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Show HN: RankedVote – SurveyMonkey but focused on ranked-choice voting

rankedvote.co

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Re: Show HN: RankedVote – SurveyMonkey but focused on ranked-choice voting

#11

Post by tadmilbourn »

mnomitch wrote: post #5

Hi! I actually made a similar site for my own purposes - https://poller.io - and I've been using it with friends for a while. One interesting finding. I was expecting that Instant Runoff would be the method we all preferred. I also included plurality winner, Borda Count and the Condorcet winner (if there was one) in the list of results. After using this with friends for decisions, I realized that a lot of choices tha…

Thanks! And I hadn't come across Poller before. Pretty cool. FYI - RankedVote actually uses a type of Borda Count as its tiebreaking mechanism. Not quite what you're saying, but is better than picking a name out of a hat!

You bring up a lot of interesting points on what people feel happy with after voting. None of these systems is perfect. Each can be picked apart in various ways. That's why I tend to frame things in terms of "does this move things forward from the status quo?"

Re: Show HN: RankedVote – SurveyMonkey but focused on ranked-choice voting

#12

Post by mritchie712 »

tadmilbourn wrote: post #2

Hi HN! I’ve been running RankedVote as a solo founder for over a year and have had great success (and luck) with it being used to educate voters in New York City and Alaska. Bill de Blasio even ate a piece of pepperoni pizza as the result of one contest held on RankedVote. BUT…what I’m looking for at this stage are use cases outside of direct voter education where RankedVote can be applied. By crossing over into ever…

"What feature should we build next?" Could be a good one. I don't know that it's actually a good thing to ask of your users, but I could definitely see people thinking it's a good thing to ask.

Re: Show HN: RankedVote – SurveyMonkey but focused on ranked-choice voting

#13

Post by clolege »

mnomitch wrote: post #5

Hi! I actually made a similar site for my own purposes - https://poller.io - and I've been using it with friends for a while. One interesting finding. I was expecting that Instant Runoff would be the method we all preferred. I also included plurality winner, Borda Count and the Condorcet winner (if there was one) in the list of results. After using this with friends for decisions, I realized that a lot of choices tha…

Isn't Borda Count just Score voting where you enforce that voters can't give two options the same amount of support?

I would be curious why people would prefer Borda over Score if so.

Re: Show HN: RankedVote – SurveyMonkey but focused on ranked-choice voting

#14

Post by adamredwoods »

endisneigh wrote: post #3

though I think the app looks great. I’ve never seen the point of ranked choice. Approval voting seems faster to vote, easier to implement and explain

Approval voting allows bullet voting, which is not ideal:

https://fairvote.org/the_troubling_record_of_approval_voting...

Re: Show HN: RankedVote – SurveyMonkey but focused on ranked-choice voting

#15

Post by tadmilbourn »

WORMS_EAT_WORMS wrote: post #8
tadmilbourn wrote: post #2

Hi HN! I’ve been running RankedVote as a solo founder for over a year and have had great success (and luck) with it being used to educate voters in New York City and Alaska. Bill de Blasio even ate a piece of pepperoni pizza as the result of one contest held on RankedVote. BUT…what I’m looking for at this stage are use cases outside of direct voter education where RankedVote can be applied. By crossing over into ever…

Really well done and congrats! I think the market specifically for “Ranked-Choice Voting” is probably way smaller than the need for “easy/better/awesome polling and survey tools”. Just keep that in mind as you grow and good luck with everything

Thanks for the kind words!

And, you're exactly right. The online world of people specifically interested in tools for ranked-choice voting is quite small. The question I'm trying to answer is what use cases does ranked-choice voting work better than other existing survey/polling options? That way, someone could be looking for a solution to that specific problem. Right now, most of RankedVote's users are already aware of RCV and then try to apply that in some scenario at work where a simple voting tool would have been the alternative.

Re: Show HN: RankedVote – SurveyMonkey but focused on ranked-choice voting

#16

Post by mnomitch »

tadmilbourn wrote: post #11
mnomitch wrote: post #5

Hi! I actually made a similar site for my own purposes - https://poller.io - and I've been using it with friends for a while. One interesting finding. I was expecting that Instant Runoff would be the method we all preferred. I also included plurality winner, Borda Count and the Condorcet winner (if there was one) in the list of results. After using this with friends for decisions, I realized that a lot of choices tha…

Thanks! And I hadn't come across Poller before. Pretty cool. FYI - RankedVote actually uses a type of Borda Count as its tiebreaking mechanism. Not quite what you're saying, but is better than picking a name out of a hat! You bring up a lot of interesting points on what people feel happy with after voting. None of these systems is perfect. Each can be picked apart in various ways. That's why I tend to frame things in…

Oh interesting. If you don't mind me asking, what is the tie breaking mechanism?

And totally agreed on the framing. Also, prepare yourself for the feedback of "we should have a runoff election with the top two" and then people completely rejecting the concept that you've already done the runoff. :)

Re: Show HN: RankedVote – SurveyMonkey but focused on ranked-choice voting

#17

Post by crazygringo »

endisneigh wrote: post #3

though I think the app looks great. I’ve never seen the point of ranked choice. Approval voting seems faster to vote, easier to implement and explain

Because of 5 candidates, there are 3 I approve, and 2 I hate. But of the 3 I approve, I love one and only reluctantly accept the other two.

People often have strong feelings about their top preference, and approval rating destroys that.

And then in my example, the voter is tempted to approve just 1 in order to give them a better chance of winning. (Known as bullet voting.)

It's much more intuitive and less cognitive load to rank options by preference than to decide on an arbitrary threshold of approval. You already know your ranking; you have to strategically decide on an approval cutoff.

(Also, between the candidates you disapprove of, you still often think some would be better/worse than others, and want that to count too.)

Re: Show HN: RankedVote – SurveyMonkey but focused on ranked-choice voting

#18

Post by SamBam »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #7
endisneigh wrote: post #3

though I think the app looks great. I’ve never seen the point of ranked choice. Approval voting seems faster to vote, easier to implement and explain

> I’ve never seen the point of ranked choice. I'm waiting to see RCV pushed by someone's who ideology doesn't exactly benefit from it in their area. It's not a second place always wins, but I have seen a lot of examples of "My party will not win in my area, but it's kinda close, and RCV gives me a higher statistical probability of "my side" getting in" . Maybe approval voting is better, I'm not sure how likely it is…

I'm for any form of multi-vote system (RCV, Approval, etc) because (1) they tend to more accurately reflect the will of the electorate, and (2) they may help to break the strangle-hold of a two party system in the US.

The two-party system is so dominant in the US because of the first-past-the-post voting system. With such an election (even disregarding the financial power of the parties, or the role of the electoral college) third-party candidates never have a shot, because any intelligent voter knows that a vote for them is a spoiler for their second-favorite candidate.

Multi-choice voting systems generally reduce or eliminate spoiler effects, which both allows a third party to build support, and reduces the chance that an election will go to a candidate with lower support simply because the other side had their vote split.

Even when we're not talking about the two-party system, multi-vote systems better reflect the will of the people. My city has a ranked choice, multi-seat election for city council. All councilors are at-large, meaning you're voting a group of about ten of them in, and selecting from a pool of about 20 candidates. There's almost no other system that could accurately capture the majority of the people's positions.

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