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Obligatory plug for electoral reform. Lesser evils aren't inevitable; they're a product of a bad voting system. https://www.fairvote.org/rcv https://www.fairvo

Obligatory plug for electoral reform. Lesser evils aren't inevitable; they're a product of a bad voting system. https://www.fairvote.org/rcv https://www.fairvote.org/rcv https://www.fairvote.org/alternatives https://www.fairvote.org/alternatives Maine has converted to RCV already and it's stood up in court; 49 to go.

CamperBob2 6y ago
Lesser evils aren't inevitable; they're a product of a bad voting system. Other countries with other systems don't really do much better. The fundamental problem is that the people who want this sort of power are the last ones who should ever be allowed to wield it. When people are willing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to get a job that pays $500K a year, you have to wonder what's really going on.
- a1369209993 6y ago
  Does "select a president [senator, etc] uniformly at random from the voting population" count as a voting system? I feel like that's about the only way to fix things at this point. (I'm partial to approval voting (vote "yes" or "no" for each cantidate separately and if the winner doesn't have at least 50% "yes", the office is vacant until the next election), but I suspect the party line would immediately become "you're a traitor if you approve anyone but the Party's candidate".)
  - JoshTriplett 6y ago
    > Does "select a president uniformly at random from the voting population" count as a voting system? Not voting, but it is a real election system, known as Sortition (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition). It was used in ancient Athens. Also, yes, approval voting is a great approach and we should absolutely use it. We'd still get people who vote party-line, and it'd take a while for people to truly internalize that they can safely vote for other candidates they like, but it'd be a massive improvement.
    - a1369209993 6y ago
      > known as Sortition (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition). It was used in ancient Athens. I vaguely remembered that, but not the name, thanks.
cavanasm 6y ago
Major this. Also plug for CGP Grey's "politics in the animal kingdom" video series that explains exactly why we have that 'lesser of two evils' problem, and how exactly RCV and Alternative vote systems resolve that problem, in a very simple, understandable way. https://www.cgpgrey.com/politics-in-the-animal-kingdom https://www.cgpgrey.com/politics-in-the-animal-kingdom
- gspr 6y ago
  What I, as a European from a country that elects proportionally (which isn't perfect, but anyway), cannot understand is the blank stare Americans give me when people point out that the two-party system and FPTP are the things that need to be fixed for the US to have a democratic future. It's like so many of them cannot wrap their heads around something being fundamentally broken. The same goes for Canadians and UKians.
  - Taek 6y ago
    We've literally been brainwashed from birth to believe that we have, by far, the best government that's ever been built. It's a major part of the school system. Cognitive dissonance around the idea that there is room for improvement is inevitable.
    - gspr 6y ago
      I'm surprised that this attitude survives along side the attitude of "the government sucks at everything and it should be made as small as possible" that seems to be so pervasive in the US. And I'm surprised that I get the same blank stares from Americans that have lived for a decade in Europe. It's like they've never contemplated any other way of electing. Of course it's not true about everyone. I'm generalizing a lot here, but it still surprises me.
      - baddox 6y ago
        Most people who believe the “the government sucks at everything and should be as small as possible” probably still worship the Constitution and “the forefathers” and believe it’s completely compatible.
dllthomas 6y ago
> Lesser evils aren't inevitable; they're a product of a bad voting system. It's made much worse by the bad voting system, but it's perfectly possible that I simply disagree with enough of my fellow citizens that any compromise we can reach will be some "lesser evil".
- lukifer 6y ago
  I think that's probably the case. Nonetheless, I would claim "lesser evilism" would be greatly reduced due to RCV (and Approval) being better at capturing preferences: you get to vote for your favorite option, and against your least favorite option. I think there's a strong argument that RCV/Approval would shift the incentives and game-theoretic landscape away from polarization and turnout, and towards big-tent coalition building, to appeal to the greatest quantity of left, right, center, and independent. That does mean compromise, and likely policy concessions; but i think that would be a huge improvement over (a) taking turns at obstructionism, and (b) a de-facto one-party system regarding corporate interests, the military-industrial complex, etc.
  - dllthomas 6y ago
    Yeah, my comment was intended narrowly - in no way was I endorsing FPTP. :)
  - JoshTriplett 6y ago
    > would be greatly reduced due to RCV (and Approval) being better at capturing preferences The problem is that IRV/RCV doesn't capture your preferences, because it ignores all your preferences except your top choice, until your top choice is eliminated. IRV is reasonably good at making sure that third-parties can't prevent first-parties from being elected, but very bad at actually allowing third parties to actually be elected even if they have widespread approval. Approval is a good compromise, and fully ranked systems (e.g. Condorcet) would be even better but much harder to enact. I would happily support universal adoption of Approval.
    - NineStarPoint 6y ago
Press2forEN 6y ago
