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Ranked-choice voting is on the ballot in New York City

• s_dev 7y ago
  Ireland uses this appraoch. We call it STV. STV Explained -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8XOZJkozfI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8XOZJkozfI It just a better democracy because it's more representative. It's solves the "wasted vote" problem people have with democracy and why many democracies result in a two party system. This way it ensures your vote is counted and multiple parties exist.
  • ownagefool 7y ago
    Scotland also uses STV (Single Transferable Vote), though also participates in FPTP (First Past the Post) for UK wide elections.
    • seanalltogether 7y ago
      NI too. I would love to see STV used for Parliament so that possibly someone other then DUP or Sinn Fein could make it in.
  • stevenleeg 7y ago
    I'd also highly recommend "Tweak the Vote" from Radiolab, which discusses Ireland's election process: https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/tweak-vote https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/tweak...
  • gmiller123456 7y ago
    Actually, that's a form of Proportional Representation. What's being adopted by NY still results in one winner, not a percentage of seats awarded based on the percentage of votes a party got.
    • pmyteh 7y ago
      Instant Runoff Voting is essentially STV in the degenerate case of single seat constituencies rather than multi-member ones. So you're both right! It is in some sense the same system, but it plays very differently in that the results are majoritarian rather than proportional.
  • tunesmith 7y ago
    Generally, I think it's accepted that IRV is a good choice for multi-member elections. But for these kinds of US single-winner elections, that's where its flaws come out.
    • bbrazil 7y ago
      It seems to work fine for the Irish presidential elections, which are single winner. The Irish presidency is almost entirely a ceremonial role.
• ehPReth 7y ago
  man, I wish Canada had this yesterday
  • umeshunni 7y ago
    How would this have changed the Canadian results?
    • Kylekramer 7y ago
      Would have given Liberals a more convincing victory given that the Canada left is split into three to four parties while right just has one.
      • vkou 7y ago
        Even if you're a Liberal supporter, the last thing that you wanted to see last night was another Liberal majority. [1] Their handling of scandals (Pre-black-face, which was a side-show) was absolutely atrocious, and they could absolutely get away with it, by closing ranks in Parliament. It's one of the big reasons for why the Cons gained 4 percentage points in the popular vote since 2015. Another four years of an untouchable majority, and they would have stolen everything not nailed down, completely destroyed their public image, only to waltz into the polls, and find to their dismay that this results in another Con government. Proportionate representation would give Canadian politics the kick in the direction it needs, but unfortunately, the Liberals went back on their promises of electoral reform, once they realized that it would cost them seats. [1] Edit: It should be noted that Canada has a track record of reasonably functioning minority governments - so government will continue to be able to reasonably... Govern. What it won't be able to continue with, is closing is eyes and ears, to all kinds of cabinet impropriety.
      • yifanl 7y ago
        It's more of a 3-2 split, no? Afaict, the Bloc are a right-leaning party. (Not familiar with Quebecois politics, so I could definitely be wrong)
        • 7y ago
• gmiller123456 7y ago
  Certainly a small step in the right direction. But what's really needed to give voters their voice is Proportional Representation. That's were the legislative houses are made up of parties given the percentage of seats based on the percentage of votes they received. Ranked choice voting still results in a "first past the post" system, where significant portions of the voters (up to 49.999...%) get no voice at all.
  • ls612 7y ago
    This is for the Mayor and other citywide offices where there can only be one winner in the election.
  • Ididntdothis 7y ago
    Germany has a system where part is determined by the votes percentage but then there are also some seats that can be won by winning a district. I think this works pretty well. In general the US needs a system where if you a certain number of votes you get some level of representation. For example it’s real bad that Perot won 20% in the 90s but these votes got zero representation. .
  • sixstringtheory 7y ago
    For any polisci folks out there, does ranked choice voting still encourage a bipartisan system, or does it theoretically encourage more parties to specialize to single-issue parties where voters essentially rank their issues on the ballot, as opposed to voting all-or-nothing for a party that supports their #1 issue but none others?
    • harshreality 7y ago
      Yes it encourages bipartisan voting. It encourages 3rd party voting only when you know the 3rd party will be eliminated before the two major parties, otherwise you risk your lesser-of-two-evils choice being eliminated instead. IRV for single winner elections is nearly as awful as first past the post. Last time I brought up condorcet someone pointed out it has problems too, but they're not as bad. Switching all rep voting to multi winner, rather than one winner per district, solves some of the election problems (and makes gerrymandering a lot less significant), and for single winner like president or governor the ultimate solution is range voting which ends up strategically collapsing to approval voting. So basically people who want to can range vote, but practically everyone will vote Yes/max for all candidates they can stomach and no/0 for candidates they can't. That seems simple but the obvious effect is that good 3rd parties can be voted for without "wasting" your vote. Therefore a few good third parties would flourish and start winning city and state elections, not just in crazy districts or once in a blue moon, but regularly whenever Reps/Dems have lost touch.
• pastor_elm 7y ago
  Only for primaries. The Democrat establish cannot be challenged.
  • xrd 7y ago
    But, doesn't this permit a situation where a Democrat that wants to maintain the estabishment will go through the Democratic party, and someone that does not (who might identity mostly as a Democrat) can go outside and still participate in the primary? There is still the problem with money and power corrupting the message (and the two party system wants to keep that power in place). But, at least it provides options for alternative candidates if they are feel their integrity is worth more than party loyalty?
• whiddershins 7y ago
  Can someone comment on whether this really does what we want it to do? I recall reading that a similar system in Australia (or New Zealand or somewhere) didn’t enable third party candidates at all, which was explain because of something something math. I’d love to know is what the deal is.
