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

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

#231

Post by BuyMyBitcoins » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 5:16 AM UTC

autoexec wrote: post #172

NickM wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> By honestly ranking their preferences, they threw away their say in the outcome. When Begich came out as the loser, every one of the votes he got went to the voter's #2 choice which was either Palin or Peltola (and a surprising 29% of Begich voters had Peltola as their #2 choice!) The only people who "threw away their say in the outcome" are the ones who didn't rank their preferences. They basically opted out of ha…

I have a feeling the average voter doesn’t actually have a preference for more than one candidate, much less ranking all of them. The whole appeal of RCV is supposedly to help Third Parties, but that hasn’t really come to fruition. Many voters are partisan, and don’t feel like ranking a RINO/DINO as their second choice. RCV ballots state that you can choose to vote for only one candidate.

People are used to casting ballots for their main choice, and if pressed I doubt most of the electorate would be able to describe the instant runoff process RCV enabled and you would be hard pressed to find a layman able to flesh out all the different scenarios of how their ballot would be counted in any particular close race.

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

#232

Post by BuyMyBitcoins » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 5:18 AM UTC

ClayShentrup wrote: post #224

crazygringo wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I see that there are certain situations where ex post, you get some weird outcomes where _hypothetically_ ranking your preferred candidate lower would have helped your candidate. It's not even that strong -- it's outcomes where ranking your second -most preferred candidate above your preferred one will help get that second -most preferred candidate elected, as opposed to a third one you detest -- if you know your m…

Of course it works in practice. You just vote for the stronger lesser evil candidate, for the same reason my aunt voted for Biden even though she preferred Warren. This is called compromise strategy. The opposite strategy would be like if Trump supporters voted for Warren to advance the weaker candidate against their guy. The same strategy works in any kind of runoff method including instant runoff voting.

What you mentioned is something closed primaries are designed to counteract.

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

#233

Post by josephcsible » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 5:19 AM UTC

buzzy_hacker wrote: post #213

dogcomplex wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, wher…

> we are dumbfounded by those who prefer Ranked Choice Voting. Hello, I prefer RCV. Reasons: - it is a stepping stone to proportional representation (achieved by adopting both RCV and multi-member districts), which is much more important than which single-winner voting system is chosen - you need to be a fellow voting systems nerd to understand when you may want to vote tactically in RCV, so approximately zero people…

> - you need to be a fellow voting systems nerd to understand when you may want to vote tactically in RCV, so approximately zero people will vote insincerely

I don't think this is true. Consider a hypothetical voter whose sincere party preference order is "Constitution > Libertarian > Republican > Green > Democrat > Socialist > Communist". It doesn't take very big of a logical leap to say "it basically always seems to be a Republican or Democrat who wins, so for my vote to count the most, I should vote Republican > Constitution > Libertarian > Green > Socialist > Communist > Democrat."

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

#234

Post by dane-pgp » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 5:22 AM UTC

notriddle wrote: post #157

JTbane wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

STAR voting can be easily gamed- tell your supporters "vote MAX for me and 0 for everyone else". Anyone who gives more than a 0 to their second choice candidate will hurt their first choice.

The only voting system that isn't "vulnerable" to bullet voting is FPTP, since it obligates you to bullet vote.

Actually that's not the only invulnerable system; there's also "Asset Voting", which I've mentioned in a comment above[0]. It also obligates you to bullet vote, since the voter's honest first preference is the only information needed, but it avoids the spoiler problems of FPTP, and is thus superior to it.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33117670

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

#235

Post by supreme_loquat » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 5:25 AM UTC

buzzy_hacker wrote: post #213

dogcomplex wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, wher…

> we are dumbfounded by those who prefer Ranked Choice Voting. Hello, I prefer RCV. Reasons: - it is a stepping stone to proportional representation (achieved by adopting both RCV and multi-member districts), which is much more important than which single-winner voting system is chosen - you need to be a fellow voting systems nerd to understand when you may want to vote tactically in RCV, so approximately zero people…

