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This is actually not the case - RCV suffers from the "center squeeze" effect [1], in which moderates are squeezed out in the early rounds. That said, things lik

This is actually not the case - RCV suffers from the "center squeeze" effect [1], in which moderates are squeezed out in the early rounds. That said, things like Approval have the opposite problem, in which moderates are given an advantage (some approval people will say this is a feature, not a bug). For an edge case, consider an election with 3 factions: socialists, libertarians, and fascists. There is also a 4th candidate, a boring status quo moderate, running. Imagine the populace is split 1/3 between the first 3 factions as their 1st choice, but everyone selects boring status quo moderates as their 2nd choice, because everyone in the first 3 factions hates the other ideologies. The boring status quo moderates get eliminated in round 1, and eventually 1 of the 3 extremes will win, resulting in 2/3 of the country being very angry. Not ideal. Obviously this is just an unrealistic edge case, but it demonstrates the effect. [1] https://electowiki.org/wiki/Center_squeeze https://electowiki.org/wiki/Center_squeeze

godelski 4y ago
> That said, things like Approval have the opposite problem, in which moderates are given an advantage (some approval people will say this is a feature, not a bug). This is a weird way to say that representing the population is a bug. Your example election would be a compelling argument if population preference was more of a multimodal distribution rather than closer to a unimodal distribution. Despite the US's current division, it is nowhere near as divided as your scenario.
- gamegoblin 4y ago
  To be clear, I personally prefer approval to IRV. But raw approval gives undue advantage to moderates. Approval-to-runoff being clearly superior than raw approval, for this reason. And STAR being a little bit better than that. The RCV people's main criticism of Approval is that it doesn't allow you to express different levels of support, and they aren't totally wrong (even though their preferred mechanism of IRV doesn't get them there, either). I think (without data, happy to be proven wrong) that the US population is fairly strongly bimodal on most issues. Many issues that people care a lot about (for better or worse...) have two clear centers of gravity, e.g. for gun control and abortion most people are in the orbit of a "mostly ban" or "mostly allow" group, with very few people falling into some nuanced middle ground.
  - godelski 4y ago
    > But raw approval gives undue advantage to moderates. If by "moderates" you mean "most liked" then I'm not sure what the problem is here. The point of voting is to find the most universally agreed upon ruler. You may call this unfair, but I would say that it is MORE unfair to give advantage to fringe groups rather than giving advantage to the masses. I thought the point of democracies was about having rule by the masses. If you think fringe groups should have the advantage I'd like to hear your argument.
    - gamegoblin 4y ago
      > If you think fringe groups should have the advantage I'd like to hear your argument. I'm not sure what gave you the impression I think that. My comments clearly suggest that my view is that STAR > Approval-to-runoff > Approval > RCV-IRV > Plurality. My reasoning is that I place a very high value on the condorcet and favorite betrayal criteria.
      - godelski 4y ago
        My apologies then. It was the italicized "undue" that made me think that this was your position. I read it as "undeserving". As for the condorcet winner, that is quite hard actually. But if we consider a weak condorcet winner (where it is true 90+% of the time), that isn't as hard. I do think simplicity, transparency, and reduced vulnerability to strategy is a worthwhile trade-off for a strong condorcet winner. But of course, this is just my personal opinion and what's the preferred optima depends a lot on personal preferences.
  - crazygringo 4y ago
    > I think (without data, happy to be proven wrong) that the US population is fairly strongly bimodal on most issues. Many issues that people care a lot about (for better or worse...) have two clear centers of gravity, We'll you'll be happy then! :) Because this is commonly believed but actually totally untrue. There's an entire book about it, "Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America" by Morris P. Fiorina. The upshot is basically that if you ask people binary yes/no questions (or binary left/right votes), the population appears divided, bimodal. But whenever you give a sliding scale in surveys, it becomes abundantly clear that the population is centrist -- unimodal. Even for gun control and abortion, the most hot-button issues.
- lostdog 4y ago
  Voters will realize that approval gives benefits to centrists, and they will change their voting strategies and stop approving centrists. None of the math analyses shared here take that into account. For example, say three fictitious candidates are running for dogcatcher, Bernie, Hillary, and Trump. Does your hardcore Bernie supporter friend believe that approving Hillary doesn't hurt Bernie? Will they choose not to approve centrist candidates, leading to extreme results in elections?
  - godelski 4y ago
    If centrist is defined by the minimization of distance between a population's preference and a candidate's position then I don't see the problem. Why would you want an extremist? Or why would you want someone that is less representative of the population as a whole? Isn't the point of democracy to minimize this distance? I'd actually argue that if approval was used Bernie would have won. One can vote Bernie honestly but also approve of Hillary as a safety. And this would have had a larger edge with Score or STAR. Bernie was quite popular and frankly a lot of people that also voted Trump also liked Bernie because he was an outsider.
    - lostdog 4y ago
      > One can vote Bernie honestly but also approve of Hillary as a safety. No, that's the thing. Many people want to express their preference, and really really didn't want to "approve" of these two people at the same level. It's exactly the same with... > Bernie was quite popular and frankly a lot of people that also voted Trump also liked Bernie because he was an outsider. ...where these people may have felt positively about Bernie, but they really really preferred Trump, and they would not have "approved" of Bernie if that meant putting him at the same level as Trump. So now you have two groups of people who would have preferred Bernie as their 2nd place choice, but decide not to "approve" him in order to help their 1st place choices win. Supporters of approval voting just keep ignoring this dynamic of how real people vote in the real world.
      - godelski 4y ago
        So I think your points are valid. I also just want to state that pretty much every cardinal voter I know prefers STAR then Score then Approval. I'm STAR 5, Score 5, approval 4 (only slight preference of STAR over Score). But I think that resolves your concerns. It is just that in practice we find that Approval is easier to argue for and is good enough. From a personal stand point I'll argue with technical people about voting systems if we got approval but I wouldn't be an evangelist anymore.

