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I spent some more time on this - for a large number of candidates (which is extremely common in India), the IRV mechanism is impractical. The Indian elections

I spent some more time on this - for a large number of candidates (which is extremely common in India), the IRV mechanism is impractical. The Indian elections are the largest elections of any kind in the world. The number of eligible voters are 814 million and a total of 8k candidates contested for the 500 odd seats. Perhaps something like the Kemeny-Young pairwise comparison might be the most efficient way of doing this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kemeny%E2%80%93Young_method https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kemeny%E2%80%93Young_method I wonder why this was not chosen - the claims seem to indicate that IRV does not account for second choices (http://www.votefair.org/compare.html http://www.votefair.org/compare.html)

lambertsimnel 10y ago
Thanks for the interesting links, but I don't think they support your conclusion that IRV is less practical to count. The Kemeny-Young method can't practically be counted without a computer. IRV can easily be counted by hand or computer. I think IRV is used as widely as it is not only because of its simplicity, but also because of familiarity; it is a preferential form of the multi-round Exhaustive Ballot system and a special case of Single Transferable Vote (which in other cases is a system of proportional representation). For your legislative elections, a system of proportional representation would be better than IRV, Kemeny-Young or any other single-winner system.
- sandGorgon 10y ago
  > For your legislative elections, a system of proportional representation would be better than IRV, Kemeny-Young or any other single-winner system. that is a much harder battle. Changing the election system is easier than change the representation system. So I agree that IRV is simpler - but I'm still looking for a tabular format that will allow count-once-but-execute-multiple-reassignment-round mechanism. Sorry - I'm really interested in these things for the electoral system in India... which is far more complicated than the two party systems in the US.

lambertsimnel 10y ago

Thanks for the interesting links, but I don't think they support your conclusion that IRV is less practical to count. The Kemeny-Young method can't practically be counted without a computer. IRV can easily be counted by hand or computer. I think IRV is used as widely as it is not only because of its simplicity, but also because of familiarity; it is a preferential form of the multi-round Exhaustive Ballot system and a special case of Single Transferable Vote (which in other cases is a system of proportional representation). For your legislative elections, a system of proportional representation would be better than IRV, Kemeny-Young or any other single-winner system.

sandGorgon 10y ago
> For your legislative elections, a system of proportional representation would be better than IRV, Kemeny-Young or any other single-winner system. that is a much harder battle. Changing the election system is easier than change the representation system. So I agree that IRV is simpler - but I'm still looking for a tabular format that will allow count-once-but-execute-multiple-reassignment-round mechanism. Sorry - I'm really interested in these things for the electoral system in India... which is far more complicated than the two party systems in the US.