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Great to see this on Hacker News! I'm a former YC Founder who's been working with NYC on voter education for this year's elections through RankedVote (https://w

Great to see this on Hacker News! I'm a former YC Founder who's been working with NYC on voter education for this year's elections through RankedVote (https://www.rankedvote.co https://www.rankedvote.co). You can get a sense for what it's like to vote in a ranked-choice election here: https://app.rankedvote.co/elections/7568/Best-NYC-Pizza-Topping/7554/vote https://app.rankedvote.co/elections/7568/Best-NYC-Pizza-Topp... And you can see the results visualized here (over 20K people voted in this one!): https://app.rankedvote.co/elections/7568/Best-NYC-Pizza-Topping/7554/results https://app.rankedvote.co/elections/7568/Best-NYC-Pizza-Topp... And you can see Mayor Bill de Blasio eating a pepperoni pizza as a result of this here: https://twitter.com/therecount/status/1404809865235767315 https://twitter.com/therecount/status/1404809865235767315

lalaland1125 5y ago
Very nice work! Do you think there is a need to educate voters on how to tactically vote in ranked choice voting? Every voting system has strategies to use it effectively and most voters are not used to the tactics necessary for ranked choice voting. We see a lot of education in how to use the ballot simply, but very little education on "advanced tactics". In particular, a lot of NYC voters aren't ranking either Wiley or Adams, which is a huge mistake as those are very likely to be in the final round.
- tadmilbourn 5y ago
  Thanks! The idea is to use software to promote this reform (as well as Final-Five Voting...which is Open Primaries + RCV) As for advanced tactics, if you're really into it, Rob Richie, the CEO of FairVote (leading national advocacy org) put this in the New York Times over the weekend. It spells out a bunch of scenarios (e.g. "I want Garcia to win and Stringer to lose.") and how to tactically vote for each. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/18/opinion/nyc-mayoral-election-ballot.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/18/opinion/nyc-mayoral-elect... BUT the point I'd want to drive home is that ranked-choice allows you to be FAR more able to "vote for who you believe is best" than in the more common most votes wins approach (where you have to be strategic the moment a 3rd candidate enters).
  - lalaland1125 5y ago
    Yeah, that article is exactly what I was thinking about, but I think it would be better if it mentioned more general tactics (such as the inherent advantage of making sure to rank front runners since they will last longer). Once this NYC election is over we should look at the voting records and see how many votes were lost due to poor tactics (forgetting to rank front runners).
  - ClayShentrup 5y ago
    IRV has the same problem. Democrats in next year's Alaska senate race want to strategically rank Murkowksi (R) 1st to stop Tshibaka (Q). https://twitter.com/Beyond2Parties/status/1405372454017536002 https://twitter.com/Beyond2Parties/status/140537245401753600... Score voting or approval voting actually solve this and are much simpler.
- saurik 5y ago
  Huh... yeah, so this pizza ballot (which I'm just going to have to assume is similar to the real ballot, as otherwise I'm not sure why they are doing this ;P) definitely isn't at all what I was expecting, as I was at least expecting to get to rank all the candidates; I can definitely see some weird effects happening with a ballot like this if people have to decide to use up ranking slots on people they dislike just so they can provide comparative rankings between them as maybe they'd end up in the final round. I mean, wasn't the entire point of this that I'm supposed to get to just vote for the people I like in the order I like them, rather than having to second guess stuff like "well, I hate both of these people, but since I hate this one less than that one and I bet a lot of people like both of them I'd better rank at least one of them above a candidate I prefer"? (And yes: I appreciate the trilemma that says that no voting system is perfect, but truncating the rank mechanism is seeming to leave some of the goal sitting on the table.)
- singhrac 5y ago
