11 ms·

Ranked-choice voting will be used in Maine’s presidential election, court rules

182 points by dane-pgp 6y ago

dane-pgp 6y ago
> The case hinged on 988 signatures collected by two circulators who were not registered to vote in the towns they circulated petitions in prior to beginning their work. Dunlap argued that should invalidate the signatures they gathered, while Republicans charged that the secretary of state was wrongly disenfranchising voters. It's ironic that the Republicans complained that independent voters were not having their votes counted.
- seibelj 6y ago
  It’s ironic that you think any political party is above doing every last possible thing to win. No political party anywhere on earth has principles above getting elected. If you believe the democrats are any better, perhaps research machine politics. It is a naked power struggle from top to bottom on all sides.
  - p1necone 6y ago
    I'm not sure what universe you're living in to think that the Democrats are "just as bad". Sure, there's also plenty of corruption in other political parties, but don't think you're fooling anyone into thinking you're not either arguing in bad faith or just ignorant.
    - seibelj 6y ago
      I'm sorry, but I believe you are extremely naive.
    - spacephysics 6y ago
      The democrats have fumbled this election cycle. One minute they’re encouraging riots, Pelosi and other politicians, next minute Pelosi is asking all violent protesters and looters to be prosecuted. During the Obama administration, Hillary Clinton wrote its the Republican Party‘s duty to the American people to push a Supreme Court seat before Obama’s tenure was over (2016), now they demand the process is halted once the cards are dealt to the opposing side. We’re seeing a shift of the Republican Party representing the working class, and the Democratic Party representing the wealthy. Both have issues, but don’t pretend one is ostensibly worse in totality. Each party takes turns being the villain, and currently the Democrats pushes for chaos in the streets, and it backfired. Just like Nixon was elected after the riots and bombings of the 60’s, this election too will be a landslide similar for both Nixon and Reagan. Democrats pushed too far with ideological baggage that the average blue collar, working class American doesn’t want to deal with. https://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/27/1969-a-year-of-bombings/ https://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/27/1969-a-year-of...
    - Waterfall 6y ago
      You clearly never lived in Chicago or NYC. These Democrats make Republicans look like angels. They hire their friends as contractors, they do a poor job, then get paid to fix it. You're the ignorant one if you actually think one party is any better.
  - dane-pgp 6y ago
    A recent study[0] found that the Republican party is three times worse than the Democrats in terms of respecting the norms, principles, and practices of democratic countries. (The data was based on a survey of 2000 experts from around the world.) I'm not saying this proves that the Democrats are better, but I do think it's too simplistic to say that every single party in the world is exactly as corrupt/authoritarian as every other party in the world. [0] https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/21449634/republicans-supreme-court-gop-trump-authoritarian https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/21449634/republicans...
    - ars 6y ago
      A: vox isn't a valid news source for this kind of news. B: "a survey of 2000 experts from around the world" is not a valid way to collect such data And finally the actual article says: "Its closest peers are, almost uniformly, radical right and anti-democratic parties. This includes Turkey’s AKP (a regime that is one of the world’s leading jailers of journalists), and Poland’s PiS (which has threatened dissenting judges with criminal punishment)." Since concluding the Republican party is like those is ridiculous on it's face, one can only conclude this survey is garbage if it generates such results. To be specific: the survey isn't measuring how the Republican party actually is. Rather it's measuring how these experts think the Republican party is - informed mainly by a liberal American media. I've seen it over and over: Decide how you think the opponent will behave, then criticize them, in advance, as if they have already behaved that way. Think about it: Do you think Republicans would "jail journalists" and "threaten judges with criminal punishment"? Next, think Did Republicans actually do that? And consider why your opinion on what you think they would do doesn't match what they actually did.
      - FireBeyond 6y ago
        > This includes Turkey’s AKP (a regime that is one of the world’s leading jailers of journalists) Whereas we, on the other hand, are only the second leading jailer of citizens. > which has threatened dissenting judges with criminal punishment Our current President repeatedly threatens journalists and the media with criminal punishment, tying your two points together.
  - drunkpotato 6y ago
    > It’s ironic that you think any political party is above doing every last possible thing to win. Political parties don't do anything, people in them do. The people in those parties, for the most part, do indeed have limits to what they will do to win. The ones that don't are sociopaths who unfortunately sometimes amass undeserved power. But I see no evidence for the kind of universal assertion of amorality you're making here. > No political party anywhere on earth has principles above getting elected. That just treats politics as some kind of nihilistic team sport, which I reject and it's unsupported by any evidence. Parties have platforms. According to https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/trust-us-politicians-keep-most-of-their-promises/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/trust-us-politicians-ke... politicians do try to keep most of their platform promises. > If you believe the democrats are any better, perhaps research machine politics. I don't understand your point here. It appears that you're defending Republicans doing... something? By saying that the Democrats did... something? > It is a naked power struggle from top to bottom on all sides. That stance seems in direct contradiction to the enlightenment principles upon which the United States was founded. The peaceful transition of power between opposing parties has been very much a hallmark of the US republic for many decades, and a principle to which most of us adhere.
