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This is actually a really balanced article, making some very nuanced points about why some activists might oppose a system that produces more moderate candidate

This is actually a really balanced article, making some very nuanced points about why some activists might oppose a system that produces more moderate candidates, and how the existing system sort of relies on low turnout to give extra power to the most motivated core voters of the two main political parties. It also discusses the problems with Ranked Choice Voting specifically, with examples of its possible failure modes, and considerations of it being harder for less informed or less educated voters to understand, including the issue that not filling in a complete set of preferences means your vote might get discarded before the final round, whereas someone else's wouldn't.

verall 4y ago
The "issue" of ballot exhaustion is super overblown and preys on people's misunderstandings of instant runoff voting. If you vote for, say, the green party candidate in major American election, your vote is effectively immediately "exhausted" since they will not have even a tenth of the votes of a major party candidate. FPTP encourages people to metagame who they think is "viable" which is really difficult in unpolled local elections and contrary to people voting who they would actually like to win.
- dane-pgp 4y ago
  I absolutely agree that FPTP has all the same problems, only worse because they are not made explicitly and transparently part of the voting mechanics. I still think that ballot exhaustion is a real issue though (maybe an overblown one, but not super overblown). If you vote for the green party candidate, as per your example, but it's an RCV election, and you don't specify your preference for Democrats vs Republicans (because you're only familiar with FPTP, or you feel this would be "disloyal" to the Green candidate) then your vote would be less effective than another Green supporter who did express their full set of preferences. Maybe it's a price worth paying, that society says "If you don't maximally fill out the ballot, then you are potentially punished by having less political power than some of your fellow citizens", but I think we need to admit that this is a trade-off we're making when we support RCV. (Again, though, it's not a trade-off relative to FPTP, which absolutely gives some voters less power, because votes for third parties are immediately exhausted, I agree).
  - verall 4y ago
    You're not punished by having less political power, if you want the greens or noone, you get exactly what you want, and if you have a ranked preference, that is available to you. It just has a scary name that makes people think something undemocratic is going on, but nothing is. It's depressing it's explained like you have less political power than your fellow citizens. If it's not a trade off compared to FPTP, are you comparing to a parliamentary system? How would that work for individual or nonpartisan posts, like say a town mayor or chief dogcatcher?
    - DerekL 4y ago
      > … if you want the greens or noone … BTW, it's no one or no-one.
    - dane-pgp 4y ago
      > if you want the greens or noone, you get exactly what you want Except you don't get no-one, you get one of the two big parties. (Getting no-one would be like "none of the above" winning, which is a supported outcome in some election systems). The best I can do to steelman your argument is to imagine you meant "the greens or anyone", because then, yes, the winner was "anyone", but that's not what a voter necessarily thought they were doing by being "loyal" to the green candidate. Instant-runoff voting (used in practice for counting RCV ballots in the US) actually satisfies the "later-no-harm" criterion[0] of voting systems (unlike Approval Voting), so if a voter knows this fact, they may feel comfortable adding the extra signal of additional preferences to their vote, but otherwise they might be reluctant to, making their vote less effective due to lack of education or misplaced loyalty. You're right that this is a minor problem compared to the extensive flaws in FPTP, but it is a new and avoidable flaw, and it will affect people who might have previously benefited from (the unfairness of) FPTP. I'm not "comparing to a parliamentary system", though, since both presidential and parliamentary systems are compatible with both RCV/IRV and FPTP, and I think everything we've mentioned is equally applicable to individual and non-partisan posts. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Later-no-harm_criterion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Later-no-harm_criterion
      - 4y ago
landemva 4y ago
> the two main political parties. Two parties is a feature often defined by State election law. Some States like Illinois specifically mention Rs and Ds. Other States often use a method of favoring (donation limits) major parties which is determined by off-year results in a race like the Governor. Partisanship matters because of benefits in State election laws. State legislators who are Ds and Rs know this and don't talk about it because it would reduce their club powers. I would clean out the State election laws before applying band-aids and lotions.
- defrost 4y ago
  The US two party oligarchy is particularly silly given the poor unrepresentative outcomes and the vocal opposition to political parties overall by many of the US founding fathers.
- dane-pgp 4y ago
  > I would clean out the State election laws before applying band-aids and lotions. I don't see why the two approaches can't be run in parallel. I agree with you, though, that laws which privilege specific parties (or even parties generally over independent candidates) have no place in a democracy. Have there not been any cases brought which challenge the constitutionality of such laws? I know that Lawrence Lessig tried to challenge Winner Take All (plurality) voting in the US under the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment[0], which seemed like a bit of a long shot, whereas I don't think that the establishment would feel particularly threatened by having to rewrite a few state laws to be more neutral. Presumably there are plenty of states that don't have such laws, and they are equally locked into the two-party system. [0] https://medium.lessig.org/the-equal-protection-challenge-to-winner-take-all-a-legal-guide-ce99747e5001 https://medium.lessig.org/the-equal-protection-challenge-to-...
  - landemva 4y ago
    Sometimes difficult to show harm and standing. Appeals are expensive. The States I looked at have major/minor party and other hindrances such as mandatory reports to secretary of state by party officers from each county. Maybe I would look in N.H. election laws for a place without this.
defrost 4y ago
> and considerations of it being harder for less informed or less educated voters to understand, Works fine in Australia and I'll add, in the true spirit of Aussie Competiveness, that our dumb F*'s are dumber than US dumb F*'s. Making a list of who you like in numbered order ain't that hard, and ditching the ballots of those that cannot number 1 through 6 is no great loss. The USofA has one of the truly insanely over complicated and least effective voting systems on the planet .. the billions spent on presidential elections is just ridiculous and symptomatic of some kind of crazy "little king" syndrome when the real focus should be on getting a balanced representative team together .. let them sort out a token figurehead that can be easily replaced if corrupt | sick | etc.
- dane-pgp 4y ago
  > ditching the ballots of those that cannot number 1 through 6 is no great loss. It's worth looking into the statistics around that. For example, one study[0] found that: "Between 2004 – 2016, 32% of electorates reported more informal votes than votes in the margin between the winner and runner-up." Of course not, not all "informal votes" are due to people trying but failing to correctly fill out their ballot paper, but the study also found that "more candidates cause more informal votes", so the complexity of the ballots was clearly a factor. The fact that as many as a third of seats would have a different winner if every vote was counted, though, has to undermine confidence in the democratic process. And this is in a polity where voting is compulsory, so in the US it would be more likely that these informal voters just stayed at home, and the problem would be even more brushed under the carpet. [0] http://eamonmcginn.com.s3-website-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/papers/Informal_Voting.pdf http://eamonmcginn.com.s3-website-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.c...
  - defrost 4y ago
    An interesting study, cheers for that, a few points of note that sprang out at me: - In Australia, where voting is compulsory, around 5% of votes are informal, not counting toward the outcome. So, compulsory voting (> 95% of those that can vote do vote) plus low (5%) informal voting ==> way more people vote effectively in Australia than in the USofA (by a long shot). - The abstract quote differs from the main body quote of the same: > Between 2004–2016, 32% of electorates received more informal votes than those in the margin between the winner and runner-up. Or, in other words: 32% of electorates were closely contested and could have been swayed by the ineffective votes of those that didn't pay attention to detail (is this what we want?). What isn't expanded on (in my quick skim, I could be wrong) - is that these electorates were close AFTER ranking votes were counted and less popular candidates discarded with second and third preferences thrown in. Your "conclusion" > The fact that as many as a third of seats would have a different winner if every vote was counted, though, has to undermine confidence in the democratic process. is hasty - it assumes that the informal votes, had they been proper votes (rather than drawings of a dick, etc) would have made a decisive and coordinated swing bloc large enough to tip the balance .. when, in truth, they could have been evenly split across the field and had no decisive weight. (And there are other issues, but that'll suffice for now).

