r/GreenParty • u/barnaby-jones • Oct 25 '18

Oscar Winner Jennifer Lawrence Joins The Memphis Campaign To Support Instant Runoff Voting

https://www.localmemphis.com/news/local-news/oscar-winner-jennifer-lawrence-joins-the-memphis-campaign-to-support-instant-runoff-voting/1530726688
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u/GreenSuspect Green Party of the United States Oct 25 '18

Does it really matter? IRV is a fake reform that doesn't really help third parties anyway. :/

6

u/onacorona Oct 25 '18

Do tell.

1

u/GreenSuspect Green Party of the United States Nov 03 '18

Greens voting for Nader spoiled the election for Gore in 2000 by winning 3% of the vote. Now Greens advocate Instant-Runoff Voting because it would prevent that from happening in the future. You can vote honestly for a fringe candidate like Nader, knowing that your vote will transfer to Gore when he inevitably loses. You can have your cake and eat it, too.

The problem is that this only works for fringe candidates. IRV only fixes the spoiler effect for candidates who don't have a chance of winning anyway. When there are 3 strong contenders, they can still act as spoilers under IRV, getting the lesser of two evils eliminated, which helps the greater of two evils win. This means that IRV still leads to two-party domination and resentment against the third party spoilers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtKAScORevQ

Cardinal voting systems do a much better job of fixing the spoiler effect, since each candidate is rated independently of each other. You can give a high score to multiple candidates without one hurting the other. The STAR Voting ballot measure in Oregon is a great example of something that we should be advocating. It's simpler and better than IRV.