    - sthnblllII 6y ago
      >It appears that you're defending Republicans doing... something? By saying that the Democrats did... something? I think he's explicitly NOT defending either party. a critique of one is not a defense of the other.
  - shajznnckfke 6y ago
    I think different organizations have constraints that lend them to prioritizing different values. Because more of the population supports democrats, especially oft-disenfranchised groups, it’s in the party’s interests to expand the rights of voters. It’s similar to how Apple can value privacy more because they are a hardware company. You could look at this cynically and say that these organizations are all amoral agents who only behave according to their incentives. You’d be right. Another way to look at it is that these organizations are tools for humans, and their differing constraints mold them to be useful to further certain values. I don’t naively support democrats because I believe they are better people. I support them because their values align better with the world I want to live in.
  - threatofrain 6y ago
    Mexico looks like a naked power struggle from top to bottom on all sides; the US hasn't yet broken all bonds in a civil war.
  - Fezzik 6y ago
    Look up which party has flagrantly gerrymandered countless districts in the last 20 years... there may be a few that have been redrawn by democrats, but the super-majority have been redrawn by republicans to amplify republican votes. It’s not even a close race regarding who is actually cheating to get elected. Also note that it was a conservative majority of the Supreme Court that said Federal Courts cannot interfere in partisan gerrymandering (a 5-4 vote). Also note which party challenged partisan gerrymandering.
  - sthnblllII 6y ago
    > No political party anywhere on earth has principles above getting elected. If you only know the GOP and DNC i can understand why you'd think that
  - dumbfoundded 6y ago
    Yeah, just like how every company is just a struggle to make money on all sides. Every corporation is ethically the same. Just because some companies knowingly launder money for cartels doesn't make them any worse than any other company. Starting the opioid epidemic for money? You would've too if you were smart and savvy enough. In fact, every person is simply motivated to maximize comfort, minimize pain and procreate. It's a rat race through and through. All people are the same. Child killers and doctors. No difference. Any simple extension of your miserable idea seems foolish. I'd hate to have to live in your mind.
  - nickysielicki 6y ago
    Why is that ironic?
- deleted 6y ago
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glafayette 6y ago
This is great news! CGP Grey has a great series on voting schemes for anybody who is interested in learning more - https://www.cgpgrey.com/politics-in-the-animal-kingdom https://www.cgpgrey.com/politics-in-the-animal-kingdom Also, not to be too self-promotional, but I also made a simple site for running polls using Ranked-choice voting. I was surprised that it was tricky to find a nice SurveyMonkey-esque site that did Borda Counts and Instant Runoff voting so I made my own. Hope some other voting geeks can enjoy it - https://poller.io https://poller.io
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- oehpr 6y ago
  Hey this is great! I've been looking for a decent poll site like this! Some things I would like: Could you randomize the initial order to avoid donkey votes? I'd like it if there was an option to allow invited participants to add their own choices. For communal voting like "where shall we have breakfast" letting people add things would be good. Also it would be nice to be able to drag some of the choices into a "I'm not voting for this" box or something. Or maybe just start all the options in the "I'm not voting for this" box and let people move them over? Not sure what would be easier. Anyway thanks for making this.
  - glafayette 6y ago
    Hey, thanks for checking it out! Definitely planning to randomize the order. This is next on my todo list whenever I get back around to this site. Adding your own choices is tricky UX-wise, because if person A votes, then person B votes and adds a new choice, person A's vote never took the new choice into account. When using this personally with friends, I've just aggressively solicited ideas beforehand to get around this. Definitely not a perfect solution though. I really like the "I'm not voting for this" idea. Also, that would let you just click your votes in order, rather than having to sort a list. Will explore this idea!
- godelski 6y ago
  Unfortunately CGP Grey is wrong. RCV (IRV) has been used in Australia for 100+ years. Ireland uses it. We've already had it in America. We've done enough experimenting. The thing to get excited about is Approval and STAR. Let's interested try cardinal voting systems instead of ordinal. They are also substantially simpler.
duxup 6y ago
I really like to think this would allow for politicians who can straddle party loyalties and gather enough votes from multiple parties at once and be viable ... rather than go through the single party extrude process where one must be all one thing or all the other to be viable. I don't think this is a panacea, but i really like this more the current system.
Animats 6y ago
Not that it matters this time, there being no third party candidates of note in Maine. If Florida had ranked voting in 2000, Al Gore would be President. Florida 2000: Bush 2,912,790 Gore 2,912,253 Nader 97,488 Buchanan 17,484 Browne 16,415 Others < 6,000
- lakala6790 6y ago
  And Hillary Clinton as well if I recall correctly.
  - nl 6y ago
    I don't think that is obviously true. Stein and the Green Party finished behind the Libertarian Party by a signification margin. What states would have switched? In Wisconsin Clinton + Stein did outpoll Trump alone (by ~10K votes), but the Libertarian party had another 106K votes that would have been allocated and it's not hard to imagine Trump getting more than Clinton of them. It was a similar story in Pennsylvania and Michigan.
- sigstoat 6y ago
  s/If Florida had ranked voting in 2000/& and the candidates, campaigns, and voters all behaved as though it didn't/
  - tyrust 6y ago
    You're technically correct, but how do you think people would behave differently with ranked-choice voting?
    - throwaheyy 6y ago
