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Anything is better than the status quo. Instant Runoff Voting has legit flaws, but it would still be an improvement. I always point folks at this https://ncase

Anything is better than the status quo. Instant Runoff Voting has legit flaws, but it would still be an improvement. I always point folks at this https://ncase.me/ballot/ https://ncase.me/ballot/ I sincerely believe that a better voting system is one of the highest ROI changes we could make towards better government, and some systems are just so simple it’s crazy not to do it. I personally prefer approval voting, because it’s still trivial to mark, count, and explain (speaking by analogy, it's just switching from radio buttons to checkboxes). It also doesn't have as bad failure modes as some other systems (see the link above for comparisons). But everything’s better than today’s FPTP system.

NationalPark 6y ago
The problem is pretty much all systems that make voting more fair also make Republicans win much less, so there's very little bipartisan motivation to make changes.
- kibwen 6y ago
  Maine voters passed it via ballot measure, no partisan politicking required. Likewise, the two states voting on it this year, Alaska and Massachusetts, are also doing so via ballot measure.
  - wahern 6y ago
    Article 1, Section 4, Clause 1 of the U.S. Constitution says, > The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators. There have been two Supreme Court decisions that have analogized the electorate as a legislative body in ballot measures, referendums, public initiatives, etc. The latest was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arizona_State_Legislature_v._Arizona_Independent_Redistricting_Commission https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arizona_State_Legislature_v._A... [1] In that decision it was the liberals and Kennedy who upheld precedent; all the conservatives would have prohibited direct public votes on Congressional election rules. But now Kennedy and Ginsburg are gone, and their replacements are very likely to vote against precedent if the question comes back to the court. (In fact, IIRC, some justices, like Thomas, don't even like the idea of public initiatives for purely state elections, an argument based on their own peculiar notions of Federalism. Also, if you read the order opinions over the last few weeks by Kavanaugh and Gorsuch, some of their arguments seem to be aimed at reversing Arizona.) Roberts might switch his vote to uphold precedent, but Roberts would only make 4 votes, not enough to save it. If (or, rather, when) SCOTUS prohibits the public from directly legislating their Congressional elections, only Congress could restore the ability, unless the Constitution was amended. [1] Skimming through the Arizona case, I think the first was Pacific States Telephone & Telegraph Co. v. Oregon, 223 U. S. 118 (1912). But I don't have time to reread the Arizona opinions carefully to refresh my memory.
    - kibwen 6y ago
      The makeup of SCOTUS is irrelevant in this case, because before they could hear the case Congress would need to pass a law contradicting these state measures, which could then be challenged up to SCOTUS. No matter what, the ball is in Congress's court here.
      - wahern 6y ago
        Look at the parties in Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission. Any state legislature (or perhaps even any state legislator) that wanted to challenge their state's initiative-back election laws could sue. I'm not that well versed in election law, but it's also possible any state citizen could do it as well. In any event, just looking at the plaintiffs in the flurry of 2020 election cases shows how easy it would be to bring a case back to SCOTUS.
        kibwen 6y ago
        Er, I feel like you're actually deflating your own argument here. Note that the aforementioned clause in the US Constitution grants no power to Congress to dictate how states perform their own legislative elections. The scenario you're envisioning first requires a state to pass an alternative voting system via ballot, then for the state legislature elected by that voting system to sue the state itself to overturn it (which is guaranteed to be wildly unpopular among the electorate that just passed the ballot measure), then for the case to make it to SCOTUS, who can only overturn it for federal elections, not for any state elections, and especially not in state elections in states other than the one that challenged it. A state politician has nothing to gain and everything to lose by supporting such a measure.
        wahern 6y ago
        The context here is Federal elections for President and Congress--Maine's Federal Senate race is also via rank-choice, as mentioned in the second paragraph/sentence of the linked article. To another commenter's argument that switching to ranked-choice voting for those elections would require bipartisan support, you had retorted that > Maine voters passed [ranked-choice voting] via ballot measure, no partisan politicking required. Likewise, the two states voting on it this year, Alaska and Massachusetts, are also doing so via ballot measure. My point is that for Federal congressional elections the legal capacity to use voter initiatives to institute different voting rules, bypassing partisan state legislatures and Congress, will likely be extinguished in the coming years. The same is likely true for Presidential elections as the relevant constitutional language is nearly identical: "Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors...." My comment about Thomas' view (uncited--I could be misremembering the nuances) about who gets to pass laws controlling state legislature elections was merely to suggest how likely he would be to overturn Arizona; his opinion about the Constitution's and SCOTUS' role in dictating/safeguarding a very specific form of representative government extends beyond a simplistic plain text[1] interpretation of the aforementioned constitutional clauses. [1] I feel like I should point out that no justice, conservative or otherwise, subscribes to a "plain text" philosophy of constitutional interpretation. Conservatives justices tend to espouse either a so-called Original Intent philosophy or Scalia's Original Meaning philosophy, where "Original Meaning" is not the same thing as "plain text". And justices of all political philosophies will make a "plain text" argument when it suits their interpretation. All things being equal (though they rarely are), everybody tends to agree a plain text defense is the best defense.
