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We have this for all elections in Australia. It works great and allows you to vote for your single issue party but fallback to a more mainstream or centrist par

We have this for all elections in Australia. It works great and allows you to vote for your single issue party but fallback to a more mainstream or centrist party without spending your ballot.

PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
Not just single issue - you can vote the party or candidate that "far, far from the typical public position on most things but preferred by me", without opening the door to the ones you actively oppose. I would likely be a green party voter by choice, but when there's a republican on the ballot, there's no way I'm voting green - the downside of having the republican win is (for me) larger than the downside of not casting my vote according to my conscience.Adjust to suit your own political preferences - perhaps you'd like to vote libertarian but are worried about allowing the crypto-DSA democrat into office, etc, etc. This is MAJOR. The US, the UK and other first-past-the-post systems need RCV or something similar so badly. [EDIT: yes, STAR is likely even better]
- a1369209993 6y ago
  Put another way, first-past-the-post means you're not voting for anyone; you're voting against whichever side of the ruling party is worse.
wyldfire 6y ago
I think it would be excellent if it found more adoption in the US (or approval voting or similar). What drawbacks/surprising consequences, if any, are there?
- dicomdan 6y ago
  It would hurt the current duopoly so you can expect a significant pushback against it. If MA passes theirs it could pick up real mainstream momentum though.
  - drewrv 6y ago
    > It would hurt the current duopoly I get that this is conventional wisdom, and a lot of smaller parties support rank choice voting because they think it helps them. But neither of the major parties like "spoiler" candidates, it seems like the ability to "collect" votes from the green or libertarian parties would be in their interest. I suspect the reason it's not more widespread is more mundane. It isn't incomprehensible, but it's more complicated than what we have. If you're explaining you're losing. Also people are (perhaps rightly) cautious about messing with how elections happen. Finally, it doesn't ignite the same passions as abortion or police reform. The interest groups pushing most strongly for it are, by definition, small and not really powerful.
    - jmholla 6y ago
      That's why I'm a bigger fan of approval voting. No ballot updates and people just check next to who they like.
  - godelski 6y ago
    Actually I think this is why we see widespread support for RCV, because it still favors the major parties. On the other hand, cardinal systems (approval or STAR), do not favor mainstream parties. Really they don't favor any party.
- graeme 6y ago
  In Canada it’s been used by the Conservative party for their leadership contests. Both times, the response to the winner has been “Who?”. So in a field with a lot of contenders it can favour marginal candidates. You also end up with an absurdly big ballot. Past, say, five ranks the choices are hardly meaningful. I’m favourably disposed to this type of voting but those are a couple of downsides.
  - jmholla 6y ago
    > You also end up with an absurdly big ballot. Past, say, five ranks the choices are hardly meaningful. How does the type of voting affect the number of people on the ballot?
    - graeme 6y ago
      Right now if you vote for a third party in the US your vote is wasted. Under a ranked ballot system you can vote for a super marginal party confident that your more mainstream preference will ultimately get your vote if your marginal candidate loses. This encourages votes for smaller parties
      - jmholla 6y ago
        Are you saying more parties crop up? I still have third parties on FPTP ballots.
        sokoloff 6y ago
        My vote in MA is not mathematically meaningful today, as you could correctly call the 2020 presidential race for blue back all the way back in 2016. Change the voting process and I could vote for Party Q, then F, then D and have something closer to my true preferences be measurable vs today and give the parties a sense of where they stand with the populace. I’m still not convinced it breaks the binary star in US politics. Right now, if those are my prefs, I have a choice of voting Q, voting D, or staying home. If Q is a third party, there’s an argument that vote might as well have not been counted or cast (because from today’s voting you can’t infer the true level of support for Q because some Qs cast their ballot for D just on the off chance that R would otherwise win; for the same reason, you can’t tell as much about the true R or D support either).
- jandrese 6y ago
  The drawback is that it is more complex than a traditional ballot. It's not especially difficult, but given how many people have difficulty with even our current ballots it will cause some additional issues.
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  It can have strange results when there isn’t a clear moderate. Canada uses it for a lot of leadership elections. What often happens is that a candidate nobody knows or really wants wins because they got picked so their vote wouldn’t go to the main competing candidate. So you get party leaders who nobody seriously examined as the more hardcore members just needed to park their votes.
  - blibble 6y ago
    this is a direct consequence of switching from "most popular wins" (FPTP) to "least unpopular wins" (IRV), which is a subtle but very important distinction
- typest 6y ago
