6 ms·

Just getting rid of first-past-the-post would do wonders for our country and by the looks of it approval voting is inferior to run-off voting by a mile.

by Apofis 5y ago

godelski 5y ago
> by the looks of it approval voting is inferior to run-off voting by a mile. I'm curious why you think this? I think exactly the opposite. RCV/IRV has major problems, especially for strong spoilers. They are also more difficult to tabulate and with the recent events of the last election the importance of ease to tabulate went up in my priority list (making me even question my preference of score over approval). In fact, IRV also favors extremists, which is something I really don't want.
- noahtallen 5y ago
  For more context, this post has some cool interactive features to explain the voting types: https://ncase.me/ballot/ https://ncase.me/ballot/ Another problem with RCV is that it’s difficult to understand, at least when you get into the runoffs. That makes it harder for people to understand and trust the election system, which is also very important.
  - godelski 5y ago
    I'm not too big of a fan of this site but it is nice. One thing I wanted to point out is the spoiler effect. Often we talk about it but similarly we generally only talk about a weak spoiler. So I wanted to show an example of a strong spoiler[0]. In this example Hexagon splits Triangles votes just by a little, but the sum of Triangle and Hex are larger than Square. But here IRV has Square winning but Approval has Hex winning. This is one big issue for me with IRV vs Cardinal systems. Both handle _weak_ spoilers but IRV doesn't handle ''strong,, spoilers. Understanding that these are two different types of spoilers is really important. It is "Bernie vs Hillary" and "Cruz vs Trump." Even with IRV we'd still see the parties trying to prevent strong primary candidates from running independently because they could spoil the election. With cardinal methods (approval, score, star) this is far less of a concern and thus I think more democratic of an election. I honestly think we should be much more concerned with strong spoilers than weak spoilers (weak spoilers don't affect elections much anyways). [0] https://imgur.com/a/vV15A7Z https://imgur.com/a/vV15A7Z
    - noahtallen 5y ago
      I completely agree; I tend to like approval voting just because it is nearly as good as the other scoring methods while being very simple.
      - godelski 5y ago
        Exactly. I say STAR: 5, Score 4, approval 4, IRV 1, FPTP 1 It would be ranked in this order too, but there's more expressivity here than an ordinal system can provide.
    - Apofis 5y ago
      Considering our present division, I have a big "spider-sense" tingle that approval voting will simply result in everyone just voting all blue or all red, that sounds like a bad deal to me. Run off voting would give moderates a good chance of putting the country right side up again.
      - godelski 5y ago
        > everyone just voting all blue or all red FWIW, this already happens. That will also happen under any system. I'm not sure why you think IRV encourages moderates. It actually encourages extremist candidates which is why I'm particularly against it.
        madeofmeat 5y ago
        "Everyone" doesn't vote all-red or all-blue. 30% vote all red, 30% all blue, and 40% stay home because there is never a sensible centrist candidate. Each of the 30% active voters then get mistaken for 50% of citizens.
- r00fus 5y ago
  All your assertions are actually complaints about our existing plurality voting system. IRV/Approval/Borda/Condorcet voting systems all improve those factors. That they have some edge conditions that could be theoretically exploited belies that fact that plurality voting (ie, FPTP / one person one vote) is a complete train wreck for spoilers and favoring extreme voting. No voting system is perfect (Arrow's impossibility theorem) but some are harder to exploit than others. Staying with a broken system because the proposed replacement isn't perfect is a poor justification.
  - godelski 5y ago
    Down below I actually give an example of IRV/RCV not solving a strong spoiler case. Clay has also written extensively on the subject matter so I'll defer to him. I'll especially defer to him on explaining how IRV actually encourages extremists. I think the problem here is that people get caught up in VSE. I get it, that's what I was caught up in when I first started learning about this stuff. Then I had to really dig through strategic voting and spoilage. The nuance of the systems actually do make a very big difference in the outcomes.
    - r00fus 5y ago
      I'd love to hear how our current electoral system is in any way preferable to RCV (or Star Voting for example). Because for many municipalities, it's not whether they move to Approval vs. RCV or IRV or Star, etc - it's moving away from the dumpster fire of plurality voting.
      - nitrogen 5y ago
        It seems likely that a given municipality will only have the political energy to change voting systems once. Given that, it would be preferable to move to something that isn't RCV/IRV in the first place.
        godelski 5y ago
        This is what we see historically
pxx 5y ago
I'd argue that instant-runoff is _worse than plurality_. It complicates the voting system, makes the wrong tradeoffs (lack of monotonicity is a very serious one), and I'd really like to hear more about why you think approval voting is worse than runoff (instant or otherwise).
- cpeterso 5y ago
  IRV is also very hard to explain to average voters. Approval voting is easy to explain: you get to give a thumbs up or down to every candidate. In a local mayoral election that used IRV, I've seen some candidates tell their supporters to vote for them in every slot. Either those candidates didn't understand IRV themselves, or they didn't want to try to explain IRV to their supporters.
  - mjevans 5y ago
    I prefer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulze_method https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulze_method Though with a candidate modification: add 'none of them / no confidence' as a virtual candidate that can never be removed by the runoff processes. If 'NoT' is the winner then the entire election is thrown out and all of the candidates are banned from the re-run.
    - godelski 5y ago
      Condorcet methods are also hard to explain to voters. The tabulation is rather complicated. At least in comparison to something like cardinal methods. In light of recent recounts I think this is a really important factor to consider. While Condorcet methods have the best VSE, they aren't winning by a huge margin. Besides, VSE isn't everything.
    - ClayShentrup 5y ago
      Condorcet methods perform, at best, only a little better than approval voting in computer simulations. And they have only ever been used in one US city (Marquette, MI) which shortly thereafter repealed it. And they are radically more complicated and unlikely to ever see the light of day. https://electionscience.github.io/vse-sim/vse.html https://electionscience.github.io/vse-sim/vse.html
troydavis 5y ago
You might be interested in my answer in another thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29266519#29277580 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29266519#29277580 I give an example from this year's Seattle primaries where RCV/IRV would have eliminated the candidate that most accurately reflects the electorate but Approval Voting would not have. That's not a trivial or rare situation, either, it's just such a simple race that it's easy to spot.