Let's say the US had 5 parties and all 5 supported 5 variations of the EARN IT act, what then?
- z3c0 6y ago
  Then we're choosing the lesser of five evils, except now, none of the evil parties alone have a strong enough electorate to squash any sixth party that emerges from the disenfranchised of the other five. That's completely unlike the current two-party system, where no third party can gain any traction due to not having a sizable enough electorate to take on "the big kids".
- jonhohle 6y ago
  start over? > to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness
godelski 6y ago
I want to push back against this, and specifically fair vote. - What they are referring to as RCV is called Instant Runoff Voting (IRV). IRV is a RCV, but RCV isn't IRV. Think "Rock and Roll is The Beatles" vs "The Beatles are a Rock and Roll group." - IRV isn't that great when it comes to Voter Satisfaction Efficiency (VSE)[0]. There's even other RCV methods like Ranked Pair[1] that are exactly the same for the voter. Essentially IRV is a 6% improvement upon plurality (what we currently use) but RP is a 15% increase from plurality. So I ask, why go to IRV when we can do twice as good? (or better! Keep reading) - Fair Vote claims that IRV has a high resistance to spoiler candidates (a candidate that takes away votes from another similar candidate). This is actually why the distinction from RCV and IRV is important and why Fair Vote is misleading. While RCV is better than plurality in this respect, some RCVs are better than others. IRV doesn't adequately solve this issue (but there are other RCVs that do!). IRV fails when two candidates are similar in positions and similar in popularity. [2] This is specifically the kind of spoiling that we are trying to prevent. We're trying to prevent a candidate like Sanders from spoiling Biden (or vise versa) not Jill Stein spoiling Biden. IRV prevents the latter, but not the former. I am specifically upset with Fair Vote because they are misleading in this context. Because they claim IRV := RCV, they take all the things different RCV methods solve and claim IRV solves them. This is simply not true (and why I make the first bullet). - There are just better methods besides ranking (also called "ordinal" methods). There's a class called Cardinal[3], that is actually simpler. The simplest is called approval. An example of approval is Netflix's rating system (binary). It does pretty well. Better yet is range/score voting. This would be the old Netflix system where you rated out of 5 stars. The difference in ranked vs cardinal is that you rate each candidate or policy independent of the others. This allows you to be more precise/honest (you may actually like two candidates equally!). It also reduces complexity because a common accident in ranking is rating two candidates the same. In ordinal systems this is a bug, in cardinal this is a feature. - I want to specifically mention STAR voting[4]. While STAR isn't perfect, it much better handles various types of spoiler candidates, has a high VSE (similar to that of RP), and handles strategic voting well. The last is the major reason you should choose STAR over RP (and there's no reason you should choose IRV over RP, because RP is strictly better). While all three systems encourage honest voting (in a single agent scenario) strategic voting is always an issue. Under no circumstance is STAR worse than IRV because STAR handles strategic voting. Specifically the most important kind is the "1-sided strategy"[5] which is arguably very common. - Lastly, I want to appeal to authority. Kennith Arrow (who you may be familiar with from Arrow's Impossibility theorem and Gibbard's extension) is a Nobel Laureate and said cardinal systems are "probably right."[6] And I think many of us know science speak into the confidence that conveys. That link is a full interview with him from Election Science. It is a good read/listen. TLDR: We want a good voting system, use STAR, not IRV. [0] https://electionscience.github.io/vse-sim/vse.html https://electionscience.github.io/vse-sim/vse.html [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked_pairs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked_pairs [2] https://www.electionscience.org/library/the-spoiler-effect/ https://www.electionscience.org/library/the-spoiler-effect/ [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinal_voting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinal_voting [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STAR_voting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STAR_voting [5] https://electionscience.github.io/vse-sim/VSE/ https://electionscience.github.io/vse-sim/VSE/ [6] https://www.electionscience.org/commentary-analysis/voting-theory-podcast-2012-10-06-interview-with-nobel-laureate-dr-kenneth-arrow/ https://www.electionscience.org/commentary-analysis/voting-t...
qchris 6y ago
Just a quick reminder that in California, a bill allowing statewide ranked-choice voting in all cities (not just charter ones) was passed by both the state assembly and senate by a wide margin, before being vetoed by Gov. Newsom last year. [1] https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/Gavin-Newsom-vetoes-bill-to-allow-ranked-choice-14535193.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/Gavin-Newsom-ve...
- ece 6y ago
  RCV or any voting system isn't better than what the current prescription is for CVRA lawsuits: having districts. It enables more local elections, lower cost of campaigning, and more minority representation. Edit: It's also easier to have neutral district lines drawn (like in CA and a few states by boards) than to pick a voting system that might not achieve the objectives of the CVRA. If you're wondering why it was vetoed, maybe look at the history of CVRA lawsuits and how having districts has helped communities more than RCV. RCV is an apportioning method, which doesn't necessarily make it a good voting method.

