3 ms·

Unfortunately we're already seeing new examples of how RCV generates unintuitive outcomes, with Sen. Tom Cotton tweeting[0]: > 60% of Alaska voters voted for a

Unfortunately we're already seeing new examples of how RCV generates unintuitive outcomes, with Sen. Tom Cotton tweeting[0]: > 60% of Alaska voters voted for a Republican, but thanks to a convoluted process and ballot exhaustion — which disenfranchises voters — a Democrat ‘won.’ We might dismiss this as self-serving and disingenuous, but I actually have some sympathy for the claim that ballot exhaustion "disenfranchises voters", since it means that voters who have done more research about all the candidates (and can thus express a fuller set of preferences) potentially have their votes included in more rounds than less-informed voters (whose ballots are discarded earlier). I suppose some people might think that more-informed voters should be given more power at the ballot box than their fellow citizens, but this seems equivalent to (for example) requiring voters to have a college degree, or passing a "literacy" test (which is a barrier that has historically been abused for purely partisan goals). Anyway, we shouldn't be too surprised that RCV produced a result that was open to such criticism, since a similar thing happened back in 2009 during the mayoral elections of Burlington, Vermont.[1] The unintuitive outcome lead to RCV being scrapped for future elections there, and I fear that failures of RCV for state-wide elections could cause similar disillusionment with the idea of voting reform in other states. One cause for optimism, however, is that Burlington did end up changing its mind again, and approving RCV in 2021, so perhaps the bad experience was only a temporary setback. It would still be prudent, however, to consider other types of reform, to be tried in different states, which are, after all, the laboratories of democracy. [0] https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/3624553-republicans-rage-against-ranked-choice-voting-after-alaska-election/ https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/3624553-re... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked-choice_voting_in_the_United_States#Burlington https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked-choice_voting_in_the_Un...

cylinder714 4y ago
Here's a more detailed article about the situation in Alaska: https://electionscience.org/commentary-analysis/rcv-fools-palin-voters-into-electing-a-progressive-democrat/ https://electionscience.org/commentary-analysis/rcv-fools-pa... Note that's it's from a group promoting approval voting as an alternative to ranked-choice voting, so it may be biased, but the details look correct at first glance. My impression of RCV is not good, beginning with Jean Quan's poor turn as mayor of Oakland some years back. I'm sympathetic to those who'd like an alternative to first-past-the-post, but any system that allows no one's first choice to win seems broken. I'm interested in approval voting because it's simpler—no algorithmic folderol—and it seems even more fair to third parties than RCV: vote for whichever candidates you find acceptable, regardless of party, and whoever gets the greatest number of votes wins, period. A Republican who doesn't like Trump could vote for, say, Ron DeSantis, Marco Rubio and Tom Cotton, while a progressive Democrat might mark down Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Jill Stein (assuming an open primary). I see this as a way for independents and moderates, too, to make a bigger impact, as they could pick moderates from multiple parties. I don't see any obvious downsides. Thoughts? EDIT: A link to "The Center for Election Science," advocating for approval voting: https://electionscience.org/ https://electionscience.org/
- dane-pgp 4y ago
  I agree that Approval Voting seems better in almost every respect to RCV/IRV, and (therefore) much better than FPTP. For that reason I would encourage more states to experiment with Approval Voting so we can gather some more data about what sort of results and UX it produces in practice. The reason I mention UX, though, is that I think there is one respect in which Approval might be lacking, namely how voters interpret the instruction of "vote for whichever candidates you find acceptable". Have you ever stopped to think what "acceptable" means in that sentence? More importantly, have you asked a wide range of different people what they think it means, to check they all interpret it the same way? That's a rhetorical question, but my point is that some people (based on their personality, or the advice from their party, or misinformation that they are exposed to) might think that "acceptable" means "I can tolerate this candidate winning, because they're not quite as bad as the worst outcome", while other people might interpret it as "this candidate is practically as good as my first choice candidate (but I don't like his haircut as much)". This is somewhat similar to the "disenfranchisement" issue I mentioned above, where some voters are able to cast a more-powerful ballot by carefully calibrating the threshold at which they "approve" of a candidate. There's also the potential for people regretting the reform, if they discover that, for example, millions of anxious Democrats "approved" of DeSantis out of fear that Trump might win, when actually Bernie could have won if they had just stayed loyal and believed in Bernie's chances of success.
  - cylinder714 4y ago
    >Have you ever stopped to think what "acceptable" means in that sentence? No, but I don't know how that would affect outcomes given a mass of voters. My sense is that it would all "even out" because no one would be forced to choose a single candidate, or to rank their favorites.
    - dane-pgp 4y ago
      It would only "even out" if the different understandings of "acceptable" didn't have any correlation with people's political preferences. Given that we know there are personality traits that are strongly indicative of party membership[0] (not to mention education level), I think the default assumption should be that different parties will be affected differently by voters interpreting the question differently. Also, all aspects of voting systems have to be considered in the context of an adversarial environment, and you have to imagine that some parties will be more unscrupulous than others at exploiting voters' confusion, or just better at using polling data or other strategies to instruct their voters how to make their votes more powerful. I suppose you could argue that we already accept that tactical voting is a reality under FPTP, and maybe in practice the situation under Approval wouldn't be any worse over all (although it might be better for some parties and worse for others), but even if it is better, you have the problem that any change adds to the "attack surface" of things that election losers can point at to cast the validity of the results into doubt. That's why any reform needs to ideally involve voter instructions and election outcomes that are more intuitive than FPTP, to counteract the potential for additional misinformation to be introduced. [0] https://practicalpie.com/personality-and-politics/ https://practicalpie.com/personality-and-politics/