  • rcarback 7y ago
    That depends on the criteria, which could be "the candidate that most people accept/approve" (my personal preference), "the candidate that the most people will choose over all others", or something else. IRV has failure cases against both of these, and I wrote a good example of an IRV election which explains the issue here: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/410622/scoring-the-candidates/ https://www.technologyreview.com/s/410622/scoring-the-candid... Warren's page on this with a lot more details is here: https://rangevoting.org/rangeVirv.html https://rangevoting.org/rangeVirv.html
  • macawfish 7y ago
    Ranked choice voting systems are still ordinal voting systems, just like first past the post. Which means it's still susceptible to similar kinds of strategic voting as the current system. Although it obscures them from being usable via common sense, I don't think it prevents algorithms with lots of data from exploiting them. All ordinal systems are susceptible to Arrow's Theorem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoiler_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoiler_effect
    • lambertsimnel 7y ago
      First Past the Post isn't actually an ordinal system. "Ordinal" is simply a synonym of "ranked choice". Arrow's impossibility theorem isn't relevant to FPTP, but that doesn't make it a satisfactory system.
      • macawfish 7y ago
        Ah, yeah I was wrong about that. (It does reduce to an ordinal system in a two-choice election though!)
• crazygringo 7y ago
  I absolutely support ranked-choice voting as an improvement to the current system. BUT, the proposed system is specifically Instant Run-Off Voting (IRV), which does not make a centrist third-party candidate likely to win. Because it removes whoever gets the least first-place votes, the only improvement it gives is that a third-party candidate doesn't spoil an election, because your second-place vote will still count. (E.g. Nader wouldn't have taken votes from Gore, so Gore would have won instead of Bush.) But you're still stuck with one of the polarizing two-party candidates who will win. Contrast this to the Borda Count [2], where points are assigned by rank. In this case, suppose about half of everyone votes first-place for an extreme liberal, and the other half vote first-place for an extreme conservative. But everyone votes second-place for a moderate centrist they can live with, and third-place for the opposite-party candidate they detest. With IRV, the centrist is ignored and one of the extremists will win. But with Borda, the centrist candidate will win. So to really get away from the poisonous political polarization of our times, ranked choice is necessary, but it needs to be Borda or similar, not IRV. Still -- it's a start, and I'm grateful for that alone. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borda_count https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borda_count
  • chadlavi 7y ago
    > a third-party candidate doesn't spoil an election that's enough of an improvement for me
    • karmelapple 7y ago
      Agreed. Let’s not allow perfect to be the enemy of the better. After not making any significant changes to voting in over 200 years (besides expanding it to more people, thank goodness) in the USA, taking one step towards a better future is gigantic. Once we take that first step, future steps will be easier (even if they’ll still be difficult at first). I can’t wait for RCV, any flavor, to come to more cities and states. P.S. if you’re in Massachusetts and feel strongly about ranked choice voting, come join me helping out https://voterchoice2020.org/ https://voterchoice2020.org/
  • 7y ago
• macawfish 7y ago
  My concern with ranked choice voting is that it doesn't reduce the problem of splitting, it just obscures it from human view. My hunch is that data analysis methods will still be just as capable of manipulating RCV as they are FPTP. It'll just be harder to detect and reason about. Ordinal voting systems have certain game theoretical properties in common. I'm a huge fan of non-ranked (cardinal) voting systems, as they don't force people to order their choices. Forcing people to order their choices filters out information about peoples' preferences and therefore distorts them. My favorite voting systems are approval voting and STAR voting.
  • DominikPeters 7y ago
    IRV does reduce the problem of vote splitting: if a candidate would win, but is then split into two or more “clones” such that all voters rank these clones in adjacent positions, then a clone still wins the election. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independence_of_clones_criterion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independence_of_clones_criteri...
• rpmisms 7y ago
  I've been a huge fan of this system ever since CGP Grey made an excellent video on how it works and why it's great. Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Y3jE3B8HsE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Y3jE3B8HsE
• uoaei 7y ago
  Shortly after the 2016 election I did some research into election and social choice theory. First-past-the-post is clearly the worst system possible. But ranked-choice also has strange artifacts where voting for your actual favorite as your first-rank choice means they might have a lower chance of winning. A much simpler method in my opinion is approval voting: the ballot instructs, "Who do you think would perform the duties of the office to your approval? Check all names that apply." Then whoever gets the most checkmarks in aggregate is the winner. No spoiler effect, easily-understood vote tallying system, and reflects true approval in the population of voters. It can be adapted to multi-seat races just by taking the top n winners. Ka-Ping Yee simulated elections using a number of recognized methods for counting votes[1]. I believe that the best system will be one which is easily-understood at the ballot box and behaves as similarly to the Condorcet method as possible. According to these simulations, it appears that approval voting is the best. No election method will meet all the requirements for an ideal one[2] so it comes down to which conditions you want to enforce and which are less important. IMO, monotonicity is very important while the later-no-harm criterion can be interpreted as a compromise which is necessary for strategic voting. [1] http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/ http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theore...
  • ElijahLynn 7y ago
    https://ncase.me/ballot/ https://ncase.me/ballot/ highlights those _strange artifacts_ in the interactive simulations.
    • uoaei 7y ago
      Oh fantastic, I hadn't realized Nicky Case did a post on this too! The chart at the bottom demonstrating the range of "Bayesian regret" caught my eye when I first started looking into all of this 3 years ago. It roughly measures aggregate societal satisfaction with respect to the result of the election versus their own preferences. Strategic ballots in approval voting reduce to FPTP -- there's not really much room for a concerted effort to sway an election one way or another, since this strategy will be shared by large swaths of each candidate's voter base and so is roughly negligible. And people will feel that "their voice is heard" which I strongly encourage as political engagement is contingent on feeling like it's worth it.
