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my thinking exactly why is it that there are not the best 5, 50 or 500 people on the ballot and I as a voter can mark any and all that I think I know will do t

my thinking exactly why is it that there are not the best 5, 50 or 500 people on the ballot and I as a voter can mark any and all that I think I know will do the job the way I want them to

xp84 2y ago
Only (relative) nerds would be able to figure this out in practice. Using a voting system that “the common man” doesn’t fully understand is unfortunately kind of elitist/classist in its effects even though i understand that’s not the intention of the many who wish for it.
- JoshTriplett 2y ago
  > Only (relative) nerds would be able to figure this out in practice. "Check the box next to anyone you approve of" is not hard to figure out. "Write down the candidates you find acceptable, in order of preference" is not substantially harder, either, and provides additional benefit (the ability to express a preference among the candidates you approve of).
  - xp84 2y ago
    This is just the thing you “voting system optimizers” miss! Yes, “check each one you approve of” is easy if you the voter aren’t meant to understand how it works. “If you just shut up and do what you’re told by the political scientists, it’ll all work out.” It’s the ‘how it works’ part that loses people. Strategies employed by those who understand it fully can even advantage more savvy voters over the ones just strictly following instructions. For instance, manipulating ranked choice by strategically not choosing any second or third choices. People know that they don’t know fully how systems besides FPTP work, and it makes them feel like these are a way to cheat them. The instructions are simple, the mechanism and the possible ‘optimization strategies’ are more complex. I’m not saying people are stupid, just not experts in this flavor of nerdery, and suspicious.
    - JoshTriplett 2y ago
      > manipulating ranked choice by strategically not choosing any second or third choices This is not a useful strategy for good preference-ordering systems. "strategically" not making a second or third choice is on balance much more likely to cause you to fail to get your preferences, because the scenario you thought you were hedging against didn't happen. > Yes, “check each one you approve of” is easy if you the voter aren’t meant to understand how it works. It's easy to understand how approval voting works, as well. That's the primary advantage of approval over Condorcet: ease of understanding. "Vote for anyone you approve of and would be satisfied to see in office. This way, you can vote for candidates you like more, as well as candidates you think have a better chance of winning, and you don't have to choose whether to vote strategically to keep someone you don't like out of office or to vote for your favorite candidate. We tally all the votes, and the person with the most votes wins, which means they're the person approved by the most people." While Condorcet is a bit more challenging to understand (the easiest explanation being based on "who would beat everyone else in a head-to-head race", leaving aside the cycle-breaking mechanisms), it's much more resilient against the need for strategic voting. In Condorcet, there isn't an incentive to vote strategically; just write down your preferences. Approval does have scenarios in which strategic voting may be desirable, notably when a less mainstream candidate is close to overtaking the mainstream candidates and enough people are willing to drop their approval of the closest mainstream candidate. That's a dangerous strategy to try, because it also gives an opportunity for the most popular opposing candidate to try to win. The existence of that strategy is one of the biggest arguments for Condorcet over Approval. So, the massive tradeoff here is: Do you want a system that's trivial to explain to people with no additional complexity under the surface, trivial to adapt existing voting procedures and ballot designs for, and is better than FPTP along most axes, but still retains one of the notable flaws of FPTP, namely having particular scenarios that still encourage strategic voting? That's Approval. Or do you want a system that's better than FPTP along pretty much every axis, encourages and benefits from honest voting with no "strategy" required or desired, but is a bit harder to explain to people and has some additional complexity under the surface, and is harder to adapt existing voting procedures and ballot designs for? That's Condorcet. Also, frankly, if you're going to talk about systems that present voters with something easy to understand on the surface but have complexity under the surface that most people don't understand and that does cheat people, we already have that system in place: FPTP with the Electoral College, gerrymandering, myriad forms of voter suppression... Compared to that, both Approval and Condorcet are simple.
  - DemocracyFTW2 2y ago
    Yeah I do find the commenter you responded to is, shall we say, overly concerned about the mental capacities of the average voter. "Mark each one you like" is not that hard and not substantially harder than "mark the one you like most". I am concerned tho that preference voting (is that the right word?) gives people too many opportunities to screw up—there are too many things that can go wrong on the ballot (ones I've seen have three columns for 1st, 2nd, 3rd preference, and there should be at most? exactly? one mark in each column). Also vote counting has too many ifs and whens and seemingly arbitrary rules how my ballot will be counted in case my 1st choice doesn't clearly make it on first count. Writing down candidates names will make for some fun days when it comes to counting. Plus, what if multiple candidates have similar names? And, a ballot with a scribbled "Miller!!1!" on it, do you mean Ms Annie Miller from Portland Oregon? That one? Lastly, when was the last time another person was able to read your scratches?