  Most surprising consequence is probably that IRV is unlikely to break 2 party dominance, even though it this is an often claimed advantage of IRV. The frequently imagined scenario with IRV is that, in a two party system where most people will rank 1 of 2 parties first, then a small percent of voters can safely rank a third party first. This party is then eliminated, but not before a surprisingly strong showing (e.g. 5% first rather than the .05% we currently have). This would likely happen. The problem arises in the next election, when the third party is now strong enough to command a large percent of first place votes. Since the party with the least first place votes is eliminated (even if they have a ton of second place votes), the third party now stands a real risk of cannibalizing votes from the next most similar "mainstream" party. If this cannibalization were to occur, both parties could lose to the other mainstream party that many voters might not have preferred! Due to this risk, it's likely voters would strategically rank the third party below the mainstream party even if that wasn't their true preference. In this way, IRV can still lead to 2 party dominance.
  - jessaustin 6y ago
    Assume for the sake of argument that the policy of the "third" party is just like that of the "second" of the two "main" parties. In that case, it's true that the second party could be eliminated in the initial round of voting. However, all its votes would then transfer to the third party. In that case the third party very well could beat the "first" party, satisfying supporters of both the second and third parties. It's true that third parties would be unlikely to map to the current political spectrum in such a "pure" fashion. However, that just means that voters reject the political choices currently on offer. Voters really should have that option.
    - typest 6y ago
      I think you have two incorrect assumptions here. You're assuming A) that parties and political ideologies exist in 1 dimension, and that B) the second party is closer to the third party than the first, such that its votes will go to the nearest neighbor, which is then the third party. Even granting A, B is definitely not true. There are many similarities between the two major parties, and removing one in favor of a third party would likely split voters between the third party, and the other major party. Also, A is not true either, so the distance between parties becomes even more unclear. I for sure believe voters should be able to reject the current political choice on offer! I support IRV over our current system for sure. But, my main point is that IRV is actually not what many people believe it to be, and is far worse than other, simpler systems, such as approval voting.
aerovistae 6y ago
Serious question: given that you have this in Aus, why do the politicians always seem to be conservative clowns like Tony Abbott? I'm 29 but I can't remember any PMs of Aus ever being talked about internationally with anything but scorn so far. With ranked choice universally adopted there I would have hoped for more diversity of representation :/
- specialist 6y ago
  (I don't know anything about Australia.) Generally, election reform advocate for something like RCV for executive races and proportional representation (PR) for assemblies. PR can moot districts, eliminating some attack vectors, like gerrymandering.
- TOGoS 6y ago
  Because the voting system is only one of many factors that determine what kind of government you end up with. Who controls the money in Australia? Who would they prefer to have in government representing them? Are there any ways they might use their money to propagandize or lobby for favorable laws? (I don't know the Australian answer to that, but where I live the answer is "the ultra-rich and the investor class", "Republicans, but they like to keep Democrats in their pocket, too", and "yes, and it seems to get worse every year") RCV would be a great improvement, but as long as money rules, things are gonna keep sucking.
- axefrog 6y ago
  We have a massive problem with our media being largely owned by Murdoch. The result is that our elections tend to be heavily influenced by lies and propaganda, just as is the case with Fox News in the US.
poulsbohemian 6y ago
I totally get where this makes sense in your system, where the election typically results in a coalition of parties that come together to form a government, but I'm less clear on whether this makes sense in the US system where it is far more winner-take-all.
- gorjusborg 6y ago
  It makes sense in our system because it allows individuals to vote for the candidate they like the most rather than against the one they dislike the most. Unfortunately, RCV only fixes that assuming that you have more than two candidates on the ballot. This time there were 4 or 5 candidates for president in Maine, so I voted for the 4 I liked. Felt good, but honestly, the largely two-party system prevented many great candidates from being on the ticket.
- godelski 6y ago
  The US forms coalitions too, and that's actually part of the problem. Both the democrats and republicans have subparties within them. It is really more accurate to think of democrats and republicans as coalitions. That's why we have people like Bernie being so different from Biden. Or Trump, tea party, and neo libs, being far from classical conservatives. All of which are republicans.
godelski 6y ago
Australia's (as well as Ireland's) main advantage seems more due to proportionate representation (parliamentary system) rather than due to IRV. Australia is still dominated by two parties (>70%) and the minor parties have to be pretty close. This is the same problem that plurality has, that it causes parties to form large coalitions in an effort to compete with the other side.

