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In my view, the priority of a democratic system is to ensure peaceful transitions of power by providing the perception of fairness. The perception of an electi

In my view, the priority of a democratic system is to ensure peaceful transitions of power by providing the perception of fairness. The perception of an election being fair is more important than an election being actually fair, although both at once is obviously desirable. My concern with sophisticated voting schemes like Condorcet or RCV is that these systems may be too complicated for some unsophisticated voters to understand, and therefore risk the perception of unfairness. FPTP is less fair, but is easy to understand and is therefore easy to perceive as fair. FPTP is simple enough that any common fool can hold a mock election with his friends and trivially calculate the winner. Send that same man to the Condorcet method wikipedia page and I think his eyes will glaze over before he figures it out. It may be the case that my concern is misplaced, so I support testing these voting methods in low-stake elections, such as this one in Alaska. But I recommend caution when applying these methods to high-stake elections. Peaceful transitions of power is more important than anything else, and anything that might risk that peace should be considered with caution.

rayiner 4y ago
I agree 100%. The perception of fairness is the most important thing. Elections need to be transparent and simple enough that even idiots and skeptics of government still must begrudgingly acknowledge the results.
- bosswipe 4y ago
- phkahler 4y ago
  >> The perception of fairness is the most important thing. And yet, we add a single level of quantization (the electoral college) and half the country loses their mind whenever the "majority vote" candidate doesn't win. Maybe something a little more complicated would be good ;-)
  - rayiner 4y ago
    The electoral college isn’t a voting rule (for deciding who wins) it’s a power distribution rule (for deciding who does the electing). But you’re correct that even that modest complexity causes people to have a fit every four years when it doesn’t reflect their intuitive understanding of how elections should work.
sbf501 4y ago
Why would you pick out voting when our entire political system is complicated and has a direct impact on people's lives? Look at the electoral college. My 80-year-old parents still have no idea how it works, and IMHO it is just as important as voting to ensure faith in the system. How can we trust voting when a governor can appoint electors and subvert the will of the people? EDIT: Grammar: my parents are 80 years old, I don't have 80 parents.
- MichaelCollins 4y ago
  > Look at the electoral college. My 80 parents still have no idea how it works, It's the devil they know. An obvious broken system that nevertheless has a track record of delivering the priority goal, peaceful transitions of power, is safer than the unknown.
  - Spivak 4y ago
    Also, in some weird twisted way, it's fun. It's like arguing over the ref's calls at a football game. I know how this will come off but it's true -- one of the oddities of the US political system is that despite it being bitterly polarized the majority is largely unaffected by politics in any meaningful way. This isn't to say that politics couldn't have big effects on people's lives but despite the marketing both parties are generally interested in protecting the status quo, not disrupting existing power structures, and making small incremental changes. Again I really hate to distill it down to this but if you're white, above the poverty line, and put as much distance as possible between you and the justice system, to first order it doesn't really matter who you vote for -- your interests are protected. The biggest divides between the two parties are policies that affect vulnerable populations.
- intrasight 4y ago
  >My 80 parents still have no idea how it works This last election demonstrated that nobody knows how it works - because of the complexity and unwritten "norms", and therefore we end up leaving up to judges to decide the election.
  - 4y ago
greenthrow 4y ago
This comes off as concern trolling. I don't know your underlying political biases, so just reading it neutrally, that's how it comes off. Lots of places have been using RCV for some time. It is not hard to understand. These concerns about the importance of the "perception of fairness" are never brought up when it comes to issues like voter ID laws, elections being on work days, election holidays, publicly funded elections, etc.
- d23 4y ago
  On top of that, it's clearly something each individual would prefer. If I don't get my first choice, I'd rather have my vote go to my second choice than essentially no one. I know you're being downvoted, but I agree with your assessment re: concern trolling. The position seems disingenuous.
  - jacobr1 4y ago
    The general points is valid one, I don't think it was disingenuous (though I agree it is probably mistaken). The broader concerns is legitimacy. It is more important that there be a general acceptance of the election results, and peaceful transition of power, than the results themselves be optimally fair. That said, there is no reason we can't have both and plenty of jurisdictions do have fairer systems without collapsing in civil war. But we should lose sight of fact that gaining buy-in from the populace at large is one of the factors required for successful democratic-governance.
- yyyk 4y ago
  >Lots of places have been using RCV for some time. It is not hard to understand. >These concerns about the importance of the "perception of fairness" are never brought up when it comes to issues like voter ID laws, elections being on work days, election holidays, publicly funded elections, etc. Lots of places on Earth have solved all these issues: an easily available ID, election holiday or at least early voting, public funding, automatic voter registration, etc. To those places, IRV is arguably not a very good idea, and people who live there might note this even on HN. You shouldn't reduce everything to US partisan politics.
jacques_chester 4y ago
Australians are, on the average, no smarter or dumber than Americans. We have voted with RCV for a century and in Australia it is compulsory to vote, so the below-average intelligence voter is made to show up as well as the above-average voter. It works because it's piss easy to understand "number them in the order you like them". Millions of people vote this way for multiple levels of government. The USA is not a special place with a different kind of human and the Australian experience can be generalised to the American case. RCV works and will continue to work just fine.
- godelski 4y ago
  Isn't Australia also highly divisive over politics? I mean you all have coalitions and that's great and all because more parties but I'm not sure I see that as meaningfully different than what the US has where coalitions just call themselves a party (let's be real, AOC and Biden are not in the same "party" but they are definitely the same coalition). I've always seen Australia as a example of how ordinal systems still perpetuate the two party/coalition system.
  - jacques_chester 4y ago
    I live in the US but I keep up with the home country. Australian politics is, relative to US politics, a hugging contest with the parties all singing kumbaya with perfect choristry. As for the two-party system, it's not perpetuated by how you count the vote. It's perpetuated by the economics of capturing single-member electorates. Australia has multi-member electorates for its Senate and most state upper houses and, unsurprisingly, that's where minor parties largely succeed in gaining representation.
    - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
      > it's not perpetuated by how you count the vote. It's perpetuated by the economics of capturing single-member electorates One of the simplest tweaks to the American system might be consolidating e.g. Senate elections so that the states elect two Senators at one time. It's simpler than combining House districts in that it's merely a scheduling change.
mjamesaustin 4y ago
Approval voting has better outcomes than RCV and is also easier to understand. Vote for as many options as you like, whoever gets the most votes wins. I wish this system was getting as much attention as Ranked Choice.
- MichaelCollins 4y ago
  I agree that approval voting is easy to understand. Nevertheless approval voting may violate the perception of fairness in communities where the meme "one person, one vote" is entrenched as the standard of fairness.
- phkahler 4y ago
  That doesn't help a 3rd party candidate beat the 2 big party candidate. If I want the 3rd party guy but say either of the other 2 is acceptable, one of them will still win. If I refuse to put either of the big 2 as a selection, I'm "throwing away" my vote. IRV allows me to vote the 3rd option as my primary choice as a meaningful strategy.
  - fdsjgfklsfd 4y ago
    You've got this backwards. Under Approval Voting, it is always safe to vote honestly for your true favorite, which increases the visibility (and perception of electability) of third parties. Under IRV, it is not safe to put your honest favorite as your primary choice, or you risk creating a spoiler effect that helps the greater of two evils win.
- tunesmith 4y ago
  I tried unsuccessfully to get my HOA to adopt approval voting. Their current voting system has so many flaws that in this case approval voting almost "strictly dominates" their current system, with the only change being to "count all checkboxes" rather than "throw out ballots with too many checkboxes". The vote to adopt it failed, 4-3, partly because the HOA's lawyers (who have a vested interest in the old method) gave "legal advice" that it might not be legal, and party because one of the HOA members thought it "sounded weird".
arrosenberg 4y ago
Bad take. Right wing nationalists are going to call election fairness into question anyways, we may as well adopt a system that produces popular results.
- bosswipe 4y ago
NickM 4y ago
I think this is a very valid concern, not only for the peaceful transition of power, but also for the pragmatic fact that we will never get off FPTP by replacing it with methods that seem worse to many people. This problem has already happened once in Burlington, VT, where RCV was repealed shortly after it was implemented due to (arguably valid) perceptions of unfairness in the 2009 election there. Say what you want about Approval voting, but this is also one of the areas where Approval voting is clearly better. It's very easy to understand, and much simpler to tabulate the results when it's still just "the person with the most votes wins".
- jacques_chester 4y ago
  There are more places than Burlington where RCV has been used.
  - MichaelCollins 4y ago
    It works in some places but not others. This shouldn't be surprising; the math works the same everywhere but the perception of fairness is a social and cultural phenomenon.
    - jacques_chester 4y ago
      Australia didn't inherit RCV from the UK. It wasn't present among the convicts. It doesn't magically come from the water supply. It was introduced to replace FPTP. Again: Americans are not a different sort of human from Australians. The problem is that losers are muddying the waters, not that the water was undrinkable by American minds.
      - MichaelCollins 4y ago
        > Again: Americans are not a different sort of human from Australians. I'm not talking about biology, I'm talking about culture. I thought I made that clear, and I'm sure you understand the distinction.
CalChris 4y ago
You will be happy to know that there was no post election violence in Alaska after their special election to replace Don Young.
dskloet 4y ago
You don't really need to run an experiment on Alaska. There is a long history. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_and_use_of_instant-runoff_voting https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_and_use_of_instant-r...
ajcp 4y ago
Maybe a* priority, but THE priority of a democratic system is to provide for the expression of it's electorates political will. In a representative model this is via elections the end in the formation of a government that enacts that will. "Fairness" has nothing to do with FPTP and winner-take-all unless "take" is outsized to the constituency it represents. While I agree that FPTP is much simpler in concept, it is massively less representative in the context of the US system. An informed electorate is an engage electorate, and it's political processes should be concerned with lifting up it's lowest common denominator, not dragging down it's highest.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
fdsjgfklsfd 4y ago
The only reason Condorcet systems are "complicated" is because they are always described along with their tiebreaking process. With any other voting system, the tiebreaking process is considered to be a cursory detail, and a particular voting method can have different types of tiebreakers while still being considered the same system. Condorcet itself is simple: Look at each pair of candidates and see who was ranked higher by a majority of voters. Elect the candidate who beats all the others.

