6 ms·

Wouldn't it increase the odds of an extreme and/or single issue candidate winning? I mean isn't the point of it that a 3rd party candidate would have a more vi

by pfisch 6y ago

Wouldn't it increase the odds of an extreme and/or single issue candidate winning? I mean isn't the point of it that a 3rd party candidate would have a more viable shot at winning? Though I suppose it would also better express the voters' will if those 3rd party candidates still lost.

DFHippie 6y ago
If they win it's hard to say this will be a result the electorate finds disappointing. The advantage for mainstream candidates is that third parties won't be spoilers, which is currently a relatively common occurrence (and why Maine has ranked-choice voting).
Buttons840 6y ago
RCV eliminates the spoiler effect, but I don't think that necessarily means that 3rd party candidates have a higher chance of winning. I don't know. It is nice to be able to show your support for third party candidates in the way that matters most, by actually voting for them, even if they still have little chance of winning. It's nice to be able to do this without throwing your vote away. You no longer have to choose between strategic voting and showing support for your favorite candidate. Even with RCV there will still be political parties with varying popularity, and there will still be 2 at the top that are most popular. At least we wont have to have candidates strategically drop out to avoid being a spoiler any more.
- heintje_ghulam 6y ago
  It doesn't eliminate the spoiler effect. Here's a simple example of what can happen under RCV: Pretend Bernie Sanders in 2016 ran under the Green Party after dropping out of the Democratic Primary. RCV claims to eliminate the spoiler effect, so it is "safe" for all the people who want Bernie as their first choice to actually express that. Assume everyone who likes Bernie the best follows that: they put Bernie as their first choice and either Trump or Clinton as their second choice. Presumably more will have Clinton as their second choice than Trump since Clinton is more centrist than Trump who is on the right. Say the "first choice" votes go as follows: - 45% top choice Trump - 35% top choice Bernie - 20% top choice Hillary Hillary gets eliminated and the people who put Hillary as their first choice now have their second choices distributed among the remaining candidates. Say that split goes (within the 20%): - 6% 2nd choice Trump - 14% 2nd choice Bernie Trump wins, even if all the Bernie voters had Hillary as their 2nd choice, because their second choices didn't count for anything. So the claim that it was "safe" to express their true preferences and put Bernie as their first choice completely backfired. summary: among three choices, under Ranked Choice Voting, you only get your votes moved to your 2nd choice in Ranked Choice if you do not come in 2nd place overall. If your candidate comes in 2nd, your votes are worthless. A system that fixes this and other issues is STAR Voting, and it's what people should be pushing for: https://www.equal.vote/ https://www.equal.vote/ https://www.starvoting.us/ https://www.starvoting.us/
  - lhopki01 6y ago
    Surely in your example STAR Voting would have had the same result? Hilary (and all other lesser candidates of which there are none) get eliminated leaving Bernie and Trump. Then preferences of Hilary voters for those two are calculated (Preference for a runoff between Bernie and Trump are already determined) so you end up with the exact same result.
    - heintje_ghulam 6y ago
      You're assuming the scores were chosen from e.g. 1,2,3, and people gave their first preference 1, second preference 2, and third preference 3. So yes, if you force everyone to rank the candidates like in Ranked Choice Voting, in this case you get the same outcome as Ranked Choice Voting. STAR doesn't restrict people to strict ranking though.
      - lhopki01 6y ago
