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

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

#41

Post by buzzy_hacker »

charlesetc wrote: post #28

"How Ranked-Choice Voting elects extremists" https://psephomancy.medium.com/how-ranked-choice-voting-elec... This article recommends instead a STAR voting system which is still simple to implement and understand while not electing extremists in some cases. I would be sad to see NYC and others turn to ranked choice without considering all the alternatives.

In the real world, moderate candidates (green in the example) get more support/votes than extremists so it’s unlikely they would get the fewest first place votes. Also, if green is only able to get a tiny sliver of first-choice preferences, I don’t think they should be elected, even if they are in the middle of the 1-dimensional spectrum.

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

#42

Post by clairity »

tadmilbourn wrote: post #15
WORMS_EAT_WORMS wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

ranked choice is a primitive form of conjoint analysis, so that might be an avenue for exploration. marketers aren't always statistically rigorous in how they poll and analyze markets (which is one of the reasons product management rose in prominence, because of the promise of more analytic rigor). even simple versions of conjoint can be an informative tool in the toolbox, but the studies and the existing tools are expensive.

i don't know for sure that there is a big enough market there for VC, but i'm sure a good marketer could make a nice business out of it.

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

#43

Post by goodpoint »

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…

Please support Condorcet voting.

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

#44

Post by clolege »

mnomitch wrote: post #21
clolege wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not super familiar with score, but the advantage in this scenario is that voters call all input the same way and get borda + IRV + a potential condorcet winner. If you allowed same scores then you can't do both simultaneously and/or the UX gets really funky.

you can do both simultaneously if you count ranked ballots like an election office would: you throw away all tied rankings, and rankings that come after :)

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

#45

Post by naniwaduni »

crazygringo wrote: post #17
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…

> 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.)

This is fine. The probability with which a voter bullet votes vs votes three conveys the degree of preference for that candidates. This is not as informative as score voting on a wider range (because okay, degree of preference doesn't map perfectly linearly with probability of vote), but it's an perfectly adequate proxy.

By comparison, ranked choice, despite feeling like it gives you the ability to choose relative ranks, doesn't actually convey more information because it says nothing about your degree of preference! "Candidate A is perfect in every way > Candidate B agrees with me on all policy decisions but is my ex > Candidate C literally wants to murder me" looks exactly the same on a ranked choice ballot as "Candidate A is perfect in every way > Candidate B literally wants to murder me > Candidate C literally wants to murder me and also kicked my dog".

> 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.

Spoken like someone who doesn't have intransitive preferences!

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

#46

Post by bombcar »

buzzy_hacker wrote: post #37
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…

STAR and Approval have different pros and cons, they are not objectively superior. I think RCV is better, in my opinion . STAR and Approval both have their own tactical voting problems. If you really like A, are meh about B, and dislike C, it’s clear you should rate A high / give A your approval and rate C low / do not give C your approval. But what about B? It has nothing to do with what you actually think about the…

This right here is the problem, these things get way too damn complicated for normal people really fast.

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

#47

Post by zackmorris »

Could something like this be used with polling to show a discrepancy between election outcomes and what voters want?

For example, for a presidential election in the US we have the electoral college results and the popular vote (which often differ). It would be nice to also have a ranked-choice result to compare against. Especially when it comes time to consider a revote or when courts become involved with elections (a sign the electoral process has failed in some way).

I suspect that election results would differ from ranked-choice polling to such a degree that it would become apparent how elections are manipulated by parties, the media, incumbents, etc etc etc:

https://journalistsresource.org/politics-and-government/the-...

Economic elites drive nearly all policy change in the US through campaign contributions and lobbying (highly correlated), while response to the average citizen's preferences is flat across the political spectrum (no correlation).

IMHO this mismatch is driven nearly entirely by election results being uncorrelated with voters' preferences. Then the vitriol against outcomes is used by the parties to keep us divided so that much-needed legislation can be simply politicized to stop it. Once support approaches 50/50, it dies in committee.

There were 395 bills that died via division this way in the Senate as of 2020:

https://americanindependent.com/mitch-mcconnell-block-bills-...

I tried to cite the most independent article I could find, but they all mention key politicians. Please don't let names muddy the waters, as the motivation behind divisive politics is the constant here.

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

#48

Post by tadmilbourn »

SamBam wrote: post #36
tadmilbourn wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On #1 -- It could be, but trying to stay narrowly focused. There are some great services out there like OpaVote that do a wide array of voting options and calculation methods. On #2 -- That's a great point. And one that hopefully people start to better understand by using RankedVote and seeing all the "Rounds" happen at once. But, yeah, for many it's a new term. How would you make it more clear?

#2: At the very least I'd throw the word "automatically" into either step 2 or 3.

Thanks for the nudge! Great to have fresh eyes on these things and love your thinking. I added an "automatically" to step 3. More importantly, I changed "Voters rank." to "Voters rank once" in the headline of that section.

P.S. Gotta love Webflow for making changes like this super quick.

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

#49

Post by nerpderp82 »

mnomitch wrote: post #34
skybrian wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you ever try star voting?

No, but only because I have been too lazy to update the code. If I had more free time, I would probably add Star and Approval and then try to use Star with my group of friends. Maybe OP can save me the trouble by adding to his site ! :)

Shouldn't there be some Coq or Agda or gasp Rust code that implements all these voting algos that we can agree on and share?

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

#50

Post by nerpderp82 »

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…

How about on HN, you only have 10 article upvotes a day, use them wisely.
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