rayiner 4y ago

I agree 100%. The perception of fairness is the most important thing. Elections need to be transparent and simple enough that even idiots and skeptics of government still must begrudgingly acknowledge the results.

bosswipe 4y ago
phkahler 4y ago
>> The perception of fairness is the most important thing. And yet, we add a single level of quantization (the electoral college) and half the country loses their mind whenever the "majority vote" candidate doesn't win. Maybe something a little more complicated would be good ;-)
- rayiner 4y ago
  The electoral college isn’t a voting rule (for deciding who wins) it’s a power distribution rule (for deciding who does the electing). But you’re correct that even that modest complexity causes people to have a fit every four years when it doesn’t reflect their intuitive understanding of how elections should work.

sbf501 4y ago

Why would you pick out voting when our entire political system is complicated and has a direct impact on people's lives? Look at the electoral college. My 80-year-old parents still have no idea how it works, and IMHO it is just as important as voting to ensure faith in the system. How can we trust voting when a governor can appoint electors and subvert the will of the people? EDIT: Grammar: my parents are 80 years old, I don't have 80 parents.

MichaelCollins 4y ago
> Look at the electoral college. My 80 parents still have no idea how it works, It's the devil they know. An obvious broken system that nevertheless has a track record of delivering the priority goal, peaceful transitions of power, is safer than the unknown.
- Spivak 4y ago
  Also, in some weird twisted way, it's fun. It's like arguing over the ref's calls at a football game. I know how this will come off but it's true -- one of the oddities of the US political system is that despite it being bitterly polarized the majority is largely unaffected by politics in any meaningful way. This isn't to say that politics couldn't have big effects on people's lives but despite the marketing both parties are generally interested in protecting the status quo, not disrupting existing power structures, and making small incremental changes. Again I really hate to distill it down to this but if you're white, above the poverty line, and put as much distance as possible between you and the justice system, to first order it doesn't really matter who you vote for -- your interests are protected. The biggest divides between the two parties are policies that affect vulnerable populations.
intrasight 4y ago
>My 80 parents still have no idea how it works This last election demonstrated that nobody knows how it works - because of the complexity and unwritten "norms", and therefore we end up leaving up to judges to decide the election.
- 4y ago

greenthrow 4y ago

This comes off as concern trolling. I don't know your underlying political biases, so just reading it neutrally, that's how it comes off. Lots of places have been using RCV for some time. It is not hard to understand. These concerns about the importance of the "perception of fairness" are never brought up when it comes to issues like voter ID laws, elections being on work days, election holidays, publicly funded elections, etc.

d23 4y ago
On top of that, it's clearly something each individual would prefer. If I don't get my first choice, I'd rather have my vote go to my second choice than essentially no one. I know you're being downvoted, but I agree with your assessment re: concern trolling. The position seems disingenuous.
- jacobr1 4y ago
  The general points is valid one, I don't think it was disingenuous (though I agree it is probably mistaken). The broader concerns is legitimacy. It is more important that there be a general acceptance of the election results, and peaceful transition of power, than the results themselves be optimally fair. That said, there is no reason we can't have both and plenty of jurisdictions do have fairer systems without collapsing in civil war. But we should lose sight of fact that gaining buy-in from the populace at large is one of the factors required for successful democratic-governance.
yyyk 4y ago
>Lots of places have been using RCV for some time. It is not hard to understand. >These concerns about the importance of the "perception of fairness" are never brought up when it comes to issues like voter ID laws, elections being on work days, election holidays, publicly funded elections, etc. Lots of places on Earth have solved all these issues: an easily available ID, election holiday or at least early voting, public funding, automatic voter registration, etc. To those places, IRV is arguably not a very good idea, and people who live there might note this even on HN. You shouldn't reduce everything to US partisan politics.

jacques_chester 4y ago

Australians are, on the average, no smarter or dumber than Americans. We have voted with RCV for a century and in Australia it is compulsory to vote, so the below-average intelligence voter is made to show up as well as the above-average voter. It works because it's piss easy to understand "number them in the order you like them". Millions of people vote this way for multiple levels of government. The USA is not a special place with a different kind of human and the Australian experience can be generalised to the American case. RCV works and will continue to work just fine.

godelski 4y ago
Isn't Australia also highly divisive over politics? I mean you all have coalitions and that's great and all because more parties but I'm not sure I see that as meaningfully different than what the US has where coalitions just call themselves a party (let's be real, AOC and Biden are not in the same "party" but they are definitely the same coalition). I've always seen Australia as a example of how ordinal systems still perpetuate the two party/coalition system.
- jacques_chester 4y ago
  I live in the US but I keep up with the home country. Australian politics is, relative to US politics, a hugging contest with the parties all singing kumbaya with perfect choristry. As for the two-party system, it's not perpetuated by how you count the vote. It's perpetuated by the economics of capturing single-member electorates. Australia has multi-member electorates for its Senate and most state upper houses and, unsurprisingly, that's where minor parties largely succeed in gaining representation.
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    > it's not perpetuated by how you count the vote. It's perpetuated by the economics of capturing single-member electorates One of the simplest tweaks to the American system might be consolidating e.g. Senate elections so that the states elect two Senators at one time. It's simpler than combining House districts in that it's merely a scheduling change.

mjamesaustin 4y ago

Approval voting has better outcomes than RCV and is also easier to understand. Vote for as many options as you like, whoever gets the most votes wins. I wish this system was getting as much attention as Ranked Choice.