  > Every voting system has strategies to use it effectively and most voters are not used to the tactics necessary for ranked choice voting. Just to respond to this one small point, but I think the most common mathematical definition of "fairness" in market designs (including voting mechanisms) is that your utility-maximizing action should be identical to your true ranked preferences (this is called "strategy-proof"). In the case of voting, Gibbard-Satterthwaite says that there's no strictly strategy-proof mechanism (under a few restrictions) but I think the instant-runoff voting which NYC is using is mostly strategy proof (i.e. strategies only exist in rare circumstances). Fwiw the burden of learning about all these candidates seems high to me, but apparently New Yorkers don't ind.
  - dllthomas 5y ago
    > I think the instant-runoff voting which NYC is using is mostly strategy proof (i.e. strategies only exist in rare circumstances) The very comment you are replying to pointed out that "a lot of NYC voters aren't ranking either Wiley or Adams" which is a failure to apply strategy where it manifestly exists. "There are front runners" doesn't seem to be a rare circumstance.
    - singhrac 5y ago
      Well, you're right, but we mean different things. These voters are failing to rank their true preferences (you and I believe), which is going to lead to a less optimal outcome than if they had. But if they did rank their true preferences (i.e. they are ok with Wiley or Adams, but just at the bottom of their list), then it would be fine. This is a valid communication problem with ranked lists, but it's not that there exists a "strategy" per se besides ranking all of your acceptable outcomes.
      - dllthomas 5y ago
        > These voters are failing to rank their true preferences (you and I believe) I expect they are being honest about their preference order, but that this has less of an impact on the outcome (in whatever direction they desire) than if they had been dishonest about their preference order. This does assume that they actually prefer one of the front-runners to the other by a more-than-negligible margin; perhaps that isn't the case. > This is a valid communication problem with ranked lists, but it's not that there exists a "strategy" per se besides ranking all of your acceptable outcomes. There were more than six candidates, and voters could only rank their top five. Voters with more than 5 "acceptable outcomes" need to vote strategically when they get near the bottom of that list. Alternatively, there is also no such thing as "strategy" in FPTP - "you just vote for one of your acceptable outcomes". That's... not a useful definition of the words involved. Edited to add: It occurs to me that perhaps you weren't aware of the cutoff in the NYC case and were speaking of IRV with a full list? In that case I agree that strategy being necessary is substantially more rare, leaving aside for the moment whether it is sufficiently rare.
godelski 5y ago
Why do you push IRV rather than simpler methods with higher VSE like Approval or STAR? Shouldn't we be highly advocating for a system that does not fail the favorite betrayer criterion? And I think Arizona is the perfect example why transparency and low complexity is essential (higher VSE is an added bonus given these).
- tadmilbourn 5y ago
  Simple...because it's being used in a significant (and growing) number of places. Approval and STAR are great methods as well. But they're not what's in use in Maine. Or NYC. Or will be in use in Alaska. So, in the spirit of focusing where I can have the most impact, I've chosen to most directly support RCV. First past the post is the enemy here. Not RCV, STAR, or Approval.
  - godelski 5y ago
    > because it's being used in a significant (and growing) number of places. Which is because of advocation over the last (mostly) 2-3 years. We're only two states in, that's not significant momentum. FYI, we have approval in Fargo and Lane County/Eugene are close to passing STAR (I'd argue RCV hinders that effort due to confusion). > First past the post is the enemy here. Not RCV, STAR, or Approval. I'd disagree actually. The enemy is non-representative voting. Why I'll actually fight IRV is because history. We've gone down this path before and had states/cities/counties use IRV and then revert back because it didn't solve the problems they set out to solve. So, what is different this time around? There's a "good enough" bar that needs to be met. IRV doesn't meet that.
  - zestyping 5y ago