> it is a stepping stone to proportional representation (achieved by adopting both RCV and multi-member districts), which is much more important than which single-winner voting system is chosen

There are proportional methods for STAR and approval as well, there's no reason they couldn't be the stepping stones from this perspective

> you need to be a fellow voting systems nerd to understand when you may want to vote tactically in RCV, so approximately zero people will vote insincerely

Yet that doesn't try and stop people from duping voters into eg only ranking Palin, even though RCV is basically the only system where there is practically 0 reason to not rank additional candidates. Your point mostly makes sense but in practice I wouldn't expect high amounts of tactical voting in STAR either for similar reasons. And from another perspective - if someone were to eg bullet vote in STAR to help their first choice win, is that really tactical voting, or just an honest vote/admission that they care so much about their first choice that all other opponents are equally bad? In my opinion, being forced to grapple with compromise would be good for society.

> it is really obvious that voting tactically is an option in approval voting, and so lots of people will vote insincerely and this will undermine the confidence in the voting system

Possibly, although I think bullet voting is much less common than people think it would be. That said, people want to be able to express preferences so I think the best use of approval is in primaries where the top two candidates proceed to the general. Outside of that I'm kind of meh on approval, and if people have to choose between approval vs RCV or approval vs STAR, I expect RCV/STAR to win almost every time.

> while single-winner RCV may not result in many more third-party winners (we need multi-winner RCV, i.e. proportional representation for that), it will change the kinds of winners for the two dominant parties, which is just as important. This point is always under appreciated.

Will it? With RCV the two dominant parties no longer have to worry about the spoiler effect, so there is even less incentive to reach across the aisle and receive influence from a third party than before. Whereas before you might want to take some token talking points from a third party and siphon some votes from them, with RCV you might be able to assume you'll get those voter's 2nd choices for free.

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

#236

Post by autoexec » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 5:33 AM UTC

BuyMyBitcoins wrote: post #231

autoexec wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By honestly ranking their preferences, they threw away their say in the outcome. When Begich came out as the loser, every one of the votes he got went to the voter's #2 choice which was either Palin or Peltola (and a surprising 29% of Begich voters had Peltola as their #2 choice!) The only people who "threw away their say in the outcome" are the ones who didn't rank their preferences. They basically opted out of ha…

I have a feeling the average voter doesn’t actually have a preference for more than one candidate, much less ranking all of them. The whole appeal of RCV is supposedly to help Third Parties, but that hasn’t really come to fruition. Many voters are partisan, and don’t feel like ranking a RINO/DINO as their second choice. RCV ballots state that you can choose to vote for only one candidate. People are used to casting b…

> I have a feeling the average voter doesn’t actually have a preference for more than one candidate

Many voters don't have a preference for the people they vote for now. Many really do tend to fall back on voting for a party, and that option doesn't go away with RCV. I do suspect it'd be better (and easier) for each party to put forward only one candidate in each election, but as long as the list is narrowed down well enough by voting day it's not really a problem. In the Alaska election voters only had to rank three candidates which is perfectly reasonable.

> RCV ballots state that you can choose to vote for only one candidate.

And we should retain the option. Choosing one and refusing to rank the others is pretty much the same as voting against everyone else, or in the case where your one chosen candidate is removed, more like not voting at all. I don't have a problem with letting people make that choice although I have heard it argued that voting should be compulsory. I'm not sure if that'd require a rank for everyone under RCV or not.

> People are used to casting ballots for their main choice, and if pressed I doubt most of the electorate would be able to describe the instant runoff process RCV enabled and you would be hard pressed to find a layman able to flesh out all the different scenarios of how their ballot would be counted in any particular close race.