MichaelCollins 4y ago
I agree that approval voting is easy to understand. Nevertheless approval voting may violate the perception of fairness in communities where the meme "one person, one vote" is entrenched as the standard of fairness.
phkahler 4y ago
That doesn't help a 3rd party candidate beat the 2 big party candidate. If I want the 3rd party guy but say either of the other 2 is acceptable, one of them will still win. If I refuse to put either of the big 2 as a selection, I'm "throwing away" my vote. IRV allows me to vote the 3rd option as my primary choice as a meaningful strategy.
- fdsjgfklsfd 4y ago
  You've got this backwards. Under Approval Voting, it is always safe to vote honestly for your true favorite, which increases the visibility (and perception of electability) of third parties. Under IRV, it is not safe to put your honest favorite as your primary choice, or you risk creating a spoiler effect that helps the greater of two evils win.
tunesmith 4y ago
I tried unsuccessfully to get my HOA to adopt approval voting. Their current voting system has so many flaws that in this case approval voting almost "strictly dominates" their current system, with the only change being to "count all checkboxes" rather than "throw out ballots with too many checkboxes". The vote to adopt it failed, 4-3, partly because the HOA's lawyers (who have a vested interest in the old method) gave "legal advice" that it might not be legal, and party because one of the HOA members thought it "sounded weird".

arrosenberg 4y ago

Bad take. Right wing nationalists are going to call election fairness into question anyways, we may as well adopt a system that produces popular results.

bosswipe 4y ago

NickM 4y ago

I think this is a very valid concern, not only for the peaceful transition of power, but also for the pragmatic fact that we will never get off FPTP by replacing it with methods that seem worse to many people. This problem has already happened once in Burlington, VT, where RCV was repealed shortly after it was implemented due to (arguably valid) perceptions of unfairness in the 2009 election there. Say what you want about Approval voting, but this is also one of the areas where Approval voting is clearly better. It's very easy to understand, and much simpler to tabulate the results when it's still just "the person with the most votes wins".

jacques_chester 4y ago
There are more places than Burlington where RCV has been used.
- MichaelCollins 4y ago
  It works in some places but not others. This shouldn't be surprising; the math works the same everywhere but the perception of fairness is a social and cultural phenomenon.
  - jacques_chester 4y ago
    Australia didn't inherit RCV from the UK. It wasn't present among the convicts. It doesn't magically come from the water supply. It was introduced to replace FPTP. Again: Americans are not a different sort of human from Australians. The problem is that losers are muddying the waters, not that the water was undrinkable by American minds.
    - MichaelCollins 4y ago
      > Again: Americans are not a different sort of human from Australians. I'm not talking about biology, I'm talking about culture. I thought I made that clear, and I'm sure you understand the distinction.

CalChris 4y ago

You will be happy to know that there was no post election violence in Alaska after their special election to replace Don Young.

dskloet 4y ago

You don't really need to run an experiment on Alaska. There is a long history. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_and_use_of_instant-runoff_voting https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_and_use_of_instant-r...

ajcp 4y ago

Maybe a* priority, but THE priority of a democratic system is to provide for the expression of it's electorates political will. In a representative model this is via elections the end in the formation of a government that enacts that will. "Fairness" has nothing to do with FPTP and winner-take-all unless "take" is outsized to the constituency it represents. While I agree that FPTP is much simpler in concept, it is massively less representative in the context of the US system. An informed electorate is an engage electorate, and it's political processes should be concerned with lifting up it's lowest common denominator, not dragging down it's highest.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

fdsjgfklsfd 4y ago

The only reason Condorcet systems are "complicated" is because they are always described along with their tiebreaking process. With any other voting system, the tiebreaking process is considered to be a cursory detail, and a particular voting method can have different types of tiebreakers while still being considered the same system. Condorcet itself is simple: Look at each pair of candidates and see who was ranked higher by a majority of voters. Elect the candidate who beats all the others.