Just getting rid of first-past-the-post would do wonders for our country and by the looks of it approval voting is inferior to run-off voting by a mile.

by Apofis 5y ago

Just getting rid of first-past-the-post would do wonders for our country and by the looks of it approval voting is inferior to run-off voting by a mile.

godelski 5y ago

> by the looks of it approval voting is inferior to run-off voting by a mile. I'm curious why you think this? I think exactly the opposite. RCV/IRV has major problems, especially for strong spoilers. They are also more difficult to tabulate and with the recent events of the last election the importance of ease to tabulate went up in my priority list (making me even question my preference of score over approval). In fact, IRV also favors extremists, which is something I really don't want.

noahtallen 5y ago
For more context, this post has some cool interactive features to explain the voting types: https://ncase.me/ballot/ https://ncase.me/ballot/ Another problem with RCV is that it’s difficult to understand, at least when you get into the runoffs. That makes it harder for people to understand and trust the election system, which is also very important.
- godelski 5y ago
  I'm not too big of a fan of this site but it is nice. One thing I wanted to point out is the spoiler effect. Often we talk about it but similarly we generally only talk about a weak spoiler. So I wanted to show an example of a strong spoiler[0]. In this example Hexagon splits Triangles votes just by a little, but the sum of Triangle and Hex are larger than Square. But here IRV has Square winning but Approval has Hex winning. This is one big issue for me with IRV vs Cardinal systems. Both handle _weak_ spoilers but IRV doesn't handle ''strong,, spoilers. Understanding that these are two different types of spoilers is really important. It is "Bernie vs Hillary" and "Cruz vs Trump." Even with IRV we'd still see the parties trying to prevent strong primary candidates from running independently because they could spoil the election. With cardinal methods (approval, score, star) this is far less of a concern and thus I think more democratic of an election. I honestly think we should be much more concerned with strong spoilers than weak spoilers (weak spoilers don't affect elections much anyways). [0] https://imgur.com/a/vV15A7Z https://imgur.com/a/vV15A7Z
  - noahtallen 5y ago
    I completely agree; I tend to like approval voting just because it is nearly as good as the other scoring methods while being very simple.
    - godelski 5y ago
      Exactly. I say STAR: 5, Score 4, approval 4, IRV 1, FPTP 1 It would be ranked in this order too, but there's more expressivity here than an ordinal system can provide.
  - Apofis 5y ago
    Considering our present division, I have a big "spider-sense" tingle that approval voting will simply result in everyone just voting all blue or all red, that sounds like a bad deal to me. Run off voting would give moderates a good chance of putting the country right side up again.
    - godelski 5y ago
      > everyone just voting all blue or all red FWIW, this already happens. That will also happen under any system. I'm not sure why you think IRV encourages moderates. It actually encourages extremist candidates which is why I'm particularly against it.
      - madeofmeat 5y ago
        "Everyone" doesn't vote all-red or all-blue. 30% vote all red, 30% all blue, and 40% stay home because there is never a sensible centrist candidate. Each of the 30% active voters then get mistaken for 50% of citizens.
r00fus 5y ago