  - pcmaffey 6y ago
    Makes me wonder how federal ballot initiatives might play out, and why they don't exist...
    - SllX 6y ago
      The long and the short of it is there’s no provision in the Constitution. The powers of Congress are a whitelist, and it would be a stretch even for some of the stretchier clauses in there to allow for Federal ballot initiatives. That said, I wouldn’t support it. I view State-level ballot initiatives as an anti-feature, at least in my native California. Wouldn’t want that crap making it up to the Federal level.
    - autumn_unlaces 6y ago
      National Initiative is an existing proposal for doing just that which was proposed by Mike Gravel. Tom Steyer included it in his 2020 platform. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_initiative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_initiative
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 6y ago
  Well, because two-party systems are an emergent phenomena of First-Past-The-Post voting (Duverger's law), any move away from FPTP would favor third parties. Almost immediately, the GOP and the DNC would start losing votes to the Libertarian party and the Green party, so they'll both rally against any change to the existing system. Any major shift toward better voting systems will have to start in local elections where voters are fed up with both parties. Maine is doing an awesome job leading the way on the state-level.
  - vmchale 6y ago
    I'm not sure they'd lose elections though.
    - lallysingh 6y ago
      Agreed. Libertarians will probably put Republicans as preference 2, and similarly for Green -> Dems. It should, however, get more people out to vote, and that's a good thing. It also gives hard feedback to the parties about their constituent's real politics. If a party wins but sees their votes mostly coming from #2 preferences, the next round of primaries will probably shift further from the center. Similarly, if they see themselves as #1, they can shift back towards the center.
      - nickff 6y ago
        I agree with your first statement, but: "It should, however, get more people out to vote, and that's a good thing." is not necessarily true, though you're presenting it as axiomatic. Currently, the average voter is poorly informed, the marginal voter is uninformed, and the non-voters are misinformed. I challenge you to read any book about voter ignorance and come away with your current view.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_Democracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_Democracy
        clairity 6y ago
        you don't have to have perfect information spread throughout a population to make good collective decisions amongst it. it's ok if much of the electorate is somewhat ignorant or poorly informed, as long as that's relatively uncorrelated (i.e., there's no systemic coercion of choice). but that's exactly what parties are designed to subvert to their advantage. so then, what we need to do is to do everything we can to move away from party politics, including better voting mechanisms and removing the outsized influence of money in politics.
- driverdan 6y ago
  Both ruling parties oppose anything that opens the system to additional parties. Ballot access is a prime example. It's very hard for additional parties to get candidates on the ballot in most states.
  - newacct583 6y ago
    > Both ruling parties oppose anything that opens the system to additional parties. Virtually all RC election schemes in the US, and also nonpartisan primaries (which are a close cousin) are championed by democrats. That's just not true. Edit to expand: it's a partisan issue because structurally the democratic party is already a loose collection of interests. They've always structured their internal workings around this kind of dealmaking and coalition-building. Shifting to an environment where those groups (Blue Dogs, DSA, The Squad, the Congressional Black Caucus, etc...) become first class parties doesn't really change the way democrats have always governed.
    - driverdan 6y ago
      I've worked with a 3rd party in New York. At least in that state what you said is false and I've heard but not verified stories in other states. To get a candidate on a statewide ballot you have to get signatures from a percentage of registered voters. I don't remember the numbers off hand but it's in the tens of thousands. This alone is both cost and time prohibitive. There are also a bunch of other hoops you have to jump through.
      - newacct583 6y ago
        Both your and the other counterexample are talking about something other than nonpartisan ballotting, though. I mean, yes, if you have a third party candidate in isolation then whoever that third party is going to "steal" more votes from is going to oppose it. So democrats would oppose a Green or other progressive candidate in (most races in) New York, sure. That's just self-interest. But for the same reason they'd clearly welcome a libertarian entrant. That's not responsive to the discussion. The claim upthread was that "both" parties oppose ranked choice voting. And that's simply not true.
