Have you ever heard of Ranked Choice, or Instant Runoff Voting?
this post was submitted on 21 Dec 2023
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I was all-in for ranked choice voting (and even started working on an app for it) until I learned that a candidate who would have won can end up losing by becoming more popular, which is extremely counterintuitive, and a flaw that I don't think any voting system should have.
Nicky Case wrote a fantastic explanation about how that can happen, plus exploring many other voting methods: https://ncase.me/ballot/
I still think RCV (and really anything else) would be better than the US's first-past-the-post system, but I'd definitely prefer some type of approval, score, or STAR voting over it.
Yes. Often there are unintended results. I think another issue is that many people would have difficulty understanding the math behind it. It is not complex but it doesn't end up with concise results sometimes and distrust in the system can certainly jilt some people as we have witnessed enough.
That was a fantastic explanation, thanks for that
I have. What i want is an improved verison of Approval Voting
This is a form of score voting, and the specific form you discuss is the method used to elect the members of Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee (although they call it "Support", "Neutral", and "Oppose" instead of "Upvote", "Abstain", and "Downvote").
Another day, another new found love for wikipedia. It looks like what I want is specifically called a Three-Point Score election which uses Combined Approval Voting and its used by Wikipedia and in the UN when voting for the secretary general. Amazing. Thanks for sharing!
Sounds very interesting, I wonder if there are more studies on this and its effectiveness.
There are lots of really cool voting systems that don’t have the same weaknesses that first-past-the-post does. Check out https://ncase.me/ballot/ if you want a fun interactive explanation of several.
CGP Grey has multiple videos explaining different voting systems as well. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqs5ohhass_RN57KWlJKLOc5xdD9_ktRg
I will always upvote that ncase ballot link, it's so well-written.
Lots of people here are arguing for Ranked Choice, but Nicky's write-up shows that even though it's still better than the US's first-past-the-post system, something like Approval or Score voting are much better options.
I’ve long thought Condorcet is at least very close to being the absolute best election method. Nice to see it validated here!
In the epilogue she says we haven't tested scoring methods.
But in my local county council elections we had something to that degree. Every candidate (multiple candidates per party and independents) had three boxes. And every elector had 12 or 20 or something crosses to distribute. So you could give 3, 2, 1 or 0 crosses to a candidate.
Maybe the difference is, that didn't yield a single winner but elected members of the council.
Which is also a much more glaring issue with fptp systems: not the race for president, but the fact that there are only 2 parties in parliament.
Nicky Case is amazing. I didn’t know she made a project on this. Thanks!
Approval voting is similar to this. Instead of voting for one candidate, you vote for every candidate who is acceptable to you. The winner is the candidate who is acceptable to the most voters.
Exactly, but I think Approval Voting needs a Downvote option as well, so exceptionally bad candidates can be disapproved of by a voter. So a candidate that doesn’t excite you doesn’t get the same “points” from you as a candidate that wants to be a dictator.
Approval voting has a special place in my heart because it is such an easy transition from first-past-the-post (what the U.S. uses). You literally just change the ballot from "select the candidate you like" to select the candidates (plural) you like" and you're done, and it's such a significant upgrade from FPTP.
Like ranked voting? Some states already do ranked voting.
We have ranked voting in Australia. It works pretty well.
Personally I prefer the idea of ranking each candidate in order of preference, ie "this is my favorite candidate, this is my second-favorite, and so on for all the candidates with enough support to be on the ballot". I feel like it has more granularity than an upvote downvote system would have.
It's certainly still better than the US's current first-past-the-post system, but it has a critical flaw where a candidate who would have won can end up losing by becoming more popular, which could be abused by people trying to "game" the voting system. In reality, something like approval or score voting would be more representative of voter's desires.
See Nicky Case's excellent write-up on how that can happen: https://ncase.me/ballot/
That's interesting, I hadn't heard that before, though the one that has that flaw you mentioned looks to be instant runoff voting, which is not quite what I was suggesting (what I was thinking of looks to be called "borda count" here, though the write up has a criticism of that as well)
EDIT: though upon giving this a half hour or so to contemplate, I think I'd still favor that method (borda) best, out of everything mentioned in that write up. If I'm understanding their criticism of it correctly, it seems that in a case where you have a candidate who is the preferred choice for a majority of voters, and another candidate who is the preferred choice for a sizable minority of voters, and a third candidate who is almost nobody's preferred choice, but is somewhere in between them, it's sometimes possible for that third candidate to win even though the first candidate seems like they ought to, being the top choice for a bit more than half the voters. That situation feels like it ought to help dampen against polarization and cults of personality, because a candidate that is loved by a slim majority, but hated by everyone else, won't do as well as a candidate that manages to be everyone's second choice, that almost everyone can at least begrudgingly accept. It's not perfect obviously, I can imagine that it would tend to promote boring moderates that would make major changes and progress slow, which would frustrate me personally, not being a moderate myself- but I think it would result in a system that is reasonably stable and which should still generally trend towards the will of the majority, which sounds a lot better than what the US currently has. The non-ranked options presented sound intriguing, but I do think that people would just turn them into first past the post again by only marking their favorite as acceptable or giving their favorite the highest score and everyone else the lowest, because in addition to that being "strategic", it's also easier, and the cynic in me says that people are often lazy about these things.