All your assertions are actually complaints about our existing plurality voting system. IRV/Approval/Borda/Condorcet voting systems all improve those factors. That they have some edge conditions that could be theoretically exploited belies that fact that plurality voting (ie, FPTP / one person one vote) is a complete train wreck for spoilers and favoring extreme voting. No voting system is perfect (Arrow's impossibility theorem) but some are harder to exploit than others. Staying with a broken system because the proposed replacement isn't perfect is a poor justification.
- godelski 5y ago
  Down below I actually give an example of IRV/RCV not solving a strong spoiler case. Clay has also written extensively on the subject matter so I'll defer to him. I'll especially defer to him on explaining how IRV actually encourages extremists. I think the problem here is that people get caught up in VSE. I get it, that's what I was caught up in when I first started learning about this stuff. Then I had to really dig through strategic voting and spoilage. The nuance of the systems actually do make a very big difference in the outcomes.
  - r00fus 5y ago
    I'd love to hear how our current electoral system is in any way preferable to RCV (or Star Voting for example). Because for many municipalities, it's not whether they move to Approval vs. RCV or IRV or Star, etc - it's moving away from the dumpster fire of plurality voting.
    - nitrogen 5y ago
      It seems likely that a given municipality will only have the political energy to change voting systems once. Given that, it would be preferable to move to something that isn't RCV/IRV in the first place.
      - godelski 5y ago
        This is what we see historically

pxx 5y ago

I'd argue that instant-runoff is _worse than plurality_. It complicates the voting system, makes the wrong tradeoffs (lack of monotonicity is a very serious one), and I'd really like to hear more about why you think approval voting is worse than runoff (instant or otherwise).

cpeterso 5y ago
IRV is also very hard to explain to average voters. Approval voting is easy to explain: you get to give a thumbs up or down to every candidate. In a local mayoral election that used IRV, I've seen some candidates tell their supporters to vote for them in every slot. Either those candidates didn't understand IRV themselves, or they didn't want to try to explain IRV to their supporters.
- mjevans 5y ago
  I prefer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulze_method https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulze_method Though with a candidate modification: add 'none of them / no confidence' as a virtual candidate that can never be removed by the runoff processes. If 'NoT' is the winner then the entire election is thrown out and all of the candidates are banned from the re-run.
  - godelski 5y ago
    Condorcet methods are also hard to explain to voters. The tabulation is rather complicated. At least in comparison to something like cardinal methods. In light of recent recounts I think this is a really important factor to consider. While Condorcet methods have the best VSE, they aren't winning by a huge margin. Besides, VSE isn't everything.
  - ClayShentrup 5y ago
    Condorcet methods perform, at best, only a little better than approval voting in computer simulations. And they have only ever been used in one US city (Marquette, MI) which shortly thereafter repealed it. And they are radically more complicated and unlikely to ever see the light of day. https://electionscience.github.io/vse-sim/vse.html https://electionscience.github.io/vse-sim/vse.html

troydavis 5y ago

You might be interested in my answer in another thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29266519#29277580 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29266519#29277580 I give an example from this year's Seattle primaries where RCV/IRV would have eliminated the candidate that most accurately reflects the electorate but Approval Voting would not have. That's not a trivial or rare situation, either, it's just such a simple race that it's easy to spot.