- Afton 6y ago
  In Canada, we say "electoral reform is always popular with the opposition party/parties".
  - __jem 6y ago
    The GOP is the minority party in the United States. The only reason they are not in opposition is due to structural defects. This quote does not make sense when applied to the US.
  - tlavoie 6y ago
    Sure, but federal electoral reform was one of Trudeau's platform items before he got elected. Once he got in... it seems suddenly less interesting. I would dearly love to see this get done here. In BC, there was an attempt to get it in, but province-wide, the results of voting weren't there.
    - Afton 6y ago
      Trudeau's flip flop is an example of what I'm talking about, so i don't understand your use of the word "but" in the first sentence. Once in power, a party is interested in maintaining that power. Since the current system got them into power, they are unlikely to be interested in reforming it (other than with a system that would solidify it more). I don't live in BC anymore, so hadn't realized that there had been another vote in 2018. That is disappointing.
- kc-rush2049 6y ago
  I would argue it would make Democrats win much less as well. We would probably end up with level headed moderates who are best aligned with the majority of the country's voters. Not a extremist that somehow scared and scammed 51% of voters. None of the established powers-that-be will help change the system that keeps them in power.
wwweston 6y ago
> Instant Runoff Voting has legit flaws Talking to people about what they expect "ranked choice" means, I get the idea they mean Condorcet rather than IRV...
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago
  I'd love condorcet, and I'd prefer it to IRV, but I've only ever seen IRV when it comes to real proposals on ballots and implementations in governments. I don't have access to TFA, but it's using IRV, right?
- Zak 6y ago
  "Ranked choice" doesn't necessarily imply a particular counting method and could describe IRV or Condorcet. I'm disappointed that all of these proposals use IRV though.
Uehreka 6y ago
There is one thing that is worse than FPTP: The Top-Two Primary. A bunch of candidates run, if no one gets 50% then the top two vote-getters face off in a second round with no other options allowed. On the surface it sounds a bit like IRV, but it causes really bizarre outcomes. Basically, let's say party A is unpopular, and has 2 candidates. Party B is extremely popular and has 7. Party A's candidates each get 15% of the vote, Party B's candidates each get 10%. Even though most voters voted for Party B, they're now stuck in a runoff with two candidates from the opposite party. Some people argue that this forces parties to be disciplined and force out candidates they deem "unsensible" or "extreme". But in practice this often doesn't work, and even if it did I feel like the mark of a good voting system is that voters feel safe expressing their preferences without having to be strategic.
- winstonewert 6y ago
  Do you have a specific example where this scenario played out?
  - area_man_2 6y ago
    This happened in the 2016 Washington State Treasurer election https://ballotpedia.org/Washington_Treasurer_election,_2016 https://ballotpedia.org/Washington_Treasurer_election,_2016 Duane Davidson (R) won against Michael Waite (R) after 3 democrats split the vote in the primary: Republican Duane Davidson 25.09% 322,374 Republican Michael Waite 23.33% 299,766 Democratic Marko Liias 20.36% 261,633 Democratic John Paul Comerford 17.97% 230,904 Democratic Alec Fisken 13.24% 170,117
    - hef19898 6y ago
      Well that raises the question why there were 3 Dems to begin with.
    - winstonewert 6y ago
      I'm not sure any of the alternative systems would have actually given a different result. Yes, the democrats have a majority of the vote, but transfer of support between members of a party is never perfect.
ponker 6y ago
Why would you expect approval voting to yield different results than FPTP?
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago
  I would frequently vote for more than just one candidate. And people who don't vote because e.g. Biden isn't progressive enough would have someone to vote for who could actually garner a significant number of votes. So maybe turnout improves too. Those other candidates/parties could then get momentum and funding and show up at the debates. If you did it for just one election, I'd bet something like the president would get the same outcome, but local stuff with half a dozen decent candidates on the ballot would be different. Over time, different candidates winning lower races, plus 3rd party candidates for the big races being able to actually gather momentum would have profound impacts on the top races. It would even change who shows up on the ballot. Remember in the dem primaries, all the commentary about candidate X drawing votes away from candidate Y, so they had to withdraw from the race to give their policies a better chance of winning? The whole "lanes" thing? Sanders and Warren wouldn't be splitting the progressive vote. And so on. Hell, the dems could nominate biden/harris and another pair in an effort to increase turnout, which would be suicide in FPTP. Or maybe not. I'd expect lots of changes and many would likely be surprising.
- typest 6y ago
  You can think about it this way -- approval voting allows you to vote strategically for a candidate (in case you are worried about the lesser of two evils winning), and then allows you to also vote for anyone you actually prefer, guaranteeing this can't hurt the strategically chosen candidate. This would allow third parties to see real support, and then go on to win subsequent elections.