        The only situation where what you say is true is if enough of Hilary's supporters give both Bernie and Trump the same preference number. This is reflected in RCV by not putting a second and third choice. Remember that only the first round takes into account scoring. Runoff only uses relative preference which works out the same as RCV. Also it took me way too long to understand this which makes this seem to me to be a bad system. I've never struggled to understand how a voting system works before and I've used, STV, MMPR, PR, RCV, and FPT. I honestly think proportional representation in a Parliamentary system is way better than any of these complicated system. It's simple to understand, I vote for who I want, and it doesn't end up with the stupid situation of an Executive who can't command support of a Legislative.
  - alextheparrot 6y ago
    The second vote was still counted, though. It just happened that Bernie had 49% (35 + 14) of the vote vs Trump's 51% (45 + 6) in this example? Just because I don't like the hypothetical results of the vote doesn't mean it is wrong.
MikeTheGreat 6y ago
I think it actually increases the chances of a common 2nd choice winning. Extreme candidates are only going to draw from their limited constituencies, but a choice that's "nice, but not my top choice, but I'd like them if my top choice doesn't get elected" candidate for a lot of people actually does really well in this sort of system.
ggggtez 6y ago
It has the opposite effect that you described. Consider the 2000 Gore v Bush v Nader. Bush won with a minority of votes. But if they used Ranked Choice, and Nader voters are generally assumed to have the preference order (Nader > Gore > Bush) then Gore would have won. We can assume that politically, Nader is to the left of Gore, and Bush is to the right. So in fact, ranked choice voting helps the candidate that is in the political center!
- wyldfire 6y ago
  > So in fact, ranked choice voting helps the candidate that is in the political center! I think you might be right, but the single case you cited doesn't make it so.
  - jacques_chester 6y ago
    Australian politics is dominated by policies aimed at the median voter. That's over a century of cases.
- smichel17 6y ago
  It's more nuanced than this. RCV helps the median in the way you suggest when the median is more popular, by allowing the more extreme voters to avoid splitting the vote. In the example, by allowing Nader voters to fall back to Gore once Nader is eliminated. But, when the race is closer, it flip flops to have the opposite direction. Say Nader is marginally more popular among liberals. Now Gore is eliminated first, and Nader beats Bush. But hold on, what about the conservatives, who voted Bush > Gore > Nader? They've been screwed, because Gore was eliminated before Bush, so the system never considered their preference for Gore over Nader. And actually, if enough of them had flipped their vote and gone Gore > Bush > Nader, then Bush would be eliminated first, resulting in Gore's victory -- the lesser evil. If you are liberal and have a hard time identifying this as a problem, consider the reverse: an election in the south, where voting D > R > Tea party results in the tea party candidate winning, but voting R > D > Y elects the mainstream Republican. So the short summary is that, under RCV, it's only safe for you to put your favorite candidate first if: A) Your favorite is likely to win, or B) The election is not close -- you know your favorite(s) will be eliminated before your next choice, who is likely to win. It is still an improvement over FPTP, where you always have to vote for a likely-to-win candidate, but not as good as any form of score voting (e.g. approval, STAR).
mbesto 6y ago
> Wouldn't it increase the odds of an extreme and/or single issue candidate winning? You act like this isn't happening already.
rthomas6 6y ago
If a candidate is everyone's second choice, I don't think you can call them extreme or single issue.

