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We've had this in Australia since day 1 of Federation. One important factor the article didn't quite emphasise is how this voting system can break up the two p

We've had this in Australia since day 1 of Federation. One important factor the article didn't quite emphasise is how this voting system can break up the two party duopoly without creating 1920s-Reichstag-esque anarchy. It's completely normal to put a third party as your first preference, while still indicating that you'd prefer Kodos to Kang. In practical terms, it means the Dems would actually have to do some work in order to win the black vote, and likewise for the Republicans and working class white people.

ekimekim 5y ago
Fellow Aussie and RCV-enthusiast here, but minor correction: RCV was introduced in 1918 in response to elections where a minority candidate won due to vote splitting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_system_of_Australia#Preferential_voting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_system_of_Australia#...
foobarbazetc 5y ago
Your last paragraph shows a lack of depth in understanding American history and politics. -- an Australian/American living in the US.
- munk-a 5y ago
  Would you mind elaborating a bit on that point? From what I've seen RCV does tend to have a really strong moderating pull on elections that something like MMP manages to dodge, but it does mean that big tent parties will often experience strong pull off and, honestly, the African American community is often under served by a lot of Dem economic policies - though I'm really speaking in demographic generalities here.
twelvechairs 5y ago
Worth noting Australia is still generally a 2-party system in the lower house (1 representative each area) but less so in the senate (where each state elects the top 12 senators). Australians still look at envy at the New Zealand and German systems of Mixed Member Proportional representation (MMP) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed-member_proportional_representation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed-member_proportional_re...
- thepete2 5y ago
  Oh no, voting for representatives really is like a kind of "winner-take-all" filter.
- InvertedRhodium 5y ago
  We here in NZ would also like some kind of ranked choice in conjunction with MMP - as it stands, people are still reluctant to vote for smaller parties that may not reach the 5% vote threshold required. Edit: I may have confused RCV with STV. Regardless, it would be nice to know that if my first option didn't make it into Parliament that I could prefer a second party, and so on.
  - afterburner 5y ago
    As the wiki article for STV helpfully states, "Another name for STV is multi-winner ranked-choice voting". Also, "Instant runoff voting (IRV) is the single-winner analogue of STV". So ranked choice voting is a super-set with many flavours within.
- dane-pgp 5y ago
  MMP is a fantastic system, but it can face resistance if it relies on Closed Party Lists[0], which allow a party to put a potentially controversial candidate at the top of the list, almost guaranteeing them a seat and forcing party supporters to accept that as the cost of choosing the party. Open lists are better, but I believe they still have the problem that they make it unclear where representatives' mandates come from, especially if a representative can resign and be automatically replaced by someone lower on the list without a by-election. Other problems exist with list-based systems, such as treating independent candidates differently to candidates with established parties, and the possible use of "decoy lists"[1]. The best implementation I've seen of MMP, though, is that used in Baden-Württemberg, which avoids party lists by filling the proportional seats with the candidates who came closest to winning the elections in their local districts.[2] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_list https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_list [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Additional_member_system#Decoy_lists https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Additional_member_system#Decoy... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zweitmandat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zweitmandat
lr4444lr 5y ago
Sincere question: are there actual case studies of any electorate moving from a 2 party system to a multiparty system after RCV was implemented?
lobe 5y ago
It looks like the article got the Australian implementation somewhat wrong. Under cons, it says that voters have to rank all candidates on the ballot paper. In reality you have a choice. You can either rank all, or if you are lazier you can just select your favourite candidate and then your first choice candidate's preferences will be used instead. Also for some larger ballots (usually the senate with nearly 100 options) there is now a requirement to only rank say the top 10 or so for the ballot to count, so you don't need to number all 100. This is one of the best features of the Australian system. If you want to do the basic effort you can just tick one box, but if you care about the ordering you can also make your preferences count if you so choose. As an outsider looking in to American politics, I feel changing to preferential voting is the best bang for buck change to move away from extreme politics. Hopefully this catches on elsewhere.
- caf 5y ago
  In reality you have a choice. You can either rank all, or if you are lazier you can just select your favourite candidate and then your first choice candidate's preferences will be used instead. This is not true. In the elections for the Australian House of Representatives (single-member electorates, comparable to the mayoral election under discussion where there is a single winner), you must number every box for your vote to count. In elections for the Australian Senate (multiple member electorates) you don't have to number every box, but you have a choice: you can either vote "below the line" for individual candidates, in which case you must number at least 6 boxes for your vote to count (the ballot paper advises you to number at least 12); or you can vote "above the line" for groups of candidates (in which case you only have to number one, but the ballot paper advises you to number at least 6). A vote "above the line" for a group is equivalent to numbering the candidates in that group in order from top to bottom, but it doesn't imply a vote for a candidate in any other group. The voting systems in Australian states and territories vary from the above; some of them do allow only numbering a single candidate in single-member elections ("Optional Preferential Voting" or OPV) and some still have group-ticket voting in multi-member elections where you can assign your vote to the preference ticket submitted by a candidate (though hopefully the last few jurisdictions to still have this will be getting rid of it, because it is being gamed).
