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The comparison of different voting systems is what clued me in to this. A number of "generally" more optimal voting systems have degenerate outcomes in certain

by ip26 5y ago

The comparison of different voting systems is what clued me in to this. A number of "generally" more optimal voting systems have degenerate outcomes in certain edge cases which would lead to poor acceptability. It's not enough to have an optimal voting system- people also need to find the outcome somewhat acceptable to consent to the result. The current two-party-first-past-the-post system in the US is an example that is not especially optimal, but does pretty well on acceptability of outcome. People get mad their candidate lost, argue about voter fraud, argue about the electoral college... But the system never produces a selection people see as flat-out broken & invalid, unlike some more optimal systems. That is a pretty important feature.

kibwen 5y ago
> But the system never produces a selection people see as flat-out broken & invalid No, it absolutely does. Imagine a campaign issue where 60% of the electorate wants to plant more trees, and 40% wants to pave all the forests over with parking lots. Candidate A proposes planting oak trees, Candidate B proposes planting maple trees, and Candidate C loves him some asphalt. The final results: 30% for A, 30% for B, 40% for C. Vote-splitting like this is an unacceptable outcome of FPTP; it may not show up when we arbitrarily limit the system to two parties, but it's preposterous that we need to limit the vote to two candidates in order to avoid this outcome, and the two-party system produces all sorts of other problems on its own. This isn't to say that other voting systems are perfect, but they're all better than FPTP, which has no virtue other than being the simplest thing that can be called democracy at all (which mattered a lot in a world of illiterate people who had little familiarity with self-governance, but not so much these days).
DarylZero 5y ago
How do more optimal systems produce a selection that is "flat-out broken & invalid"? Are you saying that it will be perceived that way just because people don't understand the system?

by ip26 5y ago

kibwen 5y ago

> But the system never produces a selection people see as flat-out broken & invalid No, it absolutely does. Imagine a campaign issue where 60% of the electorate wants to plant more trees, and 40% wants to pave all the forests over with parking lots. Candidate A proposes planting oak trees, Candidate B proposes planting maple trees, and Candidate C loves him some asphalt. The final results: 30% for A, 30% for B, 40% for C. Vote-splitting like this is an unacceptable outcome of FPTP; it may not show up when we arbitrarily limit the system to two parties, but it's preposterous that we need to limit the vote to two candidates in order to avoid this outcome, and the two-party system produces all sorts of other problems on its own. This isn't to say that other voting systems are perfect, but they're all better than FPTP, which has no virtue other than being the simplest thing that can be called democracy at all (which mattered a lot in a world of illiterate people who had little familiarity with self-governance, but not so much these days).

DarylZero 5y ago

How do more optimal systems produce a selection that is "flat-out broken & invalid"? Are you saying that it will be perceived that way just because people don't understand the system?