• Spooky23 7y ago
  Few elections in New York are competitive. Third parties are not centrists, they are usually sponsored by some big brother. There’s a party that’s an arm of big labor unions, and at one point a billionaire had his own party. IMO third candidates are almost always bad in the US system. We’re not a parliamentary system and I’ve never seen a third candidate who didn’t benefit the incumbent.
  • jefftk 7y ago
    > I’ve never seen a third candidate who didn’t benefit the incumbent This is probably an effect of the current voting system. The proposal here is to change the voting system, which will make third-party candidates less spoiler-y.
    • Spooky23 7y ago
      They still need to caucus to get a majority in a legislature. Encouraging third party people, especially now, is just encouraging fringe lunatics.
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  • lukifer 7y ago
    > Third parties are not centrists They can't be, game-theoretically, in our present voting ecosystem. The very premise is to capture voting preferences more accurately, such that broad consensus moderates become possible, and the spoiler effect is eliminated.
  • paulgb 7y ago
    General elections usually aren't competitive in NYC, but this change also applies to primaries and public advocate, which can be very competitive. This year, Jumaane Williams won the (non-major-party) Public Advocate position with 33% of the vote, against 16 others. The last time there was a mayoral election without an incumbent, De Blasio won with 41% against 8 others.
• burtonator 7y ago
  Ironically, so is alternative-choice and cordocet voting so they split the vote /s
• patrickmay 7y ago
  Almost any change to first-past-the-post will be an improvement. To really give it teeth, we need a binding none-of-the-above-are-acceptable (NOTA) option. Anyone who loses to NOTA is not eligible for the runoff.
• vinay427 7y ago
  This has been used in San Francisco for city/county elections for a while now, and was recently updated to allow up to ten rankings for each office. I really wish it were used for other single-representative offices (governor, etc.).
• jefftk 7y ago
  I completely agree that this is better than nothing and some sort or ranking would be good, and that IRV is not great. But Borda count is vulnerable to very bad tactical voting. People will put candidates who "can't win" above people who they like better but don't want to win. And when this goes wrong you'll have people elected who no one wants. See this chart, showing that fully tactical Borda is abysmal :http://electionscience.github.io/vse-sim/vse.html http://electionscience.github.io/vse-sim/vse.html (from http://electionscience.github.io/vse-sim/VSE/ http://electionscience.github.io/vse-sim/VSE/) If we're going to do rankings we should use something that meets the Condorcet criterion, but overall I think Approval is probably the best for its simplicity. A resource I like: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/D6trAzh6DApKPhbv4/a-voting-theory-primer-for-rationalists https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/D6trAzh6DApKPhbv4/a-voting-t...
  • lukifer 7y ago
    2nded for Approval. While it may be suboptimal at capturing preferences, it has the advantages of being easy to count, and easy to explain: whoever gets the most votes wins, end of story. Most importantly, effectively nothing changes for those who want to vote a straight major-party ticket.
    • RockIslandLine 7y ago
      "whoever gets the most votes wins, end of story." That seems to be a really bad idea if you want minority representation. How would this play out in a racist 1950s scenario?
      • jtx22 7y ago
        Why would you want minority representation? The goal is optimizing happiness. That necessarily means optimizing the majority's happiness.
      • lukifer 7y ago
        This is a problem with democracy in general; while constitutional constraints theoretically limit the damage the majority can do, in practice "the fox guards the henhouse" with regard to reifying those constraints. One can easily envision scenarios where the milquetoast centrists defeat stronger positions that would otherwise have won in a two-party, lesser-evil scenario; on the other hand, it could just as easily break the other direction. I'd argue that incentives towards consensus building are net wins for minority voters (in all senses of the word), because it puts the maximum number of voters in play for each candidate. Right now, there is a very real sense in which Texas Democrats and California Republicans have very poor representation; 49% may as well round to zero. (Proportional representation is also worthy of consideration here.) Putting those votes in play for third parties and independents makes candidates more responsive to the whole electorate rather than chasing a small number of swing voters. Even if I manage to gain 70% support of voters, it will all be for naught if my opponent opens an even bigger tent at 75%. It shifts us away from thinking of politics as a zero-sum game.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• sova 7y ago
  Ranked Choice Voting or Instant Run-Off voting could save the Union. It can crush bicameralism at the root, I really hope we can apply it on the state-level one day for Representatives. Districts and re-districting are more or less Jokes in today's world, due to Gerrymandering. The person in Charge of the whole left half of Colorado has the same number of people as the person in charge of a set of towns on the eastern ridge. It's not like you can appease such a wide area. Now, on the other hand, if all the representatives were accountable to all state regions, you could call any one of them and start getting progress on state issues. You could even ask them to work together. Would this help or harm? Hard to say. I think it would definitely help.
  • zjaffee 7y ago
    Completely disagree, instant run off voting almost universally protects the status quo, as it forces people to compromise their beliefs and vote for someone either to the right or the left of where they personally stand, leaving significant levels of disapproval in the legislature. What we need is to eliminate the concept of districts within one of the houses for a bicameral state legislature, and instead you'd vote for a party slate. The current system where you vote for both legislatures by varying districts doesn't do anything to improve government and only makes things less democratic.
    • sova 7y ago
      How does instant voting force you to vote for someone not perfectly aligned? You rank your choices from #1 to #10 or whatever. Wouldn't you agree that that's a finer grain filter than my #1 choice or bust? Voting for a party that has a ranked list of candidates is a nice idea, but that's what they use in Germany right? and I don't see it working all that well. Can you point out where this works well or better?
• iambateman 7y ago
  We just worked with FairVote on an app to help people understand RCV: rankit.vote. It’s in beta, and still a little buggy, but it’s free to use. Would love some feedback!
