Show HN: RankedVote – SurveyMonkey but focused on ranked-choice voting • Hacker News Board

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

#181

Post by buzzy_hacker » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 10:15 PM UTC

defrost wrote: post #168

elihu wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with RCV is there's a big difference between giving an honest opinion and voting tactically. In RCV it's safe to put your first choice first if either they're an overwhelming favorite to win, or they're so weak they're sure to get eliminated right away. If it's a close three-way election, you might cause your favorite candidate to lose by ranking them first. It's hard to develop any kind of intuition arou…

> I think in the long run voters tend to learn that voting for third parties isn't safe, so two parties continue to dominate. The empiricval evidence in countries with long term ranked voting (Australia, say) is that bicameral party systems ( only Democrats or Republicans have any realistic chance) wither and die, and smaller blocs have a better chance of survival and impact | influence in the House and Senate .. Two…

Also it’s not just about the nominal parties that win, it’s the composition of politicians in those parties, and RCV selects for more broadly agreeable candidates.

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

#182

Post by godelski » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 10:19 PM UTC

gamegoblin wrote: post #151

godelski wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But raw approval gives undue advantage to moderates. If by "moderates" you mean "most liked" then I'm not sure what the problem is here. The point of voting is to find the most universally agreed upon ruler. You may call this unfair, but I would say that it is MORE unfair to give advantage to fringe groups rather than giving advantage to the masses. I thought the point of democracies was about having rule by the ma…

> If you think fringe groups should have the advantage I'd like to hear your argument. I'm not sure what gave you the impression I think that. My comments clearly suggest that my view is that STAR > Approval-to-runoff > Approval > RCV-IRV > Plurality. My reasoning is that I place a very high value on the condorcet and favorite betrayal criteria.

My apologies then. It was the italicized "undue" that made me think that this was your position. I read it as "undeserving".

As for the condorcet winner, that is quite hard actually. But if we consider a weak condorcet winner (where it is true 90+% of the time), that isn't as hard. I do think simplicity, transparency, and reduced vulnerability to strategy is a worthwhile trade-off for a strong condorcet winner. But of course, this is just my personal opinion and what's the preferred optima depends a lot on personal preferences.

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

#183

Post by godelski » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 10:23 PM UTC

garaetjjte wrote: post #145

bhauer wrote: post #32

Ranking the voting systems: STAR Voting > Approval Voting > Ranked Choice Voting > Plurality ("pick only one") voting. Ranked Choice Voting is marginally better than plurality voting, but it has problems. The chief defect with Ranked Choice Voting is its non-monotonicity, whereby increasing your support for your genuine favorite can actually hurt their odds of winning. This may be what happened in Alaska [1]. STAR Vo…

I'm not convinced that additional complexity of STAR is worth it compared to extremely simple score voting.

What's the added complexity of STAR?

STAR is phase 1: sort(sum(candidates))[:2] (almost identical to score/approval/FPTP. We'd just take argmax instead of top two) and phase 2: eliminate other candidates, argmax(sum(candidates)) (identical to score/approval/FPTP).

On the other hand RCV is a multi-round system with a while loop. In practice it almost never has fewer than 2 rounds (requires overwhelming majority, which almost never happens with more than 3 candidates).

From an algorithms perspective RCV is more complex.

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

#184

Post by godelski » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 10:27 PM UTC

bombcar wrote: post #150

godelski wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what I think the parent is referring to is called the Favorite Betrayer Criteria[0]. The short is that there are two forms of the spoiler effect: strong and weak. RCV handles the weak case but does not handle the strong case. I explain part of why cardinal methods handle the strong case in this comment[1]. The truth is that we're far more concerned with the strong case than weak case because from our current posit…

I wonder if fixing the "strong case" spoiler actually is NOT what some "spoiler voters" would want, simply BECAUSE they want to spoil for the other party to try to move that party toward where they want it to be.

Probably. But I don't think the public really wants their voting systems to be highly vulnerable to strategic voting. That does just give elites an edge and ends up with less equitable representation.

(strategies exist for ALL voting systems. But not all strategies are equally as bad)

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

#185

Post by gfunk911 » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 10:31 PM UTC

NickM wrote: post #162

theptip wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see a problem in the Alaska election. Perhaps I'm missing something? I posted this in a previous discussion but I'll repost because I'm keen to hear other perspectives. From https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-democrats-win-in-a... > 40 percent of voters had chosen Peltola as their first choice, 31 percent had chosen Palin and 29 percent had chosen Republican businessman Nick Begich III. Under the rules…

It's not nearly as complex as you're making it out to be. Palin was the spoiler candidate in Alaska. If Palin hadn't run, Begich would have won. Additionally, if Palin > Begich > Peltola voters had "dishonestly" voted Begich > Palin > Peltola, Begich would have won and those voters would have gotten a better outcome for themselves. By honestly ranking their preferences, they threw away their say in the outcome. Now d…

Do we know for a fact the breakdown of 2nd choices on ballots where Palin was the first choice? If not, you are only speculating.

It seems possible that Palin lost due to voters incorrectly expressing their preferences by not putting a 2nd choice. If that is a routine thing, then it is indeed a problem with ranked choice voting in the real world, but it is NOT a structural flaw as you are claiming.