- godelski 6y ago
  Simple answer: The math says so https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4FXLQoLDBA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4FXLQoLDBA Longer answer: cardinal systems (the generalized form that approval is part of) is able to capture more information about voter preference. It is easiest to see this with something like range voting. You may be familiar with a question like "Do you agree or disagree with x statement?: strongly disagree, disagree, neutral, agree, strongly agree." That is range. Approval would be "Do you agree or disagree with x statement?: Disagree, agree". Conversely FPTP would present you many statements and you have to pick the one you agree with the most, even though you may agree with many in the list. You can probably see here that you are actually able to capture a fair amount of preference information through this, thus allowing to elect representatives that more accurately represent the population as a whole.
ElijahLynn 6y ago
Would love to see Nicky Case incorporate the STAR system into a /ballot-2 version. I learned about it recently from this article on the long and painful history of how STAR 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). Update: I just asked Nicky Case here > https://twitter.com/ElijahLynn/status/1322230931571159040 https://twitter.com/ElijahLynn/status/1322230931571159040
- clairity 6y ago
  from the wired article: "...the election technology business was a heavily consolidated industry—a cartel, essentially, of just three vendors, all owned by private equity firms—that was starved for profit and all but incapable of innovation. Subsequent research suggested that the companies earned their most stable revenue through a maze of fees: maintenance, upkeep, software licenses. Their core business model seemed to involve locking clients into relationships of “ongoing annual payments.” Small wonder, then, that the firms hadn't leapt to DeBeauvoir's idea of building a machine with open source code that aimed to liberate local governments with cheap, self-sustaining technology." that's just one of the thousand cuts of corruption undermining our democratic republic. consolidation (including in government, via a 2-party system) has unquestionably proven to be a social bad. in any case, the wired story was interesting and informative. the STAR system (potentially) solves the problem of verifiability with secrecy, but not the issue of better representing the people's will in voting. for the record, i'm partial to score voting (like nicky case) with a 7-point scale.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
cesarb 6y ago
That page doesn't seem to mention the method used for president/governor/mayor elections here in Brazil: there will be an election for mayor (and the municipal legislative) on November 15. If none of the mayor candidates has at least 50% of the vote, there will be a second round on November 29 with only the two candidates which got the most votes in the first round. This system has the advantage of being very simple to explain (I just did it above in one sentence) and implement, and works well enough in practice.
- bobthepanda 6y ago
  This can be really bad if the vote is split enough that the top two candidates are not the actual voters' preferred top two.
- rbanffy 6y ago
  Brazilian living in Ireland here. The system used in Brazil doesn't help with weeding out extremists (as it's painfully obvious right now). Ranked voting, OTOH, heavily punishes rejection, which results in reducing the size of the Overton Window in politics. The two dominant parties here are both center-right and are barely distinguishable to the point the Green Party formed a government with them. This is undesirable if you want quick changes, but exceedingly good if the aim is long-term multi-generational stability.
  - marcosdumay 6y ago
    It does help, but not much. It basically enforces that the most rejected candidate does not win. But it does nothing to the second most rejected one. Of course, ranked and approval voting are much better choices.
- dwater 6y ago
  We have a similar system for electing the Mayor of Richmond, Virginia. It's biggest drawback is that the 2nd election is needlessly expensive, and since it's out-of-cycle and there are no other elections occurring at the same time turnout is much lower. I would prefer instant runoff.
lukifer 6y ago
I second Approval Voting for similar reasons. In addition to the simplicity, IMO it sidesteps Arrow's Impossibility Theorem [0] by redefining the success condition: rather than trying to accurately capture political preferences, Approval inherently maximizes Consent of the Governed. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theore...
throw7 6y ago
Just reading from the website... I would like use the condorcet method and if it "crashes" just use first past the post.
- godelski 6y ago
  Look into cardinal systems. If you want good voting systems you have to consider more factors than VSE. You'll find that cardinal systems can get to similar VSEs of condorcet with far less complexities and many other benefits.
godelski 6y ago
My major concern about IRV is that there's a lot of false promises made with it. It is shown (and we have real world examples) that it doesn't do a great job at removing spoilers, which I think is most peoples' number one draw to the system. It also doesn't scale very well and becomes less transparent as it does so. That's why I personally reject the push for ordinal systems and push for cardinal. This may seem absurd, but we've had IRV in the US in the past and we reverted back to plurality. So there's historical precedence for this position as well.

