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And in other ranked-choice voting news, two more states have ballot measures to institute it: * Massachusetts: https://ballotpedia.org/Massachusetts_Question_2

And in other ranked-choice voting news, two more states have ballot measures to institute it: * Massachusetts: https://ballotpedia.org/Massachusetts_Question_2,_Ranked-Choice_Voting_Initiative_(2020) https://ballotpedia.org/Massachusetts_Question_2,_Ranked-Cho... * Alaska (with open primaries): https://ballotpedia.org/Alaska_Ballot_Measure_2,_Top-Four_Ranked-Choice_Voting_and_Campaign_Finance_Laws_Initiative_(2020) https://ballotpedia.org/Alaska_Ballot_Measure_2,_Top-Four_Ra...

ElijahLynn 6y ago
Thanks for this, this is really _hopeful_!! I want to see Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) here in Oregon next!
- philips 6y ago
  I recently learned that there is a group in Oregon advocating a slight twist on RCV called STAR[1]. There are efforts to get it used in Lane and Multnomah counties at the moment. [1] https://www.starvoting.us/ https://www.starvoting.us/
  - vanattab 6y ago
    Why is star voting (where you award each candidate 0-5 stars) better then ranked choice voting?
    - heintje_ghulam 6y ago
      See my post in this thread for an example of why RCV is bad, and see the links I provided to learn more about STAR.
      - ElijahLynn 6y ago
        Can you clarify if by "Is bad" you mean not as good as STAR or worse than the First Past The Poll (current system)? It does sound like STAR is better than RCV, especially after reading about it here https://www.wired.com/story/dana-debeauvoir-texas-county-clerk-voting-tech-revolution/ https://www.wired.com/story/dana-debeauvoir-texas-county-cle... (A Texas County Clerk’s Bold Crusade to Transform How We Vote). I do wonder if those adopting RCV are still in a better place, than FPTP, simply because it decreases voter apathy and gives voters a chance to be "heard", thus increasing participation. At least in the short run, I feel like RCV is still a win, even though it may not be as optimal as STAR.
      - ElijahLynn 6y ago
        Linking your post you mentioned: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24944151 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24944151
    - philips 6y ago
      The FAQ[1] and comparison page[2] explain their position. [1] https://www.starvoting.us/faq https://www.starvoting.us/faq [2] https://www.equal.vote/star-vs-rcv https://www.equal.vote/star-vs-rcv
      - ElijahLynn 6y ago
        Great links on STAR, especially the comparison!
        godelski 6y ago
        Fun fact, STAR came out of Oregon too. Lane county (where the University of Oregon) has been trying to pass it for awhile (very close last time).
    - rrrrrrrrrrrryan 6y ago
      Simplifying greatly, tactical voting in RCV gets super complex, and STAR does a much better job at rewarding honest voting. In STAR voting, the optimal strategy is almost always to vote how you actually feel. This isn't the case with pure RCV.
      - Zak 6y ago
        The Condorcet method also rewards honest voting, and can be used with ranked ballots.
        godelski 6y ago
        I think this is a bad way to think about things. Rewarding honest voting means that people have perfect information and act rationally (meaning they understand how to maximize their voting power). The other way to frame things is how systems handle strategic voting. One of the reasons I'm a big fan of STAR is because it both prefers honest voting (you maximize your power her) AND it handles strategic voting well[0]. That is, the difference between VSE_best and VSE_worst is small. Where we see that the gap in Condorcet methods (like RP and Schulze) is quite large (>10%). I think people get caught up in Condorcet methods because they look at RP's VSE being the max. But STAR0-10 only has a 0.5% VSE difference on max but a 4% difference in worse case (not to mention that STAR is substantially simpler and scales better). You can't compare voting systems just by looking at VSE. It is an important factor, but there are many other factors that matter (e.g. handle of strategy, transparency, handling spoilers, scalability, and more mathematical factors). [0] https://electionscience.github.io/vse-sim/vse.html https://electionscience.github.io/vse-sim/vse.html
        Zak 6y ago