godelski 4y ago

> That said, things like Approval have the opposite problem, in which moderates are given an advantage (some approval people will say this is a feature, not a bug). This is a weird way to say that representing the population is a bug. Your example election would be a compelling argument if population preference was more of a multimodal distribution rather than closer to a unimodal distribution. Despite the US's current division, it is nowhere near as divided as your scenario.

gamegoblin 4y ago
To be clear, I personally prefer approval to IRV. But raw approval gives undue advantage to moderates. Approval-to-runoff being clearly superior than raw approval, for this reason. And STAR being a little bit better than that. The RCV people's main criticism of Approval is that it doesn't allow you to express different levels of support, and they aren't totally wrong (even though their preferred mechanism of IRV doesn't get them there, either). I think (without data, happy to be proven wrong) that the US population is fairly strongly bimodal on most issues. Many issues that people care a lot about (for better or worse...) have two clear centers of gravity, e.g. for gun control and abortion most people are in the orbit of a "mostly ban" or "mostly allow" group, with very few people falling into some nuanced middle ground.
- godelski 4y ago
  > But raw approval gives undue advantage to moderates. If by "moderates" you mean "most liked" then I'm not sure what the problem is here. The point of voting is to find the most universally agreed upon ruler. You may call this unfair, but I would say that it is MORE unfair to give advantage to fringe groups rather than giving advantage to the masses. I thought the point of democracies was about having rule by the masses. If you think fringe groups should have the advantage I'd like to hear your argument.
  - gamegoblin 4y ago
    > If you think fringe groups should have the advantage I'd like to hear your argument. I'm not sure what gave you the impression I think that. My comments clearly suggest that my view is that STAR > Approval-to-runoff > Approval > RCV-IRV > Plurality. My reasoning is that I place a very high value on the condorcet and favorite betrayal criteria.
    - godelski 4y ago
      My apologies then. It was the italicized "undue" that made me think that this was your position. I read it as "undeserving". As for the condorcet winner, that is quite hard actually. But if we consider a weak condorcet winner (where it is true 90+% of the time), that isn't as hard. I do think simplicity, transparency, and reduced vulnerability to strategy is a worthwhile trade-off for a strong condorcet winner. But of course, this is just my personal opinion and what's the preferred optima depends a lot on personal preferences.
- crazygringo 4y ago
  > I think (without data, happy to be proven wrong) that the US population is fairly strongly bimodal on most issues. Many issues that people care a lot about (for better or worse...) have two clear centers of gravity, We'll you'll be happy then! :) Because this is commonly believed but actually totally untrue. There's an entire book about it, "Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America" by Morris P. Fiorina. The upshot is basically that if you ask people binary yes/no questions (or binary left/right votes), the population appears divided, bimodal. But whenever you give a sliding scale in surveys, it becomes abundantly clear that the population is centrist -- unimodal. Even for gun control and abortion, the most hot-button issues.
lostdog 4y ago
Voters will realize that approval gives benefits to centrists, and they will change their voting strategies and stop approving centrists. None of the math analyses shared here take that into account. For example, say three fictitious candidates are running for dogcatcher, Bernie, Hillary, and Trump. Does your hardcore Bernie supporter friend believe that approving Hillary doesn't hurt Bernie? Will they choose not to approve centrist candidates, leading to extreme results in elections?
- godelski 4y ago
  If centrist is defined by the minimization of distance between a population's preference and a candidate's position then I don't see the problem. Why would you want an extremist? Or why would you want someone that is less representative of the population as a whole? Isn't the point of democracy to minimize this distance? I'd actually argue that if approval was used Bernie would have won. One can vote Bernie honestly but also approve of Hillary as a safety. And this would have had a larger edge with Score or STAR. Bernie was quite popular and frankly a lot of people that also voted Trump also liked Bernie because he was an outsider.
  - lostdog 4y ago
    > One can vote Bernie honestly but also approve of Hillary as a safety. No, that's the thing. Many people want to express their preference, and really really didn't want to "approve" of these two people at the same level. It's exactly the same with... > Bernie was quite popular and frankly a lot of people that also voted Trump also liked Bernie because he was an outsider. ...where these people may have felt positively about Bernie, but they really really preferred Trump, and they would not have "approved" of Bernie if that meant putting him at the same level as Trump. So now you have two groups of people who would have preferred Bernie as their 2nd place choice, but decide not to "approve" him in order to help their 1st place choices win. Supporters of approval voting just keep ignoring this dynamic of how real people vote in the real world.
    - godelski 4y ago
      So I think your points are valid. I also just want to state that pretty much every cardinal voter I know prefers STAR then Score then Approval. I'm STAR 5, Score 5, approval 4 (only slight preference of STAR over Score). But I think that resolves your concerns. It is just that in practice we find that Approval is easier to argue for and is good enough. From a personal stand point I'll argue with technical people about voting systems if we got approval but I wouldn't be an evangelist anymore.