NationalPark 6y ago

The problem is pretty much all systems that make voting more fair also make Republicans win much less, so there's very little bipartisan motivation to make changes.

kibwen 6y ago
Maine voters passed it via ballot measure, no partisan politicking required. Likewise, the two states voting on it this year, Alaska and Massachusetts, are also doing so via ballot measure.
- wahern 6y ago
  Article 1, Section 4, Clause 1 of the U.S. Constitution says, > The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators. There have been two Supreme Court decisions that have analogized the electorate as a legislative body in ballot measures, referendums, public initiatives, etc. The latest was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arizona_State_Legislature_v._Arizona_Independent_Redistricting_Commission https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arizona_State_Legislature_v._A... [1] In that decision it was the liberals and Kennedy who upheld precedent; all the conservatives would have prohibited direct public votes on Congressional election rules. But now Kennedy and Ginsburg are gone, and their replacements are very likely to vote against precedent if the question comes back to the court. (In fact, IIRC, some justices, like Thomas, don't even like the idea of public initiatives for purely state elections, an argument based on their own peculiar notions of Federalism. Also, if you read the order opinions over the last few weeks by Kavanaugh and Gorsuch, some of their arguments seem to be aimed at reversing Arizona.) Roberts might switch his vote to uphold precedent, but Roberts would only make 4 votes, not enough to save it. If (or, rather, when) SCOTUS prohibits the public from directly legislating their Congressional elections, only Congress could restore the ability, unless the Constitution was amended. [1] Skimming through the Arizona case, I think the first was Pacific States Telephone & Telegraph Co. v. Oregon, 223 U. S. 118 (1912). But I don't have time to reread the Arizona opinions carefully to refresh my memory.
  - kibwen 6y ago
    The makeup of SCOTUS is irrelevant in this case, because before they could hear the case Congress would need to pass a law contradicting these state measures, which could then be challenged up to SCOTUS. No matter what, the ball is in Congress's court here.
    - wahern 6y ago
      Look at the parties in Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission. Any state legislature (or perhaps even any state legislator) that wanted to challenge their state's initiative-back election laws could sue. I'm not that well versed in election law, but it's also possible any state citizen could do it as well. In any event, just looking at the plaintiffs in the flurry of 2020 election cases shows how easy it would be to bring a case back to SCOTUS.
      - kibwen 6y ago
        Er, I feel like you're actually deflating your own argument here. Note that the aforementioned clause in the US Constitution grants no power to Congress to dictate how states perform their own legislative elections. The scenario you're envisioning first requires a state to pass an alternative voting system via ballot, then for the state legislature elected by that voting system to sue the state itself to overturn it (which is guaranteed to be wildly unpopular among the electorate that just passed the ballot measure), then for the case to make it to SCOTUS, who can only overturn it for federal elections, not for any state elections, and especially not in state elections in states other than the one that challenged it. A state politician has nothing to gain and everything to lose by supporting such a measure.
        wahern 6y ago
        The context here is Federal elections for President and Congress--Maine's Federal Senate race is also via rank-choice, as mentioned in the second paragraph/sentence of the linked article. To another commenter's argument that switching to ranked-choice voting for those elections would require bipartisan support, you had retorted that > Maine voters passed [ranked-choice voting] via ballot measure, no partisan politicking required. Likewise, the two states voting on it this year, Alaska and Massachusetts, are also doing so via ballot measure. My point is that for Federal congressional elections the legal capacity to use voter initiatives to institute different voting rules, bypassing partisan state legislatures and Congress, will likely be extinguished in the coming years. The same is likely true for Presidential elections as the relevant constitutional language is nearly identical: "Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors...." My comment about Thomas' view (uncited--I could be misremembering the nuances) about who gets to pass laws controlling state legislature elections was merely to suggest how likely he would be to overturn Arizona; his opinion about the Constitution's and SCOTUS' role in dictating/safeguarding a very specific form of representative government extends beyond a simplistic plain text[1] interpretation of the aforementioned constitutional clauses. [1] I feel like I should point out that no justice, conservative or otherwise, subscribes to a "plain text" philosophy of constitutional interpretation. Conservatives justices tend to espouse either a so-called Original Intent philosophy or Scalia's Original Meaning philosophy, where "Original Meaning" is not the same thing as "plain text". And justices of all political philosophies will make a "plain text" argument when it suits their interpretation. All things being equal (though they rarely are), everybody tends to agree a plain text defense is the best defense.
- pcmaffey 6y ago
  Makes me wonder how federal ballot initiatives might play out, and why they don't exist...
  - SllX 6y ago
    The long and the short of it is there’s no provision in the Constitution. The powers of Congress are a whitelist, and it would be a stretch even for some of the stretchier clauses in there to allow for Federal ballot initiatives. That said, I wouldn’t support it. I view State-level ballot initiatives as an anti-feature, at least in my native California. Wouldn’t want that crap making it up to the Federal level.