      They can vote for candidates other than the top 2 without wasting their vote. Because when any candidate is eliminated, their votes flow to each voter’s next preference. That encourages co-operation between coalitions of candidates instead of polarization of only 2.
eucryphia 6y ago
The link should be this: https://bangordailynews.com/2020/09/22/politics/ranked-choice-voting-will-be-used-in-maines-presidential-election-high-court-rules/ https://bangordailynews.com/2020/09/22/politics/ranked-choic... Preferential voting just rewards vote buying and ginger groups, look at the recent New Zealand election. The successful economic reform incumbents were voted out by a minority party led by the ex President of the International Union of Socialist Youth with a populist party on a platform of slashing immigration.
- LudwigNagasena 6y ago
  I don’t see how the New Zealand example shows that “ preferential voting just rewards vote buying and ginger groups”.
  - caf 6y ago
    New Zealand doesn't even use Ranked Choice / Preferential Voting (for the national parliament)! It uses MMP, where the voter gets to vote for exactly one party list and one candidate for local member. Preferences are not involved.
    - rrrrrrrrrrrryan 6y ago
      Not completely true. I worked in Wellington for a stint, and held a (mail-in) ballot from one of my friends in my own hands, and it was an absolute shitshow. Some local races absolutely used ranked choice, and not only that - you had to rank every single candidate or your vote wasn't counted. It was my friend's ballot - she was in her early 20s, and she laughed and said "no wonder nobody fucking votes." She didn't vote in the election, and it kind of stuck with me. Any election reform has to take into account the amount of work you're asking of voters, and it's what led me to eventually support approval voting over ranked systems.
      - caf 6y ago
        Yes, I was referring to the national parliamentary election, which was what seemed to be under discussion (edited to make that clear). There's also "Optional Preferential" where the formality rule is "number at least one, and as many as you like".
acomjean 6y ago
Changing to Rank Choice voting is on the Referendum Ballot in Massachusetts this election. I'm in the city of cambridge which has a form of it for local elections already I think its a good idea. Though Cambridge takes a long time to deliver results (Usually its 9 winners of about 27 candidates.) . If your interested in the state ballot question, it 2 of 2: See the states voter guide which is pretty decent: https://www.sec.state.ma.us/ele/elepdf/IFV_2020.pdf https://www.sec.state.ma.us/ele/elepdf/IFV_2020.pdf Also info on "right to repair" (ballot question 1 of 2) edit: you can kind of see how cambridge does "Proportional Representation" which is a little different. We still have to rank our candidates 1..n. on the ballot. the results pages show how its tallied: https://www.cambridgema.gov/election2019/official/Council%20Round.htm https://www.cambridgema.gov/election2019/official/Council%20...
austincheney 6y ago
I just deplore winner takes all in a states electoral college. California and Washington are not completely blue just as Texas is not completely red. They are actually more purple than half the rest of the country. The electoral college results should reflect this appropriately.
- est31 6y ago
  The issue is that if there is a 60/40 state, if the party holding the 60% decided to give 40% of the electoral college members to the smaller party, they'd lose 40% of a state's college members for little gain. Who would harm themselves? Only places that have a long term difference in legislature and presidential election votes would consider it. That being said, Texas could strike a deal with California or something that they both implement it at the same time. If the right states made a deal, nothing would change in the makeup of the parties, and the dealmaking states would attract more attention from presidential candidates trying to care for their issues.
  - lurquer 6y ago
    No State can enter into any compact with another State without consent of Congress.
    - quiescant_dodo 6y ago
      Haven't heard of this before. Do you have a source?
      - HaloZero 6y ago
        "No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay." Article 1, Compact 3 of the US Constitution. That's the basis of questioning the legality of the NPVI
kibwen 6y ago
Following in Maine's footsteps, both Massachusetts and Alaska have ballot measures this year to determine whether the states will adopt RCV for various elections. I believe that anything beyond FPTP is necessary for a healthy democracy in the long run, so I'm crossing my fingers that this can be the beginning of a trend among the states. The details of the two bills, from https://www.fairvote.org/rcv_2020_ballot_measures https://www.fairvote.org/rcv_2020_ballot_measures: > Alaskans for Better Elections collected enough signatures to put Ballot Measure 2 to a vote this November. If passed, this ballot measure will implement several changes, including: 1) "top four" blanket primaries for state and congressional offices, where all candidates would appear on the same primary ballot and the top-four vote getters would advance to the general election, regardless of party affiliation; 2) ranked choice voting in the choice among four candidates on the November ballot, with write-in candidates permitted; 3) ranked choice voting in the presidential election among all candidates who have qualified for the ballot and any write-in candidates > After a multi-year educational campaign led by Voter Choice Massachusetts, an initiative will appear on the ballot as Question 2 that, if passed, would implement ranked choice voting for Massachusetts’ U.S. Senate and U.S House general and primary elections, state primary and general elections, and county offices, beginning in 2022. The initiative is supported by Yes on 2 for Ranked Choice Voting. (Notably the MA bill doesn't include implementing RCV for the presidential election, but honestly that's not as big a deal as it could be given that the bill does apply to the federal legislative elections; the only reason the presidency has gotten so out of control is because a complicit legislature has allowed it to happen.)
- HaloZero 6y ago
  I was so surprised that there's more initiatives. It seems Nevada and North Dakota both tried to have things on the ballot but not enough support. Source: https://ballotpedia.org/Ranked-choice_voting_(RCV) https://ballotpedia.org/Ranked-choice_voting_(RCV) Section: Ballot Measures 2020
  - godelski 6y ago