    - JoshTriplett 2y ago
      Yeah, ballot design for preference voting is an interesting UX problem. Any design needs to be obvious for voters, reasonable to count unambiguously, and support mail-in paper ballots (tangent: which ideally 100% of people would have the option to use). You could list the candidates in random order with a number next to them, and then have people write down those numbers in order. That, like anything else, would have failure modes, though. An NxN matrix for N candidates allows using "marked or not" detection, but it creates a huge ballot even with just a handful of candidates.
      - DemocracyFTW2 2y ago
        Wikipedia has this to say (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked_voting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked_voting): Dowdall's method assigns 1, 1⁄2, 1⁄3... points to the 1st, 2nd, 3rd... candidates on each ballot, then elects the candidate with the most points. Ranked voting systems vary dramatically in how preferences are tabulated and counted, which gives each one very different properties. Ranked voting systems are usually contrasted with rated voting methods, which allow voters to indicate how strongly they support different candidates (e.g. on a scale from 0-10).[1] Rated voting systems use more information than ordinal ballots; as a result, they are not subject to many of the problems with ranked voting (including results like Arrow's theorem). That's a bucket full of problems. I remember that I had a similar problems years ago when I wanted to consolidate several lists about the "daily usefulness" of Chinese characters. How much does it weigh when you put A, B, C in that order? is A=1/1, B=1/2, C=1/3? or maybe A=0, B=-1, C=-2? To quote the above, "Ranked voting systems vary dramatically in how preferences are tabulated and counted". This should be a red flag! I'm happy to see that alternatives to first-past-post are tried out in some locations such as Alaska, Maine and Australia, but why ranked voting? Ranked voting is only good when you think of yourself as a sole, lonely voter. You put the candidates into this order: A, B, C. But there will be other voters with other preferences. Let's say you're three people and the rankings are ABCD, EBCD and FBCD. Now you have three favorites A, E, F that are preferred choices, and there's that also-ran B who only was second best. But B got three second-best votes whereas each of A, E, F only got one vote. So answer my question: how many second, third, fourth votes will it take to surpass a given number of first votes? If there's another ballot in the same election with GCBD on it, now you have B with 3x2nd and 1x3rd place. You cannot add, subtract, multiply or divide these numbers. There's no clear answer (although practical procedures can and have been proposed and used) and that bugs me. The entire thing looks like a game of Bridge, Skat or Poker to me, full of justifiable but ultimately very arbitrary rules, hard to explain and tricky to get right. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_method https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_method says that much to me. One also has to account for unranked candidates and decide whether it should be possible to give one rank to several candidates, and then whether (as done in sports) the next rank must be left empty. It just goes on and on, the list of options to do the ballot and to do the counting is truly mind boggling. This is the reason I've come to much prefer preference voting over ranked voting. Ranked voting is much too complicated for general use in a general election whereas preference voting is simple and clear and the number of "design choices" as it were is drastically reduced when compared to ranked voting.
me_me_me 2y ago
cannot be done, only two candidates allowed. Pleas do not google preferential voting, no country has ever implemented it. Definitely not Ireland. The current system is the best thing in the world. On serious note. This will never be allowed in US as the whole 3rd candidate is wasted vote argument goes away. And suddenly there is a crack in the door for a other candidate to win. https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/government-in-ireland/elections-and-referenda/voting/proportional-representation/ https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/government-in-ireland/...
- DemocracyFTW2 2y ago
  Paraphrasing Goethe as he wrote back in the day, hearing (I think?) about potatoes being cheap in the U.S., "Ah, Ireland! You have it better!"

my thinking exactly why is it that there are not the best 5, 50 or 500 people on the ballot and I as a voter can mark any and all that I think I know will do the job the way I want them to

xp84 2y ago

Only (relative) nerds would be able to figure this out in practice. Using a voting system that “the common man” doesn’t fully understand is unfortunately kind of elitist/classist in its effects even though i understand that’s not the intention of the many who wish for it.

