4 ms·

Yeah, the entire system is screwed up by this insane electoral college. But majority-rule is insane even on a popular vote. The only good way to elect consensus

Yeah, the entire system is screwed up by this insane electoral college. But majority-rule is insane even on a popular vote. The only good way to elect consensus candidates who serve everyone well is to implement score voting http://scorevoting.net/ http://scorevoting.net/

JoshTriplett 10y ago
Several systems work well for electing a good consensus candidate in a single-winner election, including Condorcet, Approval, and various forms of range voting.
- quadrangle 10y ago
  Score voting is just another term for range voting. Approval is just score voting with the lowest resolution, effectively. Condorcet can elect a consensus candidate but inherently is worse at this than score/range/approval. Condorcet is a rank system so Arrow's Impossibility Theorem applies. Also, being a rank system, there will always be arguments about interpretation where people can hand-wring over how the outcome would be different with Borda or IRV or another way to determine the results of a rank-vote election. Finally, Condorcet always supports tyranny-of-the-majority rather than consensus. A polarizing candidate with 51% support and 49% strong disapproval will always win any rank vote, while a consenus candidate everyone likes can win a score or approval vote. Effectively, score is range is approval, same basic idea, and ONLY that idea is simple, clear, zero argument about interpreting results and none of the pathologies of rank voting. And no, rank voting is NOT able to elect consensus candidates over polarizing ones in the way score voting does.
PDoyle 10y ago
I'm not sure it's the only way. There are ranked-ballot systems that are good too, like Single Transferable Vote. The point is, first-past-the-post has almost every possible flaw you can have in a voting system.
- quadrangle 10y ago
  Nope STV is not so good, it still falls to Arrow's Impossibility Theorem which applies to every single rank voting system. Sure, first-past-the-post is horrid, but if you expend political will, time, power, energy, money to reform the voting system, it's a tragedy to replace a horrible system with a bad one when we actually know of a good one. We will not get infinite, costless resources and chances for voting reform.

JoshTriplett 10y ago

Several systems work well for electing a good consensus candidate in a single-winner election, including Condorcet, Approval, and various forms of range voting.

quadrangle 10y ago
Score voting is just another term for range voting. Approval is just score voting with the lowest resolution, effectively. Condorcet can elect a consensus candidate but inherently is worse at this than score/range/approval. Condorcet is a rank system so Arrow's Impossibility Theorem applies. Also, being a rank system, there will always be arguments about interpretation where people can hand-wring over how the outcome would be different with Borda or IRV or another way to determine the results of a rank-vote election. Finally, Condorcet always supports tyranny-of-the-majority rather than consensus. A polarizing candidate with 51% support and 49% strong disapproval will always win any rank vote, while a consenus candidate everyone likes can win a score or approval vote. Effectively, score is range is approval, same basic idea, and ONLY that idea is simple, clear, zero argument about interpreting results and none of the pathologies of rank voting. And no, rank voting is NOT able to elect consensus candidates over polarizing ones in the way score voting does.

PDoyle 10y ago

I'm not sure it's the only way. There are ranked-ballot systems that are good too, like Single Transferable Vote. The point is, first-past-the-post has almost every possible flaw you can have in a voting system.

quadrangle 10y ago
Nope STV is not so good, it still falls to Arrow's Impossibility Theorem which applies to every single rank voting system. Sure, first-past-the-post is horrid, but if you expend political will, time, power, energy, money to reform the voting system, it's a tragedy to replace a horrible system with a bad one when we actually know of a good one. We will not get infinite, costless resources and chances for voting reform.