6 ms·

Ranked choice is 'the hot reform' in democracy. Here's what you should know

24 points by squircle 2y ago

creato 2y ago
I really wish the push had been for approval voting instead of ranked choice voting. I think ranked choice is theoretically good, but it's relatively complicated, and complexity can lead to confusion which provides an opening for unscrupulous candidates (seems to be a much bigger problem than it used to be) to claim the results are illegitimate. Approval voting is dead simple and seems to solve the same problem. I think it would be a lot harder to argue against approval voting.
- greyface- 2y ago
  > ranked choice is theoretically good, but it's relatively complicated, and complexity can lead to confusion In addition to this unnecessary complexity, ranked choice doesn't fix the "spoiler effect", where the presence of a losing candidate can "steal" votes from another candidate who would otherwise have won. Approval voting doesn't have this problem. See Arrow's impossibility theorem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theore...
  - defrost 2y ago
    Entire countries (eg: Australia) use ranked choice variations (in Australia: "single transferable vote"), Condorcet methods that reduce Arrow spoiler paradox's to "theoretically possible but exceptionally unlikely to happen". Regardless, this is hardly an objection to using Ranked Voting over the US "First Past the Post" which suffers to an greater degree(?) to spoiler votes and leads over many iterations to almost identical non representative two party blocs that are hard up against each other and pushing independants out (for fear of spoiling). It's notable that Australia, a small country of fewer than 30 million, had 10 independants elected to the House last election while the UK, the US, Canada and New Zealand elected only eight between them.
    - negative_zero 2y ago
      Just want to add some nuance: STV is used for the Australian Federal Senate. The federal lower chamber (House of Representatives) uses optional preferential voting for candidates in a federal electorate. I'm not sure if NZ is a fair comparison as it uses MMP, which is deliberately designed to favour multiple parties forming coalitions, not independents.
      - defrost 2y ago
        I didn't clarify as there's even more of a mix of ranked vote variations than that in Australia. STV is also used in many state and territory local and state elections, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote#Use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote#Use and scroll down to "local bodies" | Australia for a partial list. The take home poin is that straight up simple Ranked Vote has an issue but is still (IMHO) better than FPTP and there are many ways to take the (minor) curse off of Ranked Vote to make it "better" (far less likely to hit a weird box corner that'll cause arguments | riots | civil war). I mean, seriously, it's about electing|hiring people to work for the public, in the worst case we should at least just reset and restart, it's not life or death, it's just hiring a few managers that can be fired at any time or charged and imprisoned if they graft or steal.
        negative_zero 2y ago
        100% agree. IMO, these days it seems like FPTP is more actually a source of instability (than stability it is often claimed is one of it's benefits).
        ClayShentrup 2y ago
        i co-founded the center for election science. this is superficially reasonable, but IRV could paradoxically make things worse by squandering election reform resources (namely, money) on a suboptimal and overly complex fix, at the cost of progress on approval voting, score voting, etc. then, if IRV gets repealed often due to its complexity, we end up worse off. alaska is plausibly going to repeal IRV this november.
- DemocracyFTW2 2y ago
  If by 'approval voting' you mean that electoral model where each voter can give up to one vote to each candidate on the ballot, I'm all in! We need to find a catchy name for that, too. IDK why ranked choice sees more adoption than approval voting. The former seems to have many advantages: it's easy to explain, it's easy to count. The voter gets the choice to say yes to no candidate at all or all candidates at once, if they think that's what they want. They can give votes to fringe candidates without being afraid to have wasted their precious singular vote. In contrast, ranked choice is harder to explain, uses more complicated ballots that are easier to inadvertently invalidate, and must either use an arbitrary number of ranked favorites (three being a frequent choice apparently) or else allow the use of numbers next to each candidate, or some system where voters somehow can arrange names in their preferred order (hardly possible on a paper ballot, awkward at best when presented with a screen with a longish list of names that will have to be ordered when shown first). Every single one of these options is on a spectrum of arbitrary to awkward to forbiddingly clumsy. [approval voting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approval_voting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approval_voting) [ranked choice voting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked_voting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked_voting)
bediger4000 2y ago
The USA is trending away from direct democracy, and majoritarian rule in general. I think the time has passed for any sort of reform to take place.
- engineer_22 2y ago
  The USA has never been direct democracy (if that form of govt is even desirable, likely not).
  - bediger4000 2y ago
    I see you're the kind of guy who wants his senators appointed by the state legislature. I, too, enjoy having wiser heads, who know better, prevail!
    - google234123 2y ago
      If you are ever on trial, I wonder if you'd prefer having a judge thinking about reelection when making decisions ...
    - namlem 2y ago
      Senators should be appointed by citizens assemblies/elector juries imo.
  - telesilla 2y ago
    Winston Churchill: “democracy is the worst form of government – except for all the others that have been tried.”
    - ClayShentrup 2y ago
      we need election by jury, not "democracy". https://www.electionbyjury.org/ https://www.electionbyjury.org/
      - greyface- 2y ago
josephcsible 2y ago
There's a lot of kinds of ranked-choice voting, but the one this article describes is instant-runoff voting. It's particularly bad in that it isn't even monotonic, i.e., you can lose an election because too many people voted for you. IMO, it's actually worse than the system we use today. I agree a different system could be better, but not this one. (My preference would be for either approval or score voting.)
- xen0 2y ago
  Given US presidential elections have, twice in my lifetime, been won by person with fewer votes than another, this would not be a concerning change.
  - josephcsible 2y ago
    Being nonmonotonic is way worse than that. Imagine a case where all of the ballots except one have been counted and it's really close. In IRV, it's possible that if the last ballot prefers Biden, then Trump wins, and if the last ballot prefers Trump, then Biden wins.
- robcohen 2y ago
  According to FairVote, the organization behind RCV in the US, RCV is the only option that is resistant to strategic voting. https://fairvote.org/resources/electoral-systems/comparing-voting-methods/ https://fairvote.org/resources/electoral-systems/comparing-v... Disclosure: I am a member of FairVote
  - josephcsible 2y ago
    I take issue with the phrasing "the only option that is resistant". Per the Gibbard-Satterthwaite theorem, it's definitely not completely resistant to strategic voting, and other options are each resistant to it to different degrees.
- ZeroGravitas 2y ago
  Liking approval or score voting but preferring plurality/ftpt over ranked choice is a bit of an unusual opinion surely? I knew fans of the various alternatives get a bit competitive but wasn't aware that they'd got to the extremes of claiming the others were worse than the status quo.
namlem 2y ago
Ranked choice won't solve our problems. Approval voting, single transferrable votes, or mixed member proportional elections won't solve our problems. Elections have intractable problems, they cannot be solved because they are inherent to the process. The ancient Athenians understood this. The way forward is sortition. Not randomly selecting people directly to office mind you, but convening deliberative citizens assemblies to directly weigh in on issues and even potentially to appoint officials to govern. There is a rising movement to implement such reforms that has started to gain a foothold in Ireland, France and Belgium. Those who want to know more should look into the Sortition Foundation and DemocracyNext.
nlasdhl 2y ago
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24 points by squircle 2y ago

