Jackass.  I hate when people dismiss their political opponents with the charge of anti-intellectualism.  And did you notice that it’s always liberals who do that?

So, here is an argument against IRV that is not anti-intellectual, or at least what I think that guy meant by anti-intellectual.

First, let me concede that IRV is no more an imperfect voting system than any other in terms of the fairness criteria.  Next, let me set aside any claims that IRV leads to some people getting to cast more votes, or that there are any mathematical anomalies making IRV otherwise unfair.  I understand how IRV works.

Now that that’s out of the way, this is why I think IRV is bad for democracy.  (Yeah, I said it.)

One of the supposed benefits of IRV is that it makes elections friendlier.  Since candidates are not only vying for first place votes, but also the second place votes of their opponents, they need to be careful of how harshly they criticize each other.

Okay, do I really need to explain this?  That is bad.  Really.  How on earth are we supposed to know how the candidates differ, if they can’t criticize each other?

Seriously.  In Burlington, for example, people were saying they didn’t know who to vote for because all the candidates sounded the same.  A Republican, a Democrat, a Progressive, and an independent all sounded the same?  Tell me there’s not something wrong with that.

Speaking of anti-intellectual, or intellectually dishonest, really, the pro-IRV side was campaigning with the slogan “because 50% matters.”  The point was that if we repeal IRV, we would go back to the old system, where only 40% was needed to win.

I agree that 50% matters, but we can change the threshold to 50% without having IRV.

And they were using Senator Bernie Sanders as a spokesperson, who started his political career by winning mayor of Burlington with only 43% of the vote.  (Whoops!)

Bottom line, the best system is a traditional one vote system, with a candidate needing 50%, otherwise forcing a runoff between the top two vote getters.  That way, the candidates can differentiate themselves for the voters, yet no one will win with a mere plurality, eliminating the “spoiler” effect.

Even better, when there is a large slate of candidates, the top two will have a chance to rise above the din and further define themselves before we have to choose between them.

Will some people sit out the run off? Yeah, probably, but do we really want to design out electoral system to favor the people who don’t care enough to vote?

Will a run off cost more?  Yeah.  But how much is too much to pay for good democracy?