CamperBob2 6y ago

Lesser evils aren't inevitable; they're a product of a bad voting system. Other countries with other systems don't really do much better. The fundamental problem is that the people who want this sort of power are the last ones who should ever be allowed to wield it. When people are willing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to get a job that pays $500K a year, you have to wonder what's really going on.

a1369209993 6y ago
Does "select a president [senator, etc] uniformly at random from the voting population" count as a voting system? I feel like that's about the only way to fix things at this point. (I'm partial to approval voting (vote "yes" or "no" for each cantidate separately and if the winner doesn't have at least 50% "yes", the office is vacant until the next election), but I suspect the party line would immediately become "you're a traitor if you approve anyone but the Party's candidate".)
- JoshTriplett 6y ago
  > Does "select a president uniformly at random from the voting population" count as a voting system? Not voting, but it is a real election system, known as Sortition (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition). It was used in ancient Athens. Also, yes, approval voting is a great approach and we should absolutely use it. We'd still get people who vote party-line, and it'd take a while for people to truly internalize that they can safely vote for other candidates they like, but it'd be a massive improvement.
  - a1369209993 6y ago
    > known as Sortition (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition). It was used in ancient Athens. I vaguely remembered that, but not the name, thanks.

cavanasm 6y ago

Major this. Also plug for CGP Grey's "politics in the animal kingdom" video series that explains exactly why we have that 'lesser of two evils' problem, and how exactly RCV and Alternative vote systems resolve that problem, in a very simple, understandable way. https://www.cgpgrey.com/politics-in-the-animal-kingdom https://www.cgpgrey.com/politics-in-the-animal-kingdom

gspr 6y ago
What I, as a European from a country that elects proportionally (which isn't perfect, but anyway), cannot understand is the blank stare Americans give me when people point out that the two-party system and FPTP are the things that need to be fixed for the US to have a democratic future. It's like so many of them cannot wrap their heads around something being fundamentally broken. The same goes for Canadians and UKians.
- Taek 6y ago
  We've literally been brainwashed from birth to believe that we have, by far, the best government that's ever been built. It's a major part of the school system. Cognitive dissonance around the idea that there is room for improvement is inevitable.
  - gspr 6y ago
    I'm surprised that this attitude survives along side the attitude of "the government sucks at everything and it should be made as small as possible" that seems to be so pervasive in the US. And I'm surprised that I get the same blank stares from Americans that have lived for a decade in Europe. It's like they've never contemplated any other way of electing. Of course it's not true about everyone. I'm generalizing a lot here, but it still surprises me.
    - baddox 6y ago
      Most people who believe the “the government sucks at everything and should be as small as possible” probably still worship the Constitution and “the forefathers” and believe it’s completely compatible.

dllthomas 6y ago

> Lesser evils aren't inevitable; they're a product of a bad voting system. It's made much worse by the bad voting system, but it's perfectly possible that I simply disagree with enough of my fellow citizens that any compromise we can reach will be some "lesser evil".

lukifer 6y ago
I think that's probably the case. Nonetheless, I would claim "lesser evilism" would be greatly reduced due to RCV (and Approval) being better at capturing preferences: you get to vote for your favorite option, and against your least favorite option. I think there's a strong argument that RCV/Approval would shift the incentives and game-theoretic landscape away from polarization and turnout, and towards big-tent coalition building, to appeal to the greatest quantity of left, right, center, and independent. That does mean compromise, and likely policy concessions; but i think that would be a huge improvement over (a) taking turns at obstructionism, and (b) a de-facto one-party system regarding corporate interests, the military-industrial complex, etc.
- dllthomas 6y ago
  Yeah, my comment was intended narrowly - in no way was I endorsing FPTP. :)
- JoshTriplett 6y ago
  > would be greatly reduced due to RCV (and Approval) being better at capturing preferences The problem is that IRV/RCV doesn't capture your preferences, because it ignores all your preferences except your top choice, until your top choice is eliminated. IRV is reasonably good at making sure that third-parties can't prevent first-parties from being elected, but very bad at actually allowing third parties to actually be elected even if they have widespread approval. Approval is a good compromise, and fully ranked systems (e.g. Condorcet) would be even better but much harder to enact. I would happily support universal adoption of Approval.
  - NineStarPoint 6y ago

Press2forEN 6y ago

Let's say the US had 5 parties and all 5 supported 5 variations of the EARN IT act, what then?

