[throw5away]

Honestly IRV is _even worse than plurality_. It doesn't solve the problems it sets out to solve (it entrenches two-party domination [1]), it has ridiculous monotonicity violations [2], all for a lot more complication in counting the votes (you can't distribute the counting well without transmitting the contents of all of the ballots) and possibly wrecking the secret ballot (you can encode and buy specific down-ballot rankings).

Seriously, it's all of the disadvantages and very limited upside.

[1] https://rangevoting.org/TarrIrvSumm.html [2] http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/

[zestyping]

And worse: it suppresses the Black vote, as if we didn't have enough of that already.

https://rangevoting.org/SPRates.html

https://www.yes2repeal.org/spoiled-ballots

IRV means much higher rates of spoiled ballots, disproportionately in low-income neighbourhoods. It's actively harmful.

[wslack]

> you can't distribute the counting well without transmitting the contents of all of the ballots

There are only so many combinations of rankings that are possible. It shouldn't be hard to encode each of those possible orders and transmit them as a whole.

[godelski]

> There are only so many combinations of rankings that are possible.

O(n^2) isn't great though...

The algorithm to count is rough and requires many rounds (since you count, knock out the lowest candidate, recount, and repeat until a >50% favor is achieved by one candidate). Cardinal systems on the other hand just require summing the columns and taking argmax. This is far simpler (in fact we can do most of this in parallel making a far better runtime).

[zestyping]

"Only so many" = At least N factorial. If ties are allowed, then even more.

With 20 candidates in an election, that's over 2 billion billion possibilities. It's not practical.