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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 cand

by 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
    - ClayShentrup 4y ago
      > 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) This is a flaw for instant runoff voting at a benefit for approval voting. In a nutshell, later no harm means voting for your second can't hurt your first. But it can also mean that your vote for your second can't hurt your third either. Thus if it's more important to target your third than your first, you want to hoist your second favorite into the first position by burying your true favorite. That can never be strategically good with approval voting. https://medium.com/@ClayShentrup/later-no-harm-72c44e145510 https://medium.com/@ClayShentrup/later-no-harm-72c44e145510
- lovich 4y ago
  is it a real issue if its failure mode in the worst case scenario is the exact same standard case as FPTP? They don't have less political power, they are either choosing or neglecting to use the power they were provided. I'm failing to see how the person in your example is worse off in any way under RCV than they were in FPTP, and if that's not your implication than what's the point in bringing it up? There's superior voting systems like STAR, but those aren't on the table to be adopted by the country, unlike RCV which already has some support and has been implemented in a few states
  - mindslight 4y ago
    I wish these movements for "Ranked Choice Voting" would be recast as RCV/Condorcet (same input, differing tallying), rather than revolving around runoff voting. Runoff voting is essentially still bound to the idea of the two party system, with the added ability for an informational third-party vote in addition to your "real" duopoly choice. Whereas a tallying process that abides by the Condorcet criterion makes sure that whoever gets elected really was actually favored by most voters. The difference will start to matter if third parties ever gain ground.
    - dane-pgp 4y ago
      I agree that a Condorcet counting process would give better outcomes than the IRV one that is usually proposed, you're right, but I think that both are unintuitive, in the sense that if you handed someone a set of ranked ballots and asked them to calculate the winner, they would not be able to come up with a system on their own. In fact, even if you told them what the process should be, they probably wouldn't be able to remember it and implement it correctly. This lack of transparency/legibility between the voting process and the results it produces is just the sort of thing that undermines people's confidence in elections, and that makes it an easy target for those who oppose reform, or who just want to undermine faith in an outcome that didn't go their way. We only have to look at the 2011 UK referendum on introducing the "Alternative Vote" system (their name for IRV) where the Prime Minister said in the national press that "It’s a puzzling mess of preferences, probabilities and permutations."[0] I support any reform that is offered to replace FPTP, but advocates need to be really careful that they don't tie themselves to a proposal that is open to such attacks, and then poisons the well for years to come, preventing other more understandable or more representative reforms from being offered (as happened in the UK). [0] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1383675/AV-referendum-Dont-sleepwalk-damages-democracy.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1383675/AV-refere...

by verall 4y ago

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
  - ClayShentrup 4y ago
    > 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) This is a flaw for instant runoff voting at a benefit for approval voting. In a nutshell, later no harm means voting for your second can't hurt your first. But it can also mean that your vote for your second can't hurt your third either. Thus if it's more important to target your third than your first, you want to hoist your second favorite into the first position by burying your true favorite. That can never be strategically good with approval voting. https://medium.com/@ClayShentrup/later-no-harm-72c44e145510 https://medium.com/@ClayShentrup/later-no-harm-72c44e145510
lovich 4y ago
is it a real issue if its failure mode in the worst case scenario is the exact same standard case as FPTP? They don't have less political power, they are either choosing or neglecting to use the power they were provided. I'm failing to see how the person in your example is worse off in any way under RCV than they were in FPTP, and if that's not your implication than what's the point in bringing it up? There's superior voting systems like STAR, but those aren't on the table to be adopted by the country, unlike RCV which already has some support and has been implemented in a few states
- mindslight 4y ago
  I wish these movements for "Ranked Choice Voting" would be recast as RCV/Condorcet (same input, differing tallying), rather than revolving around runoff voting. Runoff voting is essentially still bound to the idea of the two party system, with the added ability for an informational third-party vote in addition to your "real" duopoly choice. Whereas a tallying process that abides by the Condorcet criterion makes sure that whoever gets elected really was actually favored by most voters. The difference will start to matter if third parties ever gain ground.
  - dane-pgp 4y ago
    I agree that a Condorcet counting process would give better outcomes than the IRV one that is usually proposed, you're right, but I think that both are unintuitive, in the sense that if you handed someone a set of ranked ballots and asked them to calculate the winner, they would not be able to come up with a system on their own. In fact, even if you told them what the process should be, they probably wouldn't be able to remember it and implement it correctly. This lack of transparency/legibility between the voting process and the results it produces is just the sort of thing that undermines people's confidence in elections, and that makes it an easy target for those who oppose reform, or who just want to undermine faith in an outcome that didn't go their way. We only have to look at the 2011 UK referendum on introducing the "Alternative Vote" system (their name for IRV) where the Prime Minister said in the national press that "It’s a puzzling mess of preferences, probabilities and permutations."[0] I support any reform that is offered to replace FPTP, but advocates need to be really careful that they don't tie themselves to a proposal that is open to such attacks, and then poisons the well for years to come, preventing other more understandable or more representative reforms from being offered (as happened in the UK). [0] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1383675/AV-referendum-Dont-sleepwalk-damages-democracy.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1383675/AV-refere...