6 ms·

> If people could confidently vote for another party there wouldn't be just two parties. If multimember districts are used with RCV yes. If not it tends to mai

by erentz 5y ago

> If people could confidently vote for another party there wouldn't be just two parties. If multimember districts are used with RCV yes. If not it tends to maintain a duopoly. Australia’s Senate uses RCV like voting with multimember districts and has more diversity than its House which uses single member districts. That said there is some benefit to using RCV even with single member districts as in theory it tends to moderate the candidates a bit as they want to appeal to more people. That said I think it’s a serious missed opportunity to press RCV without multimember districts.

Taniwha 5y ago
I think that RCV is at best a hack, a compromise for people who don't want to get too far from FPP. IMHO if you are electing individual people (a mayor, a US president, a city council, a US Senator) then STV is more equitable (it is pretty close to RCV if you are electing a single person). But if you are electing parties (like the US House) then MMP is a fairer solution
- ant6n 5y ago
  Ranked ballots in single member districts are really a hack on electoral reform movements. It creates the appearance of improving the system while only solving one of many problems. The hack worked in Canada and GB, where it was used to divide, confuse and ultimately scuttle the electoral reform process.
- gwright 5y ago
  > But if you are electing parties (like the US House) I'm not sure why you are phrasing it this way. Voters don't pick a party for their House representative, they pick a candidate. Each House district election is independent of all the others.
  - CameronNemo 5y ago
    Voters pick a candidate knowing that the candidate will have to play within a two party legislature. Third party legislators are shunned. Their bills get no traction, and they get no committee assignments. If they are seriously divergent, the House could easily have them removed.
    - tptacek 5y ago
      Further evidence for this exists in the demise of ticket splitting: if you vote R at the top of the ticket, you're very likely to vote R the rest of the way down the ticket, regardless of who the downballot R's are. It wasn't always this way, but has been for some time.
      - koolba 5y ago
        Some States even have a single box you can check to vote entirely for that party’s candidates, “straight ticket voting”. Texas removed it a few years back and it’s removal was challenged (and lost) by Democrats: https://www.texastribune.org/2020/09/30/texas-2020-election-staight-ticket-voting/ https://www.texastribune.org/2020/09/30/texas-2020-election-...
  - Taniwha 5y ago
    Yes but if each house district is FPP 3rd parties generally don't get a look in, people who vote for them get no representation at all, and can produce governments where the party with the most seats got fewer votes than the others. MMP provides local representation, and proportional representation (at the expense of having larger local seats, or more representatives).
- alexitorg 5y ago
  I'm Australian so I might be biased, but I don't like MMP. It seems to be optimising for democratic outcome (well at least a parliament that looks like the distribution of first party votes) while ignoring all other factors. Many countries that use it seem to have weak governments that can't get much done. There is parties that won't work together because one is secessionists (Catalans), right wing (national rally in France, AfD in Germany), different ethnic group (Arabs in Israel, Flemish vs French speakers in Belgium). Some parties seem to get more popular if they refuse to compromise. This can end up in endless elections (e.g. Israel), inability to form government for years (e.g. Belgium) or parties that aren't acceptable for mainstream parties to form coalitions with becoming the only opposition (e.g. National Rally). Even well run countries like the Netherlands and Sweden can seem to take forever to form a government. RCV mostly allows one party to form a majority government and get things done. There is clear accountability. While at the same time there is still the incentive to appeal to a broad base. And over time new parties can break into the system if they are appealing enough.
  - ajdlinux 5y ago
    Just to be clear - most of the countries you give as your examples aren't MMP systems, they are other proportional representation systems, and the problems you have with it are common to proportional representation systems broadly rather than MMP.
  - jltsiren 5y ago