thought_alarm 5y ago
It's not fool-proof. In Canada in 1952, the province of British Columbia switched to a ranked ballot and it nearly ended in disaster. The ranked ballot was an attempt by the traditional Liberal and Conservative parties to keep a rising socialist party from gaining power, as they assumed no Liberal or Conservative voter would choose the socialists as their second choice. But there was so much animosity between the parties that most voters chose a fringe right-wing party as their second choice, as a protest vote. The two traditional parties were wiped out and the fringe right-wing party narrowly won, despite having no leader and little governing experience. Fortunately, saner heads took over the fringe party and quickly steered it to the political center as a sort of big tent party for former Liberal and Conservative voters. But it could have gone very differently. The ranked ballot idea was quickly dropped, but the event shaped British Columbia politics for the next 60+ years. That fringe party elected by accident became the province's natural governing party. I suppose the moral of the story is that no voting system can prevent irrational voters from shooting themselves in the foot.
- MichaelApproved 5y ago
  Why are people presenting examples from parliamentary systems for an American voting process? The two systems are so dramatically different that no cautionary tale would ever be meaningful.
  - dane-pgp 5y ago
    What aspects of parliamentary systems make it difficult to apply lessons from their voting systems to the voting systems used to elect representatives to the US Congress?
- grumblenum 5y ago
  So voters almost got what they wanted and not what established interests thought they should be allowed to have? Frightening.
  - mkoubaa 5y ago
    Imagine unsarcastically arguing that "Ranked Choice Voting gives too much power to voters"
Ericson2314 5y ago
Ranked choice does avoid vote-split issues, but is insufficient for breaking a two party system because the races are still single-winner. That we still have primaries makes it worse. Proportional representation is what is desperately needed to break the two party system.
godelski 5y ago
> One important factor the article didn't quite emphasise is how this voting system can break up the two party duopoly I'm not convinced this is true. 2 parties control 80%. 2 coalitions control 95%. I'm also not sure how you can look at America and not recognize that our parties are more similar to coalitions (come on, AOC/Bernie are not the same party as Pelosi/Biden). A better explanation is that Australia uses a parliament which has proportionate representation. My evidence of this is that other parliaments without IRV have similar party structures as Australia. So we have examples where you remove one aspect and things don't change, I don't think that makes for strong evidence that the thing removed is causing the effect (how can it cause an effect somewhere that it doesn't exist!). So don't compare Australia vs America to prove IRV creates more parties. Compare Australia/France/UK vs America to prove parliament causes the desired outcome.
ClayShentrup 5y ago
> We've had this in Australia since day 1 of Federation. Australia adopted the preferential system in 1918. > It's completely normal to put a third party as your first preference, while still indicating that you'd prefer Kodos to Kang. The evidence shows most voters don't, which is why Australia's IRV elections still maintain a duopoly. In spite of the fact that the senate, which uses (proportional) STV, has escaped duopoly. http://scorevoting.net/AustralianPol http://scorevoting.net/AustralianPol
- godelski 5y ago
  > which uses _proportional_ STV I've always seen the proportional nature as being key to other countries lack of a two party system (though they have two major coalitions). I'm curious why you think many look to Australia's IRV as the reason for it being a multi-party system when many parliamentary systems that don't use IRV have even more parties. How do you combat this common misconception? Also it seems dishonest to not consider coalitions when US parties aren't as uniform as most other country's parties. If we look at coalitions it does not appear that Australia (or most others) have escaped duopoly. And as always, good to see you in the comments and thanks for all the information.
SulphurCrested 5y ago
It's worth mentioning that the way this has taken away seats from the two major parties is not mostly through the rise of third parties, but the election of independents unaffiliated with any party. This has invariably occurred in electorates which are so homogeneous they were safe for one or the other major party, usually (but not always) rural. The most spectacular example of this was the election of three rural independents who then proceeded to install Julia Gillard from Labor as Prime Minister, even though they were conservative. Their stated reasons were Labor's promise to build a fibre-to-the-premises broadband network and their assessment of the conservative leader. Other examples include members in wealthy Sydney suburbs who, while otherwise conservative, wanted action on climate change, and members in farming electorates unhappy with the way the Nationals have been captured by mining and housing development interests and failed to represent farmers. (The Nationals, formerly the Country Party, always join the conservative Liberals in coalition, apparently having forgotten the purpose of coalitions.) An exception is the Greens, who usually score one seat based on the central business district of Melbourne. This includes very high density apartment towers, and student accommodation for the University of Melbourne, and is demographically odd. Many observers believe the rural independents may eventually coalesce into a new party which displaces the Nationals. I see no evidence thay the Liberals' several humiliating losses to independents in "safe" seats is causing them to rethink their policies. This may or may not change once they are unable to rely on whatever replaces the Nationals to form government.