    Fargo (ND) actually recently had an election with Approval Voting[0] (which is better at mitigating spoilers, has higher VSE, and is much simpler) [0] https://electionscience.org/commentary-analysis/fargos-first-approval-voting-election-results-and-voter-experience/ https://electionscience.org/commentary-analysis/fargos-first...
burlesona 6y ago
This is great news! If you’re interested in the consequences of First Past the Post voting and why we need change so bad, I strongly recommend this book: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44244963-breaking-the-two-party-doom-loop https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44244963-breaking-the-tw...
godelski 6y ago
For a more interesting experiment Fargo had an election with Approval Voting[0]. Unfortunately RCV (IRV) doesn't solve many of the problems that it claims to do. One of the claims is that IRV prevents spoilers, which is objectively false[1][2]. We're pretty interested in the Favorite Betrayal Criterion to prevent this[3]. We also see that IRV has a fairly poor voter satisfaction efficiency (VSE)[4][5]. It really feels like people just watched the CGP Grey videos on election science and dug no further. Even Arrow himself said that cardinal voting (Approval, score, STAR) is probably the likely answer. They also tend to be much simpler as they only are single rounds and resistant to people accidentally "ranking" two candidates equally (which you might actually favor two candidates equally and these methods let you express that). [0] https://electionscience.org/commentary-analysis/fargos-first-approval-voting-election-results-and-voter-experience/ https://electionscience.org/commentary-analysis/fargos-first... [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtKAScORevQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtKAScORevQ [2] https://electionscience.org/library/the-spoiler-effect/ https://electionscience.org/library/the-spoiler-effect/ [3] https://electowiki.org/wiki/Favorite_betrayal_criterion https://electowiki.org/wiki/Favorite_betrayal_criterion [4] https://electionscience.github.io/vse-sim/VSE/ https://electionscience.github.io/vse-sim/VSE/ [5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4FXLQoLDBA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4FXLQoLDBA
- mehrdadn 6y ago
  > Even Arrow himself said that cardinal voting (Approval, score, STAR) is probably the likely answer. Unfortunately, as I understand it, it turns out the problem is basically unsolvable: https://politics.stackexchange.com/a/14245 https://politics.stackexchange.com/a/14245
  - godelski 6y ago
    Voting itself, yes. Which is why Arrow (who is being referenced in that post) is hedging. But just because there is no global maxima doesn't mean there aren't better solutions than others. It depends on the criteria that you're looking for. While Cardinal systems don't maximize VSE like Schulze or RP do (which also don't get 100%!) they much better counter strategic voting as well as are dead simple. If you read a few of the links I posted or watch a few of the videos they explain some of these concepts. But yes, voting math (social choice theory) is hard. No one is going to combat you on that.
Kosirich 6y ago
When this subject comes up I get reminded how electoral system is something that we don't really learn about during education. Yes, we get thought 'democracy is important','voting is important' and later on in high school we probably had a subject that covered democratic processes, but non of it went to the depth that this thread (and links) go to. Winner takes all, majority system is so ingrained in us all the way from the kindergarten when we probably had to choose which cartoon we were going to watch or later in school when choosing class president. I would gladly pay to see what would the results of my counties or countries election be with different voting systems (strange that pollsters don't try to do that).
dalbasal 6y ago
IDK to what extent foreign politics gets discussed in the states, but I think it's worth noting that political culture in a lot of places has been shifting to a more multiparty norm. Emphasis on culture. While voting systems and mechanics obviously play a huge role, political culture is (IMO) a very big factor... perhaps the deciding factor. Here (in Ireland) we have moved from a "two party with exceptions" system to a full multiparty system within a few elections. It now take >2 parties to form a majority. This isn't an uncommon story. A point I made recently to American friends who are in favour of these kinds of changes was: The US has tons of elected positions. That is a lot of surface area that these changes can grow on.
torresjrjr 6y ago
I feel this will quietly be one of the most important changes in US political history. Also, I hope it's STV.
ethn 6y ago
Ranked-choice voting (and its Arrow equivalents) necessarily gives the worst outcome of any voting scheme, specifically it matches the least voting preferences[0][1]. Two-outcome FPTP on the other hand does not fall to Arrow’s impossibility theorem. This is the system most states in the USA effectively have. Intuitively, the least remarkable candidate will be elected because the opposing sides will reciprocally downgrade the candidates perceived as better. For instance Hitler was a result of an alternate voting scheme [2]. [0] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/arrows-theorem/#NonDic https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/arrows-theorem/#NonDic [1] https://news.stanford.edu/news/2011/november/devlin-ranked-voting-110711.html https://news.stanford.edu/news/2011/november/devlin-ranked-v... [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1932_German_presidential_election https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1932_German_presidential_ele...
justnotworthit 6y ago
Why was it opposed by the Republican party in Maine?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
dllthomas 6y ago
Something occurred to me the other day. There's this notion of "choice-induced preference change", where making a decision to choose X over Y changes your preferences such that you now more strongly prefer X to Y. I'm not sure to just what degree it's 1) real, 2) of meaningful size, and 3) occurs as a result of casting a vote; but with some possible answers to those questions, it should be the case that given the same outcome to an election the most voters will be the happiest with it if they chose it by approval voting. I'm not sure what to do with that observation, but I think it's interesting.

