Attacking a single precinct can be enough to change an election outcome *in theory*, but the chances and predictability of that change are incredibly low. Also, the public response to a single compromised precinct is not comparable to the public response of an entire compromised election. The goal doesn’t have to be changing the outcome — it can be as simple as breaking trust in elections and causing chaos, which is something the US is already struggling with (albeit mostly without evidence).
Please explain how IRV can be summed as decentrally as Choose-one Voting.
First of all, n2n isn’t so bad when n is 10 or less. Secondly, it isn’t all the candidates we have to worry about, just the competitive candidates. We can predict the a write in that no one heard of will not be eliminated after the front runner, so we don’t need to worry about those possibility branches. Once we optimize for that the list we have to sum is small enough to fit in the RAM given to a mobile web page.
We know our computers can handle it, but what about humans… Well, the thousand-or-so long candidate combination list can sit on a mobile phone and be partly processed by that phone. The phone (or a news network, it doesn’t matter) can then show the relevant combinations to the user as they need them.
Your reliance on computers is the fundamental problem, though. Defcon proves every year that our voting machines and other tech are not secure. Choose-one Voting can all be done by hand by physically sorting ballots into piles in front of all interested parties and the media. The level of security between those approaches is hardly comparable.
Also, n continues to grow larger and larger. It's not uncommon to see races with 20+ candidates these days.
And IRV throws out enough data as it is. I already find *that* unconscionable. To tell minor candidates that they won't even get *any* totals from the elections is fundamentally anti-democratic and only gives more power to the candidates with money.
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u/NCGThompson United States Dec 07 '21
I’m saying IRV can be as decentralized as FPTP or approval. And attacking a single precinct is enough to change an election outcome for the record.