cylinder714 4y ago

Here's a more detailed article about the situation in Alaska: https://electionscience.org/commentary-analysis/rcv-fools-palin-voters-into-electing-a-progressive-democrat/ https://electionscience.org/commentary-analysis/rcv-fools-pa... Note that's it's from a group promoting approval voting as an alternative to ranked-choice voting, so it may be biased, but the details look correct at first glance. My impression of RCV is not good, beginning with Jean Quan's poor turn as mayor of Oakland some years back. I'm sympathetic to those who'd like an alternative to first-past-the-post, but any system that allows no one's first choice to win seems broken. I'm interested in approval voting because it's simpler—no algorithmic folderol—and it seems even more fair to third parties than RCV: vote for whichever candidates you find acceptable, regardless of party, and whoever gets the greatest number of votes wins, period. A Republican who doesn't like Trump could vote for, say, Ron DeSantis, Marco Rubio and Tom Cotton, while a progressive Democrat might mark down Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Jill Stein (assuming an open primary). I see this as a way for independents and moderates, too, to make a bigger impact, as they could pick moderates from multiple parties. I don't see any obvious downsides. Thoughts? EDIT: A link to "The Center for Election Science," advocating for approval voting: https://electionscience.org/ https://electionscience.org/

dane-pgp 4y ago
I agree that Approval Voting seems better in almost every respect to RCV/IRV, and (therefore) much better than FPTP. For that reason I would encourage more states to experiment with Approval Voting so we can gather some more data about what sort of results and UX it produces in practice. The reason I mention UX, though, is that I think there is one respect in which Approval might be lacking, namely how voters interpret the instruction of "vote for whichever candidates you find acceptable". Have you ever stopped to think what "acceptable" means in that sentence? More importantly, have you asked a wide range of different people what they think it means, to check they all interpret it the same way? That's a rhetorical question, but my point is that some people (based on their personality, or the advice from their party, or misinformation that they are exposed to) might think that "acceptable" means "I can tolerate this candidate winning, because they're not quite as bad as the worst outcome", while other people might interpret it as "this candidate is practically as good as my first choice candidate (but I don't like his haircut as much)". This is somewhat similar to the "disenfranchisement" issue I mentioned above, where some voters are able to cast a more-powerful ballot by carefully calibrating the threshold at which they "approve" of a candidate. There's also the potential for people regretting the reform, if they discover that, for example, millions of anxious Democrats "approved" of DeSantis out of fear that Trump might win, when actually Bernie could have won if they had just stayed loyal and believed in Bernie's chances of success.
- cylinder714 4y ago
  >Have you ever stopped to think what "acceptable" means in that sentence? No, but I don't know how that would affect outcomes given a mass of voters. My sense is that it would all "even out" because no one would be forced to choose a single candidate, or to rank their favorites.
  - dane-pgp 4y ago
    It would only "even out" if the different understandings of "acceptable" didn't have any correlation with people's political preferences. Given that we know there are personality traits that are strongly indicative of party membership[0] (not to mention education level), I think the default assumption should be that different parties will be affected differently by voters interpreting the question differently. Also, all aspects of voting systems have to be considered in the context of an adversarial environment, and you have to imagine that some parties will be more unscrupulous than others at exploiting voters' confusion, or just better at using polling data or other strategies to instruct their voters how to make their votes more powerful. I suppose you could argue that we already accept that tactical voting is a reality under FPTP, and maybe in practice the situation under Approval wouldn't be any worse over all (although it might be better for some parties and worse for others), but even if it is better, you have the problem that any change adds to the "attack surface" of things that election losers can point at to cast the validity of the results into doubt. That's why any reform needs to ideally involve voter instructions and election outcomes that are more intuitive than FPTP, to counteract the potential for additional misinformation to be introduced. [0] https://practicalpie.com/personality-and-politics/ https://practicalpie.com/personality-and-politics/