• sillysaurusx 7y ago
  There is a paradox I was hoping someone might resolve: If first past the post voting is the worst system possible, why is the US the most powerful country? It seems like either voting systems don’t matter that much, or the current voting system is good. Both are controversial.
  • shantly 7y ago
    > If first past the post voting is the worst system possible, why is the US the most powerful country? Having a well-functioning system of representative democracy isn't as strongly correlated with "powerful country" as a bunch of other factors. > It seems like either voting systems don’t matter that much For crowning "powerful countries", no, they may not.
  • vharuck 7y ago
    By "powerful," can I assume you mean military or economic power? Because most U.S. citizens don't share either of those things. I'm more in interested in enjoyment, lack of stress, and hope for the future. I don't think the U.S. compares as well in those categories.
  • jakeogh 7y ago
    You are correct, if you gauge things scientifically (on measurable outcomes) our system is, well, the best. There are always forces to make it more complicated, especially in the voting area.
• epistasis 7y ago
  In California, the governor recently vetoed legislation that would have allowed most cities to use ranked-choice voting. His explanation is a bit odd: > Ranked choice is an experiment that has been tried in several charter cities in California. Where it has been implemented, I am concerned that it has often led to voter confusion, and that the promise that ranked choice voting leads to greater democracy is not necessarily fulfilled. https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/SB-212-Veto-Message.pdf https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/SB-212-Vet... Newsom's own San Francisco is one of the places that has used ranked-choice voting, and I've not once heard of voter confusion. So the explanation seems rather disingenuous.
  • danieltillett 7y ago
    The confusion seems to be the voters choose someone other than a Democrat.
    • epistasis 7y ago
      There are heavy partisan divides in California, they just don't follow Democratic/Republican divides.
  • bxparks 7y ago
    I worked as a poll worker in San Francisco during the 2016 elections. I answered so many questions about ranked choice voting that I got tired of it by the end of the day. I would guess that more than 50% of voters were somewhat confused. Some of them were so confused that they botched the ballot twice, and had to return to the desk to pick up new ballots. Other times, the voter thought they had filled it out correctly only to have it rejected at the voting machine. These problems definitely increased queue times and size of the waiting line. Newsom may have other motives but I don't think his explanation is disingenuous. Edited: "confused" -> "somewhat confused"
    • epistasis 7y ago
      Thanks for this! I had not heard that perspective at all.
• Animats 7y ago
  This is what Brexit really needed. There are several options, none of which really has a majority. That's why the UK is stuck.
• bhauer 7y ago
  Although instant run-off and other ranked or "preferential" voting models are an improvement over plurality, we should be advocating for better and simpler models such as approval voting or score voting. Approval and score voting are cardinal methods that do not require that the voter order their preferences. Preferential models such as IRV require a strict preference order be specified by the voter and are much more complicated. My go-to resource for voting reform is the Center for Election Science [1]. Perhaps the worst feature of IRV is that it's non-monotonic, meaning that in some cases, voting your sincere preference can actually hurt your preferred candidate. See the linked part of the video in [2]. [1] https://www.electionscience.org/ https://www.electionscience.org/ [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2q_eMUGCU5U&feature=youtu.be&t=487 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2q_eMUGCU5U&feature=youtu.be...
  • realcoopernurse 7y ago
    Center for Election Science is great. Approval voting was recently adopted in Fargo, ND. St. Louis is currently gathering signatures for a ballot initiative to adopt approval voting. [1] [1] https://stlapproves.org/ https://stlapproves.org/
  • specialist 7y ago
    Yup. Approval Voting is the best balance between fairness and ease. Only Score Voting is (somewhat) more fair. No other system is as easy to teach, implement, audit. (Unlike IRV.) A big win for us election integrity types.
    • ClayShentrup 7y ago
      STAR Voting is reasonable. https://star.vote/ https://star.vote/
      • specialist 7y ago
        Belated response; apologies. Terrific share, thank you. Show vs tell. Very effective.
  • 7y ago
• currymj 7y ago
  one thing I think about a lot is that Australia has the sort of voting system that voting system nerds here in the US dream about. yet their political situation seems to be about as dysfunctional as ours. of course first past the post is a pretty bad system and it would be good to replace it, but I don’t think it will make a huge difference to the overall political climate.
  • JacobAldridge 7y ago
    Australian chiming in. I think it depends on what you mean by dysfunction - the Australian electorate seems fairly evenly split between the two major parties, while adding some minor parties thanks to IRV (in the House of Representatives) and proportional voting (in our Senate). This has created a sequence of minority governments - where neither party has a majority in either chamber - or slim majorities in the lower house (where our Executive / Prime Minister is chosen from). That does create some gridlock and there’s no clear mandate for a change of direction. I think that’s still a fair ways removed from some of the major-party obstruction (specifically the GOP, and specifically Mitch McConnell leading the US Senate) which defines current US politics from the outside. I think IRV is a good thing for promoting a wider array of voices in politics, but I don’t suspect it will do much to prevent inherent checks-and-balances from becoming partisan roadblocks to policy.
    • jacques_chester 7y ago
      The wider range of voices in the upper houses is due to multi-member electorates, not preferential voting per se. Australia's hung parliaments are historical aberrations; I expect that the historical pattern of clear lower house majorities to resume over time. The economics of bloc formation and ordinary logistics create constant pressure on any party. It's possible that Labor will be replaced by the Greens, or that they will form a permanent coalition like the Liberals/National/LNP/CLP chimera. But that will still be a de facto 2-party system.
• pjkundert 7y ago
  Instant Run-Off may not be the ultimate voting system, but it is a incontrovertible step-improvement vs. First Past the Post. The idea of marshaling your entire population, and then discarding everything except their selection of the least-worst candidate is ... laughable or tragic? Comical, maybe? Respect for basic thermodynamics demands that, at least, you discover your citizens' true ranking of preference, and respect that.
