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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

#91

Post by godelski »

charlesetc wrote: post #33
mkoubaa wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is quite reductive and ridiculous, people don't measure their difference from a candidate on a single axis and vote for the person with the smallest distance.

Don't they? Isn't that axis just "how much they like the candidate"?

No, it is how much they like a candidate on a certain topic and then they consider all topics, which are weighted. But also the distance measurement of voting systems aren't in reality a single axis. So this doesn't really matter anyways because it is already accounted for.

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

#92

Post by tunesmith »

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…

KUDOS to you for respecting the Condorcet Winner.

After spending a notable portion of my life diving deeply into voting systems, their side effects, and the various poorly-thought-out arguments that people make, I basically only feel wincing pain when a lot of these projects come out. So I'm glad that the concept of the Condorcet Winner hasn't been forgotten.

The IRV zealots have basically won the messaging war, using what I believe to be unethical tactics. IRV is not the only way to count RCV, but they act like it is. But power is power, so until society suffers enough with lousy results, it's just going to be the FPTP pain all over again, dressed up in different clothing.

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

#93

Post by lucasmullens »

elihu wrote: post #82
godelski wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't think normal people can understand: "Rate this candidate from 0 to 5 stars?" If so, we really need to rethink a lot of how we ask for people's opinions, because this is probably the most common way.

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…

> If it's a close three-way election, you might cause your favorite candidate to lose by ranking them first.

Could you explain that? I can't think of a situation where putting the candidate I want to win as #1 would cause them to lose. Ranking other close candidates as #2/#3 could cause my #1 to lose, but I don't think voting for someone as #1 alone would possibly harm them.

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

#94

Post by NickM »

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…

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 like it eliminates the spoiler effect, but it really only eliminates it in simple cases where the third-party candidates are not competitive. This suddenly becomes very obvious and painful in cases like Burlington, 2009 or Alaska, 2022 where voters were told "RCV is great because you can vote honestly", only to realize post-election that this was entirely false, and that they threw away their votes and let the election go to a candidate they despise.

Trust is extremely important in political movements, and very easy to lose. I fear RCV is going to poison the well for any FPTP alternatives for a long time to come.

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

#96

Post by tunesmith »

gamegoblin wrote: post #60

I used to be a hardcore pro-RCV supporter (I liked Yang, and Yang made RCV one of his main issues, outside UBI), but I've become a little more jaded in the last few years. Empirically, it seems like RCV-IRV (RCV from here on) not much better than Plurality. For example, look at all the countries and cities with RCV and without. It's not at all clear to me that those with RCV are much better than those without. Both N…

Well I think you'd need to draw more of a causal link between those outcomes and the voting system. Maybe their elections really all are democratic outcomes, and there's something completely independent of the ballot-counting process that is causing bad outcomes.

If you zoom out and think about the entire voting process, it's rife with inefficiencies and bad assumptions:

A ballot proposal implies that the proposal is well-described and doesn't have perverse effects.

A voting day implies the voting population is ready to decide, and fully understands the proposal, and that everyone with an interest is aware of that interest and has an opportunity to vote.

A counting method implies that the outcome will actually reflect the democratic will of the population.

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

#98

Post by jasonlotito »

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…

That's a very misleading article that plays loose with the math. e.g. It makes assumptions on things that are flat out not true (for example, assuming people would vote for thing they clearly didn't vote for).

If an article is going to sit there and make up votes that didn't occur, I can't really trust it.

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

#99

Post by NickM »

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 adds too much distortion to people wanting to express their sincere preferences, which they can easily do in RCV: A > B > C

RCV actually literally has the exact same problem you're describing with voting strategically, it's just subtler and harder to understand. The problem is, if you rank A > B > C, then your subsequent preferences after A only matter if A gets eliminated. If A comes in second place, then your "B > C" preference has no impact, and C may be elected whereas if you "dishonestly" voted for B first you might have allowed B to win.

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

#100

Post by dane-pgp »

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…

> I fear RCV is going to poison the well for any FPTP alternatives for a long time to come.

Which, cynically, might be the reason it has achieved the level of adoption that it has so far. We at least have to consider the possibility that the current major parties will only (disingenuously) support reforms that will, in the long run, further entrench their duopoly.

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