We have this for all elections in Australia. It works great and allows you to vote for your single issue party but fallback to a more mainstream or centrist party without spending your ballot.

PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago

Not just single issue - you can vote the party or candidate that "far, far from the typical public position on most things but preferred by me", without opening the door to the ones you actively oppose. I would likely be a green party voter by choice, but when there's a republican on the ballot, there's no way I'm voting green - the downside of having the republican win is (for me) larger than the downside of not casting my vote according to my conscience.Adjust to suit your own political preferences - perhaps you'd like to vote libertarian but are worried about allowing the crypto-DSA democrat into office, etc, etc. This is MAJOR. The US, the UK and other first-past-the-post systems need RCV or something similar so badly. [EDIT: yes, STAR is likely even better]

a1369209993 6y ago
Put another way, first-past-the-post means you're not voting for anyone; you're voting against whichever side of the ruling party is worse.

wyldfire 6y ago

I think it would be excellent if it found more adoption in the US (or approval voting or similar). What drawbacks/surprising consequences, if any, are there?

dicomdan 6y ago
It would hurt the current duopoly so you can expect a significant pushback against it. If MA passes theirs it could pick up real mainstream momentum though.
- drewrv 6y ago
  > It would hurt the current duopoly I get that this is conventional wisdom, and a lot of smaller parties support rank choice voting because they think it helps them. But neither of the major parties like "spoiler" candidates, it seems like the ability to "collect" votes from the green or libertarian parties would be in their interest. I suspect the reason it's not more widespread is more mundane. It isn't incomprehensible, but it's more complicated than what we have. If you're explaining you're losing. Also people are (perhaps rightly) cautious about messing with how elections happen. Finally, it doesn't ignite the same passions as abortion or police reform. The interest groups pushing most strongly for it are, by definition, small and not really powerful.
  - jmholla 6y ago
    That's why I'm a bigger fan of approval voting. No ballot updates and people just check next to who they like.
- godelski 6y ago
  Actually I think this is why we see widespread support for RCV, because it still favors the major parties. On the other hand, cardinal systems (approval or STAR), do not favor mainstream parties. Really they don't favor any party.
graeme 6y ago
In Canada it’s been used by the Conservative party for their leadership contests. Both times, the response to the winner has been “Who?”. So in a field with a lot of contenders it can favour marginal candidates. You also end up with an absurdly big ballot. Past, say, five ranks the choices are hardly meaningful. I’m favourably disposed to this type of voting but those are a couple of downsides.
- jmholla 6y ago
  > You also end up with an absurdly big ballot. Past, say, five ranks the choices are hardly meaningful. How does the type of voting affect the number of people on the ballot?
  - graeme 6y ago
    Right now if you vote for a third party in the US your vote is wasted. Under a ranked ballot system you can vote for a super marginal party confident that your more mainstream preference will ultimately get your vote if your marginal candidate loses. This encourages votes for smaller parties
    - jmholla 6y ago
      Are you saying more parties crop up? I still have third parties on FPTP ballots.
      - sokoloff 6y ago
        My vote in MA is not mathematically meaningful today, as you could correctly call the 2020 presidential race for blue back all the way back in 2016. Change the voting process and I could vote for Party Q, then F, then D and have something closer to my true preferences be measurable vs today and give the parties a sense of where they stand with the populace. I’m still not convinced it breaks the binary star in US politics. Right now, if those are my prefs, I have a choice of voting Q, voting D, or staying home. If Q is a third party, there’s an argument that vote might as well have not been counted or cast (because from today’s voting you can’t infer the true level of support for Q because some Qs cast their ballot for D just on the off chance that R would otherwise win; for the same reason, you can’t tell as much about the true R or D support either).
jandrese 6y ago
The drawback is that it is more complex than a traditional ballot. It's not especially difficult, but given how many people have difficulty with even our current ballots it will cause some additional issues.
MattGaiser 6y ago
It can have strange results when there isn’t a clear moderate. Canada uses it for a lot of leadership elections. What often happens is that a candidate nobody knows or really wants wins because they got picked so their vote wouldn’t go to the main competing candidate. So you get party leaders who nobody seriously examined as the more hardcore members just needed to park their votes.
- blibble 6y ago
  this is a direct consequence of switching from "most popular wins" (FPTP) to "least unpopular wins" (IRV), which is a subtle but very important distinction
typest 6y ago
Most surprising consequence is probably that IRV is unlikely to break 2 party dominance, even though it this is an often claimed advantage of IRV. The frequently imagined scenario with IRV is that, in a two party system where most people will rank 1 of 2 parties first, then a small percent of voters can safely rank a third party first. This party is then eliminated, but not before a surprisingly strong showing (e.g. 5% first rather than the .05% we currently have). This would likely happen. The problem arises in the next election, when the third party is now strong enough to command a large percent of first place votes. Since the party with the least first place votes is eliminated (even if they have a ton of second place votes), the third party now stands a real risk of cannibalizing votes from the next most similar "mainstream" party. If this cannibalization were to occur, both parties could lose to the other mainstream party that many voters might not have preferred! Due to this risk, it's likely voters would strategically rank the third party below the mainstream party even if that wasn't their true preference. In this way, IRV can still lead to 2 party dominance.
- jessaustin 6y ago
  Assume for the sake of argument that the policy of the "third" party is just like that of the "second" of the two "main" parties. In that case, it's true that the second party could be eliminated in the initial round of voting. However, all its votes would then transfer to the third party. In that case the third party very well could beat the "first" party, satisfying supporters of both the second and third parties. It's true that third parties would be unlikely to map to the current political spectrum in such a "pure" fashion. However, that just means that voters reject the political choices currently on offer. Voters really should have that option.
  - typest 6y ago
    I think you have two incorrect assumptions here. You're assuming A) that parties and political ideologies exist in 1 dimension, and that B) the second party is closer to the third party than the first, such that its votes will go to the nearest neighbor, which is then the third party. Even granting A, B is definitely not true. There are many similarities between the two major parties, and removing one in favor of a third party would likely split voters between the third party, and the other major party. Also, A is not true either, so the distance between parties becomes even more unclear. I for sure believe voters should be able to reject the current political choice on offer! I support IRV over our current system for sure. But, my main point is that IRV is actually not what many people believe it to be, and is far worse than other, simpler systems, such as approval voting.