• justinzollars 7y ago
  First I am a former elected DNC Delegate. I absolutely hate Ranked choice voting. I never know where my vote will end up being allocated. Its deliberately confusing. This helps no one.
  • nebulous1 7y ago
    Have you read up on the system? Do you genuinely believe that it has been deliberately designed to be confusing?
    • dragonwriter 7y ago
      I'm quite familiar with Instant Runoff Voting (“Ranked Choice Voting” is a bad name that attempts to usurp the entire space of ranked-choice methods, of which it is very nearly the worst) and, whether intentional or not, the loser-elimination step makes it needlessly chaotic and produces worse outcomes than dropping that step and simply choosing first (and, if tied there, farthest).past the election quota without loser-elimination.
      • lambertsimnel 7y ago
        What system(s) do you recommend for single-winner elections? What about Coombs' method or Condorcet systems? I'm quite fond of IRV, partly because it isn't plurality voting and it's what you get when you reduce the number of winners to one under STV. Maybe the Schulze method and Schulze STV are the optimal choices.
        • dragonwriter 7y ago
          > What system(s) do you recommend for single-winner elections? What about Coombs' method or Condorcet systems? Condorcet systems are, IMO, analytically ideal (that is, any system that guarantees it chooses the Condorcet winner of one exists or a member of the Smith set otherwise is.) They aren't administratively ideal, though; particularly, they aren't straightforward to tally and sum (neither is IRV, really!). For that reason, I like Bucklin despite the fact that it is not analytically ideal in results.
• busterarm 7y ago
  New Yorker here. Instant Run-Off Voting is terrible and I will happily be voting against this when it comes to ballot. Also, the NYT Editorial Board can't seem to keep a consistent line on this issue: https://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/07/us/a-critical-spotlight-shines-on-ranked-choice-voting.html https://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/07/us/a-critical-spotlight-s... https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/09/opinion/ranked-choice-voting-maine-san-francisco.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/09/opinion/ranked-choice-vot...
  • kevindong 7y ago
    Your first link is a regular article by a journalist. Only the second link is by the editorial board.
    • busterarm 7y ago
      I give a regular journalist even more weight than the EB.
  • cgrealy 7y ago
    Do you want to make an argument as to why IRV is worse than FPP? FPP is widely acknowledged to be the single worst way of holding an election.
    • busterarm 7y ago
      and IRV is widely acknowledged to be the next worst. There are known-better systems out there.
      • cgrealy 7y ago
        100% agree that there are better systems, but don't let perfect be the enemy of good.
        • andrekandre 7y ago
          yes, but maybe we shouldn’t let perfect or better be the enemy of what is actually needed (to paraphrase alan kay) iow, what are the actual problems we are trying to solve, and what is the election system that is actually needed to solve it the potential problem of choosing something “a little better” is that we could get stuck in another local minima, where further reform (that is needed) doesn’t happen because the new current system is “good enough”
• Gusen 7y ago
  Listen to New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio rape and kill five boys in Buffalo on January 14, 2019. Download the video link below, turn the volume all the way up and put head phones on. See page 35 in the PDF. 14JanCh3_2100-2300.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yolCgVtY5b8d8YDcshwb-Yd3kS0Jg-Bk/view?usp=sharing Excerpts from the audio of the dialogue (number on left is video time in the upper right): 2102 Gigi Hadid: Why the fuck are we giving you five kids DeBlasio? 2102 Bill DeBlasio: Jesus Christ because I asked for them. 2123 Bill DeBlasio rapes and kills his first child of the night. 2123 Bill DeBlasio: I can't believe I killed the little bastard. 2128 ?: Oh God (FBI) Rapinoe is coming down the street (seen in front of 307 Summer headed in the direction of Ashland Avenue Apartments). 2130 Tara: Rapinoe is fuckin furious. 2134 Christopher Porter: A fifth child has died at the hands of Bill DeBlasio. 2134 Matthew Porter: Thing is Bill [DeBlasio] didn't even want the fifth one, but he did it anyway because that's how bad he wants to be a part of the Illuminati. 2135 Bill DeBlasio: [regarding Illuminati 'ownership' of DeBlasio] ...seriously, you already owned me with $100 million dollars. 2137 Bill DeBlasio: I think I figured out what you're doing. You want me to go on record saying I killed five kids. But here I am on video so what difference does it make? I killed five kids by raping them. Does that fucking work for you? 2137 Donald Reeves: That'll do Bill thank you. 2138 Bill DeBlasio: Now where is that little minx I'll finish off with her. 2138 Gigi Hadid: So he just fucked five kids and killed them now I have to finish him off? 2138 Patricia Porter: Gigi is gonna finish [DeBlasio] off. She has to do that. This is the tip of the iceberg. Full 84 page document [updated 9Sep]: FBI_FinalDraft_26Jul2019_BSchlenker.pdf https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Sj9EN_pHmicKS6rFQlmk67knMdJc9cGk/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Sj9EN_pHmicKS6rFQlmk67knMdJ...
• classicsnoot 7y ago
  I posted this earlier but few read it. https://americanmind.org/essays/as-the-electoral-college-goes-so-goes-the-constitution/ https://americanmind.org/essays/as-the-electoral-college-goe...
• anthony_romeo 7y ago
  My locality uses ranked-choice voting for its city elections. It also uses paper ballots. While I believe philosophically that this is a far more representative way of voting, the ballot was laid out as a giant matrix of circles to fill in. It was pretty daunting, even for me. I could see that ballot leading to serious issues for the voting rights of the elderly. It's vital that the right type of ballot is chosen for this to really work. I almost feel that ranked-choice voting would need to go hand-in-hand with a switch to electronic voting machines (for a more clear and dynamic UI), which I'm philosophically against and comes with its own host of usability issues and problems with disenfranchisement. Hard to find a satisfying middle ground on this one. Has anyone come across a more reasonable paper ballot for this type of voting?