182 points by dane-pgp 6y ago

> The case hinged on 988 signatures collected by two circulators who were not registered to vote in the towns they circulated petitions in prior to beginning their work. Dunlap argued that should invalidate the signatures they gathered, while Republicans charged that the secretary of state was wrongly disenfranchising voters. It's ironic that the Republicans complained that independent voters were not having their votes counted.

seibelj 6y ago
It’s ironic that you think any political party is above doing every last possible thing to win. No political party anywhere on earth has principles above getting elected. If you believe the democrats are any better, perhaps research machine politics. It is a naked power struggle from top to bottom on all sides.
- p1necone 6y ago
  I'm not sure what universe you're living in to think that the Democrats are "just as bad". Sure, there's also plenty of corruption in other political parties, but don't think you're fooling anyone into thinking you're not either arguing in bad faith or just ignorant.
  - seibelj 6y ago
    I'm sorry, but I believe you are extremely naive.
  - spacephysics 6y ago
    The democrats have fumbled this election cycle. One minute they’re encouraging riots, Pelosi and other politicians, next minute Pelosi is asking all violent protesters and looters to be prosecuted. During the Obama administration, Hillary Clinton wrote its the Republican Party‘s duty to the American people to push a Supreme Court seat before Obama’s tenure was over (2016), now they demand the process is halted once the cards are dealt to the opposing side. We’re seeing a shift of the Republican Party representing the working class, and the Democratic Party representing the wealthy. Both have issues, but don’t pretend one is ostensibly worse in totality. Each party takes turns being the villain, and currently the Democrats pushes for chaos in the streets, and it backfired. Just like Nixon was elected after the riots and bombings of the 60’s, this election too will be a landslide similar for both Nixon and Reagan. Democrats pushed too far with ideological baggage that the average blue collar, working class American doesn’t want to deal with. https://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/27/1969-a-year-of-bombings/ https://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/27/1969-a-year-of...
  - Waterfall 6y ago
    You clearly never lived in Chicago or NYC. These Democrats make Republicans look like angels. They hire their friends as contractors, they do a poor job, then get paid to fix it. You're the ignorant one if you actually think one party is any better.
- dane-pgp 6y ago
  A recent study[0] found that the Republican party is three times worse than the Democrats in terms of respecting the norms, principles, and practices of democratic countries. (The data was based on a survey of 2000 experts from around the world.) I'm not saying this proves that the Democrats are better, but I do think it's too simplistic to say that every single party in the world is exactly as corrupt/authoritarian as every other party in the world. [0] https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/21449634/republicans-supreme-court-gop-trump-authoritarian https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/21449634/republicans...
  - ars 6y ago
    A: vox isn't a valid news source for this kind of news. B: "a survey of 2000 experts from around the world" is not a valid way to collect such data And finally the actual article says: "Its closest peers are, almost uniformly, radical right and anti-democratic parties. This includes Turkey’s AKP (a regime that is one of the world’s leading jailers of journalists), and Poland’s PiS (which has threatened dissenting judges with criminal punishment)." Since concluding the Republican party is like those is ridiculous on it's face, one can only conclude this survey is garbage if it generates such results. To be specific: the survey isn't measuring how the Republican party actually is. Rather it's measuring how these experts think the Republican party is - informed mainly by a liberal American media. I've seen it over and over: Decide how you think the opponent will behave, then criticize them, in advance, as if they have already behaved that way. Think about it: Do you think Republicans would "jail journalists" and "threaten judges with criminal punishment"? Next, think Did Republicans actually do that? And consider why your opinion on what you think they would do doesn't match what they actually did.
    - FireBeyond 6y ago
      > This includes Turkey’s AKP (a regime that is one of the world’s leading jailers of journalists) Whereas we, on the other hand, are only the second leading jailer of citizens. > which has threatened dissenting judges with criminal punishment Our current President repeatedly threatens journalists and the media with criminal punishment, tying your two points together.
- drunkpotato 6y ago
  > It’s ironic that you think any political party is above doing every last possible thing to win. Political parties don't do anything, people in them do. The people in those parties, for the most part, do indeed have limits to what they will do to win. The ones that don't are sociopaths who unfortunately sometimes amass undeserved power. But I see no evidence for the kind of universal assertion of amorality you're making here. > No political party anywhere on earth has principles above getting elected. That just treats politics as some kind of nihilistic team sport, which I reject and it's unsupported by any evidence. Parties have platforms. According to https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/trust-us-politicians-keep-most-of-their-promises/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/trust-us-politicians-ke... politicians do try to keep most of their platform promises. > If you believe the democrats are any better, perhaps research machine politics. I don't understand your point here. It appears that you're defending Republicans doing... something? By saying that the Democrats did... something? > It is a naked power struggle from top to bottom on all sides. That stance seems in direct contradiction to the enlightenment principles upon which the United States was founded. The peaceful transition of power between opposing parties has been very much a hallmark of the US republic for many decades, and a principle to which most of us adhere.
  - sthnblllII 6y ago
    >It appears that you're defending Republicans doing... something? By saying that the Democrats did... something? I think he's explicitly NOT defending either party. a critique of one is not a defense of the other.
- shajznnckfke 6y ago
  I think different organizations have constraints that lend them to prioritizing different values. Because more of the population supports democrats, especially oft-disenfranchised groups, it’s in the party’s interests to expand the rights of voters. It’s similar to how Apple can value privacy more because they are a hardware company. You could look at this cynically and say that these organizations are all amoral agents who only behave according to their incentives. You’d be right. Another way to look at it is that these organizations are tools for humans, and their differing constraints mold them to be useful to further certain values. I don’t naively support democrats because I believe they are better people. I support them because their values align better with the world I want to live in.
- threatofrain 6y ago
  Mexico looks like a naked power struggle from top to bottom on all sides; the US hasn't yet broken all bonds in a civil war.
- Fezzik 6y ago
  Look up which party has flagrantly gerrymandered countless districts in the last 20 years... there may be a few that have been redrawn by democrats, but the super-majority have been redrawn by republicans to amplify republican votes. It’s not even a close race regarding who is actually cheating to get elected. Also note that it was a conservative majority of the Supreme Court that said Federal Courts cannot interfere in partisan gerrymandering (a 5-4 vote). Also note which party challenged partisan gerrymandering.
- sthnblllII 6y ago
  > No political party anywhere on earth has principles above getting elected. If you only know the GOP and DNC i can understand why you'd think that
- dumbfoundded 6y ago
  Yeah, just like how every company is just a struggle to make money on all sides. Every corporation is ethically the same. Just because some companies knowingly launder money for cartels doesn't make them any worse than any other company. Starting the opioid epidemic for money? You would've too if you were smart and savvy enough. In fact, every person is simply motivated to maximize comfort, minimize pain and procreate. It's a rat race through and through. All people are the same. Child killers and doctors. No difference. Any simple extension of your miserable idea seems foolish. I'd hate to have to live in your mind.
- nickysielicki 6y ago
  Why is that ironic?
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glafayette 6y ago