by pfisch 6y ago

DFHippie 6y ago

If they win it's hard to say this will be a result the electorate finds disappointing. The advantage for mainstream candidates is that third parties won't be spoilers, which is currently a relatively common occurrence (and why Maine has ranked-choice voting).

Buttons840 6y ago

RCV eliminates the spoiler effect, but I don't think that necessarily means that 3rd party candidates have a higher chance of winning. I don't know. It is nice to be able to show your support for third party candidates in the way that matters most, by actually voting for them, even if they still have little chance of winning. It's nice to be able to do this without throwing your vote away. You no longer have to choose between strategic voting and showing support for your favorite candidate. Even with RCV there will still be political parties with varying popularity, and there will still be 2 at the top that are most popular. At least we wont have to have candidates strategically drop out to avoid being a spoiler any more.

heintje_ghulam 6y ago
It doesn't eliminate the spoiler effect. Here's a simple example of what can happen under RCV: Pretend Bernie Sanders in 2016 ran under the Green Party after dropping out of the Democratic Primary. RCV claims to eliminate the spoiler effect, so it is "safe" for all the people who want Bernie as their first choice to actually express that. Assume everyone who likes Bernie the best follows that: they put Bernie as their first choice and either Trump or Clinton as their second choice. Presumably more will have Clinton as their second choice than Trump since Clinton is more centrist than Trump who is on the right. Say the "first choice" votes go as follows: - 45% top choice Trump - 35% top choice Bernie - 20% top choice Hillary Hillary gets eliminated and the people who put Hillary as their first choice now have their second choices distributed among the remaining candidates. Say that split goes (within the 20%): - 6% 2nd choice Trump - 14% 2nd choice Bernie Trump wins, even if all the Bernie voters had Hillary as their 2nd choice, because their second choices didn't count for anything. So the claim that it was "safe" to express their true preferences and put Bernie as their first choice completely backfired. summary: among three choices, under Ranked Choice Voting, you only get your votes moved to your 2nd choice in Ranked Choice if you do not come in 2nd place overall. If your candidate comes in 2nd, your votes are worthless. A system that fixes this and other issues is STAR Voting, and it's what people should be pushing for: https://www.equal.vote/ https://www.equal.vote/ https://www.starvoting.us/ https://www.starvoting.us/
- lhopki01 6y ago
  Surely in your example STAR Voting would have had the same result? Hilary (and all other lesser candidates of which there are none) get eliminated leaving Bernie and Trump. Then preferences of Hilary voters for those two are calculated (Preference for a runoff between Bernie and Trump are already determined) so you end up with the exact same result.
  - heintje_ghulam 6y ago
    You're assuming the scores were chosen from e.g. 1,2,3, and people gave their first preference 1, second preference 2, and third preference 3. So yes, if you force everyone to rank the candidates like in Ranked Choice Voting, in this case you get the same outcome as Ranked Choice Voting. STAR doesn't restrict people to strict ranking though.
    - lhopki01 6y ago
      The only situation where what you say is true is if enough of Hilary's supporters give both Bernie and Trump the same preference number. This is reflected in RCV by not putting a second and third choice. Remember that only the first round takes into account scoring. Runoff only uses relative preference which works out the same as RCV. Also it took me way too long to understand this which makes this seem to me to be a bad system. I've never struggled to understand how a voting system works before and I've used, STV, MMPR, PR, RCV, and FPT. I honestly think proportional representation in a Parliamentary system is way better than any of these complicated system. It's simple to understand, I vote for who I want, and it doesn't end up with the stupid situation of an Executive who can't command support of a Legislative.
- alextheparrot 6y ago
  The second vote was still counted, though. It just happened that Bernie had 49% (35 + 14) of the vote vs Trump's 51% (45 + 6) in this example? Just because I don't like the hypothetical results of the vote doesn't mean it is wrong.

MikeTheGreat 6y ago

I think it actually increases the chances of a common 2nd choice winning. Extreme candidates are only going to draw from their limited constituencies, but a choice that's "nice, but not my top choice, but I'd like them if my top choice doesn't get elected" candidate for a lot of people actually does really well in this sort of system.

ggggtez 6y ago

It has the opposite effect that you described. Consider the 2000 Gore v Bush v Nader. Bush won with a minority of votes. But if they used Ranked Choice, and Nader voters are generally assumed to have the preference order (Nader > Gore > Bush) then Gore would have won. We can assume that politically, Nader is to the left of Gore, and Bush is to the right. So in fact, ranked choice voting helps the candidate that is in the political center!

wyldfire 6y ago
> So in fact, ranked choice voting helps the candidate that is in the political center! I think you might be right, but the single case you cited doesn't make it so.
- jacques_chester 6y ago
  Australian politics is dominated by policies aimed at the median voter. That's over a century of cases.
smichel17 6y ago
It's more nuanced than this. RCV helps the median in the way you suggest when the median is more popular, by allowing the more extreme voters to avoid splitting the vote. In the example, by allowing Nader voters to fall back to Gore once Nader is eliminated. But, when the race is closer, it flip flops to have the opposite direction. Say Nader is marginally more popular among liberals. Now Gore is eliminated first, and Nader beats Bush. But hold on, what about the conservatives, who voted Bush > Gore > Nader? They've been screwed, because Gore was eliminated before Bush, so the system never considered their preference for Gore over Nader. And actually, if enough of them had flipped their vote and gone Gore > Bush > Nader, then Bush would be eliminated first, resulting in Gore's victory -- the lesser evil. If you are liberal and have a hard time identifying this as a problem, consider the reverse: an election in the south, where voting D > R > Tea party results in the tea party candidate winning, but voting R > D > Y elects the mainstream Republican. So the short summary is that, under RCV, it's only safe for you to put your favorite candidate first if: A) Your favorite is likely to win, or B) The election is not close -- you know your favorite(s) will be eliminated before your next choice, who is likely to win. It is still an improvement over FPTP, where you always have to vote for a likely-to-win candidate, but not as good as any form of score voting (e.g. approval, STAR).

mbesto 6y ago

> Wouldn't it increase the odds of an extreme and/or single issue candidate winning? You act like this isn't happening already.

rthomas6 6y ago

If a candidate is everyone's second choice, I don't think you can call them extreme or single issue.