3 ms·

As a casual observer, I wonder why ranked-choice captured the mind share when people who are passionate about voting systems seem to universally prefer approval

As a casual observer, I wonder why ranked-choice captured the mind share when people who are passionate about voting systems seem to universally prefer approval. Maybe there's something about voting for multiple candidates that just doesn't sit right with people?

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
NickM 7y ago
This may be too cynical, but I have to wonder if it's because of its flaws that the two parties in power are allowing RCV to gain ground. RCV eliminates the spoiler effect for non-competitive third-party candidates, but conveniently fails to do so when third parties start to become threatening. Approval voting, on the other hand, always allows people to show support to a third-party candidate without risking throwing away their vote....
- macawfish 7y ago
  In my mind it's something a little more subtle but to the same effect. I think that ordinal and cardinal voting systems attract/repel people with different psychological tendencies, probably not unlike the tendencies described here, related to tolerance for uncertainty: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3092984/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3092984/. Ordinal systems impose a strict rank on peoples' choices, whereas cardinal systems allow people to settle on superpositions of choices, to explicitly give up control. To me, being forced to order my choices is an unfair imposition. I want to be able to say "I'd be okay with fish or vegan food, someone else who cares more should make the final call". I don't want Rob Richie telling me that I should vote for fish over vegan food because I happen to really like fish. In doing that, I'd be alienating my vegan friend, and because I'm totally up for eating vegan food, I find it unacceptable to be pressured into ranking one over the other. This is the very dynamic that creates splitting, and I'm offended by it. Being forced to rank my choices is unnatural to me, but I've heard ordinal voting advocates claim that ranking choices is natural and intuitive to everyone/most people, even after sharing my position that it feels funny. Go figure. I'd expect ordinal voting advocates to be more likely to agree with statements like "everyone has a favorite color".
  - jsmith45 7y ago
    A good ranked choice system like Schulze, avoids that issue. You can give multiple people the same rank, to express no preference between them. So you could have two or more choices you don't want to express an opinion between both marked 1, then perhaps the lesser but still acceptable candidates marked 2, the unacceptable candidates as 3, and extremely unacceptable candidates as 4. Meanwhile, somebody else can come along and rank all the candidates with a unique number if they prefer. In Schulze, all the numbering is doing is expressing who you would pick in a one-on-one race any pair of candidates. Ranking candidates the same (tied), simply means you would have left that question blank on a traditional FPTP ballot because you don't care which of the two wins, either because you find them equally good/bad or you feel they sufficiently close that you would prefer to let those who care more decide. For example, I don't own a home, or have kids, so i will usually leave school property tax levy questions blank. I may have some super slight preference one way or another, but I'm mostly unaffected, so I will let those who actually care about this decide.
jtolmar 7y ago
In my experience, when you ask people to do approval voting, they seem to rank the candidates then try to figure out where to put the cutoff between the approvable candidates and non. The system doesn't give any guidelines on where the cutoff goes, so people recoil because they feel like they're doing it wrong. The fact that people can set arbitrary cutoffs and it'll work out in aggregate is pretty surprising.
deleted 7y ago
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paulgb 7y ago
Maybe I'm just projecting, but I think the expressiveness of being able to rank candidates appeals to the same type of informed voters who would advocate for electoral reform.
philipn 7y ago
One reason is constitutionality. The "One man, one vote" principal likely has to be upheld for a voting system used in the US to be ruled as constitutional. https://www.fairvote.org/how_ranked_choice_voting_survives_the_one_person_one_vote_challenge https://www.fairvote.org/how_ranked_choice_voting_survives_t... https://www.fairvote.org/_ranked_choice_voting_reaffirmed_in_latest_court_challenge https://www.fairvote.org/_ranked_choice_voting_reaffirmed_in...

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

NickM 7y ago

This may be too cynical, but I have to wonder if it's because of its flaws that the two parties in power are allowing RCV to gain ground. RCV eliminates the spoiler effect for non-competitive third-party candidates, but conveniently fails to do so when third parties start to become threatening. Approval voting, on the other hand, always allows people to show support to a third-party candidate without risking throwing away their vote....

macawfish 7y ago
In my mind it's something a little more subtle but to the same effect. I think that ordinal and cardinal voting systems attract/repel people with different psychological tendencies, probably not unlike the tendencies described here, related to tolerance for uncertainty: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3092984/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3092984/. Ordinal systems impose a strict rank on peoples' choices, whereas cardinal systems allow people to settle on superpositions of choices, to explicitly give up control. To me, being forced to order my choices is an unfair imposition. I want to be able to say "I'd be okay with fish or vegan food, someone else who cares more should make the final call". I don't want Rob Richie telling me that I should vote for fish over vegan food because I happen to really like fish. In doing that, I'd be alienating my vegan friend, and because I'm totally up for eating vegan food, I find it unacceptable to be pressured into ranking one over the other. This is the very dynamic that creates splitting, and I'm offended by it. Being forced to rank my choices is unnatural to me, but I've heard ordinal voting advocates claim that ranking choices is natural and intuitive to everyone/most people, even after sharing my position that it feels funny. Go figure. I'd expect ordinal voting advocates to be more likely to agree with statements like "everyone has a favorite color".
- jsmith45 7y ago
  A good ranked choice system like Schulze, avoids that issue. You can give multiple people the same rank, to express no preference between them. So you could have two or more choices you don't want to express an opinion between both marked 1, then perhaps the lesser but still acceptable candidates marked 2, the unacceptable candidates as 3, and extremely unacceptable candidates as 4. Meanwhile, somebody else can come along and rank all the candidates with a unique number if they prefer. In Schulze, all the numbering is doing is expressing who you would pick in a one-on-one race any pair of candidates. Ranking candidates the same (tied), simply means you would have left that question blank on a traditional FPTP ballot because you don't care which of the two wins, either because you find them equally good/bad or you feel they sufficiently close that you would prefer to let those who care more decide. For example, I don't own a home, or have kids, so i will usually leave school property tax levy questions blank. I may have some super slight preference one way or another, but I'm mostly unaffected, so I will let those who actually care about this decide.

jtolmar 7y ago

In my experience, when you ask people to do approval voting, they seem to rank the candidates then try to figure out where to put the cutoff between the approvable candidates and non. The system doesn't give any guidelines on where the cutoff goes, so people recoil because they feel like they're doing it wrong. The fact that people can set arbitrary cutoffs and it'll work out in aggregate is pretty surprising.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

paulgb 7y ago

Maybe I'm just projecting, but I think the expressiveness of being able to rank candidates appeals to the same type of informed voters who would advocate for electoral reform.

philipn 7y ago

One reason is constitutionality. The "One man, one vote" principal likely has to be upheld for a voting system used in the US to be ruled as constitutional. https://www.fairvote.org/how_ranked_choice_voting_survives_the_one_person_one_vote_challenge https://www.fairvote.org/how_ranked_choice_voting_survives_t... https://www.fairvote.org/_ranked_choice_voting_reaffirmed_in_latest_court_challenge https://www.fairvote.org/_ranked_choice_voting_reaffirmed_in...