    You seem to be assuming that doing something is usually better than doing nothing. I believe the opposite is true in politics. It's difficult to make things better with political decisions, but it's much easier to break things or make them worse. If you can't convince a clear majority that something is a good idea, doing nothing is probably a better choice. Presidents, prime ministers, and governors are always enemies of liberal democracy (the republic for those more familiar with American terminology). Nobody should be given that kind of power, but unless we can figure out how to run a country without such leaders, we have to tolerate them as a necessary evil.
  - Taniwha 5y ago
    It works well here in NZ - I think that part of it is that we've built a political culture around MMP that understands that to be successful at MMP parties need to build coalitions and compromise (very transparent public compromises) - the current government is the first we've had in 3-4 decades where one party could form a government by themselves, and they still formed a coalition of sorts
- erentz 5y ago
  I see RCV and STV used interchangeably. And the way I’ve seen RCV described in the US it is just STV with a better name for easier marketing. But I may be missing some subtlety. I also prefer MMP for parliamentary systems but changing the US to use MMP is several orders of magnitude harder than implementing RCV, which can be done state by state. It can even be implanted using multimember districts without changing anything. So it gives the US the best path to a better electoral system I think.
anonporridge 5y ago
While multimember districts would be a huge improvement, I wonder if we also should start having the conversation if geography based representation is the right approach for the internet age. I for one, have more in common with a minority identity widely dispersed across the country but connected through the internet than I do my next door neighbors. My niche identity never gets proportionately represented in government because I'm overwhelmed by local majorities.
- barsonme 5y ago
  No. Government and politics are primarily local because most problems are local. For instance, I have zero clue about life in NYC. Letting me directly influence decisions in NYC is wholly unfair. I have no skin in the game! How good or bad their transportation is doesn’t affect me. Whether their local tax rate is high or low doesn’t affect me. But it most definitely does affect them. Likewise, nobody in NYC is affected by the repeat wildfires we’ve had recently on the west coast. Letting them directly say, “Nah, it’s no big deal” is also unfair. I definitely empathize, though. Lots of my beliefs aren’t represented where I live, either.
  - nine_k 5y ago
    Ironically, a lot of people who decide how to develop NYC subway sit in Albany, NY.
    - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
      > a lot of people who decide how to develop NYC subway sit in Albany, NY Albany bailed us out, so it retains oversight. But the vast majority of the MTA’s decisions are made by people with boots on the ground.
  - pandem 5y ago
    The Congress does not decide the New York local tax rate or how west coast cities handle their forest. You can have a local government and Congressional elections that are not tied to your specific location. As far as I know now the only position that both someone in California and someone in New York would vote for is POTUS.
shkkmo 5y ago
> That said there is some benefit to using RCV even with single member districts as in theory it tends to moderate the candidates a bit as they want to appeal to more people. RCV has a bigger impact when used in conjunction with primaries. The is a not unusual situation where more extreme candidates win primaries when the more moderate candidate would have won the election by a larger margin. The more extreme candidate then ends up elected because the district has been jerrymandered to belong to their party.
- erentz 5y ago
  Yeah. The solution there is to get rid of primaries altogether. And they’re unnecessary with RCV. Although I think they’re unnecessary already under the current system and the US would be a lot better off without them. You could get rid of them and just leave it up to the parties themselves to decide which candidate they will back for each district via whichever means they prefer internally amongst party members.
uitstel894 5y ago
What I like about RCV is that it benefits moderate candidates. You can also argue that moderate candates have more influence at a national level, and if your representatives have more influence they have more bargaining power on behalf of your state. All in all RCV can be a moderating factor AND it does not require top down changes to the election system.

