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There's a "law" that describes this: Duverger's Law [1] Pedantry follows: First past the post is [more or less] the election system we have - you select one c

by wrsh07 10y ago

There's a "law" that describes this: Duverger's Law [1] Pedantry follows: First past the post is [more or less] the election system we have - you select one candidate. Candidate with plurality [that's a generalization of a majority, ie the person with the most votes even if they don't have > 50%] wins. There are lots of alternatives, and even a ballot initiative in Maine [2] to switch to a different type of voting system known as Ranked Choice Voting. New types of voting systems are exciting, but complexity lends itself to a poor user interface. So more sophisticated forms of voting actually depress poll #s [I'll just cite Harry talking about this ballot initiative in this podcast [3]]. If you're looking to ever have a real alternative to the big two, the path to that is convincing your local government to switch voting systems. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law [2]: https://ballotpedia.org/Maine_Ranked_Choice_Voting_Initiative,_Question_5_(2016) https://ballotpedia.org/Maine_Ranked_Choice_Voting_Initiativ... [3]: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/elections-podcast-countdown-11-days/ http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/elections-podcast-countd... [Edit: put scare quotes around law]

abecedarius 10y ago
The issue of complexity is why I'd push for approval voting (i.e. you can upvote multiple candidates). http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/ http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/ shows some of the weirdness that comes up with ranked choice voting (what I'd always heard of before as instant runoff voting). It looks even more surprising than what we have! I've been wondering recently if California would go for a ballot initiative to change their primaries to approval voting or score voting or some other reasonable improvement. Since recently the state has open primaries, meaning you might end up with a general election between two Democrats, or two Republicans, and other weirdness. I can imagine less resistance to a change here, than for the mechanism of the general election.
- wrsh07 10y ago
  Majority judgment or judgment voting is interesting / more general than merely up vote + down vote. I think the most important thing is for voters to want to experiment. And to be engaged.
perilunar 10y ago
In Australia we use Preferential or Optional Preferential voting (aka Instant Runoff) for pretty much all elections (federal, state and local), and it works reasonably well. First-past-the-post voting seems like a completely backward way to vote, and perfectly designed to make voting for a third party candidate a difficult choice.
acedinlowball 10y ago
Also known as First Past the Post.
- wrsh07 10y ago
  Yes, I even named it in my post

by wrsh07 10y ago

abecedarius 10y ago

The issue of complexity is why I'd push for approval voting (i.e. you can upvote multiple candidates). http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/ http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/ shows some of the weirdness that comes up with ranked choice voting (what I'd always heard of before as instant runoff voting). It looks even more surprising than what we have! I've been wondering recently if California would go for a ballot initiative to change their primaries to approval voting or score voting or some other reasonable improvement. Since recently the state has open primaries, meaning you might end up with a general election between two Democrats, or two Republicans, and other weirdness. I can imagine less resistance to a change here, than for the mechanism of the general election.

wrsh07 10y ago
Majority judgment or judgment voting is interesting / more general than merely up vote + down vote. I think the most important thing is for voters to want to experiment. And to be engaged.

perilunar 10y ago

In Australia we use Preferential or Optional Preferential voting (aka Instant Runoff) for pretty much all elections (federal, state and local), and it works reasonably well. First-past-the-post voting seems like a completely backward way to vote, and perfectly designed to make voting for a third party candidate a difficult choice.

acedinlowball 10y ago

Also known as First Past the Post.

wrsh07 10y ago
Yes, I even named it in my post