This is great news! CGP Grey has a great series on voting schemes for anybody who is interested in learning more - https://www.cgpgrey.com/politics-in-the-animal-kingdom https://www.cgpgrey.com/politics-in-the-animal-kingdom Also, not to be too self-promotional, but I also made a simple site for running polls using Ranked-choice voting. I was surprised that it was tricky to find a nice SurveyMonkey-esque site that did Borda Counts and Instant Runoff voting so I made my own. Hope some other voting geeks can enjoy it - https://poller.io https://poller.io

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oehpr 6y ago
Hey this is great! I've been looking for a decent poll site like this! Some things I would like: Could you randomize the initial order to avoid donkey votes? I'd like it if there was an option to allow invited participants to add their own choices. For communal voting like "where shall we have breakfast" letting people add things would be good. Also it would be nice to be able to drag some of the choices into a "I'm not voting for this" box or something. Or maybe just start all the options in the "I'm not voting for this" box and let people move them over? Not sure what would be easier. Anyway thanks for making this.
- glafayette 6y ago
  Hey, thanks for checking it out! Definitely planning to randomize the order. This is next on my todo list whenever I get back around to this site. Adding your own choices is tricky UX-wise, because if person A votes, then person B votes and adds a new choice, person A's vote never took the new choice into account. When using this personally with friends, I've just aggressively solicited ideas beforehand to get around this. Definitely not a perfect solution though. I really like the "I'm not voting for this" idea. Also, that would let you just click your votes in order, rather than having to sort a list. Will explore this idea!
godelski 6y ago
Unfortunately CGP Grey is wrong. RCV (IRV) has been used in Australia for 100+ years. Ireland uses it. We've already had it in America. We've done enough experimenting. The thing to get excited about is Approval and STAR. Let's interested try cardinal voting systems instead of ordinal. They are also substantially simpler.

duxup 6y ago

I really like to think this would allow for politicians who can straddle party loyalties and gather enough votes from multiple parties at once and be viable ... rather than go through the single party extrude process where one must be all one thing or all the other to be viable. I don't think this is a panacea, but i really like this more the current system.

Animats 6y ago

Not that it matters this time, there being no third party candidates of note in Maine. If Florida had ranked voting in 2000, Al Gore would be President. Florida 2000: Bush 2,912,790 Gore 2,912,253 Nader 97,488 Buchanan 17,484 Browne 16,415 Others < 6,000

lakala6790 6y ago
And Hillary Clinton as well if I recall correctly.
- nl 6y ago
  I don't think that is obviously true. Stein and the Green Party finished behind the Libertarian Party by a signification margin. What states would have switched? In Wisconsin Clinton + Stein did outpoll Trump alone (by ~10K votes), but the Libertarian party had another 106K votes that would have been allocated and it's not hard to imagine Trump getting more than Clinton of them. It was a similar story in Pennsylvania and Michigan.
sigstoat 6y ago
s/If Florida had ranked voting in 2000/& and the candidates, campaigns, and voters all behaved as though it didn't/
- tyrust 6y ago
  You're technically correct, but how do you think people would behave differently with ranked-choice voting?
  - throwaheyy 6y ago
    They can vote for candidates other than the top 2 without wasting their vote. Because when any candidate is eliminated, their votes flow to each voter’s next preference. That encourages co-operation between coalitions of candidates instead of polarization of only 2.

eucryphia 6y ago

The link should be this: https://bangordailynews.com/2020/09/22/politics/ranked-choice-voting-will-be-used-in-maines-presidential-election-high-court-rules/ https://bangordailynews.com/2020/09/22/politics/ranked-choic... Preferential voting just rewards vote buying and ginger groups, look at the recent New Zealand election. The successful economic reform incumbents were voted out by a minority party led by the ex President of the International Union of Socialist Youth with a populist party on a platform of slashing immigration.