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

#186

Post by zajio1am » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 10:45 PM UTC

bhauer wrote: post #32

Ranking the voting systems: STAR Voting > Approval Voting > Ranked Choice Voting > Plurality ("pick only one") voting. Ranked Choice Voting is marginally better than plurality voting, but it has problems. The chief defect with Ranked Choice Voting is its non-monotonicity, whereby increasing your support for your genuine favorite can actually hurt their odds of winning. This may be what happened in Alaska [1]. STAR Vo…

Approval voting fails in a situation that is pretty common in Europe (e.g. French presidential elections) - you have center left, center right, far left and far right candidate. If you vote for center left/right, you have to decide whether to also approve center right/left candidate, which may be contrary to your values, corrupt and incompetent, but at least not communist or fascist. That is why later-no-harm property of IRV is important.

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

#187

Post by zajio1am » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 10:58 PM UTC

RyanCavanaugh wrote: post #75

fasthands9 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing that I think gets lost in political debate around voting is that RCV also changes the behavior/selection of the candidates. Its not just that the candidates are identical and you vote with a different mechanism - but candidates have an incentive to moderate. This may mean the outcome is the same (in terms of which candidate wins) but their positions represent the median voter more. I would imagine approval…

RCV-IRV doesn't encourage moderate candidates because, in a polarized environment, moderate candidates are much more likely to be no one's first choice and get eliminated as a result. This isn't hypothetical -- you can look at the results in Seattle's City Attorney race, which strangely ended up electing a Republican to a citywide office for the first time in 20 years, and where the outcome under RCV would have been…

> moderate candidates are much more likely to be no one's first choice and get eliminated as a result.

If i look at my country's upper chamber, which is elected with two-round system, then it is quite the reverse. Extremist candidates rarely pass to second round and if they do, they are eliminated there.

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

#188

Post by elihu » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 11:10 PM UTC

uoaei wrote: post #165

NickM wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's easy to understand and doesn't result in absurd outcomes I mean, I realize this is somewhat subjective, but "more people ranking a candidate first can cause them to lose" seems like a pretty absurd outcome to me. I'm not saying approval voting is perfect either, sure it has flaws, but at least it doesn't violate the monotonicity criterion (or a variety of other important criteria that RCV fails to satisfy).

I think this is the important point: some criteria are more important than others in that the societal reactions when one or another criterion is violated are not equal and could engender different outcomes. If approval voting reduces to bullet voting in heated contests, I don't see that as very bad: to put it crudely, it's just the cost of doing business with that particular voting method, but there's nothing to say…

"Bullet voting" (voting for only one candidate) isn't usually even a smart strategy to maximize your influence in an approval voting election, despite fairvote.org's claims that it is.

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

#189

Post by zajio1am » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 11:11 PM UTC

bhauer wrote: post #32

Ranking the voting systems: STAR Voting > Approval Voting > Ranked Choice Voting > Plurality ("pick only one") voting. Ranked Choice Voting is marginally better than plurality voting, but it has problems. The chief defect with Ranked Choice Voting is its non-monotonicity, whereby increasing your support for your genuine favorite can actually hurt their odds of winning. This may be what happened in Alaska [1]. STAR Vo…

> Ranking the voting systems: STAR Voting > Approval Voting > Ranked Choice Voting > Plurality ("pick only one") voting.

Funny is that you ranked them and not scored them nor just say whether you approve them or not.

If you have to vote for these voting systems using approval voting, which ones would you approve?

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

#190

Post by dogcomplex » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 11:17 PM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #88

bhauer wrote: post #32

Ranking the voting systems: STAR Voting > Approval Voting > Ranked Choice Voting > Plurality ("pick only one") voting. Ranked Choice Voting is marginally better than plurality voting, but it has problems. The chief defect with Ranked Choice Voting is its non-monotonicity, whereby increasing your support for your genuine favorite can actually hurt their odds of winning. This may be what happened in Alaska [1]. STAR Vo…

I just want to make clear for others: this "ranking" is just bhauer's opinion. Since some people here might interpret it as being presented as objective fact or some consensus opinion. There are a lot of pros/cons to all of the richer voting systems, usually categorized as approval voting, ranked voting, and score voting, in terms of increasing information. But there is absolutely no consensus that approval or score…

Just to be clear for others: those who reject Ranked Choice Voting do so because it does not support 3rd party candidates - it encourages strategic voting (due to its non-monotonicity) that locks in to 2-parties again. It thus completely fails to achieve the most important part of reform, and falls below ALL other systems previously mentioned here (including also Condorcet or Proportional Representation systems, where applicable). This is not simply "oh some people like Approval voting a little more" - we are dumbfounded by those who prefer Ranked Choice Voting. STRONG negative preference.

It's also worth considering that the same parties who benefit from First Past The Post would be threatened by a change to literally any other system aside from FPTP or Ranked Choice Voting. Surely that comes into play when voting reform movements are funded. And surely that kind of "conspiracy talk" shouldn't be dismissed in an intellectual forum when there is a very clear path to how these reforms could directly affect very powerful parties.