    IRV is only better than FPTP in a limited set of circumstances, and can often be worse at selecting the winner. Most importantly, IRV will not break us out of the two-party system, which is the root of many problems in American politics. Are you aware that IRV significantly increases spoiled ballot rates, and disproportionately in low-income areas? It's actively harmful, roughly equivalent to knocking a couple percent off of the Black vote. https://rangevoting.org/SPRates.html https://rangevoting.org/SPRates.html https://www.yes2repeal.org/spoiled-ballots https://www.yes2repeal.org/spoiled-ballots Please reconsider your support for it. I am sure you have good intentions; my guess is that most IRV supporters probably aren't aware of the harm they're doing. I also thought IRV was an okay system (not perfect but better than plurality etc.) until I learned this information relatively recently.
xvedejas 5y ago
What would you say to someone like me who feels that IRV is perhaps the worst possible alternative voting system to advocate for? It feels like someone at some stage must be very dishonest, or otherwise dangerously uninformed, to think that IRV is worth advocating for over alternatives like approval voting, range voting, or any Condorcet voting system. I'm very worried that most places will have the political will to improve the voting system only once in a century and we'll have wasted it on a system that's unusually ill-behaved. I'm particularly concerned about IRV's non-monotonicity, whereby it's possible to hurt a candidate by ranking them higher, and likewise it's possible to help a candidate by ranking them lower. How can anyone feel they're voting honestly in an honest election when this is the case?
- throw5away 5y ago
  Honestly IRV is _even worse than plurality_. It doesn't solve the problems it sets out to solve (it entrenches two-party domination [1]), it has ridiculous monotonicity violations [2], all for a lot more complication in counting the votes (you can't distribute the counting well without transmitting the contents of all of the ballots) and possibly wrecking the secret ballot (you can encode and buy specific down-ballot rankings). Seriously, it's all of the disadvantages and very limited upside. [1] https://rangevoting.org/TarrIrvSumm.html https://rangevoting.org/TarrIrvSumm.html [2] http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/ http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - zestyping 5y ago
    And worse: it suppresses the Black vote, as if we didn't have enough of that already. https://rangevoting.org/SPRates.html https://rangevoting.org/SPRates.html https://www.yes2repeal.org/spoiled-ballots https://www.yes2repeal.org/spoiled-ballots IRV means much higher rates of spoiled ballots, disproportionately in low-income neighbourhoods. It's actively harmful.
  - wslack 5y ago
    > you can't distribute the counting well without transmitting the contents of all of the ballots There are only so many combinations of rankings that are possible. It shouldn't be hard to encode each of those possible orders and transmit them as a whole.
koolba 5y ago
> You can get a sense for what it's like to vote in a ranked-choice election here: That’s a neat visualization. The step where mushroom pulls ahead of sausage really shows the flow. Though I do question the integrity of a pizza topping poll that manages to exclude pineapple-ham, not individually, but as a joint entry. Did it miss the filing deadline? > And you can see Mayor Bill de Blasio eating a pepperoni pizza as a result of this here: Worst mayor ever eating one of the worst pizza toppings ever. (Seriously even Google dedicates multiple pages of results to De Blasio: https://www.google.com/search?q=worst+mayor+ever https://www.google.com/search?q=worst+mayor+ever)
marc_abonce 5y ago
I think that it would be interesting to see this pizza example for comparing ranked voting against acceptance voting. After all, in this example the plurality vote winner is still the clear, uncontested winner in ranked choice, so this example makes it look like ranked voting is just a way of complicating a process that "just works". I know this is not actually true, but this is how some people see alternative voting methods. On the other hand, with acceptance voting you would probably get a different result as most meat eaters are indifferent towards mushrooms while many vegetarians would be passionately against pepperoni. So, I suspect that with acceptance voting the results could be switched, for better or for worse.
mtalantikite 5y ago
Nice work! But clearly the best slice is just a slice, no toppings necessary.

