Aside from words in a PEP, what actual investment do we have in IRV so far? For example, have we invested time/money/effort in designing IRV ballots? Time/money/effort in acquiring/developing IRV tallying software? Any sunk costs to implement it? Or is it still just aspirational?
I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking 
. This is an effort to address Donald’s:
That is, unless we’d have to throw away work to switch, what are the downsides to switching?
Personally, if I were tasked to tally the votes, and it switched from (say) IRV to STAR, or vice versa, at the last second, I’d shrug “fine - no problem”. They’re both easy to tally with brief, simple, clear Python code. Heck, for a vote of this size, the easy-to-tally methods could be done by hand.
I haven’t seen those messages. What I have seen is a few people pointing out that (a) IRV is poorly regarded among people who study voting systems; but, (b) we could live with it this context anyway; but, (c) what is the actual cost of switching? I have to echo Nathaniel’s observation:
It’s not like you (Brett) appear to want IRV. It seems more that you’re opposed to change because … it would be a change. So my question is: a change to what? Words in the PEP, or is there actual investment in IRV infrastructure that would be lost?
If there is no infrastructure already in place, switching would leave us exactly where we already are: at ground zero. If that’s the case, the relentlessness of the opposition becomes hard to understand. The relentlessness of the opposition to IRV is easy to understand: IRV sucks , which has nothing to do with any of us.
Ya, I can live with it - but why is that necessary? The winner-so-far (“Pure Condorcet”) in the latest mostly-ignored poll is also fine by me. There’s actually little pointless bikeshedding in these messages: most people with some knowledge of these things agree that plurality, IRV, and Borda are poor choices, and that just about anything else would be significantly better. Donald and I seem to be the only vocal fans of range/score methods, but we’ve both said any of the Condorcet methods would be fine too. There isn’t a rally around any particular alternative because they’re all seen as better than IRV.
Nathaniel’s poll is a pure instance of approval voting, which is also better