z3c0 6y ago
Then we're choosing the lesser of five evils, except now, none of the evil parties alone have a strong enough electorate to squash any sixth party that emerges from the disenfranchised of the other five. That's completely unlike the current two-party system, where no third party can gain any traction due to not having a sizable enough electorate to take on "the big kids".
jonhohle 6y ago
start over? > to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness

godelski 6y ago

I want to push back against this, and specifically fair vote. - What they are referring to as RCV is called Instant Runoff Voting (IRV). IRV is a RCV, but RCV isn't IRV. Think "Rock and Roll is The Beatles" vs "The Beatles are a Rock and Roll group." - IRV isn't that great when it comes to Voter Satisfaction Efficiency (VSE)[0]. There's even other RCV methods like Ranked Pair[1] that are exactly the same for the voter. Essentially IRV is a 6% improvement upon plurality (what we currently use) but RP is a 15% increase from plurality. So I ask, why go to IRV when we can do twice as good? (or better! Keep reading) - Fair Vote claims that IRV has a high resistance to spoiler candidates (a candidate that takes away votes from another similar candidate). This is actually why the distinction from RCV and IRV is important and why Fair Vote is misleading. While RCV is better than plurality in this respect, some RCVs are better than others. IRV doesn't adequately solve this issue (but there are other RCVs that do!). IRV fails when two candidates are similar in positions and similar in popularity. [2] This is specifically the kind of spoiling that we are trying to prevent. We're trying to prevent a candidate like Sanders from spoiling Biden (or vise versa) not Jill Stein spoiling Biden. IRV prevents the latter, but not the former. I am specifically upset with Fair Vote because they are misleading in this context. Because they claim IRV := RCV, they take all the things different RCV methods solve and claim IRV solves them. This is simply not true (and why I make the first bullet). - There are just better methods besides ranking (also called "ordinal" methods). There's a class called Cardinal[3], that is actually simpler. The simplest is called approval. An example of approval is Netflix's rating system (binary). It does pretty well. Better yet is range/score voting. This would be the old Netflix system where you rated out of 5 stars. The difference in ranked vs cardinal is that you rate each candidate or policy independent of the others. This allows you to be more precise/honest (you may actually like two candidates equally!). It also reduces complexity because a common accident in ranking is rating two candidates the same. In ordinal systems this is a bug, in cardinal this is a feature. - I want to specifically mention STAR voting[4]. While STAR isn't perfect, it much better handles various types of spoiler candidates, has a high VSE (similar to that of RP), and handles strategic voting well. The last is the major reason you should choose STAR over RP (and there's no reason you should choose IRV over RP, because RP is strictly better). While all three systems encourage honest voting (in a single agent scenario) strategic voting is always an issue. Under no circumstance is STAR worse than IRV because STAR handles strategic voting. Specifically the most important kind is the "1-sided strategy"[5] which is arguably very common. - Lastly, I want to appeal to authority. Kennith Arrow (who you may be familiar with from Arrow's Impossibility theorem and Gibbard's extension) is a Nobel Laureate and said cardinal systems are "probably right."[6] And I think many of us know science speak into the confidence that conveys. That link is a full interview with him from Election Science. It is a good read/listen. TLDR: We want a good voting system, use STAR, not IRV. [0] https://electionscience.github.io/vse-sim/vse.html https://electionscience.github.io/vse-sim/vse.html [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked_pairs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked_pairs [2] https://www.electionscience.org/library/the-spoiler-effect/ https://www.electionscience.org/library/the-spoiler-effect/ [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinal_voting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinal_voting [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STAR_voting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STAR_voting [5] https://electionscience.github.io/vse-sim/VSE/ https://electionscience.github.io/vse-sim/VSE/ [6] https://www.electionscience.org/commentary-analysis/voting-theory-podcast-2012-10-06-interview-with-nobel-laureate-dr-kenneth-arrow/ https://www.electionscience.org/commentary-analysis/voting-t...

qchris 6y ago

Just a quick reminder that in California, a bill allowing statewide ranked-choice voting in all cities (not just charter ones) was passed by both the state assembly and senate by a wide margin, before being vetoed by Gov. Newsom last year. [1] https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/Gavin-Newsom-vetoes-bill-to-allow-ranked-choice-14535193.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/Gavin-Newsom-ve...

ece 6y ago
RCV or any voting system isn't better than what the current prescription is for CVRA lawsuits: having districts. It enables more local elections, lower cost of campaigning, and more minority representation. Edit: It's also easier to have neutral district lines drawn (like in CA and a few states by boards) than to pick a voting system that might not achieve the objectives of the CVRA. If you're wondering why it was vetoed, maybe look at the history of CVRA lawsuits and how having districts has helped communities more than RCV. RCV is an apportioning method, which doesn't necessarily make it a good voting method.