        > Rewarding honest voting means that people have perfect information and act rationally Democracy itself implies that we expect voters to be informed and rational. Since we know that isn't the case, perhaps the important business of ruling countries should be left up to those who are very well educated and who possess a certain... nobility. What I like about Condorcet methods is the Condorcet criterion itself. I have yet to find a better definition of a candidate being most preferred by the voters than that the candidate would beat every other candidate in a two-person race. The later-no-harm criterion (that giving a positive rating to a less favored candidate cannot hurt a more favored candidate) is also valuable and STAR doesn't satisfy it. STAR does seem easy to count though, and without doing much research, likely to elect the Condorcet winner most of the time.
  - ElijahLynn 6y ago
    Oh, I just read a big article about how Star voting came to be. https://www.wired.com/story/dana-debeauvoir-texas-county-clerk-voting-tech-revolution/ https://www.wired.com/story/dana-debeauvoir-texas-county-cle... (A Texas County Clerk’s Bold Crusade to Transform How We Vote) I thought I remembered it was mostly about how to verify your vote, I'll have to read more into it again. Thanks!
    - patmorgan23 6y ago
      That's a different STAR vote (i know its confusing). The one you posted is about design for a voting machine. The one the comment is referring to is a vote counting method (like first past the post or rcv)
    - godelski 6y ago
      STAR came out of Oregon actually. One of the co-inventors actually sometimes frequents HN.
  - heintje_ghulam 6y ago
    By the way, STAR is not really a twist on RCV, it's a twist on Score Voting.
woofie11 6y ago
The Massachusetts proposal is less dumb than Maine's. It's for all elections except presidential. RCV is incompatible with the NPVIC, as well as with how the electoral college works in the interim. If Maine voted for a third-party without NPVIC, it would, in effect, waste its vote.
- Karunamon 6y ago
  As I understand it, the NPVIC will never happen. Its entire purpose, as expalained in a CGP Grey video, was creating a situation where no one state has to move first by making the agreement only take effect once a certain number of electoral votes are accounted for. The problem is that this agreement is expressly unconstitutional by way of article 1 section 10: No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, [...] enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State While states are allowed to divvy up their EVs within their own borders however they choose, this kind of interstate agreement to do so in a certain way is illegal, and bipartisan congressional support to circumvent the electoral college seems unlikely.
  - akhosravian 6y ago
    What exactly could the federal government do about it? Force the states to nominate electors by some other process? Toss out the states votes? I’m not concern trolling I honestly can’t come up with a response that doesn’t seem like a disaster.
    - lostdog 6y ago
      The problem is what happens if a state that signed the compact decided to break it. Because the federal government considers the compact illegal, it won't enforce it, so any state can break it at will.
      - Karunamon 6y ago
        I'd imagine the electors, or quite possibly any voter in the state, would have standing to invalidate joining the agreement whether or not it's actually enforced.
thehappypm 6y ago
I live in Massachusetts and had not heard a whole lot about this issue until I got the ballot. I read the proposal and I was a little confused why it's a better system, and it's a lot more complicated than "every person gets 1 vote and whoever gets the most votes wins". RCV feels similar to the Electoral College, a system made with good intentions but is so complicated that it's gameable.
- smichel17 6y ago
  Yeah. I have the same hesitations about it. I think the biggest risk is that it's only a small improvement, and people may feel like, "Tried alternative voting systems, they were more complicated and didn't really improve anything." However, I ended up voting Yes on 2 because it will increase awareness that alternative voting systems exist. The more people who are aware that FPTP sucks moose juice, the more likely we can pass other, more impactful, reforms like STAR. So basically I'm wagering that there's more people like this, than people who will give up on voting reform due to RCV (really, IRV)'s shortcomings.

