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Alexander is quite right, the Alternative Vote (or what we here in the United States
call Instant Runoff Voting) is a majoritarian system that uses ranked/transferable
ballots to, in essence, ask voters ahead of time who their "runoff" choice is so
that you can determine a majority winner in one election. it's a fine system, used
for single-winner races (like single-seat districts, mayors, etc.) A version of it
was just used to elect the mayor of London, and also it is used to elect the president
of the Republic of Ireland, the president of the American Political Science Association,
and the Australian House of Representatives, among others. naturally, like
all voting systems, it can suffer from some unusual results and paradoxes in extraordinary
circumstances, but generally speaking in 99 percent of cases, IRV/alternative vote
works just fine. but it is not the same as Single Transferable Vote (STV) or what
we in the United States call choice voting. STV is a proportional representation
voting system electing representatives from multi-seat districts, instead of single-seat
districts. It too is used in Ireland and Australia, as well as the city of
Cambridge, Massachusetts to elect city council and school boards. It's also
used by the Academy Awards to select the five finalists in major award categories. Steven
Hill
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