  - autumn_unlaces 6y ago
    National Initiative is an existing proposal for doing just that which was proposed by Mike Gravel. Tom Steyer included it in his 2020 platform. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_initiative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_initiative
rrrrrrrrrrrryan 6y ago
Well, because two-party systems are an emergent phenomena of First-Past-The-Post voting (Duverger's law), any move away from FPTP would favor third parties. Almost immediately, the GOP and the DNC would start losing votes to the Libertarian party and the Green party, so they'll both rally against any change to the existing system. Any major shift toward better voting systems will have to start in local elections where voters are fed up with both parties. Maine is doing an awesome job leading the way on the state-level.
- vmchale 6y ago
  I'm not sure they'd lose elections though.
  - lallysingh 6y ago
    Agreed. Libertarians will probably put Republicans as preference 2, and similarly for Green -> Dems. It should, however, get more people out to vote, and that's a good thing. It also gives hard feedback to the parties about their constituent's real politics. If a party wins but sees their votes mostly coming from #2 preferences, the next round of primaries will probably shift further from the center. Similarly, if they see themselves as #1, they can shift back towards the center.
    - nickff 6y ago
      I agree with your first statement, but: "It should, however, get more people out to vote, and that's a good thing." is not necessarily true, though you're presenting it as axiomatic. Currently, the average voter is poorly informed, the marginal voter is uninformed, and the non-voters are misinformed. I challenge you to read any book about voter ignorance and come away with your current view.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_Democracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_Democracy
      - clairity 6y ago
        you don't have to have perfect information spread throughout a population to make good collective decisions amongst it. it's ok if much of the electorate is somewhat ignorant or poorly informed, as long as that's relatively uncorrelated (i.e., there's no systemic coercion of choice). but that's exactly what parties are designed to subvert to their advantage. so then, what we need to do is to do everything we can to move away from party politics, including better voting mechanisms and removing the outsized influence of money in politics.
driverdan 6y ago
Both ruling parties oppose anything that opens the system to additional parties. Ballot access is a prime example. It's very hard for additional parties to get candidates on the ballot in most states.
- newacct583 6y ago
  > Both ruling parties oppose anything that opens the system to additional parties. Virtually all RC election schemes in the US, and also nonpartisan primaries (which are a close cousin) are championed by democrats. That's just not true. Edit to expand: it's a partisan issue because structurally the democratic party is already a loose collection of interests. They've always structured their internal workings around this kind of dealmaking and coalition-building. Shifting to an environment where those groups (Blue Dogs, DSA, The Squad, the Congressional Black Caucus, etc...) become first class parties doesn't really change the way democrats have always governed.
  - driverdan 6y ago
    I've worked with a 3rd party in New York. At least in that state what you said is false and I've heard but not verified stories in other states. To get a candidate on a statewide ballot you have to get signatures from a percentage of registered voters. I don't remember the numbers off hand but it's in the tens of thousands. This alone is both cost and time prohibitive. There are also a bunch of other hoops you have to jump through.
    - newacct583 6y ago
      Both your and the other counterexample are talking about something other than nonpartisan ballotting, though. I mean, yes, if you have a third party candidate in isolation then whoever that third party is going to "steal" more votes from is going to oppose it. So democrats would oppose a Green or other progressive candidate in (most races in) New York, sure. That's just self-interest. But for the same reason they'd clearly welcome a libertarian entrant. That's not responsive to the discussion. The claim upthread was that "both" parties oppose ranked choice voting. And that's simply not true.
Afton 6y ago
In Canada, we say "electoral reform is always popular with the opposition party/parties".
- __jem 6y ago
  The GOP is the minority party in the United States. The only reason they are not in opposition is due to structural defects. This quote does not make sense when applied to the US.
- tlavoie 6y ago
  Sure, but federal electoral reform was one of Trudeau's platform items before he got elected. Once he got in... it seems suddenly less interesting. I would dearly love to see this get done here. In BC, there was an attempt to get it in, but province-wide, the results of voting weren't there.
  - Afton 6y ago
    Trudeau's flip flop is an example of what I'm talking about, so i don't understand your use of the word "but" in the first sentence. Once in power, a party is interested in maintaining that power. Since the current system got them into power, they are unlikely to be interested in reforming it (other than with a system that would solidify it more). I don't live in BC anymore, so hadn't realized that there had been another vote in 2018. That is disappointing.
kc-rush2049 6y ago
I would argue it would make Democrats win much less as well. We would probably end up with level headed moderates who are best aligned with the majority of the country's voters. Not a extremist that somehow scared and scammed 51% of voters. None of the established powers-that-be will help change the system that keeps them in power.