I really wish the push had been for approval voting instead of ranked choice voting. I think ranked choice is theoretically good, but it's relatively complicated, and complexity can lead to confusion which provides an opening for unscrupulous candidates (seems to be a much bigger problem than it used to be) to claim the results are illegitimate. Approval voting is dead simple and seems to solve the same problem. I think it would be a lot harder to argue against approval voting.

greyface- 2y ago
> ranked choice is theoretically good, but it's relatively complicated, and complexity can lead to confusion In addition to this unnecessary complexity, ranked choice doesn't fix the "spoiler effect", where the presence of a losing candidate can "steal" votes from another candidate who would otherwise have won. Approval voting doesn't have this problem. See Arrow's impossibility theorem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theore...
- defrost 2y ago
  Entire countries (eg: Australia) use ranked choice variations (in Australia: "single transferable vote"), Condorcet methods that reduce Arrow spoiler paradox's to "theoretically possible but exceptionally unlikely to happen". Regardless, this is hardly an objection to using Ranked Voting over the US "First Past the Post" which suffers to an greater degree(?) to spoiler votes and leads over many iterations to almost identical non representative two party blocs that are hard up against each other and pushing independants out (for fear of spoiling). It's notable that Australia, a small country of fewer than 30 million, had 10 independants elected to the House last election while the UK, the US, Canada and New Zealand elected only eight between them.
  - negative_zero 2y ago
    Just want to add some nuance: STV is used for the Australian Federal Senate. The federal lower chamber (House of Representatives) uses optional preferential voting for candidates in a federal electorate. I'm not sure if NZ is a fair comparison as it uses MMP, which is deliberately designed to favour multiple parties forming coalitions, not independents.
    - defrost 2y ago
      I didn't clarify as there's even more of a mix of ranked vote variations than that in Australia. STV is also used in many state and territory local and state elections, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote#Use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote#Use and scroll down to "local bodies" | Australia for a partial list. The take home poin is that straight up simple Ranked Vote has an issue but is still (IMHO) better than FPTP and there are many ways to take the (minor) curse off of Ranked Vote to make it "better" (far less likely to hit a weird box corner that'll cause arguments | riots | civil war). I mean, seriously, it's about electing|hiring people to work for the public, in the worst case we should at least just reset and restart, it's not life or death, it's just hiring a few managers that can be fired at any time or charged and imprisoned if they graft or steal.
      - negative_zero 2y ago
        100% agree. IMO, these days it seems like FPTP is more actually a source of instability (than stability it is often claimed is one of it's benefits).
      - ClayShentrup 2y ago
        i co-founded the center for election science. this is superficially reasonable, but IRV could paradoxically make things worse by squandering election reform resources (namely, money) on a suboptimal and overly complex fix, at the cost of progress on approval voting, score voting, etc. then, if IRV gets repealed often due to its complexity, we end up worse off. alaska is plausibly going to repeal IRV this november.
DemocracyFTW2 2y ago
If by 'approval voting' you mean that electoral model where each voter can give up to one vote to each candidate on the ballot, I'm all in! We need to find a catchy name for that, too. IDK why ranked choice sees more adoption than approval voting. The former seems to have many advantages: it's easy to explain, it's easy to count. The voter gets the choice to say yes to no candidate at all or all candidates at once, if they think that's what they want. They can give votes to fringe candidates without being afraid to have wasted their precious singular vote. In contrast, ranked choice is harder to explain, uses more complicated ballots that are easier to inadvertently invalidate, and must either use an arbitrary number of ranked favorites (three being a frequent choice apparently) or else allow the use of numbers next to each candidate, or some system where voters somehow can arrange names in their preferred order (hardly possible on a paper ballot, awkward at best when presented with a screen with a longish list of names that will have to be ordered when shown first). Every single one of these options is on a spectrum of arbitrary to awkward to forbiddingly clumsy. [approval voting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approval_voting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approval_voting) [ranked choice voting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked_voting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked_voting)

