4 ms·

RCV != IRV. Everyone is reporting this as a failure of Ranked Choice Voting, but it's actually a failure of Instant Runoff Voting. There are other, better, mor

RCV != IRV. Everyone is reporting this as a failure of Ranked Choice Voting, but it's actually a failure of Instant Runoff Voting. There are other, better, more reliable Ranked Choice alternatives, and any serious expert in voting systems would tell you that IRV has as many weird failures as FPTP. http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/ http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/ is a good overview of different methods.

gamegoblin 4y ago
In US political vernacular, RCV == IRV. This is just a case of terminology getting warped, but it is what it is.
- lalaithion 4y ago
  Yeah, but we should push back against this, lest it poison every attempt at getting better non-IRV RCV implemented.
  - froh 4y ago
    that's the idea behind falsely mislabeling irv as rcv...
  - gamegoblin 4y ago
    I think it's far too late for that. I don't know if I have ever seen any movement to push back against "wrong" vernacular succeed. Consider the more recent "coronavirus" which is equivalent to COVID-19 in the vernacular, even though it's really just a family of viruses and COVID-19 is an illness caused by a particular coronavirus instance (SARS CoV-2).
    - jacobr1 4y ago
      Agreed - you can't fight back against labeling by telling people they are wrong. Instead to you must fight-forward with a new proposal going in a different direction.
    - fdsjgfklsfd 4y ago
      99% of people who call it "RCV" have no idea how it works. Just call it "Hare RCV" in the same context as "Schulze RCV" or "Minimax RCV" and they'll be forced to confront their ignorance.
- godelski 4y ago
  Honestly I have the term RCV. It is a specific type of ranked choice systems and now we have to refer to that class as Ordinal to not be confused with the specific variant. And it leads to a lot of misunderstandings like this.
twblalock 4y ago
This whole conversation is a good demonstration of why FPTP succeeds and is popular -- it is easy to understand, and most of the other systems are not. When a voting system is hard to understand, people will tend to see conspiracies and fraud even though there isn't any, and they will lose trust in the system. With FPTP, every voter casts one vote for one candidate, and the candidate with the most votes wins. Simple. If you need a website with diagrams to explain the abstruse differences between different voting mechanisms, I think you've already failed. This stuff is certainly of academic interest but the average voter cannot handle it.
- lalaithion 4y ago
  This is why I endorse STAR voting: https://www.equal.vote/star https://www.equal.vote/star. The explanation behind it is simple enough for most people to understand, because it's a combination of 5 star ratings, which are everywhere in society, and FPTP.
  - bena 4y ago
    At worst, you've made single vote FPTP with extra steps. Give your guy 5, everyone else 0. The goal is to get in the runoff and to keep others out. If everyone adopts this strategy, it's the same as FPTP. At best, you're made RCV/IRV with extra steps. Because still you give your guy 5 stars, but now there's people you do not want at all. They're 0s. Then there are people you're ok with, but would rather have your guy win. They're 1s. That way, if the runoff is between one of your 0s and one of your 1s, you're making sure a 0 doesn't win. Which is exactly RCV/IRV where you've ranked them 1, 2, and 3. Past that, candidates towards the bottom of the ballot are going to get shafted. There is incredible decision fatigue in having to rank everyone 0 - 5 stars. After a while, you will either give up or just start picking more arbitrarily. RCV/IRV is fine. Condorcet is fine. Star voting is just bad.
    - lalaithion 4y ago
      https://www.equal.vote/accuracy https://www.equal.vote/accuracy Star voting outperforms IRV on both 100% honest and 100% strategic election strategies. Decision fatigue is easier for Star than for IRV—just rate everyone you don't care about as a 2, whereas for IRV, if you want to distinguish between "8 people I don't know" and "person I hate", you have to decide on a ranking order for the 8 people.

gamegoblin 4y ago

In US political vernacular, RCV == IRV. This is just a case of terminology getting warped, but it is what it is.

lalaithion 4y ago
Yeah, but we should push back against this, lest it poison every attempt at getting better non-IRV RCV implemented.
- froh 4y ago
  that's the idea behind falsely mislabeling irv as rcv...
- gamegoblin 4y ago
  I think it's far too late for that. I don't know if I have ever seen any movement to push back against "wrong" vernacular succeed. Consider the more recent "coronavirus" which is equivalent to COVID-19 in the vernacular, even though it's really just a family of viruses and COVID-19 is an illness caused by a particular coronavirus instance (SARS CoV-2).
  - jacobr1 4y ago
    Agreed - you can't fight back against labeling by telling people they are wrong. Instead to you must fight-forward with a new proposal going in a different direction.
  - fdsjgfklsfd 4y ago
    99% of people who call it "RCV" have no idea how it works. Just call it "Hare RCV" in the same context as "Schulze RCV" or "Minimax RCV" and they'll be forced to confront their ignorance.
godelski 4y ago
Honestly I have the term RCV. It is a specific type of ranked choice systems and now we have to refer to that class as Ordinal to not be confused with the specific variant. And it leads to a lot of misunderstandings like this.

twblalock 4y ago

This whole conversation is a good demonstration of why FPTP succeeds and is popular -- it is easy to understand, and most of the other systems are not. When a voting system is hard to understand, people will tend to see conspiracies and fraud even though there isn't any, and they will lose trust in the system. With FPTP, every voter casts one vote for one candidate, and the candidate with the most votes wins. Simple. If you need a website with diagrams to explain the abstruse differences between different voting mechanisms, I think you've already failed. This stuff is certainly of academic interest but the average voter cannot handle it.

lalaithion 4y ago
This is why I endorse STAR voting: https://www.equal.vote/star https://www.equal.vote/star. The explanation behind it is simple enough for most people to understand, because it's a combination of 5 star ratings, which are everywhere in society, and FPTP.
- bena 4y ago
  At worst, you've made single vote FPTP with extra steps. Give your guy 5, everyone else 0. The goal is to get in the runoff and to keep others out. If everyone adopts this strategy, it's the same as FPTP. At best, you're made RCV/IRV with extra steps. Because still you give your guy 5 stars, but now there's people you do not want at all. They're 0s. Then there are people you're ok with, but would rather have your guy win. They're 1s. That way, if the runoff is between one of your 0s and one of your 1s, you're making sure a 0 doesn't win. Which is exactly RCV/IRV where you've ranked them 1, 2, and 3. Past that, candidates towards the bottom of the ballot are going to get shafted. There is incredible decision fatigue in having to rank everyone 0 - 5 stars. After a while, you will either give up or just start picking more arbitrarily. RCV/IRV is fine. Condorcet is fine. Star voting is just bad.
  - lalaithion 4y ago
    https://www.equal.vote/accuracy https://www.equal.vote/accuracy Star voting outperforms IRV on both 100% honest and 100% strategic election strategies. Decision fatigue is easier for Star than for IRV—just rate everyone you don't care about as a 2, whereas for IRV, if you want to distinguish between "8 people I don't know" and "person I hate", you have to decide on a ranking order for the 8 people.