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> most European systems are working under a parliamentary system which causes this proportionate representation. Could you clarify what you mean here? There i

> most European systems are working under a parliamentary system which causes this proportionate representation. Could you clarify what you mean here? There is nothing about a parliamentary system which inherently requires or leads to proportional representation, as the UK system shows. Similarly it would be possible in the US congressional system to have proportional representation by having multi-member districts (as was allowed[0] before 1967) and using a system like STV, also called multi-winner ranked-choice voting.[1] > cardinal systems are resistant to both strong and weak spoilers. While I support any serious alternative to FPTP, it's worth being aware of the deficiencies of Approval voting. Firstly, it can confront voters with difficult questions about whether they support a certain candidate enough to approve of them. For example, a Democrat voter might hedge their bets by voting for a moderate Republican to prevent a more extreme Republican winning, while hoping that enough Republicans approve of a moderate Democrat. Secondly, though, I think that an important goal for a voting systems is that it doesn't increase (and ideally decreases) the dependence on voting machines. As recent events have shown, every additional element to a voting system is just expanding the attack surface for people to target FUD at, and a voting machine is a complex system which is very hard for the average voter to reason about (even if the purported hardware designs and source code were publicly available). While it is still feasible to count Approval ballots by hand, and the process can be split between districts to produce sub-totals which can be summed, the fact that a given ballot can have multiple marks on it does increase the complexity for human counters, which makes the counting slower and more expensive. In particular, if there are N candidates in an election, then a FPTP ballot can be placed onto one of N piles, whereas 2^N piles are needed to group all possible Approval votes physically together. I don't know how much that complexity would actually slow down the counting, but in a world where election workers are being threatened with violence for doing their job, even an extra hour of counting is hard to justify. Fortunately, though, there is a voting system which satisfies the above criteria, namely Asset Voting.[2] In its single-winner variant, the election proceeds just like a FPTP one, with the same ballot papers, instructions, and counting process, but after the count is complete, the candidates from fewest to most votes get to reassign their share to a remaining candidate, until one candidate has a majority. This removes the spoiler problem, and relies on the fact that voters are choosing someone to represent them and who can therefore be entrusted with the job of assigning their votes to the ultimate winner if necessary. [0] https://www.amacad.org/ourcommonpurpose/recommendation-1-3 https://www.amacad.org/ourcommonpurpose/recommendation-1-3 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_representation#Asset_voting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_representation#As...

godelski 5y ago
> it's worth being aware of the deficiencies of Approval voting. Firstly, it can confront voters with difficult questions about whether they support a certain candidate enough to approve of them. I'm sorry, but I find this concern a bit in bad taste. This type of strategic voting exists in every voting system. In ordinal systems (such as IRV, STV, etc) you artificially rank candidates higher than what your actual preference is. The same thing about the second concern (you add the Republican to your ranking). It's a pretty universal strategy in voting so I'm not sure why this is a problem specific to Approval, and thus why it it is being brought up. This can easily be mitigated by using score voting. In addition, I would like to point out that the benefit of STAR is that is is extremely resistant to strategies. AFAIK it is the most resistant voting system. > As recent events have shown, every additional element to a voting system is just expanding the attack surface for people to target FUD at, and a voting machine is a complex system which is very hard for the average voter to reason about (even if the purported hardware designs and source code were publicly available). I'm confused by this comment. I see Arizona as the prime example of why we would NOT want an ordinal system. Ordinal systems like STV and IRV have multi rounds. Let's look at the two algorithms (at an abstract level. This will be fine for STV/IRV/Approval/Score) Ordinal: Count tallies of all ranked candidates. If top candidate >50% declare winner else remove argmin from list and goto top. Cardinal: Sum scores of all rated candidates. Declare argmax as winner. I don't know about you, but summing columns and taking argmax seems way easier to me than the multi-round system. We've seen that in many ranked elections that you have many many rounds. The NYC Mayoral race had 8 rounds FWIW. Approval is one round (like FPTP) and STAR is at most 2 rounds (it is always 2 rounds in fact). I do not know how anyone can argue that the counting of cardinal systems are more complex. You note that even an extra hour is difficult and I'll note that IRV takes days to count, as seen in NYC and others. I should highlight, again, that the US has had STV in the past and then many of those cities went back to FPTP because it was complicated and didn't solve the issues they wanted to. > In its single-winner variant, the election proceeds just like a FPTP one, with the same ballot papers, instructions, and counting process, but after the count is complete, the candidates from fewest to most votes get to reassign their share to a remaining candidate, until one candidate has a majority. This removes the spoiler problem I'm not sure why you felt it was important to explain this to me when I've already demonstrated a working knowledge and at this point I also feel that you ignored a good portion of my previous post that was about strong and weak spoilers. Where I talked about how ordinal systems prevent weak spoilers but not strong spoilers. Maybe a source would help?[0] Weak spoilers aren't a concern. Strong spoilers, aka a favorite betrayer, are. Solving weak spoilers allow third parties to exist, but it doesn't allow them to win. As for Asset voting I'm extremely against this. That's just making collusion rings easier. Again, let's look at the 2016 and 2020 elections. That's just letting the parties dictate who can run in the elections. This is a major problem in our system. [0] https://electionscience.org/library/the-spoiler-effect/ https://electionscience.org/library/the-spoiler-effect/