This is perhaps the biggest problem and it applies to literally any change we make to our voting system. We need to educate the public on how the new system works, or at the very least provide information so that the public is able to inform themselves. I can't speak to how well Alaska made an effort to inform their population about the new voting system, but I will say that there are some very good youtube videos that explain the idea behind RCV pretty well.

Following any change there is bound to be a little confusion, but with time and little effort on the part of the people I'm convinced we'll be just as comfortable with an improved voting system (RCV or not) as we are with the one we're stuck with presently.

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

#237

Post by autoexec » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 5:46 AM UTC

josephcsible wrote: post #226

autoexec wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By honestly ranking their preferences, they threw away their say in the outcome. When Begich came out as the loser, every one of the votes he got went to the voter's #2 choice which was either Palin or Peltola (and a surprising 29% of Begich voters had Peltola as their #2 choice!) The only people who "threw away their say in the outcome" are the ones who didn't rank their preferences. They basically opted out of ha…

The people who picked Begich as their first choice had their second choice counted, but the people who picked Palin as their first choice threw away their second choice. Had the latter's second choices not been thrown away, then Begich would have won.

> The people who picked Palin as their first choice threw away their second choice.

You don't get to rank a bunch of choices and then claim your vote didn't get counted because every one of your choices didn't win the election. People who picked Palin as their #1 choice won against Begich. Their vote went to Palin exactly as they wanted. Palin lost, but the voter who put Palin first voted for the person they wanted and that vote was counted.

Voting for a losing candidate does not mean throwing your vote away or not having your vote counted.

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

#238

Post by autoexec » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 5:53 AM UTC

ClayShentrup wrote: post #223

autoexec wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By honestly ranking their preferences, they threw away their say in the outcome. When Begich came out as the loser, every one of the votes he got went to the voter's #2 choice which was either Palin or Peltola (and a surprising 29% of Begich voters had Peltola as their #2 choice!) The only people who "threw away their say in the outcome" are the ones who didn't rank their preferences. They basically opted out of ha…

This is simply wrong. Palin voters didn't get their second choice preferences counted. If they had instead tactically/ insincerely ranked Begich first, he would have won by a 5% majority against Peltola. They were punished by voting sincerely for Palin. Palin was a spoiler. People who voted for her threw away their vote, period.

Voting for a losing candidate does not mean throwing your vote away or not having your vote counted. People who picked Palin as their #1 choice won against Begich. Their vote was counted and it went to Palin exactly as they wanted.

If you want to argue that there should have only been one republican on the ballot to prevent a 'spoiler' you'd have to take that up with the republican party

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

#239

Post by LawTalkingGuy » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 6:02 AM UTC

lostdog wrote: post #204

godelski wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If centrist is defined by the minimization of distance between a population's preference and a candidate's position then I don't see the problem. Why would you want an extremist? Or why would you want someone that is less representative of the population as a whole? Isn't the point of democracy to minimize this distance? I'd actually argue that if approval was used Bernie would have won. One can vote Bernie honestly…

> One can vote Bernie honestly but also approve of Hillary as a safety. No, that's the thing. Many people want to express their preference, and really really didn't want to "approve" of these two people at the same level. It's exactly the same with... > Bernie was quite popular and frankly a lot of people that also voted Trump also liked Bernie because he was an outsider. ...where these people may have felt positivel…

It's an iterated event, voters would learn that voting a single candidate generally gives them less influence.

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

#240

Post by jcadam » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 6:04 AM UTC

NickM wrote: post #94

crazygringo wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

it would be a shame to spend our effort squabbling over which alternative, than giving support to the one that has the most momentum and chance of succeeding now I think the bigger shame would be to spend so much effort promoting RCV, only to have people become jaded and disillusioned with voting method reform in general when they realize RCVs many glaring problems. The biggest problem with RCV IMO is that it looks l…

As a resident of Alaska I will support any effort to repeal RCV. The state legislature can repeal a ballot measure 2 years after its effective date, so that may happen before the 2024 election.