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[Leafsnail]

2. Not even these alternatives would be impervious to meta-voting; trying to list people you don't want knocked out early as your first choice (or something of the like) might lead to unforeseen consequences.

It's definitely true that it isn't immune to meta-voting.  There's some really interesting mathematical work that proves that any electoral system with more than two candidates must be dictatorial (one voter decides the outcome), exclusive (a candidate or candidates can never win regardless of preference) or manipulable (you can get a better outcome from the election by not reporting your real preferences)*.  Out of these three I think it's fair to say the last is the most preferable, so it really becomes a matter of trying to minimize the potential for manipulation as much as possible.

I would say that in real life it's pretty unlikely that IRV could be manipulable.  That's because it being manipulated requires weird rock-paper-scissors type situations (people who like candidate A put candidate B as their second choice, people who like candidate B put candidate C as their second choice, people who like candidate C put candidate A as their second choice) and that just doesn't tend to happen.  Or at least it doesn't happen as often as the split-voting which happens in FPTP.

* http://www.math4realworld.com/?page_id=6 is the source I used here, the GIBBARD-SATTERTHWAITE THEOREM section specifically.  I'm not really enough of a mathematician to rigorously follow the proof, but I can understand the general argument.

[Pnx]

Trouble is it doesn't at least as far as most democrats and republicans are concerned, no matter how it turns out they're pretty much guaranteed to lose power. Making things a pure popular representation rather than the state representatives thing we have right now would also mean no more gerrymandering districts, since who's a part of what district would no longer matter.

This is something you'd really have to do as a grass roots movement, it might be better to try to convince the representatives at a state legislature to implement this first.

The biggest issue we've got right now preventing different forms of voting from being a thing, is that most people aren't even aware you can do this. Or they don't consider it a valid system. So your first step should be to raise awareness.

[Leafsnail]

Changing a voting system is always tough, but it's not impossible.  Personally I'm hoping the Tories are badly burnt by having their vote split with UKIP at the next election.  That'd probably cause them to see the upside to IRV/AV/whatever.

[GrizzlyAdamz]

Hm, well, you know what George F. Will said about pessimism. Sweet, I'll start pestering people about this when given the chance.

unforeseen consequences.

It never ceases to amaze me how many people make "unforeseen consequences" style points against things as if there aren't already-existing examples of them in other parts of the world that have been in effect for decades or more.

It's already a point I concede but,
It never ceases to amaze me how many people don't include a source for their claims mister.

[SalmonGod]

unforeseen consequences.

It never ceases to amaze me how many people make "unforeseen consequences" style points against things as if there aren't already-existing examples of them in other parts of the world that have been in effect for decades or more.

It's already a point I concede but,
It never ceases to amaze me how many people don't include a source for their claims mister.

MSH has already posted two, one of which I thought you read.

Don't mean to get on your case about it, especially if you concede the point.  It's just a pet peeve of mine, because I encounter it soooo much.

[GrizzlyAdamz]

Hadn't read the wiki article, thought it was just to establish what AV (IRV) was. Have now, the contents of the article & this thread are most reassuring.

Did that advert get a lot of airtime? If so, lovely.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

@Salmon
Btw, looked around for all of 10 mins, seems australia & ireland are the only countries with a bona-fide national IFV/AV/STV system, here's the last page I wound up on.

[Pnx]

There was a lot along those lines from what I hear, "it's too confusing!" was a big point in the campaign, and it didn't help that the "yes" side basically failed to pitch the system simply, but they also did some really dirty fighting against the issue. From what I hear they claimed that AV was inefficient, would cost ludicrous amounts of money, was confusing and would alienate voters that didn't understand it, would lead to wars that would kill British soldiers, would kill babies (seriously), and a lot of other stuff.

[lorb]

With some luck the US might see a big change in the voting system without even changing any laws: National Popular Vote Interstate Compact

[palsch]

My favourite part was when the no campaign said it would help the BNP, rather than letting anyone sane rank every party in the UK over any BNP candidates in their area.

But yeah, a lot of the yes campaign was an ugly mess. I was kinda involved in the early stages, up until the national campaign was going to take over, at which stage there seemed to be a complete disconnect with what groups had tried to create locally. There was also little to no party unity compared to the Tories' uniform opposition. Labour had dragged their feet for over a decade on voting reform and weren't much better at embracing AV. The Lib Dems were probably the strongest supporters, but had just signed onto the deal with the Tories and so were seen as toxic to actually put front and centre in the campaign. The Greens wanted to cut off our noses in the hope that we could somehow go straight to a fully proportional system instead.

[Leafsnail]

The BNP was anti-AV anyway, that was a stupid argument.

[GrizzlyAdamz]

Sounds like something I'd be rather bitter about if I lived there.

With some luck the US might see a big change in the voting system without even changing any laws: National Popular Vote Interstate Compact

that's still FPTP, and bound to raise opposition.

[GlyphGryph]

I'd hesitate to call that "a big change". It's honestly pretty superficial.

[Pnx]

It would make a significant impact on the presidential elections, right now the electoral college system screws endlessly with the way it runs.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I'd hesitate to call that "a big change". It's honestly pretty superficial.

You call eliminating a 5% (as of the current number of presidential elections) failure rate insignificant?

[Pnx]

Not only that but by making the popular vote count, you influence the way the popular vote turns out. There are people in states that are heavily one way or the other that would vote the other way if they knew their vote counted, but since they're along side a whole bunch of people that vote the other way, they know it doesn't really matter.