ekimekim 5y ago

Fellow Aussie and RCV-enthusiast here, but minor correction: RCV was introduced in 1918 in response to elections where a minority candidate won due to vote splitting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_system_of_Australia#Preferential_voting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_system_of_Australia#...

foobarbazetc 5y ago

Your last paragraph shows a lack of depth in understanding American history and politics. -- an Australian/American living in the US.

munk-a 5y ago
Would you mind elaborating a bit on that point? From what I've seen RCV does tend to have a really strong moderating pull on elections that something like MMP manages to dodge, but it does mean that big tent parties will often experience strong pull off and, honestly, the African American community is often under served by a lot of Dem economic policies - though I'm really speaking in demographic generalities here.

twelvechairs 5y ago

Worth noting Australia is still generally a 2-party system in the lower house (1 representative each area) but less so in the senate (where each state elects the top 12 senators). Australians still look at envy at the New Zealand and German systems of Mixed Member Proportional representation (MMP) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed-member_proportional_representation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed-member_proportional_re...

thepete2 5y ago
Oh no, voting for representatives really is like a kind of "winner-take-all" filter.
InvertedRhodium 5y ago
We here in NZ would also like some kind of ranked choice in conjunction with MMP - as it stands, people are still reluctant to vote for smaller parties that may not reach the 5% vote threshold required. Edit: I may have confused RCV with STV. Regardless, it would be nice to know that if my first option didn't make it into Parliament that I could prefer a second party, and so on.
- afterburner 5y ago
  As the wiki article for STV helpfully states, "Another name for STV is multi-winner ranked-choice voting". Also, "Instant runoff voting (IRV) is the single-winner analogue of STV". So ranked choice voting is a super-set with many flavours within.
dane-pgp 5y ago
MMP is a fantastic system, but it can face resistance if it relies on Closed Party Lists[0], which allow a party to put a potentially controversial candidate at the top of the list, almost guaranteeing them a seat and forcing party supporters to accept that as the cost of choosing the party. Open lists are better, but I believe they still have the problem that they make it unclear where representatives' mandates come from, especially if a representative can resign and be automatically replaced by someone lower on the list without a by-election. Other problems exist with list-based systems, such as treating independent candidates differently to candidates with established parties, and the possible use of "decoy lists"[1]. The best implementation I've seen of MMP, though, is that used in Baden-Württemberg, which avoids party lists by filling the proportional seats with the candidates who came closest to winning the elections in their local districts.[2] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_list https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_list [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Additional_member_system#Decoy_lists https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Additional_member_system#Decoy... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zweitmandat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zweitmandat

lr4444lr 5y ago

Sincere question: are there actual case studies of any electorate moving from a 2 party system to a multiparty system after RCV was implemented?

lobe 5y ago

It looks like the article got the Australian implementation somewhat wrong. Under cons, it says that voters have to rank all candidates on the ballot paper. In reality you have a choice. You can either rank all, or if you are lazier you can just select your favourite candidate and then your first choice candidate's preferences will be used instead. Also for some larger ballots (usually the senate with nearly 100 options) there is now a requirement to only rank say the top 10 or so for the ballot to count, so you don't need to number all 100. This is one of the best features of the Australian system. If you want to do the basic effort you can just tick one box, but if you care about the ordering you can also make your preferences count if you so choose. As an outsider looking in to American politics, I feel changing to preferential voting is the best bang for buck change to move away from extreme politics. Hopefully this catches on elsewhere.

caf 5y ago
In reality you have a choice. You can either rank all, or if you are lazier you can just select your favourite candidate and then your first choice candidate's preferences will be used instead. This is not true. In the elections for the Australian House of Representatives (single-member electorates, comparable to the mayoral election under discussion where there is a single winner), you must number every box for your vote to count. In elections for the Australian Senate (multiple member electorates) you don't have to number every box, but you have a choice: you can either vote "below the line" for individual candidates, in which case you must number at least 6 boxes for your vote to count (the ballot paper advises you to number at least 12); or you can vote "above the line" for groups of candidates (in which case you only have to number one, but the ballot paper advises you to number at least 6). A vote "above the line" for a group is equivalent to numbering the candidates in that group in order from top to bottom, but it doesn't imply a vote for a candidate in any other group. The voting systems in Australian states and territories vary from the above; some of them do allow only numbering a single candidate in single-member elections ("Optional Preferential Voting" or OPV) and some still have group-ticket voting in multi-member elections where you can assign your vote to the preference ticket submitted by a candidate (though hopefully the last few jurisdictions to still have this will be getting rid of it, because it is being gamed).

