3 ms·

Is ranked choice voting not susceptible to strategic voting?

jacques_chester 8y ago
It is, but if the ranking is exhaustive then it cannot regress to de facto FPTP. You wind up with an arguably more benign form of strategic voting: preference deals. The point here is that approval voting, range voting etc work better than IRV under a number of ideal conditions. But political parties have no incentive to cooperate with the ideal conditions. They want to beat the other party.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > It is, but if the ranking is exhaustive then it cannot regress to de facto FPTP. Requiring exhaustive (or even second-level) ranking has been ruled unconstitutional (at the state level) in a couple of US states when forms of Bucklin voting were used; which makes any method that relies on compulsory multiple ranking (rather than accepting truncated rankings) more difficult to implement. Which isn't a fundamental problem, but it's something to be tactically aware of.
  - jboles 8y ago
    It seems the US cannot have so many nice things (like preferential voting, and therefore a diversity of candidates) because someone might feel that their freedoms are under threat. (I have thought this before about other things I have come across. Universal healthcare, and taxes to pay for it, come to mind)
- ClayShentrup 8y ago
  > But political parties have no incentive to cooperate with the ideal conditions. They want to beat the other party. It doesn't matter. Voters will do what's in THEIR best interest, regardless of what their favorite party wants. E.g. Ralph Nader wanted his supporters to vote for him, but 90% told pollsters they voted for someone else, mostly Gore. I repeat: voters do what's in their own best interest. With Approval Voting, that often means voting for your favorite PLUS one or more other candidates who are more electable. In a large 2014 exit poll including Approval Voting, the result of the Maine gubernatorial race was completely REVERSED. http://scorevoting.net/Maine2014Exit http://scorevoting.net/Maine2014Exit Sure, the Democrat didn't want his supporters also voting for the independent. But they DID IT ANYWAY, because they didn't want the Republican. There is a reason that experts in game theory generally favor Approval Voting and/or Score Voting, such as outlined in the 2008 book "Gaming the Vote" by William Poundstone.
  - craftyguy 8y ago
    > I repeat: voters do what's in their own best interest. I disagree with this somewhat, and the reason is because some ballots have an option to vote for one party across the board, and people do that. Parties choose their candidates, therefore parties are telling people, who have the option of voting on their favorite color, who to vote for. If you align yourself with one of the two big parties in the US, you're almost always going to vote for whatever they tell you to (of course there are exceptions, but I'm speaking generally). Generally people believe the party they like is acting in their best interest (because why else would they like it), and now we've come full circle. Ralph was not a member of one of the two major political parties. That said, I agree with the rest of your comment.

It is, but if the ranking is exhaustive then it cannot regress to de facto FPTP. You wind up with an arguably more benign form of strategic voting: preference deals. The point here is that approval voting, range voting etc work better than IRV under a number of ideal conditions. But political parties have no incentive to cooperate with the ideal conditions. They want to beat the other party.

dragonwriter 8y ago
> It is, but if the ranking is exhaustive then it cannot regress to de facto FPTP. Requiring exhaustive (or even second-level) ranking has been ruled unconstitutional (at the state level) in a couple of US states when forms of Bucklin voting were used; which makes any method that relies on compulsory multiple ranking (rather than accepting truncated rankings) more difficult to implement. Which isn't a fundamental problem, but it's something to be tactically aware of.
- jboles 8y ago
  It seems the US cannot have so many nice things (like preferential voting, and therefore a diversity of candidates) because someone might feel that their freedoms are under threat. (I have thought this before about other things I have come across. Universal healthcare, and taxes to pay for it, come to mind)
ClayShentrup 8y ago
> But political parties have no incentive to cooperate with the ideal conditions. They want to beat the other party. It doesn't matter. Voters will do what's in THEIR best interest, regardless of what their favorite party wants. E.g. Ralph Nader wanted his supporters to vote for him, but 90% told pollsters they voted for someone else, mostly Gore. I repeat: voters do what's in their own best interest. With Approval Voting, that often means voting for your favorite PLUS one or more other candidates who are more electable. In a large 2014 exit poll including Approval Voting, the result of the Maine gubernatorial race was completely REVERSED. http://scorevoting.net/Maine2014Exit http://scorevoting.net/Maine2014Exit Sure, the Democrat didn't want his supporters also voting for the independent. But they DID IT ANYWAY, because they didn't want the Republican. There is a reason that experts in game theory generally favor Approval Voting and/or Score Voting, such as outlined in the 2008 book "Gaming the Vote" by William Poundstone.
- craftyguy 8y ago
  > I repeat: voters do what's in their own best interest. I disagree with this somewhat, and the reason is because some ballots have an option to vote for one party across the board, and people do that. Parties choose their candidates, therefore parties are telling people, who have the option of voting on their favorite color, who to vote for. If you align yourself with one of the two big parties in the US, you're almost always going to vote for whatever they tell you to (of course there are exceptions, but I'm speaking generally). Generally people believe the party they like is acting in their best interest (because why else would they like it), and now we've come full circle. Ralph was not a member of one of the two major political parties. That said, I agree with the rest of your comment.