Instant-runoff voting: Difference between revisions
Explained fallacy of "3rd party spoiler effect".
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Jonah Thomas (talk | contribs) (Explained fallacy of "3rd party spoiler effect".) |
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The following example is given on [[http://electionmethods.org/ ElectionMethods.org]]:
:Suppose my true preference is for the Libertarian first and the Republican second. Suppose further that the Libertarians are the strongest "minor" party. At some round of the IRV counting process, all the candidates will be eliminated except the Republican, the Democrat, and the Libertarian. If the Libertarian then has the fewest first-choice votes, he or she will be eliminated and my vote will transfer to the Republican, just as I wanted. But what if the Republican is eliminated before the Libertarian? Unless all the Republican votes transfer to the Libertarian, which is extremely unlikely, the Democrat might then beat the Libertarian. If so, I will have helped the Democrat win by not strategically ranking the Republican first.
However, this thinking is flawed. The problem in this case is that the Republicans are not the major party, but the third party. They come in third, that makes them a third party. And they fail to vote second for their Libertarian second choice, so their second choice does not win. This is how it is supposed to work. When third-party voters don't vote for their second choice, the second choice might not win. The proposed solution is that the major-party voters should vote third-party first.
Try this reasoning when Republicans are the major party. They think that Libertarians will not vote Republican second, and there are enough Libertarians to keep the Republicans from winning. So -- even when they have 45% of the vote and Libertarians have 6%, Republicans might agree to vote Libertarian because they would prefer Libertarians to Democrats. Does that sound in any way plausible? So why would major-party Libertarians vote third-party on the assumption that the third-party voters won't vote second for their candidate? Because they have no self-respect.
==== Failure to pick a good compromise ====
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