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I used to be a hardcore pro-RCV supporter (I liked Yang, and Yang made RCV one of his main issues, outside UBI), but I've become a little more jaded in the last

I used to be a hardcore pro-RCV supporter (I liked Yang, and Yang made RCV one of his main issues, outside UBI), but I've become a little more jaded in the last few years. Empirically, it seems like RCV-IRV (RCV from here on) not much better than Plurality. For example, look at all the countries and cities with RCV and without. It's not at all clear to me that those with RCV are much better than those without. Both NZ and Australia are dominated by a large center-left and center-right party coalition. Sounds familiar. NZ has a housing crisis that is even worse than San Francisco. Australia is under the thumb of the mineral extraction industry. All sounds familiar. (Obviously NZ and Australia beat the US on some metrics, e.g. single payer healthcare if that's your thing, but there are plenty of European countries that have equivalent or better systems without RCV) There are hundreds of US cities with RCV. None of them are obviously better than those without. They still have all the same fights about zoning and bike lanes and public parking that other cities have. I'd still prefer RCV over Plurality, but I don't really think it's the panacea some of its supporters thing it is.

clolege 4y ago
I recently asked Fairvote volunteers which cities/countries they point to as RCV done “right”. All of the places I’m familiar with have poor reputations for their politics (SF, Australia) or have had problems with it (NY’s democratic primary, Alaska). All they could come up with is statistics that more women and people of color are elected with RCV, and there is not enough evidence yet that Approval voting will do the same.
- obelos 4y ago
  Those studies also don't demonstrate any causality, only correlation. It seems not unlikely that districts willing to try an experimental voting method also are more interested in running diverse candidates.
godelski 4y ago
You might want to look into cardinal methods (I have a longer post above). They are not vulnerable to the strong spoiler effect (when you like two candidates a lot they can end up splitting the vote in RCV). The most popular ones are STAR and Approval. They're both trivial to implement, infinitely scalable, and trivial to understand the tallying process (all while providing high VSE).
tunesmith 4y ago
Well I think you'd need to draw more of a causal link between those outcomes and the voting system. Maybe their elections really all are democratic outcomes, and there's something completely independent of the ballot-counting process that is causing bad outcomes. If you zoom out and think about the entire voting process, it's rife with inefficiencies and bad assumptions: A ballot proposal implies that the proposal is well-described and doesn't have perverse effects. A voting day implies the voting population is ready to decide, and fully understands the proposal, and that everyone with an interest is aware of that interest and has an opportunity to vote. A counting method implies that the outcome will actually reflect the democratic will of the population.
lambertsimnel 4y ago
NZ and a great many European countries use neither plurality voting nor RCV-IRV for their nationwide legislative elections. (France and some US states use a two-round system, which is essentially a bastardised form of RCV-IRV.) Some European countries (at least France and Ireland) use RCV-IRV or a two-round system for their presidential elections, but Australia, NZ and several European countries are constitutional monarchies, and therefore don't have presidential elections.

clolege 4y ago

I recently asked Fairvote volunteers which cities/countries they point to as RCV done “right”. All of the places I’m familiar with have poor reputations for their politics (SF, Australia) or have had problems with it (NY’s democratic primary, Alaska). All they could come up with is statistics that more women and people of color are elected with RCV, and there is not enough evidence yet that Approval voting will do the same.

obelos 4y ago
Those studies also don't demonstrate any causality, only correlation. It seems not unlikely that districts willing to try an experimental voting method also are more interested in running diverse candidates.

godelski 4y ago

You might want to look into cardinal methods (I have a longer post above). They are not vulnerable to the strong spoiler effect (when you like two candidates a lot they can end up splitting the vote in RCV). The most popular ones are STAR and Approval. They're both trivial to implement, infinitely scalable, and trivial to understand the tallying process (all while providing high VSE).

tunesmith 4y ago

Well I think you'd need to draw more of a causal link between those outcomes and the voting system. Maybe their elections really all are democratic outcomes, and there's something completely independent of the ballot-counting process that is causing bad outcomes. If you zoom out and think about the entire voting process, it's rife with inefficiencies and bad assumptions: A ballot proposal implies that the proposal is well-described and doesn't have perverse effects. A voting day implies the voting population is ready to decide, and fully understands the proposal, and that everyone with an interest is aware of that interest and has an opportunity to vote. A counting method implies that the outcome will actually reflect the democratic will of the population.

lambertsimnel 4y ago

NZ and a great many European countries use neither plurality voting nor RCV-IRV for their nationwide legislative elections. (France and some US states use a two-round system, which is essentially a bastardised form of RCV-IRV.) Some European countries (at least France and Ireland) use RCV-IRV or a two-round system for their presidential elections, but Australia, NZ and several European countries are constitutional monarchies, and therefore don't have presidential elections.