[mtgx]

Two-round system would be an improvement as well to the FPTP system. It would also fix the spoiler effect and the lack of majority support for winner problems. It's also simpler than RCV.

However, I don't think it reduces negative campaigns like RCV does (though it might improve on the "blue or red" campaigns that exist with FPTP). Another objective may be that the election "costs too much" (basically double or more), although I don't think this is a real objective. Democracy costs money. Deal with it. But I could see the objection gaining traction with some politicians, for the same reason the removal of voting polls gained traction in states with budget deficits.

I'd be content with either RCV or two-round system.

[dragonwriter]

California actually now has a two round system for many legislative (state and federal) and other elections, with the "primary" being the open-field first round and the "general election" being the final vote between the top two.

I've seen lots of complaints that it "eliminates choice", because you have elections where the "general election" options are both Democrats (most notably, this year's U.S. Senate race.)

[lambertsimnel]

RCV is better than the Two-Round system, which is an expensive and time-consuming way of doing Supplementary Vote. Supplementary Vote is a system we use in the UK to elect mayors and Police & Crime Commissioners, and is a form of RCV in which voters are limited to only two preferences.

[ClayShentrup]

Not certain. http://scorevoting.net/Honest Runoff.html

[lambertsimnel]

The address should be http://scorevoting.net/HonestRunoff.html (without the space)

Perhaps not certain, and I do agree that there's far more to be gained by replacing plurality voting by either, but I think that page has some mistakes.

> IRV leads to stifling 2-party domination

I suspect that's because of poor voter information. You can't address every political problem effectively with a choice of voting system.

> with IRV, that one round is more complicated and it cannot be done on ordinary "dumb totalizing" voting machines ... > IRV is more complicated for both voters and talliers.

I find IRV simpler as a voter because of the reduced need for tactical voting in the first round.

IRV isn't complicated to count by hand. (In my country, vested interests said we couldn't afford the necessary voting machines, but we already conduct hand counts suitable for IRV.) You simply separate the ballot papers by candidate and count each candidate's vote, as we do under plurality voting. If no candidate has a majority, eliminate the last candidate, redistribute that candidate's votes to the highest ranked candidate (as marked on each ballot paper) still in the race, count only the redistributed votes and add them to the total from the previous round. Keep going until a candidate has a majority.

> we certainly cannot argue that one system is better than the other under all circumstances.

You have to choose an electoral system before you can know the exact circumstances of an election, but the he main thing is to avoid plurality voting.