JoshTriplett 2y ago
> Only (relative) nerds would be able to figure this out in practice. "Check the box next to anyone you approve of" is not hard to figure out. "Write down the candidates you find acceptable, in order of preference" is not substantially harder, either, and provides additional benefit (the ability to express a preference among the candidates you approve of).
- xp84 2y ago
  This is just the thing you “voting system optimizers” miss! Yes, “check each one you approve of” is easy if you the voter aren’t meant to understand how it works. “If you just shut up and do what you’re told by the political scientists, it’ll all work out.” It’s the ‘how it works’ part that loses people. Strategies employed by those who understand it fully can even advantage more savvy voters over the ones just strictly following instructions. For instance, manipulating ranked choice by strategically not choosing any second or third choices. People know that they don’t know fully how systems besides FPTP work, and it makes them feel like these are a way to cheat them. The instructions are simple, the mechanism and the possible ‘optimization strategies’ are more complex. I’m not saying people are stupid, just not experts in this flavor of nerdery, and suspicious.
  - JoshTriplett 2y ago
    > manipulating ranked choice by strategically not choosing any second or third choices This is not a useful strategy for good preference-ordering systems. "strategically" not making a second or third choice is on balance much more likely to cause you to fail to get your preferences, because the scenario you thought you were hedging against didn't happen. > Yes, “check each one you approve of” is easy if you the voter aren’t meant to understand how it works. It's easy to understand how approval voting works, as well. That's the primary advantage of approval over Condorcet: ease of understanding. "Vote for anyone you approve of and would be satisfied to see in office. This way, you can vote for candidates you like more, as well as candidates you think have a better chance of winning, and you don't have to choose whether to vote strategically to keep someone you don't like out of office or to vote for your favorite candidate. We tally all the votes, and the person with the most votes wins, which means they're the person approved by the most people." While Condorcet is a bit more challenging to understand (the easiest explanation being based on "who would beat everyone else in a head-to-head race", leaving aside the cycle-breaking mechanisms), it's much more resilient against the need for strategic voting. In Condorcet, there isn't an incentive to vote strategically; just write down your preferences. Approval does have scenarios in which strategic voting may be desirable, notably when a less mainstream candidate is close to overtaking the mainstream candidates and enough people are willing to drop their approval of the closest mainstream candidate. That's a dangerous strategy to try, because it also gives an opportunity for the most popular opposing candidate to try to win. The existence of that strategy is one of the biggest arguments for Condorcet over Approval. So, the massive tradeoff here is: Do you want a system that's trivial to explain to people with no additional complexity under the surface, trivial to adapt existing voting procedures and ballot designs for, and is better than FPTP along most axes, but still retains one of the notable flaws of FPTP, namely having particular scenarios that still encourage strategic voting? That's Approval. Or do you want a system that's better than FPTP along pretty much every axis, encourages and benefits from honest voting with no "strategy" required or desired, but is a bit harder to explain to people and has some additional complexity under the surface, and is harder to adapt existing voting procedures and ballot designs for? That's Condorcet. Also, frankly, if you're going to talk about systems that present voters with something easy to understand on the surface but have complexity under the surface that most people don't understand and that does cheat people, we already have that system in place: FPTP with the Electoral College, gerrymandering, myriad forms of voter suppression... Compared to that, both Approval and Condorcet are simple.
- DemocracyFTW2 2y ago
  Yeah I do find the commenter you responded to is, shall we say, overly concerned about the mental capacities of the average voter. "Mark each one you like" is not that hard and not substantially harder than "mark the one you like most". I am concerned tho that preference voting (is that the right word?) gives people too many opportunities to screw up—there are too many things that can go wrong on the ballot (ones I've seen have three columns for 1st, 2nd, 3rd preference, and there should be at most? exactly? one mark in each column). Also vote counting has too many ifs and whens and seemingly arbitrary rules how my ballot will be counted in case my 1st choice doesn't clearly make it on first count. Writing down candidates names will make for some fun days when it comes to counting. Plus, what if multiple candidates have similar names? And, a ballot with a scribbled "Miller!!1!" on it, do you mean Ms Annie Miller from Portland Oregon? That one? Lastly, when was the last time another person was able to read your scratches?