verall 4y ago

The "issue" of ballot exhaustion is super overblown and preys on people's misunderstandings of instant runoff voting. If you vote for, say, the green party candidate in major American election, your vote is effectively immediately "exhausted" since they will not have even a tenth of the votes of a major party candidate. FPTP encourages people to metagame who they think is "viable" which is really difficult in unpolled local elections and contrary to people voting who they would actually like to win.

dane-pgp 4y ago
I absolutely agree that FPTP has all the same problems, only worse because they are not made explicitly and transparently part of the voting mechanics. I still think that ballot exhaustion is a real issue though (maybe an overblown one, but not super overblown). If you vote for the green party candidate, as per your example, but it's an RCV election, and you don't specify your preference for Democrats vs Republicans (because you're only familiar with FPTP, or you feel this would be "disloyal" to the Green candidate) then your vote would be less effective than another Green supporter who did express their full set of preferences. Maybe it's a price worth paying, that society says "If you don't maximally fill out the ballot, then you are potentially punished by having less political power than some of your fellow citizens", but I think we need to admit that this is a trade-off we're making when we support RCV. (Again, though, it's not a trade-off relative to FPTP, which absolutely gives some voters less power, because votes for third parties are immediately exhausted, I agree).
- verall 4y ago
  You're not punished by having less political power, if you want the greens or noone, you get exactly what you want, and if you have a ranked preference, that is available to you. It just has a scary name that makes people think something undemocratic is going on, but nothing is. It's depressing it's explained like you have less political power than your fellow citizens. If it's not a trade off compared to FPTP, are you comparing to a parliamentary system? How would that work for individual or nonpartisan posts, like say a town mayor or chief dogcatcher?
  - DerekL 4y ago
    > … if you want the greens or noone … BTW, it's no one or no-one.
  - dane-pgp 4y ago
    > if you want the greens or noone, you get exactly what you want Except you don't get no-one, you get one of the two big parties. (Getting no-one would be like "none of the above" winning, which is a supported outcome in some election systems). The best I can do to steelman your argument is to imagine you meant "the greens or anyone", because then, yes, the winner was "anyone", but that's not what a voter necessarily thought they were doing by being "loyal" to the green candidate. Instant-runoff voting (used in practice for counting RCV ballots in the US) actually satisfies the "later-no-harm" criterion[0] of voting systems (unlike Approval Voting), so if a voter knows this fact, they may feel comfortable adding the extra signal of additional preferences to their vote, but otherwise they might be reluctant to, making their vote less effective due to lack of education or misplaced loyalty. You're right that this is a minor problem compared to the extensive flaws in FPTP, but it is a new and avoidable flaw, and it will affect people who might have previously benefited from (the unfairness of) FPTP. I'm not "comparing to a parliamentary system", though, since both presidential and parliamentary systems are compatible with both RCV/IRV and FPTP, and I think everything we've mentioned is equally applicable to individual and non-partisan posts. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Later-no-harm_criterion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Later-no-harm_criterion
    - 4y ago