  • vatueil 7y ago
    Even if we insist on preserving traditional hand-counting of counting paper ballots, for good or ill, couldn't we use electronic voting machines to fill out paper ballots?
  • crooked-v 7y ago
    Some usability testing by FairVote suggests that the most usable ranked ballot design usable with existing scanning machines looks like this: https://i.imgur.com/oiBMZ22.jpg https://i.imgur.com/oiBMZ22.jpg
  • lambertsimnel 7y ago
    It's possible to hold an election in which voters write numbers on the ballot papers, next to the candidates' names. The votes can still be counted by computer; that's how Scotland holds elections under Single Transferable Vote.
  • TimJRobinson 7y ago
    In Australia we write the rank number in boxes, I'm unsure what happens if you double up a number or the OCR machine can't figure out what it is. The ideal solution IMO is a touch screen machine with a list of candidates, you drag and drop your order of preference, then when you're done it prints out a paper ballot which you can double check is correct then drop in the ballot box.
• whack 7y ago
  Every time the topic of IRV comes up, people immediately wonk out and start debating the pros/cons of Borda, Condorcet and other alternatives to IRV. Even worse, they start intricately detailing all the ways in which IRV is "bad", relative to other voting systems that they prefer. And then people respond to them with with a long list of reasons as to why their proposed voting system is also bad, and actually worse than IRV. Finally, someone brings up the Arrow impossibility theorem and proves that all voting systems are fundamentally flawed in some way. Can we put our wonk-hats away for a second though and acknowledge something: IRV may not be perfect, but it is heaps better than the current system. Every time we get into a IRV-Borda-Condorcet debate, everyone else tunes out, decides that it's best to just leave things well alone, and nothing ever changes. Are there other voting systems that are better than IRV? Probably. But at this point, IRV is the most credible challenger to the status quo. It is simple, easy to understand, the average joe is open to it, and it has considerable momentum. Instead of tearing it down because it isn't perfect, can we just throw our weight behind it and help it make it a dent in the dysfunctional status quo. Once that happens, we can wonk out as much as we want, and debate what voting system to use in a referendum to determine the ideal voting-system for future elections. But it would be great if we could just focus for now on getting something done.
  • oehpr 7y ago
    British Columbia recently had a referendum on our provincial voting system. The first time we did this, we lost, 60 to 40. 60 on the reform side btw, we needed a super majority. We did another referendum on it it, we lost 50 50. We did it again, this time giving a bunch of options for voting preferences, but first asked "fptp, yes or no?". We lost 60 to 40, 60 against. I am in agreement with the lesson you're talking about. I'll take basically anything over FPTP. I wish we had learned that lesson 10 years ago. Because at this junction, BC is sick of the question being asked, and we're basically stuck with this poisonous voting system forever. A strange coincidence, the party that promised to reform Canada's federal election but deliberately pulled out on the results of the worlds strangest online poll, just got back in to power last day. So not only is reform on it's own nearly impossible, it seems impossible to ask reform of people whom got in to power with FPTP. The people debating the merits of the various voting systems really need to open their eyes to how thoroughly stuck they are with the worst choice.
• jredwards 7y ago
  The real power of this is if you combine it with open primaries. If you're in a competitive district, ranked choice allows you to prefer a less traditional candidate with no penalty, instead of worrying that you'll give away the election. If you're not in a competitive district, open primaries mean that instead of voting for the candidate from the party you prefer (who is destined to lose no matter what), you can vote for whichever candidate you feel more comfortable with and have an impact. With both, the more primary seats you allow in your open primary, and given ranked choice voting, the more likely you are to elect a candidate who genuinely lies somewhere near the middle of the spectrum of the electorate, instead of lying at the extreme of whichever party is in the majority of the electorate.
• linsomniac 7y ago
  The biggest benefit, and the biggest reason it will never happen, is that it would break the "two party system". There are many people who have an interest in keeping that alive.
• jszymborski 7y ago
  I've been thinking a lot about electoral reform after the Canadian elections yesterday. I've been feeling really disillusioned about the likelihood of abolishing first-past-the-post because of the current incentive structures, but is changing the way we vote municipally maybe the beginning of the answer? The barrier to get getting municipal electoral reform might be lower because of the general lower stakes, shorter terms, and because it's a more direct form of democracy. If voters are used to voting with IRV municipally, get to understand it better as a result, and perhaps like the outcomes better, it might be easier to get a critical mass of the population to demand reform.
• schappim 7y ago
  We’ve had this in Australia my entire life. Next up you guys should adopt the Democracy Sausage[1]. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_sausage https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_sausage
  • jacques_chester 7y ago
    It is depressing how many discussions of voting systems in the US are (a) always being theorised from first principles instead of referring to a century of experience over thousands of elections at all scales from local to national, (b) focus on one (1) mayoral election as "proof" that IRV is "worse" and (c) assume that all counting methods are equal in terms of the logistics of actually counting the ballots. As an Australian living in the USA it drives me fairly bonkers.
• gbronner 7y ago
  In NYC, this is a democrat protection scheme. In a few elections, one republican runs against a field of democrats. There's some concern that the Republican might win against a splintered field of Democrats -- can't recall it ever happening, but the Republicans, who are a small minority, are forever hopeful. This will ensure that none get elected.
  • aisengard 7y ago
    Sounds like a good system to make sure tiny minorities don't end up in power.