LudwigNagasena 6y ago
I don’t see how the New Zealand example shows that “ preferential voting just rewards vote buying and ginger groups”.
- caf 6y ago
  New Zealand doesn't even use Ranked Choice / Preferential Voting (for the national parliament)! It uses MMP, where the voter gets to vote for exactly one party list and one candidate for local member. Preferences are not involved.
  - rrrrrrrrrrrryan 6y ago
    Not completely true. I worked in Wellington for a stint, and held a (mail-in) ballot from one of my friends in my own hands, and it was an absolute shitshow. Some local races absolutely used ranked choice, and not only that - you had to rank every single candidate or your vote wasn't counted. It was my friend's ballot - she was in her early 20s, and she laughed and said "no wonder nobody fucking votes." She didn't vote in the election, and it kind of stuck with me. Any election reform has to take into account the amount of work you're asking of voters, and it's what led me to eventually support approval voting over ranked systems.
    - caf 6y ago
      Yes, I was referring to the national parliamentary election, which was what seemed to be under discussion (edited to make that clear). There's also "Optional Preferential" where the formality rule is "number at least one, and as many as you like".

acomjean 6y ago

Changing to Rank Choice voting is on the Referendum Ballot in Massachusetts this election. I'm in the city of cambridge which has a form of it for local elections already I think its a good idea. Though Cambridge takes a long time to deliver results (Usually its 9 winners of about 27 candidates.) . If your interested in the state ballot question, it 2 of 2: See the states voter guide which is pretty decent: https://www.sec.state.ma.us/ele/elepdf/IFV_2020.pdf https://www.sec.state.ma.us/ele/elepdf/IFV_2020.pdf Also info on "right to repair" (ballot question 1 of 2) edit: you can kind of see how cambridge does "Proportional Representation" which is a little different. We still have to rank our candidates 1..n. on the ballot. the results pages show how its tallied: https://www.cambridgema.gov/election2019/official/Council%20Round.htm https://www.cambridgema.gov/election2019/official/Council%20...

austincheney 6y ago

I just deplore winner takes all in a states electoral college. California and Washington are not completely blue just as Texas is not completely red. They are actually more purple than half the rest of the country. The electoral college results should reflect this appropriately.

est31 6y ago
The issue is that if there is a 60/40 state, if the party holding the 60% decided to give 40% of the electoral college members to the smaller party, they'd lose 40% of a state's college members for little gain. Who would harm themselves? Only places that have a long term difference in legislature and presidential election votes would consider it. That being said, Texas could strike a deal with California or something that they both implement it at the same time. If the right states made a deal, nothing would change in the makeup of the parties, and the dealmaking states would attract more attention from presidential candidates trying to care for their issues.
- lurquer 6y ago
  No State can enter into any compact with another State without consent of Congress.
  - quiescant_dodo 6y ago
    Haven't heard of this before. Do you have a source?
    - HaloZero 6y ago
      "No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay." Article 1, Compact 3 of the US Constitution. That's the basis of questioning the legality of the NPVI

kibwen 6y ago

Following in Maine's footsteps, both Massachusetts and Alaska have ballot measures this year to determine whether the states will adopt RCV for various elections. I believe that anything beyond FPTP is necessary for a healthy democracy in the long run, so I'm crossing my fingers that this can be the beginning of a trend among the states. The details of the two bills, from https://www.fairvote.org/rcv_2020_ballot_measures https://www.fairvote.org/rcv_2020_ballot_measures: > Alaskans for Better Elections collected enough signatures to put Ballot Measure 2 to a vote this November. If passed, this ballot measure will implement several changes, including: 1) "top four" blanket primaries for state and congressional offices, where all candidates would appear on the same primary ballot and the top-four vote getters would advance to the general election, regardless of party affiliation; 2) ranked choice voting in the choice among four candidates on the November ballot, with write-in candidates permitted; 3) ranked choice voting in the presidential election among all candidates who have qualified for the ballot and any write-in candidates > After a multi-year educational campaign led by Voter Choice Massachusetts, an initiative will appear on the ballot as Question 2 that, if passed, would implement ranked choice voting for Massachusetts’ U.S. Senate and U.S House general and primary elections, state primary and general elections, and county offices, beginning in 2022. The initiative is supported by Yes on 2 for Ranked Choice Voting. (Notably the MA bill doesn't include implementing RCV for the presidential election, but honestly that's not as big a deal as it could be given that the bill does apply to the federal legislative elections; the only reason the presidency has gotten so out of control is because a complicit legislature has allowed it to happen.)