landemva 4y ago

> the two main political parties. Two parties is a feature often defined by State election law. Some States like Illinois specifically mention Rs and Ds. Other States often use a method of favoring (donation limits) major parties which is determined by off-year results in a race like the Governor. Partisanship matters because of benefits in State election laws. State legislators who are Ds and Rs know this and don't talk about it because it would reduce their club powers. I would clean out the State election laws before applying band-aids and lotions.

defrost 4y ago
The US two party oligarchy is particularly silly given the poor unrepresentative outcomes and the vocal opposition to political parties overall by many of the US founding fathers.
dane-pgp 4y ago
> I would clean out the State election laws before applying band-aids and lotions. I don't see why the two approaches can't be run in parallel. I agree with you, though, that laws which privilege specific parties (or even parties generally over independent candidates) have no place in a democracy. Have there not been any cases brought which challenge the constitutionality of such laws? I know that Lawrence Lessig tried to challenge Winner Take All (plurality) voting in the US under the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment[0], which seemed like a bit of a long shot, whereas I don't think that the establishment would feel particularly threatened by having to rewrite a few state laws to be more neutral. Presumably there are plenty of states that don't have such laws, and they are equally locked into the two-party system. [0] https://medium.lessig.org/the-equal-protection-challenge-to-winner-take-all-a-legal-guide-ce99747e5001 https://medium.lessig.org/the-equal-protection-challenge-to-...
- landemva 4y ago
  Sometimes difficult to show harm and standing. Appeals are expensive. The States I looked at have major/minor party and other hindrances such as mandatory reports to secretary of state by party officers from each county. Maybe I would look in N.H. election laws for a place without this.

defrost 4y ago

> and considerations of it being harder for less informed or less educated voters to understand, Works fine in Australia and I'll add, in the true spirit of Aussie Competiveness, that our dumb F*'s are dumber than US dumb F*'s. Making a list of who you like in numbered order ain't that hard, and ditching the ballots of those that cannot number 1 through 6 is no great loss. The USofA has one of the truly insanely over complicated and least effective voting systems on the planet .. the billions spent on presidential elections is just ridiculous and symptomatic of some kind of crazy "little king" syndrome when the real focus should be on getting a balanced representative team together .. let them sort out a token figurehead that can be easily replaced if corrupt | sick | etc.

dane-pgp 4y ago
> ditching the ballots of those that cannot number 1 through 6 is no great loss. It's worth looking into the statistics around that. For example, one study[0] found that: "Between 2004 – 2016, 32% of electorates reported more informal votes than votes in the margin between the winner and runner-up." Of course not, not all "informal votes" are due to people trying but failing to correctly fill out their ballot paper, but the study also found that "more candidates cause more informal votes", so the complexity of the ballots was clearly a factor. The fact that as many as a third of seats would have a different winner if every vote was counted, though, has to undermine confidence in the democratic process. And this is in a polity where voting is compulsory, so in the US it would be more likely that these informal voters just stayed at home, and the problem would be even more brushed under the carpet. [0] http://eamonmcginn.com.s3-website-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/papers/Informal_Voting.pdf http://eamonmcginn.com.s3-website-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.c...
- defrost 4y ago
  An interesting study, cheers for that, a few points of note that sprang out at me: - In Australia, where voting is compulsory, around 5% of votes are informal, not counting toward the outcome. So, compulsory voting (> 95% of those that can vote do vote) plus low (5%) informal voting ==> way more people vote effectively in Australia than in the USofA (by a long shot). - The abstract quote differs from the main body quote of the same: > Between 2004–2016, 32% of electorates received more informal votes than those in the margin between the winner and runner-up. Or, in other words: 32% of electorates were closely contested and could have been swayed by the ineffective votes of those that didn't pay attention to detail (is this what we want?). What isn't expanded on (in my quick skim, I could be wrong) - is that these electorates were close AFTER ranking votes were counted and less popular candidates discarded with second and third preferences thrown in. Your "conclusion" > The fact that as many as a third of seats would have a different winner if every vote was counted, though, has to undermine confidence in the democratic process. is hasty - it assumes that the informal votes, had they been proper votes (rather than drawings of a dick, etc) would have made a decisive and coordinated swing bloc large enough to tip the balance .. when, in truth, they could have been evenly split across the field and had no decisive weight. (And there are other issues, but that'll suffice for now).