wwweston 6y ago

> Instant Runoff Voting has legit flaws Talking to people about what they expect "ranked choice" means, I get the idea they mean Condorcet rather than IRV...

6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago
I'd love condorcet, and I'd prefer it to IRV, but I've only ever seen IRV when it comes to real proposals on ballots and implementations in governments. I don't have access to TFA, but it's using IRV, right?
Zak 6y ago
"Ranked choice" doesn't necessarily imply a particular counting method and could describe IRV or Condorcet. I'm disappointed that all of these proposals use IRV though.

Uehreka 6y ago

There is one thing that is worse than FPTP: The Top-Two Primary. A bunch of candidates run, if no one gets 50% then the top two vote-getters face off in a second round with no other options allowed. On the surface it sounds a bit like IRV, but it causes really bizarre outcomes. Basically, let's say party A is unpopular, and has 2 candidates. Party B is extremely popular and has 7. Party A's candidates each get 15% of the vote, Party B's candidates each get 10%. Even though most voters voted for Party B, they're now stuck in a runoff with two candidates from the opposite party. Some people argue that this forces parties to be disciplined and force out candidates they deem "unsensible" or "extreme". But in practice this often doesn't work, and even if it did I feel like the mark of a good voting system is that voters feel safe expressing their preferences without having to be strategic.

winstonewert 6y ago
Do you have a specific example where this scenario played out?
- area_man_2 6y ago
  This happened in the 2016 Washington State Treasurer election https://ballotpedia.org/Washington_Treasurer_election,_2016 https://ballotpedia.org/Washington_Treasurer_election,_2016 Duane Davidson (R) won against Michael Waite (R) after 3 democrats split the vote in the primary: Republican Duane Davidson 25.09% 322,374 Republican Michael Waite 23.33% 299,766 Democratic Marko Liias 20.36% 261,633 Democratic John Paul Comerford 17.97% 230,904 Democratic Alec Fisken 13.24% 170,117
  - hef19898 6y ago
    Well that raises the question why there were 3 Dems to begin with.
  - winstonewert 6y ago
    I'm not sure any of the alternative systems would have actually given a different result. Yes, the democrats have a majority of the vote, but transfer of support between members of a party is never perfect.

ponker 6y ago

Why would you expect approval voting to yield different results than FPTP?

6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago
I would frequently vote for more than just one candidate. And people who don't vote because e.g. Biden isn't progressive enough would have someone to vote for who could actually garner a significant number of votes. So maybe turnout improves too. Those other candidates/parties could then get momentum and funding and show up at the debates. If you did it for just one election, I'd bet something like the president would get the same outcome, but local stuff with half a dozen decent candidates on the ballot would be different. Over time, different candidates winning lower races, plus 3rd party candidates for the big races being able to actually gather momentum would have profound impacts on the top races. It would even change who shows up on the ballot. Remember in the dem primaries, all the commentary about candidate X drawing votes away from candidate Y, so they had to withdraw from the race to give their policies a better chance of winning? The whole "lanes" thing? Sanders and Warren wouldn't be splitting the progressive vote. And so on. Hell, the dems could nominate biden/harris and another pair in an effort to increase turnout, which would be suicide in FPTP. Or maybe not. I'd expect lots of changes and many would likely be surprising.
typest 6y ago
You can think about it this way -- approval voting allows you to vote strategically for a candidate (in case you are worried about the lesser of two evils winning), and then allows you to also vote for anyone you actually prefer, guaranteeing this can't hurt the strategically chosen candidate. This would allow third parties to see real support, and then go on to win subsequent elections.
godelski 6y ago
Simple answer: The math says so https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4FXLQoLDBA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4FXLQoLDBA Longer answer: cardinal systems (the generalized form that approval is part of) is able to capture more information about voter preference. It is easiest to see this with something like range voting. You may be familiar with a question like "Do you agree or disagree with x statement?: strongly disagree, disagree, neutral, agree, strongly agree." That is range. Approval would be "Do you agree or disagree with x statement?: Disagree, agree". Conversely FPTP would present you many statements and you have to pick the one you agree with the most, even though you may agree with many in the list. You can probably see here that you are actually able to capture a fair amount of preference information through this, thus allowing to elect representatives that more accurately represent the population as a whole.

