In one of my first posts at DailyKos, I reposted an entry from my main blog, A New Kind of Third Party, that was titled, "The Problem(s) with Instant Runoff Voting". In it, I said I didn't think it would be a good idea to use IRV for bigger elections because of the centralization of vote-counting and its' increased potential for corruption. Fortunately, Rob Richie pointed out today that all that is required is the centralization of vote-counting results and I concur. Unfortunately, it seems I was too hasty in my assessment of IRV, possibly because I wanted to create a problem that my proposed alternative form of IRV would then solve.
I could mention caveats, but IRV works! Even if it's not the strongest medicine for our democracyin the cabinet of possible electoral reforms, it's very much needed. And I fear that too many advocates for alternative election rules are too eager to attack IRV which is the best known helpful alternative to the first-past-the-post election rule that is used way too much here in the United States.
So I apologize to Rob Richie and FairVote and FairVoteMN and all other supporters of Instant Runoff Voting for how I let my ego get in the way of helping to ensure we get an electoral reform debate going throughout the US as soon as possible!!!
dlw