Yeah but there needs to be an "explicitly not this one"-rank, and if you have to also rank republicans in the US, a whole lot of those.
Afaik, you don't have to rank every candidate in most RCV systems. So If you don't like someone, you can just leave them unranked.
This predictably would just lead to a two party system where you upvote your guy and downvote theirs.
I want the US to be able to vote a third candidate and have it not be an utter throwaway.
Downvoting would mean that in a 2 party system one Team upvotes their guy and downvotes the other.
Ranked choice voting works better. I believe CGP grey has a cool YouTube series on the voting options. He explains it based on voting in animal kingdom.
Ranked Choice is actually (much) worse overall than the modified Score that OP is describing, even with bullet voting.
As a note, Ranked Choice still has bullet voting. About 30% of voters in a ranked choice election bullet vote.
This video goes into a deep dive about Ranked Choice (and some other systems) and talks about how Ranked Choice might actually be worse than simple plurality. (which is already pretty bad)
You are horrible, I just spent the last half hour in a Rabbit Hole about star voting and other methods and will probably be reading more.
I don't know who the random YouTuber is but indeed several large voting organizations seem to favor star (score then automatic runoff) over RCV. As modern systems make counting/processing the votes much easier.
Thanks for the links and info!
As a note, Ranked Choice still has bullet voting. About 30% of voters in a ranked choice election bullet vote.
I think that stat could easily be attributed to a lack of familiarity with what is, to a lot of people, a new and different method of voting. You'd be surprised how many people don't adequately read or understand directions.
In other words, what you're describing isn't inherent to the system itself and it could be much worse.
I'd guess that the number of people who bullet vote will decrease as the level of education and familiarity around "new" voting systems like RCV increases.
Actually, no.
Bullet voting is just a thing people do.
Even in places that have been using versions of RCV for decades, about 30% of any given population will bullet vote.
That's info from FairVote themselves (The main proponents of RCV, even if they're sort of scummy in their advocacy)
You are horrible, I just spent the last half hour in a Rabbit Hole about star voting and other methods and will probably be reading more.
I don't know who the random YouTuber is but indeed several large voting organizations seem to favor star (score then automatic runoff) over RCV. As modern systems make counting/processing the votes much easier.
Thanks for the links and info!
It wouldn’t be a two party this guy versus that guy election though. There would be debates/campaigning and then you upvote/downvote/novote for each candidate running and whoever gets the most wins
Ranked choice voting.
Might I suggest range voting? Say there are 10 candidates on the ballot. You can give each a 1-10, 1 being most preferred. After giving 1 vote to your most preferred, you vote 2 on your second choice which gives them a half of a vote. 3rd choice is 1/3 of a vote, etc. You can also choose to not cast any fraction of a vote for a candidate. So say there's 10 candidates on a ballot, and one of them is an orange tinted fascist; you can completely withhold any part of your vote to that candidate.
Wait until you learn that's how real countries work! A Parliament gives you proportional representation based on your vote versus the proportion of the populace.
Ranked voting, as you describe, still works better but it is still a winner takes all scenario. Some cities, like NYC, already use it for their local elections because yes it makes sense.
Isn’t ranked voting a 1-5 option? I want a yes, no, abstain voting. Like how Lemmy we do up, down, no vote
This is a long read (skip to the "conclusion" part at the end to get the gist) but I think it belongs:
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/mark-bray-horizontalism
(if anyone has a more easy to digest introduction to horizontal governance, ideally to read rather than watch, I'd love a link!)
Cant you summarize it in your comment and apply it to the post in a way you think it belongs?
It's a form of governance, you either want to read even just the last paragraph for yourself, or you don't.. ¯\(ツ)/¯
That sort of ranked choice voting would be great in areas where there is truly a democratic option. In Utah, there is no other party except Republicans. They have gerrymandered every district so that only republicans can have their votes counted, and it is not possible to register as anything other than republican in Utah. That's one reason we're so in the pockets of big oil and gas industries here - it's all about how much money politicians can line their pocket with. But the point is - there is no way to downvote anyone. Most of us don't even get a chance to vote here.
A slight misconception in your comment, what OP is describing is much closer to a slightly limited version of Score. Or possibly an expanded Approval.
It's nothing like Ranked Choice.
To break things down, Ranked Choice is an Ordinal voting system. You rank candidates A then B then C.
The actual mechanics of the election are a series of First Past the Post elections all on a single ballot.
To contrast, Approval and Score are both Cardinal voting systems. You express preference for A, but that doesn't mean anything about your preference for B. The votes per candidate are counted independently of the votes for any other candidate. This means that Cardinal voting systems are 100% immune to the spoiler effect. They're also almost completely immune to clone candidates and other such attacks.
Ordinal systems will always fall victim to the spoiler effect, although the more complex ordinal voting systems like Ranked Choice mitigate it somewhat (while making things so much worse when it does crop up)
Sounds good thanks for clarifying.
Should be like figure skating judging.
We rank each canditate out of a possible ten points. Throw out the top 1% and the lowest 1% and then total.
Why would you throw out the top 1%?
In figure skating judging for the Olympics, they would throw out the top and bottom scores to eliminate any country-based biases against competitors.