bediger4000 2y ago

The USA is trending away from direct democracy, and majoritarian rule in general. I think the time has passed for any sort of reform to take place.

engineer_22 2y ago
The USA has never been direct democracy (if that form of govt is even desirable, likely not).
- bediger4000 2y ago
  I see you're the kind of guy who wants his senators appointed by the state legislature. I, too, enjoy having wiser heads, who know better, prevail!
  - google234123 2y ago
    If you are ever on trial, I wonder if you'd prefer having a judge thinking about reelection when making decisions ...
  - namlem 2y ago
    Senators should be appointed by citizens assemblies/elector juries imo.
- telesilla 2y ago
  Winston Churchill: “democracy is the worst form of government – except for all the others that have been tried.”
  - ClayShentrup 2y ago
    we need election by jury, not "democracy". https://www.electionbyjury.org/ https://www.electionbyjury.org/
    - greyface- 2y ago

josephcsible 2y ago

There's a lot of kinds of ranked-choice voting, but the one this article describes is instant-runoff voting. It's particularly bad in that it isn't even monotonic, i.e., you can lose an election because too many people voted for you. IMO, it's actually worse than the system we use today. I agree a different system could be better, but not this one. (My preference would be for either approval or score voting.)

xen0 2y ago
Given US presidential elections have, twice in my lifetime, been won by person with fewer votes than another, this would not be a concerning change.
- josephcsible 2y ago
  Being nonmonotonic is way worse than that. Imagine a case where all of the ballots except one have been counted and it's really close. In IRV, it's possible that if the last ballot prefers Biden, then Trump wins, and if the last ballot prefers Trump, then Biden wins.
robcohen 2y ago
According to FairVote, the organization behind RCV in the US, RCV is the only option that is resistant to strategic voting. https://fairvote.org/resources/electoral-systems/comparing-voting-methods/ https://fairvote.org/resources/electoral-systems/comparing-v... Disclosure: I am a member of FairVote
- josephcsible 2y ago
  I take issue with the phrasing "the only option that is resistant". Per the Gibbard-Satterthwaite theorem, it's definitely not completely resistant to strategic voting, and other options are each resistant to it to different degrees.
ZeroGravitas 2y ago
Liking approval or score voting but preferring plurality/ftpt over ranked choice is a bit of an unusual opinion surely? I knew fans of the various alternatives get a bit competitive but wasn't aware that they'd got to the extremes of claiming the others were worse than the status quo.

namlem 2y ago

Ranked choice won't solve our problems. Approval voting, single transferrable votes, or mixed member proportional elections won't solve our problems. Elections have intractable problems, they cannot be solved because they are inherent to the process. The ancient Athenians understood this. The way forward is sortition. Not randomly selecting people directly to office mind you, but convening deliberative citizens assemblies to directly weigh in on issues and even potentially to appoint officials to govern. There is a rising movement to implement such reforms that has started to gain a foothold in Ireland, France and Belgium. Those who want to know more should look into the Sortition Foundation and DemocracyNext.

nlasdhl 2y ago

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