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Alternate Voting Systems

So a thread in diermuid's journal has made me think about the way we run elections in this country (I'd like to say it was due to lulumay's candidate for office, but I hadn't noticed her journal yet). I had become a recent fan of the Instant Runoff Voting system, but upon further inspection it seems to have some Seriously Weird™ problems, like lowering someone's ranking causing them to win, etc.

In the process I came across something called Condorcet voting. Initially this looked complicated as all Hel (pairwise voting? matrices in the ballot-box?), but then I actually found a site that would explain it here.

And then there's this essay on mathematical models of different voting systems, which just makes my little geek heart flutter, and this election site where you can set up your own Condorcet election.

Initial reactions:

• Condorcet seems to gravitate toward a central, compromise candidate. It does mathematically seem to pan out from the brief looking-over I've given it.



• Instant Runoff seems to gravitate toward polarizing, highly partisan candidates. However because of the mathematical idiosyncracies, it's hard to tell what's strategy and what isn't.



• I'd like to try it out sometime, whether it be a computer simulation or an actual election (could use the site above). Unfortunately most of the elections I usually can operate some control over (even straw polls) are too small to give a meaningful sample, and I don't have the time to code a simulation right now...



• And look: Now there's a simulation going based on the 2004 election! Go vote Condorcet-style!



• Any system we go for has to be simple, or our voting percentages will go down further. Either of these satisfy that, by doing all of the calculating behind the scenes, leaving the voter only needing to rank before the algorithms are applied.



• All of this is moot anyway, since Americans will never choose something created by a Frenchman in this day and age! :P



• Maybe we can call it the Concordant Voting system, which is what my brain keeps trying to call it anyway...



Anyone else heard of this, or have mathematical/political/psychological/sociological/theological input?