ElijahLynn 6y ago

Would love to see Nicky Case incorporate the STAR system into a /ballot-2 version. I learned about it recently from this article on the long and painful history of how STAR 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). Update: I just asked Nicky Case here > https://twitter.com/ElijahLynn/status/1322230931571159040 https://twitter.com/ElijahLynn/status/1322230931571159040

clairity 6y ago
from the wired article: "...the election technology business was a heavily consolidated industry—a cartel, essentially, of just three vendors, all owned by private equity firms—that was starved for profit and all but incapable of innovation. Subsequent research suggested that the companies earned their most stable revenue through a maze of fees: maintenance, upkeep, software licenses. Their core business model seemed to involve locking clients into relationships of “ongoing annual payments.” Small wonder, then, that the firms hadn't leapt to DeBeauvoir's idea of building a machine with open source code that aimed to liberate local governments with cheap, self-sustaining technology." that's just one of the thousand cuts of corruption undermining our democratic republic. consolidation (including in government, via a 2-party system) has unquestionably proven to be a social bad. in any case, the wired story was interesting and informative. the STAR system (potentially) solves the problem of verifiability with secrecy, but not the issue of better representing the people's will in voting. for the record, i'm partial to score voting (like nicky case) with a 7-point scale.
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cesarb 6y ago

That page doesn't seem to mention the method used for president/governor/mayor elections here in Brazil: there will be an election for mayor (and the municipal legislative) on November 15. If none of the mayor candidates has at least 50% of the vote, there will be a second round on November 29 with only the two candidates which got the most votes in the first round. This system has the advantage of being very simple to explain (I just did it above in one sentence) and implement, and works well enough in practice.

bobthepanda 6y ago
This can be really bad if the vote is split enough that the top two candidates are not the actual voters' preferred top two.
rbanffy 6y ago
Brazilian living in Ireland here. The system used in Brazil doesn't help with weeding out extremists (as it's painfully obvious right now). Ranked voting, OTOH, heavily punishes rejection, which results in reducing the size of the Overton Window in politics. The two dominant parties here are both center-right and are barely distinguishable to the point the Green Party formed a government with them. This is undesirable if you want quick changes, but exceedingly good if the aim is long-term multi-generational stability.
- marcosdumay 6y ago
  It does help, but not much. It basically enforces that the most rejected candidate does not win. But it does nothing to the second most rejected one. Of course, ranked and approval voting are much better choices.
dwater 6y ago
We have a similar system for electing the Mayor of Richmond, Virginia. It's biggest drawback is that the 2nd election is needlessly expensive, and since it's out-of-cycle and there are no other elections occurring at the same time turnout is much lower. I would prefer instant runoff.

lukifer 6y ago

I second Approval Voting for similar reasons. In addition to the simplicity, IMO it sidesteps Arrow's Impossibility Theorem [0] by redefining the success condition: rather than trying to accurately capture political preferences, Approval inherently maximizes Consent of the Governed. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theore...

throw7 6y ago

Just reading from the website... I would like use the condorcet method and if it "crashes" just use first past the post.

godelski 6y ago
Look into cardinal systems. If you want good voting systems you have to consider more factors than VSE. You'll find that cardinal systems can get to similar VSEs of condorcet with far less complexities and many other benefits.

godelski 6y ago

My major concern about IRV is that there's a lot of false promises made with it. It is shown (and we have real world examples) that it doesn't do a great job at removing spoilers, which I think is most peoples' number one draw to the system. It also doesn't scale very well and becomes less transparent as it does so. That's why I personally reject the push for ordinal systems and push for cardinal. This may seem absurd, but we've had IRV in the US in the past and we reverted back to plurality. So there's historical precedence for this position as well.