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  • lambertsimnel 7y ago
    That's a feature, not a bug. Fair minority representation requires multi-member districts. I understand democracy as implying majority rule, and where there is only one winner, that should have majority support. There should be multi-member districts where possible to avoid one-party domination, but in cases where there can be only one winner, isn't it democratic to allow a party with majority support to win?
    • gbronner 7y ago
      Kind of depends if you believe that representation depends on people vs party. The party apparatus is controlled in a not-particularly democratic way, which strongly affects who gets on the ballot, and historically it was possible to win a major election with about 2% of the population of the district voting for you. There was another proposal a few years ago to make local elections non-partisan. Random ballot elections are the most representative.
• Elzear 7y ago
  I am working on an application[1] and library[2] to create smalls polls using (so far) 8 different voting systems (approbation, borda, instant-runoff, kemeny, majority, minimax, schulze, two-round-runoff). Feel free to play with it, but it is still unstable, and I drop the database often times. Condorcet.vote[3] is the only similar application that I know, it lets you use 14 different methods! [1] https://www.elzear.de/poll/BLIwuJIX https://www.elzear.de/poll/BLIwuJIX [2] https://gitlab.com/lzear/votes https://gitlab.com/lzear/votes [3] https://www.condorcet.vote https://www.condorcet.vote
  • DominikPeters 7y ago
    Academics working on voting theory have several of these as well: https://voting.ml/ https://voting.ml/ https://opra.cs.rpi.edu/ https://opra.cs.rpi.edu/ https://pnyx.dss.in.tum.de/ https://pnyx.dss.in.tum.de/ http://www.robovote.org/ http://www.robovote.org/ https://whale.imag.fr/ https://whale.imag.fr/
• gumby 7y ago
  This system has been used in Australia longer than I have been alive so it should not be difficult for New Yorkers, and should be an improvement. Another improvement would be multi-candidate districts (which would also be constitutional for federal elections except, of course, {vice,}president. In that case use not only the first but first n preferences.
  • lambertsimnel 7y ago
    I agree, but note that proportional representation with ranked-choice voting and multi-member districts doesn't require a different number of preferences or votes per voter. It simply involves transferring each voter's one vote if their first preference is eliminated and a fraction of it if their first preference is elected, and then repeating with second and subsequent preferences until all vacancies are filled.
• strictnein 7y ago
  Mathematically, logically, etc these type of ballots and voting systems make sense. They will also prove disastrous in terms of voter confidence in the electoral system.
• privateSFacct 7y ago
  Quick solution: Open primaries. California has an open primary, first two past the pole approach. In practice this has driven a big move to the center. Two democrats past the pole first? The more moderate one wins. Two republicans? Again, more moderate one wins in general. IRV with highly partisan primaries is still a losing game. Go to an open IRV process and you have gold.
• blisterpeanuts 7y ago
  Can someone walk me through this system? I'm thinking of the Presidential election of 1992, in which the plurality winner of popular votes (not majority winner), Bill Clinton, beat Bush & Perot. The final numbers were: Clinton: 43% Bush: 37% Perot: 19% I've always felt that the will of the people was that a conservative should be elected, whereas a minority of the population actually voted for Clinton. Under our system, of course, Clinton was the clear winner with 370 Electoral votes, but given the controversy surrounding the 2016 results, it bears reexamination. With ranked voting, it stands to reason that most people would vote along ideological lines; most conservatives would rank Bush #1 and Perot as #2 or vice versa, while liberals would rank Clinton as #1. In this scenario, would Clinton still have won? Or would the ranked approach have awarded the Presidency to one of the conservative candidates? If the will of the people was that a conservative be President, then a parliamentary system would reflect that more accurately than our winner-takes-all approach.
  • lambertsimnel 7y ago
    In the scenario you describe, with 37% voting Bush 1 and Perot 2, and 19% voting Perot 1 and Bush 2, Perot would be eliminated and Bush would win in the final round of counting with 56%. (Other candidates receiving 1% of first prerefences between them would be eliminated before Perot.)
    • blisterpeanuts 7y ago
      So Bush would get Perot's votes? Interesting. Then again, I suppose that not everyone voting for Perot would have had Bush as their #2 choice. Plus, a number of Bush supporters didn't like/trust Perot, especially after he backed out, then reversed himself and restarted his spoiler campaign.
      • lambertsimnel 7y ago
        Yes. In reality it might have been more complicated than I suggested. And maybe I read more into your comment than I should have. I do think IRV would have been an improvement over FPTP in the elections featuring Perot and Nader, though.
• mrybczyn 7y ago
  I came here to see nerding out of epic proportions on voting schemes. Was not dissapointed. Obviously - it's a tremendously difficult subject - and one that will not be easy to convince the general public on. Moving away from FPTP is necessary - but how to make it happen? Given that any party in power - got there because of FPTP. they have strong incentive to keep it...
• lkrubner 7y ago
  Here is a place where mathematicians miss the human psychology of run-off elections. It's true that in terms of the math, ranked choice voting is the same as having multiple run-off elections, but in reality, there is a practical difference. Many people have a first choice candidate that they study and get to know. They rarely know much about their second choice, or their third choice. If there was a run-off election between an opponent and their second choice candidate, people would suddenly pay much more attention to their second choice candidate. Their preferences might shift. For practical reasons, I'd favor run off elections instead of ranked choice.
• zestyping 7y ago
  Approval voting is: • easier to participate in than IRV (IRV means lots of spoiled ballots) • easier to understand the overall behaviour of (with IRV, the overall behaviour of the system is nearly incomprehensible) • cheaper to implement than IRV (you can even keep using existing paper ballots!) • able to eliminate the spoiler effect, which IRV does not • able to reveal a reasonable measure of total support for each candidate (e.g. for analysis and news reporting), which IRV cannot Ranked ballots also introduce bias. IRV means 5–10% spoiled ballots instead of ~1%, and guess where those spoiled ballots are? Disproportionately in poorer communities: https://www.yes2repeal.org/spoiled-ballots https://www.yes2repeal.org/spoiled-ballots For single-winner elections, approval is an excellent method, and in my opinion the best way to escape dysfunctional two-party control.
