21–30 of 96 posts
It's a bit silly to argue that candidates take up too much space on a IRV ballot when it would suffice to duplicate only the box and not their name, as in 1st 2nd 3rd choice John Adams [ ] [ ] [ ] Ben Franklin [ ] [ ] [ ] Tom Jefferson [ ] [ ] [ ] Betsy Ross [ ] [ ] [ ]
Or just put in a number in a single column boxes like in Australia or Ireland.
Does Approval Voting really pass the "favourite betrayal criterion"? There are scenarios where if you don't vote for both Good and Ideal, bad will win, and scenarios where if you do vote for both Good and Ideal, Good will win (over Ideal) You obviously don't know which scenario you're in when you vote, so you don't know whether you should vote for both good+ideal or just ideal - both options can cause a worse result…
Article makes some good arguments for approval voting, but the "Ballot Spoilage" argument is a bit disingenuous. Ballots can't be spoiled in approval voting because any set of circles can be filled in. However it's a lot easier to corrupt a ballot undetected. Just fill in more bubbles for your candidate.
This is easily prevented by additionally marking the number of candidates chosen.
Let's say you a Right and Left party, and breakout Far Left which is actually very popular but has previously lacked electoral support due to its 'outsider' status.
People's favourites might look like this:
Right: 30% Left: 30% Far left: 40%
However, 75% of Far Left favourites actually vote for Left too, because they prefer them to right. This ends up with the following result:
Right: 30% Left: 60% Far left: 40%
So we are left with 'establishment' mediocrity instead of the most popular result.
Is this OK because a majority of people don't actually want 'far left'? Maybe. Intuitively though, I think taking preferences away will freak people out, particularly in situations where there might be different levels - what if there was a Far Right party that Far Left voters really don't want in - would some end up voting for Right to avoid that happening? They might win despite having 70% unpopularity!
I'd prefer difficult counting processes over a blunting of people's democratic will.
Surely this disenfranchises those most willing to compromise, who are probably going to end up being those who support small parties? Let's say you a Right and Left party, and breakout Far Left which is actually very popular but has previously lacked electoral support due to its 'outsider' status. People's favourites might look like this: Right: 30% Left: 30% Far left: 40% However, 75% of Far Left favourites actually…
Nothing in your example means that the "Left" has to be "establishment" or "mediocrity".
As a libertarian anything that increases the ability of a 3rd party go gain traction interest me but something smells very off about the recent uptick in discussion of alternatives. If these changes were actually beneficial to the underdog in the general case you'd see them being pushed by the left or the right on a state by state basis depending on the political make up of any given state. The parties aren't run by…
The main benefit of FPTP, for third parties, is that they can hijack elections by acting as "anti-tiebreaker" (Threatening to turn their nearest ally into a lose by joining the election, unless that nearest ally adopts their platform). This is why third parties generally (and openly) advocate for FPTP. Of course, the simple and well-tested solution is to reduce the power of the Executive, move power to Parliament, an…
This isn’t true in the U.K., the only country where a third party recently tried electoral reform in a country with FPTP. The Liberal Democrats wanted to get rid of FPTP.
It's a bit silly to argue that candidates take up too much space on a IRV ballot when it would suffice to duplicate only the box and not their name, as in 1st 2nd 3rd choice John Adams [ ] [ ] [ ] Ben Franklin [ ] [ ] [ ] Tom Jefferson [ ] [ ] [ ] Betsy Ross [ ] [ ] [ ]
Surely this disenfranchises those most willing to compromise, who are probably going to end up being those who support small parties? Let's say you a Right and Left party, and breakout Far Left which is actually very popular but has previously lacked electoral support due to its 'outsider' status. People's favourites might look like this: Right: 30% Left: 30% Far left: 40% However, 75% of Far Left favourites actually…
It's a bit silly to argue that candidates take up too much space on a IRV ballot when it would suffice to duplicate only the box and not their name, as in 1st 2nd 3rd choice John Adams [ ] [ ] [ ] Ben Franklin [ ] [ ] [ ] Tom Jefferson [ ] [ ] [ ] Betsy Ross [ ] [ ] [ ]
this is a non-US problem - in India, we typically have a dozen candidates in every election constituency. IRV is not very practical.
More importantly, ranking multiple people gets rid of the important problem first past the post has of splitting the vote with large numbers of candidates.