aerovistae 6y ago

Serious question: given that you have this in Aus, why do the politicians always seem to be conservative clowns like Tony Abbott? I'm 29 but I can't remember any PMs of Aus ever being talked about internationally with anything but scorn so far. With ranked choice universally adopted there I would have hoped for more diversity of representation :/

specialist 6y ago
(I don't know anything about Australia.) Generally, election reform advocate for something like RCV for executive races and proportional representation (PR) for assemblies. PR can moot districts, eliminating some attack vectors, like gerrymandering.
TOGoS 6y ago
Because the voting system is only one of many factors that determine what kind of government you end up with. Who controls the money in Australia? Who would they prefer to have in government representing them? Are there any ways they might use their money to propagandize or lobby for favorable laws? (I don't know the Australian answer to that, but where I live the answer is "the ultra-rich and the investor class", "Republicans, but they like to keep Democrats in their pocket, too", and "yes, and it seems to get worse every year") RCV would be a great improvement, but as long as money rules, things are gonna keep sucking.
axefrog 6y ago
We have a massive problem with our media being largely owned by Murdoch. The result is that our elections tend to be heavily influenced by lies and propaganda, just as is the case with Fox News in the US.

poulsbohemian 6y ago

I totally get where this makes sense in your system, where the election typically results in a coalition of parties that come together to form a government, but I'm less clear on whether this makes sense in the US system where it is far more winner-take-all.

gorjusborg 6y ago
It makes sense in our system because it allows individuals to vote for the candidate they like the most rather than against the one they dislike the most. Unfortunately, RCV only fixes that assuming that you have more than two candidates on the ballot. This time there were 4 or 5 candidates for president in Maine, so I voted for the 4 I liked. Felt good, but honestly, the largely two-party system prevented many great candidates from being on the ticket.
godelski 6y ago
The US forms coalitions too, and that's actually part of the problem. Both the democrats and republicans have subparties within them. It is really more accurate to think of democrats and republicans as coalitions. That's why we have people like Bernie being so different from Biden. Or Trump, tea party, and neo libs, being far from classical conservatives. All of which are republicans.

godelski 6y ago

Australia's (as well as Ireland's) main advantage seems more due to proportionate representation (parliamentary system) rather than due to IRV. Australia is still dominated by two parties (>70%) and the minor parties have to be pretty close. This is the same problem that plurality has, that it causes parties to form large coalitions in an effort to compete with the other side.