by erentz 5y ago

Taniwha 5y ago

I think that RCV is at best a hack, a compromise for people who don't want to get too far from FPP. IMHO if you are electing individual people (a mayor, a US president, a city council, a US Senator) then STV is more equitable (it is pretty close to RCV if you are electing a single person). But if you are electing parties (like the US House) then MMP is a fairer solution

ant6n 5y ago
Ranked ballots in single member districts are really a hack on electoral reform movements. It creates the appearance of improving the system while only solving one of many problems. The hack worked in Canada and GB, where it was used to divide, confuse and ultimately scuttle the electoral reform process.
gwright 5y ago
> But if you are electing parties (like the US House) I'm not sure why you are phrasing it this way. Voters don't pick a party for their House representative, they pick a candidate. Each House district election is independent of all the others.
- CameronNemo 5y ago
  Voters pick a candidate knowing that the candidate will have to play within a two party legislature. Third party legislators are shunned. Their bills get no traction, and they get no committee assignments. If they are seriously divergent, the House could easily have them removed.
  - tptacek 5y ago
    Further evidence for this exists in the demise of ticket splitting: if you vote R at the top of the ticket, you're very likely to vote R the rest of the way down the ticket, regardless of who the downballot R's are. It wasn't always this way, but has been for some time.
    - koolba 5y ago
      Some States even have a single box you can check to vote entirely for that party’s candidates, “straight ticket voting”. Texas removed it a few years back and it’s removal was challenged (and lost) by Democrats: https://www.texastribune.org/2020/09/30/texas-2020-election-staight-ticket-voting/ https://www.texastribune.org/2020/09/30/texas-2020-election-...
- Taniwha 5y ago
  Yes but if each house district is FPP 3rd parties generally don't get a look in, people who vote for them get no representation at all, and can produce governments where the party with the most seats got fewer votes than the others. MMP provides local representation, and proportional representation (at the expense of having larger local seats, or more representatives).
alexitorg 5y ago
I'm Australian so I might be biased, but I don't like MMP. It seems to be optimising for democratic outcome (well at least a parliament that looks like the distribution of first party votes) while ignoring all other factors. Many countries that use it seem to have weak governments that can't get much done. There is parties that won't work together because one is secessionists (Catalans), right wing (national rally in France, AfD in Germany), different ethnic group (Arabs in Israel, Flemish vs French speakers in Belgium). Some parties seem to get more popular if they refuse to compromise. This can end up in endless elections (e.g. Israel), inability to form government for years (e.g. Belgium) or parties that aren't acceptable for mainstream parties to form coalitions with becoming the only opposition (e.g. National Rally). Even well run countries like the Netherlands and Sweden can seem to take forever to form a government. RCV mostly allows one party to form a majority government and get things done. There is clear accountability. While at the same time there is still the incentive to appeal to a broad base. And over time new parties can break into the system if they are appealing enough.
- ajdlinux 5y ago
  Just to be clear - most of the countries you give as your examples aren't MMP systems, they are other proportional representation systems, and the problems you have with it are common to proportional representation systems broadly rather than MMP.
- jltsiren 5y ago
  You seem to be assuming that doing something is usually better than doing nothing. I believe the opposite is true in politics. It's difficult to make things better with political decisions, but it's much easier to break things or make them worse. If you can't convince a clear majority that something is a good idea, doing nothing is probably a better choice. Presidents, prime ministers, and governors are always enemies of liberal democracy (the republic for those more familiar with American terminology). Nobody should be given that kind of power, but unless we can figure out how to run a country without such leaders, we have to tolerate them as a necessary evil.
- Taniwha 5y ago
  It works well here in NZ - I think that part of it is that we've built a political culture around MMP that understands that to be successful at MMP parties need to build coalitions and compromise (very transparent public compromises) - the current government is the first we've had in 3-4 decades where one party could form a government by themselves, and they still formed a coalition of sorts
erentz 5y ago
I see RCV and STV used interchangeably. And the way I’ve seen RCV described in the US it is just STV with a better name for easier marketing. But I may be missing some subtlety. I also prefer MMP for parliamentary systems but changing the US to use MMP is several orders of magnitude harder than implementing RCV, which can be done state by state. It can even be implanted using multimember districts without changing anything. So it gives the US the best path to a better electoral system I think.

anonporridge 5y ago

While multimember districts would be a huge improvement, I wonder if we also should start having the conversation if geography based representation is the right approach for the internet age. I for one, have more in common with a minority identity widely dispersed across the country but connected through the internet than I do my next door neighbors. My niche identity never gets proportionately represented in government because I'm overwhelmed by local majorities.

barsonme 5y ago
No. Government and politics are primarily local because most problems are local. For instance, I have zero clue about life in NYC. Letting me directly influence decisions in NYC is wholly unfair. I have no skin in the game! How good or bad their transportation is doesn’t affect me. Whether their local tax rate is high or low doesn’t affect me. But it most definitely does affect them. Likewise, nobody in NYC is affected by the repeat wildfires we’ve had recently on the west coast. Letting them directly say, “Nah, it’s no big deal” is also unfair. I definitely empathize, though. Lots of my beliefs aren’t represented where I live, either.
- nine_k 5y ago
  Ironically, a lot of people who decide how to develop NYC subway sit in Albany, NY.
  - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
    > a lot of people who decide how to develop NYC subway sit in Albany, NY Albany bailed us out, so it retains oversight. But the vast majority of the MTA’s decisions are made by people with boots on the ground.
- pandem 5y ago
  The Congress does not decide the New York local tax rate or how west coast cities handle their forest. You can have a local government and Congressional elections that are not tied to your specific location. As far as I know now the only position that both someone in California and someone in New York would vote for is POTUS.

shkkmo 5y ago

> That said there is some benefit to using RCV even with single member districts as in theory it tends to moderate the candidates a bit as they want to appeal to more people. RCV has a bigger impact when used in conjunction with primaries. The is a not unusual situation where more extreme candidates win primaries when the more moderate candidate would have won the election by a larger margin. The more extreme candidate then ends up elected because the district has been jerrymandered to belong to their party.

erentz 5y ago
Yeah. The solution there is to get rid of primaries altogether. And they’re unnecessary with RCV. Although I think they’re unnecessary already under the current system and the US would be a lot better off without them. You could get rid of them and just leave it up to the parties themselves to decide which candidate they will back for each district via whichever means they prefer internally amongst party members.

uitstel894 5y ago

What I like about RCV is that it benefits moderate candidates. You can also argue that moderate candates have more influence at a national level, and if your representatives have more influence they have more bargaining power on behalf of your state. All in all RCV can be a moderating factor AND it does not require top down changes to the election system.