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Superficially it's simpler to understand. The actual tactics are even more complex than FPTP (and unlike ranked choice, it's not potential edge cases where rank

Superficially it's simpler to understand. The actual tactics are even more complex than FPTP (and unlike ranked choice, it's not potential edge cases where rank order matters but every vote involving a decision about how low a bar of "wouldn't absolutely hate them running the country" to set for the people you approve vs the "every additional vote I approve might hurt the candidate I actually want to win) I do agree that it tends to be depolarising in the candidates that win, but at the same time it still strongly incentivises moderates to ensure the most partisan alternative candidates get plenty of campaign airtime (both to scare moderates who identify with the other side of the aisle into putting "approve" next to their relatively moderate name, and as a "dirty tricks" campaign to promote the idea of bullet voting the other side's radicals to the other side's base)

clolege 4y ago
> The actual tactics are even more complex than FPTP Maybe marginally? How would you describe the tactics of FPTP? They may be simpler, but in some elections it is the difference of expressing your actual preferences and voting for "who you have to." The nice thing with AV that I often see overlooked is that it always in a voters interest to vote for their favorite candidate. This is called the favorite betrayal criterion, and nearly all ordinal voting methods (inc FPTP) fail it. Even still though - the UX, strategy, counting, and expressing results of ranked choice voting (IRV) is considerably more complex than both AV and FPTP. And its failure of the precinct summability criterion is a huge liability that we could just avoid entirely. If you are in favor of other types of ranking, such as Borda, why not just Score? Score is counted identically, but without the restriction of "you can only vote for one candidate in each rank or we'll toss your ballot." I agree that it would be nicer to give a more nuanced vote than just like/dislike, but I personally see AV as a stepping stone to other, more nuanced forms of Cardinal Voting. And who knows? Many online interfaces have moved from the star system in favor of thumbs up/down, and none that I'm aware of use ranking. Maybe there is an argument for a simpler UX in order to get more people to engage.

clolege 4y ago

> The actual tactics are even more complex than FPTP Maybe marginally? How would you describe the tactics of FPTP? They may be simpler, but in some elections it is the difference of expressing your actual preferences and voting for "who you have to." The nice thing with AV that I often see overlooked is that it always in a voters interest to vote for their favorite candidate. This is called the favorite betrayal criterion, and nearly all ordinal voting methods (inc FPTP) fail it. Even still though - the UX, strategy, counting, and expressing results of ranked choice voting (IRV) is considerably more complex than both AV and FPTP. And its failure of the precinct summability criterion is a huge liability that we could just avoid entirely. If you are in favor of other types of ranking, such as Borda, why not just Score? Score is counted identically, but without the restriction of "you can only vote for one candidate in each rank or we'll toss your ballot." I agree that it would be nicer to give a more nuanced vote than just like/dislike, but I personally see AV as a stepping stone to other, more nuanced forms of Cardinal Voting. And who knows? Many online interfaces have moved from the star system in favor of thumbs up/down, and none that I'm aware of use ranking. Maybe there is an argument for a simpler UX in order to get more people to engage.