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A Majority Rule Philosophy for Instant Runoff Voting

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  • Ross Hyman
  • Deb Otis
  • Seamus Allen
  • Greg Dennis

Abstract

We present the core support criterion, a voting criterion satisfied by Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) that is analogous to the Condorcet criterion but reflective of a different majority rule philosophy. Condorcet methods can be thought of as conducting elections between each pair of candidates, counting all ballots to determine the winner of each pair-election. IRV can also be thought of as conducting elections between all pairs of candidates but for each pair-election only counting ballots from voters who do not prefer another major candidate (as determined self-consistently from the IRV social ranking) to the two candidates in contention. The appropriateness of including all ballots or a subset of ballots for a pair-election, depends on whether the society deems the entire or a selected ballot set in compliance with freedom of association (which implies freedom of non-association) for a given pair election. Arguments based on freedom of association rely on more information about an electorate than can be learned from ranked ballots alone. We present a freedom-of-association based argument to explain why IRV may be preferable to Condorcet in some circumstances, including the 2022 Alaska special congressional election, based on the political context of that election.

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  • Ross Hyman & Deb Otis & Seamus Allen & Greg Dennis, 2023. "A Majority Rule Philosophy for Instant Runoff Voting," Papers 2308.08430, arXiv.org, revised Mar 2024.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2308.08430
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Nicolaus Tideman, 2023. "Choosing among the Variety of proposed Voting Reforms," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 34(3), pages 471-481, September.
    2. Joseph Ornstein & Robert Norman, 2014. "Frequency of monotonicity failure under Instant Runoff Voting: estimates based on a spatial model of elections," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 161(1), pages 1-9, October.
    3. Chang Geun Song, 2023. "What difference does a voting rule make?," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 34(3), pages 275-285, September.
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