HaloZero 6y ago
I was so surprised that there's more initiatives. It seems Nevada and North Dakota both tried to have things on the ballot but not enough support. Source: https://ballotpedia.org/Ranked-choice_voting_(RCV) https://ballotpedia.org/Ranked-choice_voting_(RCV) Section: Ballot Measures 2020
- godelski 6y ago
  Fargo (ND) actually recently had an election with Approval Voting[0] (which is better at mitigating spoilers, has higher VSE, and is much simpler) [0] https://electionscience.org/commentary-analysis/fargos-first-approval-voting-election-results-and-voter-experience/ https://electionscience.org/commentary-analysis/fargos-first...

burlesona 6y ago

This is great news! If you’re interested in the consequences of First Past the Post voting and why we need change so bad, I strongly recommend this book: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44244963-breaking-the-two-party-doom-loop https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44244963-breaking-the-tw...

godelski 6y ago

For a more interesting experiment Fargo had an election with Approval Voting[0]. Unfortunately RCV (IRV) doesn't solve many of the problems that it claims to do. One of the claims is that IRV prevents spoilers, which is objectively false[1][2]. We're pretty interested in the Favorite Betrayal Criterion to prevent this[3]. We also see that IRV has a fairly poor voter satisfaction efficiency (VSE)[4][5]. It really feels like people just watched the CGP Grey videos on election science and dug no further. Even Arrow himself said that cardinal voting (Approval, score, STAR) is probably the likely answer. They also tend to be much simpler as they only are single rounds and resistant to people accidentally "ranking" two candidates equally (which you might actually favor two candidates equally and these methods let you express that). [0] https://electionscience.org/commentary-analysis/fargos-first-approval-voting-election-results-and-voter-experience/ https://electionscience.org/commentary-analysis/fargos-first... [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtKAScORevQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtKAScORevQ [2] https://electionscience.org/library/the-spoiler-effect/ https://electionscience.org/library/the-spoiler-effect/ [3] https://electowiki.org/wiki/Favorite_betrayal_criterion https://electowiki.org/wiki/Favorite_betrayal_criterion [4] https://electionscience.github.io/vse-sim/VSE/ https://electionscience.github.io/vse-sim/VSE/ [5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4FXLQoLDBA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4FXLQoLDBA

mehrdadn 6y ago
> Even Arrow himself said that cardinal voting (Approval, score, STAR) is probably the likely answer. Unfortunately, as I understand it, it turns out the problem is basically unsolvable: https://politics.stackexchange.com/a/14245 https://politics.stackexchange.com/a/14245
- godelski 6y ago
  Voting itself, yes. Which is why Arrow (who is being referenced in that post) is hedging. But just because there is no global maxima doesn't mean there aren't better solutions than others. It depends on the criteria that you're looking for. While Cardinal systems don't maximize VSE like Schulze or RP do (which also don't get 100%!) they much better counter strategic voting as well as are dead simple. If you read a few of the links I posted or watch a few of the videos they explain some of these concepts. But yes, voting math (social choice theory) is hard. No one is going to combat you on that.

Kosirich 6y ago

When this subject comes up I get reminded how electoral system is something that we don't really learn about during education. Yes, we get thought 'democracy is important','voting is important' and later on in high school we probably had a subject that covered democratic processes, but non of it went to the depth that this thread (and links) go to. Winner takes all, majority system is so ingrained in us all the way from the kindergarten when we probably had to choose which cartoon we were going to watch or later in school when choosing class president. I would gladly pay to see what would the results of my counties or countries election be with different voting systems (strange that pollsters don't try to do that).

dalbasal 6y ago

IDK to what extent foreign politics gets discussed in the states, but I think it's worth noting that political culture in a lot of places has been shifting to a more multiparty norm. Emphasis on culture. While voting systems and mechanics obviously play a huge role, political culture is (IMO) a very big factor... perhaps the deciding factor. Here (in Ireland) we have moved from a "two party with exceptions" system to a full multiparty system within a few elections. It now take >2 parties to form a majority. This isn't an uncommon story. A point I made recently to American friends who are in favour of these kinds of changes was: The US has tons of elected positions. That is a lot of surface area that these changes can grow on.

torresjrjr 6y ago

I feel this will quietly be one of the most important changes in US political history. Also, I hope it's STV.

ethn 6y ago

Ranked-choice voting (and its Arrow equivalents) necessarily gives the worst outcome of any voting scheme, specifically it matches the least voting preferences[0][1]. Two-outcome FPTP on the other hand does not fall to Arrow’s impossibility theorem. This is the system most states in the USA effectively have. Intuitively, the least remarkable candidate will be elected because the opposing sides will reciprocally downgrade the candidates perceived as better. For instance Hitler was a result of an alternate voting scheme [2]. [0] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/arrows-theorem/#NonDic https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/arrows-theorem/#NonDic [1] https://news.stanford.edu/news/2011/november/devlin-ranked-voting-110711.html https://news.stanford.edu/news/2011/november/devlin-ranked-v... [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1932_German_presidential_election https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1932_German_presidential_ele...

justnotworthit 6y ago

Why was it opposed by the Republican party in Maine?

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dllthomas 6y ago

Something occurred to me the other day. There's this notion of "choice-induced preference change", where making a decision to choose X over Y changes your preferences such that you now more strongly prefer X to Y. I'm not sure to just what degree it's 1) real, 2) of meaningful size, and 3) occurs as a result of casting a vote; but with some possible answers to those questions, it should be the case that given the same outcome to an election the most voters will be the happiest with it if they chose it by approval voting. I'm not sure what to do with that observation, but I think it's interesting.