lalaland1125 5y ago

Very nice work! Do you think there is a need to educate voters on how to tactically vote in ranked choice voting? Every voting system has strategies to use it effectively and most voters are not used to the tactics necessary for ranked choice voting. We see a lot of education in how to use the ballot simply, but very little education on "advanced tactics". In particular, a lot of NYC voters aren't ranking either Wiley or Adams, which is a huge mistake as those are very likely to be in the final round.

tadmilbourn 5y ago
Thanks! The idea is to use software to promote this reform (as well as Final-Five Voting...which is Open Primaries + RCV) As for advanced tactics, if you're really into it, Rob Richie, the CEO of FairVote (leading national advocacy org) put this in the New York Times over the weekend. It spells out a bunch of scenarios (e.g. "I want Garcia to win and Stringer to lose.") and how to tactically vote for each. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/18/opinion/nyc-mayoral-election-ballot.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/18/opinion/nyc-mayoral-elect... BUT the point I'd want to drive home is that ranked-choice allows you to be FAR more able to "vote for who you believe is best" than in the more common most votes wins approach (where you have to be strategic the moment a 3rd candidate enters).
- lalaland1125 5y ago
  Yeah, that article is exactly what I was thinking about, but I think it would be better if it mentioned more general tactics (such as the inherent advantage of making sure to rank front runners since they will last longer). Once this NYC election is over we should look at the voting records and see how many votes were lost due to poor tactics (forgetting to rank front runners).
- ClayShentrup 5y ago
  IRV has the same problem. Democrats in next year's Alaska senate race want to strategically rank Murkowksi (R) 1st to stop Tshibaka (Q). https://twitter.com/Beyond2Parties/status/1405372454017536002 https://twitter.com/Beyond2Parties/status/140537245401753600... Score voting or approval voting actually solve this and are much simpler.
saurik 5y ago
Huh... yeah, so this pizza ballot (which I'm just going to have to assume is similar to the real ballot, as otherwise I'm not sure why they are doing this ;P) definitely isn't at all what I was expecting, as I was at least expecting to get to rank all the candidates; I can definitely see some weird effects happening with a ballot like this if people have to decide to use up ranking slots on people they dislike just so they can provide comparative rankings between them as maybe they'd end up in the final round. I mean, wasn't the entire point of this that I'm supposed to get to just vote for the people I like in the order I like them, rather than having to second guess stuff like "well, I hate both of these people, but since I hate this one less than that one and I bet a lot of people like both of them I'd better rank at least one of them above a candidate I prefer"? (And yes: I appreciate the trilemma that says that no voting system is perfect, but truncating the rank mechanism is seeming to leave some of the goal sitting on the table.)
singhrac 5y ago
> Every voting system has strategies to use it effectively and most voters are not used to the tactics necessary for ranked choice voting. Just to respond to this one small point, but I think the most common mathematical definition of "fairness" in market designs (including voting mechanisms) is that your utility-maximizing action should be identical to your true ranked preferences (this is called "strategy-proof"). In the case of voting, Gibbard-Satterthwaite says that there's no strictly strategy-proof mechanism (under a few restrictions) but I think the instant-runoff voting which NYC is using is mostly strategy proof (i.e. strategies only exist in rare circumstances). Fwiw the burden of learning about all these candidates seems high to me, but apparently New Yorkers don't ind.
- dllthomas 5y ago
  > I think the instant-runoff voting which NYC is using is mostly strategy proof (i.e. strategies only exist in rare circumstances) The very comment you are replying to pointed out that "a lot of NYC voters aren't ranking either Wiley or Adams" which is a failure to apply strategy where it manifestly exists. "There are front runners" doesn't seem to be a rare circumstance.
  - singhrac 5y ago
    Well, you're right, but we mean different things. These voters are failing to rank their true preferences (you and I believe), which is going to lead to a less optimal outcome than if they had. But if they did rank their true preferences (i.e. they are ok with Wiley or Adams, but just at the bottom of their list), then it would be fine. This is a valid communication problem with ranked lists, but it's not that there exists a "strategy" per se besides ranking all of your acceptable outcomes.
    - dllthomas 5y ago
      > These voters are failing to rank their true preferences (you and I believe) I expect they are being honest about their preference order, but that this has less of an impact on the outcome (in whatever direction they desire) than if they had been dishonest about their preference order. This does assume that they actually prefer one of the front-runners to the other by a more-than-negligible margin; perhaps that isn't the case. > This is a valid communication problem with ranked lists, but it's not that there exists a "strategy" per se besides ranking all of your acceptable outcomes. There were more than six candidates, and voters could only rank their top five. Voters with more than 5 "acceptable outcomes" need to vote strategically when they get near the bottom of that list. Alternatively, there is also no such thing as "strategy" in FPTP - "you just vote for one of your acceptable outcomes". That's... not a useful definition of the words involved. Edited to add: It occurs to me that perhaps you weren't aware of the cutoff in the NYC case and were speaking of IRV with a full list? In that case I agree that strategy being necessary is substantially more rare, leaving aside for the moment whether it is sufficiently rare.

godelski 5y ago

Why do you push IRV rather than simpler methods with higher VSE like Approval or STAR? Shouldn't we be highly advocating for a system that does not fail the favorite betrayer criterion? And I think Arizona is the perfect example why transparency and low complexity is essential (higher VSE is an added bonus given these).