ElijahLynn 6y ago

Thanks for this, this is really _hopeful_!! I want to see Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) here in Oregon next!

philips 6y ago
I recently learned that there is a group in Oregon advocating a slight twist on RCV called STAR[1]. There are efforts to get it used in Lane and Multnomah counties at the moment. [1] https://www.starvoting.us/ https://www.starvoting.us/
- vanattab 6y ago
  Why is star voting (where you award each candidate 0-5 stars) better then ranked choice voting?
  - heintje_ghulam 6y ago
    See my post in this thread for an example of why RCV is bad, and see the links I provided to learn more about STAR.
    - ElijahLynn 6y ago
      Can you clarify if by "Is bad" you mean not as good as STAR or worse than the First Past The Poll (current system)? It does sound like STAR is better than RCV, especially after reading about it here https://www.wired.com/story/dana-debeauvoir-texas-county-clerk-voting-tech-revolution/ https://www.wired.com/story/dana-debeauvoir-texas-county-cle... (A Texas County Clerk’s Bold Crusade to Transform How We Vote). I do wonder if those adopting RCV are still in a better place, than FPTP, simply because it decreases voter apathy and gives voters a chance to be "heard", thus increasing participation. At least in the short run, I feel like RCV is still a win, even though it may not be as optimal as STAR.
    - ElijahLynn 6y ago
      Linking your post you mentioned: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24944151 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24944151
  - philips 6y ago
    The FAQ[1] and comparison page[2] explain their position. [1] https://www.starvoting.us/faq https://www.starvoting.us/faq [2] https://www.equal.vote/star-vs-rcv https://www.equal.vote/star-vs-rcv
    - ElijahLynn 6y ago
      Great links on STAR, especially the comparison!
      - godelski 6y ago
        Fun fact, STAR came out of Oregon too. Lane county (where the University of Oregon) has been trying to pass it for awhile (very close last time).
  - rrrrrrrrrrrryan 6y ago
    Simplifying greatly, tactical voting in RCV gets super complex, and STAR does a much better job at rewarding honest voting. In STAR voting, the optimal strategy is almost always to vote how you actually feel. This isn't the case with pure RCV.
    - Zak 6y ago
      The Condorcet method also rewards honest voting, and can be used with ranked ballots.
      - godelski 6y ago
        I think this is a bad way to think about things. Rewarding honest voting means that people have perfect information and act rationally (meaning they understand how to maximize their voting power). The other way to frame things is how systems handle strategic voting. One of the reasons I'm a big fan of STAR is because it both prefers honest voting (you maximize your power her) AND it handles strategic voting well[0]. That is, the difference between VSE_best and VSE_worst is small. Where we see that the gap in Condorcet methods (like RP and Schulze) is quite large (>10%). I think people get caught up in Condorcet methods because they look at RP's VSE being the max. But STAR0-10 only has a 0.5% VSE difference on max but a 4% difference in worse case (not to mention that STAR is substantially simpler and scales better). You can't compare voting systems just by looking at VSE. It is an important factor, but there are many other factors that matter (e.g. handle of strategy, transparency, handling spoilers, scalability, and more mathematical factors). [0] https://electionscience.github.io/vse-sim/vse.html https://electionscience.github.io/vse-sim/vse.html
        Zak 6y ago
        > Rewarding honest voting means that people have perfect information and act rationally Democracy itself implies that we expect voters to be informed and rational. Since we know that isn't the case, perhaps the important business of ruling countries should be left up to those who are very well educated and who possess a certain... nobility. What I like about Condorcet methods is the Condorcet criterion itself. I have yet to find a better definition of a candidate being most preferred by the voters than that the candidate would beat every other candidate in a two-person race. The later-no-harm criterion (that giving a positive rating to a less favored candidate cannot hurt a more favored candidate) is also valuable and STAR doesn't satisfy it. STAR does seem easy to count though, and without doing much research, likely to elect the Condorcet winner most of the time.
- ElijahLynn 6y ago
  Oh, I just read a big article about how Star voting came to be. https://www.wired.com/story/dana-debeauvoir-texas-county-clerk-voting-tech-revolution/ https://www.wired.com/story/dana-debeauvoir-texas-county-cle... (A Texas County Clerk’s Bold Crusade to Transform How We Vote) I thought I remembered it was mostly about how to verify your vote, I'll have to read more into it again. Thanks!
  - patmorgan23 6y ago
    That's a different STAR vote (i know its confusing). The one you posted is about design for a voting machine. The one the comment is referring to is a vote counting method (like first past the post or rcv)
  - godelski 6y ago
    STAR came out of Oregon actually. One of the co-inventors actually sometimes frequents HN.
- heintje_ghulam 6y ago
  By the way, STAR is not really a twist on RCV, it's a twist on Score Voting.

woofie11 6y ago

The Massachusetts proposal is less dumb than Maine's. It's for all elections except presidential. RCV is incompatible with the NPVIC, as well as with how the electoral college works in the interim. If Maine voted for a third-party without NPVIC, it would, in effect, waste its vote.

Karunamon 6y ago
As I understand it, the NPVIC will never happen. Its entire purpose, as expalained in a CGP Grey video, was creating a situation where no one state has to move first by making the agreement only take effect once a certain number of electoral votes are accounted for. The problem is that this agreement is expressly unconstitutional by way of article 1 section 10: No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, [...] enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State While states are allowed to divvy up their EVs within their own borders however they choose, this kind of interstate agreement to do so in a certain way is illegal, and bipartisan congressional support to circumvent the electoral college seems unlikely.
- akhosravian 6y ago
  What exactly could the federal government do about it? Force the states to nominate electors by some other process? Toss out the states votes? I’m not concern trolling I honestly can’t come up with a response that doesn’t seem like a disaster.
  - lostdog 6y ago
    The problem is what happens if a state that signed the compact decided to break it. Because the federal government considers the compact illegal, it won't enforce it, so any state can break it at will.
    - Karunamon 6y ago
      I'd imagine the electors, or quite possibly any voter in the state, would have standing to invalidate joining the agreement whether or not it's actually enforced.

thehappypm 6y ago

I live in Massachusetts and had not heard a whole lot about this issue until I got the ballot. I read the proposal and I was a little confused why it's a better system, and it's a lot more complicated than "every person gets 1 vote and whoever gets the most votes wins". RCV feels similar to the Electoral College, a system made with good intentions but is so complicated that it's gameable.

smichel17 6y ago
Yeah. I have the same hesitations about it. I think the biggest risk is that it's only a small improvement, and people may feel like, "Tried alternative voting systems, they were more complicated and didn't really improve anything." However, I ended up voting Yes on 2 because it will increase awareness that alternative voting systems exist. The more people who are aware that FPTP sucks moose juice, the more likely we can pass other, more impactful, reforms like STAR. So basically I'm wagering that there's more people like this, than people who will give up on voting reform due to RCV (really, IRV)'s shortcomings.