5 ms·

I think instant-runoff voting is a better idea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting

eru 12y ago
Or approval voting. It's much easier to understand, and not really gameable.
- pateras 12y ago
  The thing I don't get about approval voting is when do you stop voting for your second choice? It seems like every vote with approval voting is a strategic vote, whereas with IRV you just always vote for your preferred candidates in order. Yes, favorite betrayal is possible, but it requires a very specific set of circumstances, and the only gaming of the system is people throwing their top vote to the opponent, which is very risky and requires a freakish amount of insight into the race to know if the conditions of a spoiler are even possible. To me, strategic voting seems much more likely with approval voting than it does with IRV, and it's that strategic voting that is maintaining the two party system. I think the possibility of a possible spoiler effect under IRV is small, and that its chances of actually allowing 3rd party victories are much higher, and thus worth the risk, especially because, to me, approval voting doesn't really remove the spoiler effect, but just delays it. I like approval voting, but IRV seems like a better solution, overall. Also, I disagree that approval voting is much easier to understand. IRV isn't significantly more complicated than approval voting, and neither are significantly more complicated the current plurality/FPTP system. TL;DR - In my opinion, IRV's rewards outweigh its risks and IRV > approval voting > FPTP.
  - eru 12y ago
    It's strategic voting under first past the post that maintaining the two-party system, not strategic voting in general. In approval voting you are always best off voting your preference. The only thing you have to decide is your cutoff for how many people you want to approve. From what I've read, people are pretty good at that intuitively.
    - ClayShentrup 12y ago
      www.electology.org/threshold
  - aninhumer 12y ago
    >The thing I don't get about approval voting is when do you stop voting for your second choice? I actually think splitting parties into which ones you like or dislike is a far more natural process than ranking them. Especially when you start getting more variety. That said, I tend to prefer Range voting, since it gives people the most flexibility to actually express their relative preferences. >Yes, favorite betrayal is possible, but it requires a very specific set of circumstances I don't think they're that uncommon circumstances. But more importantly, even the possibility of a spoiler is enough to make people think twice about putting their actual favourite first. It's nowhere near as bad as FPTP, but there's still some pressure to choose a popular party.
nitrogen 12y ago
IRV has a problem with nonmonotonicity: http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/ http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/
- philipn 12y ago
  Well, no voting system is perfect. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theorem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theorem. IRV is pretty good, and is being slowly adopted across the country. In particular, IRV satisfies the important "majority criteria," e.g. if the majority of people vote for a candidate, that candidate should win. Approval / range voting fail this criteria. See, again, Arrow's Theorem. http://archive.fairvote.org/monotonicity/ http://archive.fairvote.org/monotonicity/. Additionally, voting so as to strategically take advantage of non-monotonicity using IRV/STV/Ranked Choice Voting is NP-Complete- see http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.127.97 http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.127....
  - aninhumer 12y ago
    Approval/Range voting fail the majority criteria in that they allow a candidate who is the second preference of 90% of people to beat a candidate who is the first preference of 51% of people. Is that necessarily a bad thing? Your link also discusses the later-no-harm criteria for Approval/Range leading to strategic voting, but all the examples I've seen for this seem to talk about giving a marginally preferred candidate an advantage in the absence of any truly disliked candidates. I think in practice, people will be far more interested in keeping disliked candidates out than furthering their marginal preferences. Meanwhile, IRV suffers from Favourite Betrayal, which is a much more obvious incentive for strategic voting IMO. (Your link about NP-completeness of strategy only talks about STV.)
    - ClayShentrup 12y ago
      This issue has been solved by math PhD's and political scientists who've studied the matter for decades. www.electology.org/approval-voting-vs-irv IRV can elect X even if Y was preferred to X by an arbitrarily huge majority and got more first-place votes than X. www.electology.org/core-support Regarding favorite betrayal, you might enjoy this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtKAScORevQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtKAScORevQ

eru 12y ago

Or approval voting. It's much easier to understand, and not really gameable.

pateras 12y ago
The thing I don't get about approval voting is when do you stop voting for your second choice? It seems like every vote with approval voting is a strategic vote, whereas with IRV you just always vote for your preferred candidates in order. Yes, favorite betrayal is possible, but it requires a very specific set of circumstances, and the only gaming of the system is people throwing their top vote to the opponent, which is very risky and requires a freakish amount of insight into the race to know if the conditions of a spoiler are even possible. To me, strategic voting seems much more likely with approval voting than it does with IRV, and it's that strategic voting that is maintaining the two party system. I think the possibility of a possible spoiler effect under IRV is small, and that its chances of actually allowing 3rd party victories are much higher, and thus worth the risk, especially because, to me, approval voting doesn't really remove the spoiler effect, but just delays it. I like approval voting, but IRV seems like a better solution, overall. Also, I disagree that approval voting is much easier to understand. IRV isn't significantly more complicated than approval voting, and neither are significantly more complicated the current plurality/FPTP system. TL;DR - In my opinion, IRV's rewards outweigh its risks and IRV > approval voting > FPTP.
- eru 12y ago
  It's strategic voting under first past the post that maintaining the two-party system, not strategic voting in general. In approval voting you are always best off voting your preference. The only thing you have to decide is your cutoff for how many people you want to approve. From what I've read, people are pretty good at that intuitively.
  - ClayShentrup 12y ago
    www.electology.org/threshold
- aninhumer 12y ago
  >The thing I don't get about approval voting is when do you stop voting for your second choice? I actually think splitting parties into which ones you like or dislike is a far more natural process than ranking them. Especially when you start getting more variety. That said, I tend to prefer Range voting, since it gives people the most flexibility to actually express their relative preferences. >Yes, favorite betrayal is possible, but it requires a very specific set of circumstances I don't think they're that uncommon circumstances. But more importantly, even the possibility of a spoiler is enough to make people think twice about putting their actual favourite first. It's nowhere near as bad as FPTP, but there's still some pressure to choose a popular party.

nitrogen 12y ago

IRV has a problem with nonmonotonicity: http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/ http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/

philipn 12y ago
Well, no voting system is perfect. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theorem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theorem. IRV is pretty good, and is being slowly adopted across the country. In particular, IRV satisfies the important "majority criteria," e.g. if the majority of people vote for a candidate, that candidate should win. Approval / range voting fail this criteria. See, again, Arrow's Theorem. http://archive.fairvote.org/monotonicity/ http://archive.fairvote.org/monotonicity/. Additionally, voting so as to strategically take advantage of non-monotonicity using IRV/STV/Ranked Choice Voting is NP-Complete- see http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.127.97 http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.127....
- aninhumer 12y ago
  Approval/Range voting fail the majority criteria in that they allow a candidate who is the second preference of 90% of people to beat a candidate who is the first preference of 51% of people. Is that necessarily a bad thing? Your link also discusses the later-no-harm criteria for Approval/Range leading to strategic voting, but all the examples I've seen for this seem to talk about giving a marginally preferred candidate an advantage in the absence of any truly disliked candidates. I think in practice, people will be far more interested in keeping disliked candidates out than furthering their marginal preferences. Meanwhile, IRV suffers from Favourite Betrayal, which is a much more obvious incentive for strategic voting IMO. (Your link about NP-completeness of strategy only talks about STV.)
  - ClayShentrup 12y ago
    This issue has been solved by math PhD's and political scientists who've studied the matter for decades. www.electology.org/approval-voting-vs-irv IRV can elect X even if Y was preferred to X by an arbitrarily huge majority and got more first-place votes than X. www.electology.org/core-support Regarding favorite betrayal, you might enjoy this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtKAScORevQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtKAScORevQ