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electionmethods.org is a reasonable site, although it's clearly biased in favor of Condorcet elections. [...] I actually have a soft spot for approval voting


It looks like the folks at electionmethods would be willing to settle for approval voting as a practical compromise. I have read a few other papers which point out that out of all the seriously proposed systems "instant runoff voting" is the worst according to a multitude of metrics. Though none are perfect, I would prefer we choose one of the better ones. As a practical matter, IRV apparently has the problem that it is difficult to "trickle up" votes from precincts, and that the computation matrix becomes huge as the number of candidates goes up. Sure, we have the computation power and bandwidth to deal with this, but I think the more transparency in an election process, the better. (Which means the complexity of Condercet is a strike against it as well.)

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One of the most intriguing possibilities that I heard of recently is called "open primaries", as in California's Proposition 62, which apparently failed in the California election.


I'm going to assume the Republicans voted against it because they didn't want two Democrats and zero Republicans on the final ballot, and the Democrats voted against it because they didn't want the Republicans to trash their primary and intentionally select unelectable Democrats in the primary -- a valid concern after the dirty tricks Governor Grey Davis played with the Republican primary a few years ago. (Davis, a Democrat, helped ensure that the Republicans chose someone he could easily defeat, instead of the stronger, more moderate candidate who would have posed him a challenge. Of course, residual anger about that is probably one of the things that bit him in the ass later and got Arnold swept into office.)

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Still, the idea of a multiround preference voting system might be a way to work around some of the undesirable features of single-round preference voting, but still end up with something that voters can wrap their brains around without causing too much pain.


Of course, the reason given for instituting IRV in San Francisco was to save money on elections by avoiding runoffs. So suggesting "multiround anything" probably makes it harder to push the issue of preference voting of any type.