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All your assertions are actually complaints about our existing plurality voting system. IRV/Approval/Borda/Condorcet voting systems all improve those factors.

by 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
nitrogen 5y ago
It looks like nobody's linked to this older visualization yet, so I will: http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/ http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/ The non-monotonicity shown there for instant runoff voting seems to be more undesirable than any downsides of approval voting. IMO the point of elected representation is to be representative, not to elect specific people, so the possibility of a lesser known candidate winning over a major party's favorite candidate isn't a problem.
clolege 5y ago
> No voting system is perfect (Arrow's impossibility theorem) Arrow's impossibility theorem only says that no _ranked_ voting system is perfect, so it doesn't apply to cardinal methods such as Approval or Score. > 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. I agree, but I think the nature of the exploitation should still be considered. For IRV, we would be introducing a dependence on unauditable voting machines to tabulate votes, which would make it harder to verify the integrity of future elections.
- godelski 5y ago
  > Arrow's impossibility theorem only says that no _ranked_ voting system is perfect I tend to not get into this fight because 1) it extends to cardinal systems with Gibbard's and 2) Arrow's is more about social choice than voting.

by r00fus 5y ago

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

nitrogen 5y ago

It looks like nobody's linked to this older visualization yet, so I will: http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/ http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/ The non-monotonicity shown there for instant runoff voting seems to be more undesirable than any downsides of approval voting. IMO the point of elected representation is to be representative, not to elect specific people, so the possibility of a lesser known candidate winning over a major party's favorite candidate isn't a problem.

clolege 5y ago

> No voting system is perfect (Arrow's impossibility theorem) Arrow's impossibility theorem only says that no _ranked_ voting system is perfect, so it doesn't apply to cardinal methods such as Approval or Score. > 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. I agree, but I think the nature of the exploitation should still be considered. For IRV, we would be introducing a dependence on unauditable voting machines to tabulate votes, which would make it harder to verify the integrity of future elections.

godelski 5y ago
> Arrow's impossibility theorem only says that no _ranked_ voting system is perfect I tend to not get into this fight because 1) it extends to cardinal systems with Gibbard's and 2) Arrow's is more about social choice than voting.