• bbanyc 7y ago
  No other New Yorkers here to comment? If this were in place in 2013, it may have flipped the mayoral primary to Thompson, since he and Quinn combined had more votes than de Blasio, and both were more aligned with the centrist "machine" faction than de Blasio was. There was also some form of proportional voting in place in the '30s and '40s when LaGuardia was mayor. It greatly weakened the Tammany Hall machine and brought independent voices into the city council for the first time. Then the Communist Party won a couple of council seats. Aghast, the majority quickly amended the charter to go back to FPTP in single member districts...and Tammany sprang back into dominance. Many American cities had similar experiments with PR around the same time, and most of them "failed" for similar reasons, so for a time the only place in America with proportional representation was Cambridge, Mass., where of course the Communists would win a majority on the council regardless of what voting system they used. :P
  • lambertsimnel 7y ago
    I'm not a New Yorker, but I am interested in learning more about the history of proportional voting there. This FairVote page answered some of my questions, but I have more: https://www.fairvote.org/a_brief_history_of_proportional_representation_in_the_united_states https://www.fairvote.org/a_brief_history_of_proportional_rep... Was PR only used at city council level? Was the only PR system used STV, or were others also tried? Were other forms of ranked choice voting used? You mentioned Mayor LaGuardia. What system was he elected under as mayor? I found this 1941 mayoral election results page, which mysteriously mentions "Fusion Votes": https://www.ourcampaigns.com/RaceDetail.html?RaceID=79425 https://www.ourcampaigns.com/RaceDetail.html?RaceID=79425
    • bbanyc 7y ago
      I think it was just for the council, and mayoral races were always FPTP. Fusion voting is the odd practice in New York State of allowing one party to endorse another party's candidate. For instance, in last year's election for governor, Cuomo ran on the Democratic, Working Families, Independence, and Women's Equality Party lines, while Molinaro was the Republican, Conservative, and Reform Party candidate. https://www.elections.ny.gov/NYSBOE/elections/2018/general/2018Governor.pdf https://www.elections.ny.gov/NYSBOE/elections/2018/general/2...
• foresto 7y ago
  In case anyone here wants a quick primer on the differences between voting systems, or just something easy to hand to friends and relatives who don't have time for deep study, Politics in the Animal Kingdom by CGP Grey is a great start. At least one of the videos has already been mentioned, but here's the whole series: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkLBH5Kzphe0Qu8mCW1Leef2xSxPK1FIe https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkLBH5Kzphe0Qu8mCW1Le... http://www.cgpgrey.com/politics-in-the-animal-kingdom http://www.cgpgrey.com/politics-in-the-animal-kingdom
• jsnider3 7y ago
  Good luck.
• anigbrowl 7y ago
  Voting should be abolished; it's a relic of slow communications and travel times, and the voting mechanism has been gamed to hell and back by political rent-seekers. We could either move to a participative legislative model like Wikipedia for legal code, or just get rid of legislative terms and require all legislators to attend district assemblies once per month or quarter where agendas can be discussed and legislators confirmed or replaced.
  • lambertsimnel 7y ago
    I'd just like to point out that representative democracy can coexist with other forms of decision making. For example, the revising chamber of a bicameral legislature could be populated by sortition, and there could be direct democratic voting in referendums on policies rather than on people. (Switzerland does the latter.) Strictly speaking, I think the other forms of decision making I have in mind still involve voting, just not voting for representatives. Also, most developed countries have legislative elections that are more resistant to gaming than those in the US, UK and Canada are. (Switzerland is also one that has has an electoral system more resistant to gaming.)
• ferzul 7y ago
  Changing the voting system in America will have little effect on the party system. However, the adoption of non-partisan runoffs like in Louisiana and California will have a great effect on the people who are chosen. The current duopoly exists despite the voting system. Look at Canada and the UK, which have thriving national third parties and regional additional parites. And consider that NZ switched to MMP and Australia switched to IRV because of third party upsets. Canadians don't really worry if a vote for the NDP is a wasted vote - they vote NDP, and maybe their candidate gets up or maybe not. The duopoly exists because various states basically have laws requiring it - granting special privileges like ballot access or membership of the state gerrymandering commission to the too two parties. There may also be a contribution from the fact that electoral districts have vastly too many voters. Non-partisan runoffs increase the chances of a meaningful choice on voting day. IRV merely lets you vote for someone who won't get in. NPRV won't change the duopoly because that's required by law. But if you get a choice between the moderate Strawberry Pie party candidate and the extreme Strawberry Pie party candidate, you can get a good result from that.
• gremlinsinc 7y ago
  I've thought about a voting mechanism where you'd get 100 'points' that you can divy up... you can also convert points to 'negative' points. Say for example you had: Sanders, Warren, Gabbard, Biden and you despise biden... but like the other two... you could do something like : Sanders: 50 Warren: 20 Gabbard: 10 Biden: -20 Then you'd add up all the scores, the negative 20 you gave Biden would cancel out a 20 someone else gave him in a positive sense. This would probably need to be electronic to auto-calculate things as I'm sure many people might end up doling out 110% or 90% if they don't do the math right. Could also have a button to auto-divvy if you have no preference, or auto-divvy by party if no preference as long as they're a democrat, etc.... I've not researched all the voting theories out there, but I'm curious if this type of system would work or not? I'm not sure if IRV/ranked choice will work better, but I know what we have now is a major failure, so I'm excited that we're at least testing and willing to break things to get a system that works for more people.