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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.
    - lambertsimnel 7y ago
      Do you know of a proportional form of Bucklin voting? What do you think of the Borda count and the Quota Borda system? I believe they're straightforward to tally and sum (at least the single-winner form), and that between them they're suitable for both single-winner and multi-winner elections. I wonder how important summability is. If voters submit paper ballots, why can't election officials scan them locally and electronically transmit them to a central location for machine counting? Couldn't that make non-summable Condorcet systems work?
      - dragonwriter 7y ago
        > Do you know of a proportional form of Bucklin voting? Since Bucklin is essentially IRV with the same thresholds and no loser-elimination, the natural proportional generalization would be essentially STV without loser elimination (you'd keep STV’s winner elimination, of course)—and you could, as for STV, use either the Hare or Droop quota. > I wonder how important summability is. If voters submit paper ballots, why can't election officials scan them locally and electronically transmit them to a central location for machine counting? Couldn't that make non-summable Condorcet systems work? Sure, they can function in the ideal case; it's harder to audit the results and because the relation between any kind of subset counts or other signals and the ultimate results is somewhat opaque, it's harder to even establish rules as to when you need to do a partial or full independent confirmation. This becomes a concern if you have worries about either internal corruption or external attacks on election integrity. Ballots that can be manually canvassed in public and simply aggregated leave less room to hide shenanigans.
- nebulous1 7y ago
  I agree on the naming. I wasn't actually referring to IRV, I meant ranked choice in general as I assumed the OP did (I may well have been wrong on that). I assumed as much because all ranked choice systems are "confusing" compared to plurality systems. I'm not sure what you're suggesting by dropping the elimination step. Without the elimination step it is just first past the post. First past the post does not produce better outcomes. I do agree that IRV isn't great though. Although you can do better in single seat constituencies, it's probably more viable to move to multi-seat constituencies.
justinzollars 7y ago
I use the system and I have been elected. I hate it.

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.
  - lambertsimnel 7y ago
    Do you know of a proportional form of Bucklin voting? What do you think of the Borda count and the Quota Borda system? I believe they're straightforward to tally and sum (at least the single-winner form), and that between them they're suitable for both single-winner and multi-winner elections. I wonder how important summability is. If voters submit paper ballots, why can't election officials scan them locally and electronically transmit them to a central location for machine counting? Couldn't that make non-summable Condorcet systems work?
    - dragonwriter 7y ago
      > Do you know of a proportional form of Bucklin voting? Since Bucklin is essentially IRV with the same thresholds and no loser-elimination, the natural proportional generalization would be essentially STV without loser elimination (you'd keep STV’s winner elimination, of course)—and you could, as for STV, use either the Hare or Droop quota. > I wonder how important summability is. If voters submit paper ballots, why can't election officials scan them locally and electronically transmit them to a central location for machine counting? Couldn't that make non-summable Condorcet systems work? Sure, they can function in the ideal case; it's harder to audit the results and because the relation between any kind of subset counts or other signals and the ultimate results is somewhat opaque, it's harder to even establish rules as to when you need to do a partial or full independent confirmation. This becomes a concern if you have worries about either internal corruption or external attacks on election integrity. Ballots that can be manually canvassed in public and simply aggregated leave less room to hide shenanigans.
nebulous1 7y ago
I agree on the naming. I wasn't actually referring to IRV, I meant ranked choice in general as I assumed the OP did (I may well have been wrong on that). I assumed as much because all ranked choice systems are "confusing" compared to plurality systems. I'm not sure what you're suggesting by dropping the elimination step. Without the elimination step it is just first past the post. First past the post does not produce better outcomes. I do agree that IRV isn't great though. Although you can do better in single seat constituencies, it's probably more viable to move to multi-seat constituencies.

justinzollars 7y ago

I use the system and I have been elected. I hate it.