IRV: Instant Runoff Voting

a distraction from fixing broken electoral system
parliamentary democracy needed more than IRV
even more important: abolish CIA, break up media monopoly

Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) is a poor substitute for a parliamentary democracy in the US. In that system, third parties would actually have a voice in government. In the federal election in Canada in June 2004, the Liberals (canadian Democrats) got the most votes, but not a majority. The New Dem. Party (canadian unions) got enough votes to ensure that the Liberals are a minority government -- which was a primary reason why the Liberals didn't sign on to Bush's Star Wars program. If Canada used IRV, the NDP would not have had this power. Canada doesn't use voting machines, they have paper ballots counted by hand. IRV would be more difficult with this technology (the most tamper proof technology).

IRV discriminates against people who only have one choice. Are there any IRV advocates who can explain why some people would be able to vote for several candidates (as a ranking preference) and others who only liked one candidate could be treated equally.

If IRV had been used in San Francisco for their last mayoral election, Matt Gonzalez (the Green) would not have gotten to compete in a run-off that boosted the visibility of the Green Party.

IRV does not address the key issues of vote fraud - the use of voting machines (of whatever flavor), the role of the CIA, big money, big media in politics, the threats of violence against candidates who oppose the Empire (the Kennedy brothers, Wellstone, Carnahan, etc).

It would be interesting to know why nearly all of the Green Party's energy on electoral fraud in 2004 was (1) after the election and (2) focused almost entirely on Ohio. If the Greens had at least made some noise in Florida, Nevada, Iowa, etc. it would have been much more difficult for those running interference for the Republican theft (ie. Alexander Cockburn) to claim that it was only Ohio and that even if Ohio was flipped back to Kerry that Kerry would be a minority President (the truth: several million votes were flipped in several states, enough to flip the Electoral College AND the popular vote).

Gore got more votes than Bush in 2000. If IRV had been used, Bush would have gotten more votes than Gore. The problems of the 2000 election would not be solved at all via IRV -- it's just an effort by the Green Party to focus on a minor glitch in the electoral system to avoid the deeper issues. The Greens on a national level largely ignored the vote fraud in Florida in 2000 (and 2002 and 2004), and offering IRV as a substitute is a bad joke.