tadmilbourn 5y ago
Simple...because it's being used in a significant (and growing) number of places. Approval and STAR are great methods as well. But they're not what's in use in Maine. Or NYC. Or will be in use in Alaska. So, in the spirit of focusing where I can have the most impact, I've chosen to most directly support RCV. First past the post is the enemy here. Not RCV, STAR, or Approval.
- godelski 5y ago
  > because it's being used in a significant (and growing) number of places. Which is because of advocation over the last (mostly) 2-3 years. We're only two states in, that's not significant momentum. FYI, we have approval in Fargo and Lane County/Eugene are close to passing STAR (I'd argue RCV hinders that effort due to confusion). > First past the post is the enemy here. Not RCV, STAR, or Approval. I'd disagree actually. The enemy is non-representative voting. Why I'll actually fight IRV is because history. We've gone down this path before and had states/cities/counties use IRV and then revert back because it didn't solve the problems they set out to solve. So, what is different this time around? There's a "good enough" bar that needs to be met. IRV doesn't meet that.
- zestyping 5y ago
  IRV is only better than FPTP in a limited set of circumstances, and can often be worse at selecting the winner. Most importantly, IRV will not break us out of the two-party system, which is the root of many problems in American politics. Are you aware that IRV significantly increases spoiled ballot rates, and disproportionately in low-income areas? It's actively harmful, roughly equivalent to knocking a couple percent off of the Black vote. https://rangevoting.org/SPRates.html https://rangevoting.org/SPRates.html https://www.yes2repeal.org/spoiled-ballots https://www.yes2repeal.org/spoiled-ballots Please reconsider your support for it. I am sure you have good intentions; my guess is that most IRV supporters probably aren't aware of the harm they're doing. I also thought IRV was an okay system (not perfect but better than plurality etc.) until I learned this information relatively recently.

xvedejas 5y ago

What would you say to someone like me who feels that IRV is perhaps the worst possible alternative voting system to advocate for? It feels like someone at some stage must be very dishonest, or otherwise dangerously uninformed, to think that IRV is worth advocating for over alternatives like approval voting, range voting, or any Condorcet voting system. I'm very worried that most places will have the political will to improve the voting system only once in a century and we'll have wasted it on a system that's unusually ill-behaved. I'm particularly concerned about IRV's non-monotonicity, whereby it's possible to hurt a candidate by ranking them higher, and likewise it's possible to help a candidate by ranking them lower. How can anyone feel they're voting honestly in an honest election when this is the case?

throw5away 5y ago
Honestly IRV is _even worse than plurality_. It doesn't solve the problems it sets out to solve (it entrenches two-party domination [1]), it has ridiculous monotonicity violations [2], all for a lot more complication in counting the votes (you can't distribute the counting well without transmitting the contents of all of the ballots) and possibly wrecking the secret ballot (you can encode and buy specific down-ballot rankings). Seriously, it's all of the disadvantages and very limited upside. [1] https://rangevoting.org/TarrIrvSumm.html https://rangevoting.org/TarrIrvSumm.html [2] http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/ http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- zestyping 5y ago
  And worse: it suppresses the Black vote, as if we didn't have enough of that already. https://rangevoting.org/SPRates.html https://rangevoting.org/SPRates.html https://www.yes2repeal.org/spoiled-ballots https://www.yes2repeal.org/spoiled-ballots IRV means much higher rates of spoiled ballots, disproportionately in low-income neighbourhoods. It's actively harmful.
- wslack 5y ago
  > you can't distribute the counting well without transmitting the contents of all of the ballots There are only so many combinations of rankings that are possible. It shouldn't be hard to encode each of those possible orders and transmit them as a whole.

koolba 5y ago

> You can get a sense for what it's like to vote in a ranked-choice election here: That’s a neat visualization. The step where mushroom pulls ahead of sausage really shows the flow. Though I do question the integrity of a pizza topping poll that manages to exclude pineapple-ham, not individually, but as a joint entry. Did it miss the filing deadline? > And you can see Mayor Bill de Blasio eating a pepperoni pizza as a result of this here: Worst mayor ever eating one of the worst pizza toppings ever. (Seriously even Google dedicates multiple pages of results to De Blasio: https://www.google.com/search?q=worst+mayor+ever https://www.google.com/search?q=worst+mayor+ever)

marc_abonce 5y ago

I think that it would be interesting to see this pizza example for comparing ranked voting against acceptance voting. After all, in this example the plurality vote winner is still the clear, uncontested winner in ranked choice, so this example makes it look like ranked voting is just a way of complicating a process that "just works". I know this is not actually true, but this is how some people see alternative voting methods. On the other hand, with acceptance voting you would probably get a different result as most meat eaters are indifferent towards mushrooms while many vegetarians would be passionately against pepperoni. So, I suspect that with acceptance voting the results could be switched, for better or for worse.

mtalantikite 5y ago

Nice work! But clearly the best slice is just a slice, no toppings necessary.