godelski 5y ago

> it's worth being aware of the deficiencies of Approval voting. Firstly, it can confront voters with difficult questions about whether they support a certain candidate enough to approve of them. I'm sorry, but I find this concern a bit in bad taste. This type of strategic voting exists in every voting system. In ordinal systems (such as IRV, STV, etc) you artificially rank candidates higher than what your actual preference is. The same thing about the second concern (you add the Republican to your ranking). It's a pretty universal strategy in voting so I'm not sure why this is a problem specific to Approval, and thus why it it is being brought up. This can easily be mitigated by using score voting. In addition, I would like to point out that the benefit of STAR is that is is extremely resistant to strategies. AFAIK it is the most resistant voting system. > As recent events have shown, every additional element to a voting system is just expanding the attack surface for people to target FUD at, and a voting machine is a complex system which is very hard for the average voter to reason about (even if the purported hardware designs and source code were publicly available). I'm confused by this comment. I see Arizona as the prime example of why we would NOT want an ordinal system. Ordinal systems like STV and IRV have multi rounds. Let's look at the two algorithms (at an abstract level. This will be fine for STV/IRV/Approval/Score) Ordinal: Count tallies of all ranked candidates. If top candidate >50% declare winner else remove argmin from list and goto top. Cardinal: Sum scores of all rated candidates. Declare argmax as winner. I don't know about you, but summing columns and taking argmax seems way easier to me than the multi-round system. We've seen that in many ranked elections that you have many many rounds. The NYC Mayoral race had 8 rounds FWIW. Approval is one round (like FPTP) and STAR is at most 2 rounds (it is always 2 rounds in fact). I do not know how anyone can argue that the counting of cardinal systems are more complex. You note that even an extra hour is difficult and I'll note that IRV takes days to count, as seen in NYC and others. I should highlight, again, that the US has had STV in the past and then many of those cities went back to FPTP because it was complicated and didn't solve the issues they wanted to. > In its single-winner variant, the election proceeds just like a FPTP one, with the same ballot papers, instructions, and counting process, but after the count is complete, the candidates from fewest to most votes get to reassign their share to a remaining candidate, until one candidate has a majority. This removes the spoiler problem I'm not sure why you felt it was important to explain this to me when I've already demonstrated a working knowledge and at this point I also feel that you ignored a good portion of my previous post that was about strong and weak spoilers. Where I talked about how ordinal systems prevent weak spoilers but not strong spoilers. Maybe a source would help?[0] Weak spoilers aren't a concern. Strong spoilers, aka a favorite betrayer, are. Solving weak spoilers allow third parties to exist, but it doesn't allow them to win. As for Asset voting I'm extremely against this. That's just making collusion rings easier. Again, let's look at the 2016 and 2020 elections. That's just letting the parties dictate who can run in the elections. This is a major problem in our system. [0] https://electionscience.org/library/the-spoiler-effect/ https://electionscience.org/library/the-spoiler-effect/