thought_alarm 5y ago

It's not fool-proof. In Canada in 1952, the province of British Columbia switched to a ranked ballot and it nearly ended in disaster. The ranked ballot was an attempt by the traditional Liberal and Conservative parties to keep a rising socialist party from gaining power, as they assumed no Liberal or Conservative voter would choose the socialists as their second choice. But there was so much animosity between the parties that most voters chose a fringe right-wing party as their second choice, as a protest vote. The two traditional parties were wiped out and the fringe right-wing party narrowly won, despite having no leader and little governing experience. Fortunately, saner heads took over the fringe party and quickly steered it to the political center as a sort of big tent party for former Liberal and Conservative voters. But it could have gone very differently. The ranked ballot idea was quickly dropped, but the event shaped British Columbia politics for the next 60+ years. That fringe party elected by accident became the province's natural governing party. I suppose the moral of the story is that no voting system can prevent irrational voters from shooting themselves in the foot.

MichaelApproved 5y ago
Why are people presenting examples from parliamentary systems for an American voting process? The two systems are so dramatically different that no cautionary tale would ever be meaningful.
- dane-pgp 5y ago
  What aspects of parliamentary systems make it difficult to apply lessons from their voting systems to the voting systems used to elect representatives to the US Congress?
grumblenum 5y ago
So voters almost got what they wanted and not what established interests thought they should be allowed to have? Frightening.
- mkoubaa 5y ago
  Imagine unsarcastically arguing that "Ranked Choice Voting gives too much power to voters"

Ericson2314 5y ago

Ranked choice does avoid vote-split issues, but is insufficient for breaking a two party system because the races are still single-winner. That we still have primaries makes it worse. Proportional representation is what is desperately needed to break the two party system.

godelski 5y ago

> One important factor the article didn't quite emphasise is how this voting system can break up the two party duopoly I'm not convinced this is true. 2 parties control 80%. 2 coalitions control 95%. I'm also not sure how you can look at America and not recognize that our parties are more similar to coalitions (come on, AOC/Bernie are not the same party as Pelosi/Biden). A better explanation is that Australia uses a parliament which has proportionate representation. My evidence of this is that other parliaments without IRV have similar party structures as Australia. So we have examples where you remove one aspect and things don't change, I don't think that makes for strong evidence that the thing removed is causing the effect (how can it cause an effect somewhere that it doesn't exist!). So don't compare Australia vs America to prove IRV creates more parties. Compare Australia/France/UK vs America to prove parliament causes the desired outcome.

ClayShentrup 5y ago

> We've had this in Australia since day 1 of Federation. Australia adopted the preferential system in 1918. > It's completely normal to put a third party as your first preference, while still indicating that you'd prefer Kodos to Kang. The evidence shows most voters don't, which is why Australia's IRV elections still maintain a duopoly. In spite of the fact that the senate, which uses (proportional) STV, has escaped duopoly. http://scorevoting.net/AustralianPol http://scorevoting.net/AustralianPol

godelski 5y ago
> which uses _proportional_ STV I've always seen the proportional nature as being key to other countries lack of a two party system (though they have two major coalitions). I'm curious why you think many look to Australia's IRV as the reason for it being a multi-party system when many parliamentary systems that don't use IRV have even more parties. How do you combat this common misconception? Also it seems dishonest to not consider coalitions when US parties aren't as uniform as most other country's parties. If we look at coalitions it does not appear that Australia (or most others) have escaped duopoly. And as always, good to see you in the comments and thanks for all the information.

SulphurCrested 5y ago

It's worth mentioning that the way this has taken away seats from the two major parties is not mostly through the rise of third parties, but the election of independents unaffiliated with any party. This has invariably occurred in electorates which are so homogeneous they were safe for one or the other major party, usually (but not always) rural. The most spectacular example of this was the election of three rural independents who then proceeded to install Julia Gillard from Labor as Prime Minister, even though they were conservative. Their stated reasons were Labor's promise to build a fibre-to-the-premises broadband network and their assessment of the conservative leader. Other examples include members in wealthy Sydney suburbs who, while otherwise conservative, wanted action on climate change, and members in farming electorates unhappy with the way the Nationals have been captured by mining and housing development interests and failed to represent farmers. (The Nationals, formerly the Country Party, always join the conservative Liberals in coalition, apparently having forgotten the purpose of coalitions.) An exception is the Greens, who usually score one seat based on the central business district of Melbourne. This includes very high density apartment towers, and student accommodation for the University of Melbourne, and is demographically odd. Many observers believe the rural independents may eventually coalesce into a new party which displaces the Nationals. I see no evidence thay the Liberals' several humiliating losses to independents in "safe" seats is causing them to rethink their policies. This may or may not change once they are unable to rely on whatever replaces the Nationals to form government.