  - JoshTriplett 2y ago
    Yeah, ballot design for preference voting is an interesting UX problem. Any design needs to be obvious for voters, reasonable to count unambiguously, and support mail-in paper ballots (tangent: which ideally 100% of people would have the option to use). You could list the candidates in random order with a number next to them, and then have people write down those numbers in order. That, like anything else, would have failure modes, though. An NxN matrix for N candidates allows using "marked or not" detection, but it creates a huge ballot even with just a handful of candidates.
    - DemocracyFTW2 2y ago
      Wikipedia has this to say (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked_voting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked_voting): Dowdall's method assigns 1, 1⁄2, 1⁄3... points to the 1st, 2nd, 3rd... candidates on each ballot, then elects the candidate with the most points. Ranked voting systems vary dramatically in how preferences are tabulated and counted, which gives each one very different properties. Ranked voting systems are usually contrasted with rated voting methods, which allow voters to indicate how strongly they support different candidates (e.g. on a scale from 0-10).[1] Rated voting systems use more information than ordinal ballots; as a result, they are not subject to many of the problems with ranked voting (including results like Arrow's theorem). That's a bucket full of problems. I remember that I had a similar problems years ago when I wanted to consolidate several lists about the "daily usefulness" of Chinese characters. How much does it weigh when you put A, B, C in that order? is A=1/1, B=1/2, C=1/3? or maybe A=0, B=-1, C=-2? To quote the above, "Ranked voting systems vary dramatically in how preferences are tabulated and counted". This should be a red flag! I'm happy to see that alternatives to first-past-post are tried out in some locations such as Alaska, Maine and Australia, but why ranked voting? Ranked voting is only good when you think of yourself as a sole, lonely voter. You put the candidates into this order: A, B, C. But there will be other voters with other preferences. Let's say you're three people and the rankings are ABCD, EBCD and FBCD. Now you have three favorites A, E, F that are preferred choices, and there's that also-ran B who only was second best. But B got three second-best votes whereas each of A, E, F only got one vote. So answer my question: how many second, third, fourth votes will it take to surpass a given number of first votes? If there's another ballot in the same election with GCBD on it, now you have B with 3x2nd and 1x3rd place. You cannot add, subtract, multiply or divide these numbers. There's no clear answer (although practical procedures can and have been proposed and used) and that bugs me. The entire thing looks like a game of Bridge, Skat or Poker to me, full of justifiable but ultimately very arbitrary rules, hard to explain and tricky to get right. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_method https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_method says that much to me. One also has to account for unranked candidates and decide whether it should be possible to give one rank to several candidates, and then whether (as done in sports) the next rank must be left empty. It just goes on and on, the list of options to do the ballot and to do the counting is truly mind boggling. This is the reason I've come to much prefer preference voting over ranked voting. Ranked voting is much too complicated for general use in a general election whereas preference voting is simple and clear and the number of "design choices" as it were is drastically reduced when compared to ranked voting.

me_me_me 2y ago

cannot be done, only two candidates allowed. Pleas do not google preferential voting, no country has ever implemented it. Definitely not Ireland. The current system is the best thing in the world. On serious note. This will never be allowed in US as the whole 3rd candidate is wasted vote argument goes away. And suddenly there is a crack in the door for a other candidate to win. https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/government-in-ireland/elections-and-referenda/voting/proportional-representation/ https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/government-in-ireland/...

DemocracyFTW2 2y ago
Paraphrasing Goethe as he wrote back in the day, hearing (I think?) about potatoes being cheap in the U.S., "Ah, Ireland! You have it better!"