Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Approval Voting versus Instant Runoff Voting

electionscience.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–96 of 96 posts

Re: Approval Voting versus Instant Runoff Voting

#91

Post by dragonwriter »

magduf wrote: post #55
hadrien01 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or just put in a number in a single column boxes like in Australia or Ireland.

>Or just put in a number in a single column boxes like in Australia or Ireland. What do you do when some moron voter can't count and reuses the same number, or skips a number? This kind of voting scheme seems like it would much too complicated and confusing to the average American voter.

> What do you do when some moron voter can't count and reuses the same number, or skips a number?

Skipping is no problem. If you want, it's fairly trivial to modify IRV to allow equal preferences.

Re: Approval Voting versus Instant Runoff Voting

#92

Post by [deleted] »

dj-wonk wrote: post #88
specialist wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"opinion" Comparative fairness is well documented. This graph is a good appromixation: https://www.electionscience.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/c... https://www.electionscience.org/library/approval-voting-vers... Simplicity also accounts for election integrity concerns (ease of tabulation and auditing).

Can you share the context for the graph? Do you have a formal definition for how you are using ‘fairness’?

[deleted]

Re: Approval Voting versus Instant Runoff Voting

#93

Post by flukus »

jamesonquinn wrote: post #89
notahacker wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But assuming most of these people consider R and D acceptable but actively prefer the third party (if they consider them equally acceptable FPTP isn't really depriving them of their ideal electoral choice), AV is inferior to most other non FPTP votes like IRV, which accurately represent their preference for the third party first, and the Rs and Ds only if that party can't win. AV has a pretty significant "if I tick t…

IRV actually has the opposite problem: "If I vote for my ideal candidate, am I impairing the good candidate's chance of winning?" For instance, if it were Nader/Gore/Bush with 26%/25%/49%, and (hypothetically) all Nader voters preferred Gore over Bush but not all Gore voters preferred Nader over Bush, then voting for Nader instead of dishonestly choosing the "lesser evil" Gore would end up electing Bush. No voting me…

> No voting method can entirely escape both of these problems. But newer methods like STAR voting balance them against each other and manage to minimize both.

First you need to demonstrate that it's a problem in reality, there are very few times in history where it has been a real issue. Alternative to IRV are usually much more complex which is a terrible tradeoff for an almost entirely imaginary problem. Star voting has the same problem as star rating systems, almost everyone will score either a 5 or a 1.

Re: Approval Voting versus Instant Runoff Voting

#94

Post by szemet »

flukus wrote: post #93
jamesonquinn wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IRV actually has the opposite problem: "If I vote for my ideal candidate, am I impairing the good candidate's chance of winning?" For instance, if it were Nader/Gore/Bush with 26%/25%/49%, and (hypothetically) all Nader voters preferred Gore over Bush but not all Gore voters preferred Nader over Bush, then voting for Nader instead of dishonestly choosing the "lesser evil" Gore would end up electing Bush. No voting me…

> No voting method can entirely escape both of these problems. But newer methods like STAR voting balance them against each other and manage to minimize both. First you need to demonstrate that it's a problem in reality, there are very few times in history where it has been a real issue. Alternative to IRV are usually much more complex which is a terrible tradeoff for an almost entirely imaginary problem. Star voting…

almost everyone will score either a 5 or a 1

Then it will be similar to approval voting.

Previous comments complained that approval is bad because you cannot express detailed preferences, but you say no one wants to anyway? So then approval is ok?

Re: Approval Voting versus Instant Runoff Voting

#95

Post by a_imho »

jamesonquinn wrote: post #82
a_imho wrote: post #37

Sortition is the most democratic way of electing representatives.

Sortition (that is, random selection) is a system for roughly-proportional representation; that is, for choosing multiple winners for a legislature so as to represent a population. Approval voting is a way of picking a single winner. They solve entirely separate problems. (Sortition is nearly optimal if your only goal is to match the distribution of voters by a subset of equally-weighted representatives. Technically,…

One can most certainly pick even a single winner at random.

Equal chance to represent, there is no fairer way than that.

Voting inherently leads to a money/campaign/popularity contest (and parties, more often than not 2), it is very good at keeping the status quo by feeding back to itself.

I'm not aware of any large scale studies of election method preferences, but keep in mind 1. people are used to voting 2. even if they are aware fairer methods exist their self interest is to keep voting if they think they will benefit from the resulting unfair system.

Re: Approval Voting versus Instant Runoff Voting

#96

Post by specialist »

dj-wonk wrote: post #88
specialist wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"opinion" Comparative fairness is well documented. This graph is a good appromixation: https://www.electionscience.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/c... https://www.electionscience.org/library/approval-voting-vers... Simplicity also accounts for election integrity concerns (ease of tabulation and auditing).

Can you share the context for the graph? Do you have a formal definition for how you are using ‘fairness’?

The second link is the article featuring that graph.

Start with Arrow's Impossibility Theorem. You have the maths to better understand this stuff than me.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow's_impossibility_theorem

https://www.math.wisc.edu/~meyer/math141/voting2.html

I have focused on election integrity. For me, arguing the relative merits ranked choice voting strategies is (unforgivable) bikeshedding and ultimately results in no action. Like getting stuck arguing 4.5x vs 4.75x better than FPTP while the world burns.

For election integrity, other real world concerns also must be factored. Like voter education, verifying the hardware & software, ease of tabulation & auditing, feasibility of doing a manual recount, etc.

In conclusion, Approval Voting is almost as fair as the ideal Score Voting but much easier to implement.

Post reply on HN