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

What is ranked-choice voting and why is New York using it?

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 476 posts

Re: What is ranked-choice voting and why is New York using it?

#211

Post by dane-pgp »

tunesmith wrote: post #71
spoonjim wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would that be meaningful when the method is known to the voters ahead of time? It’s like the team with fewer total yards winning the Super Bowl... wouldn’t be that surprising since both teams know that it’s points that decide the game.

I suppose some meaning could be lost if people are voting tactically from the awareness that they're in an IRV election. But on the other hand, if a voting system's implementation incentivizes voters to vote against their true preferences, then that by itself should be an indication that the voting system is flawed. (It's not true that every voting method incentivizes tactical voting; this is a common misreading of A…

I agree that Arrow's Theorem is often misread (as it doesn't apply to score-based voting systems, or single-winner elections) but it's perhaps more important to mention the Gibbard–Satterthwaite theorem here, which is similarly misrepresented.

That theorem effectively says that all sensible voting systems will in certain conditions allow a voter to gain a better outcome by voting insincerely (i.e. tactically). However, it doesn't say how easy it is for a voter to determine the correct tactical vote to make, so potentially a voter would need perfect information about all the other votes cast in order for their tactic to succeed.

Re: What is ranked-choice voting and why is New York using it?

#212

Post by zestyping »

throw5away wrote: post #114
xvedejas wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would you say to someone like me who feels that IRV is perhaps the worst possible alternative voting system to advocate for? It feels like someone at some stage must be very dishonest, or otherwise dangerously uninformed, to think that IRV is worth advocating for over alternatives like approval voting, range voting, or any Condorcet voting system. I'm very worried that most places will have the political will to…

Honestly IRV is _even worse than plurality_. It doesn't solve the problems it sets out to solve (it entrenches two-party domination [1]), it has ridiculous monotonicity violations [2], all for a lot more complication in counting the votes (you can't distribute the counting well without transmitting the contents of all of the ballots) and possibly wrecking the secret ballot (you can encode and buy specific down-ballot…

And worse: it suppresses the Black vote, as if we didn't have enough of that already.

https://rangevoting.org/SPRates.html

https://www.yes2repeal.org/spoiled-ballots

IRV means much higher rates of spoiled ballots, disproportionately in low-income neighbourhoods. It's actively harmful.

Re: What is ranked-choice voting and why is New York using it?

#213

Post by ClayShentrup »

klodolph wrote: post #143
xvedejas wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would you say to someone like me who feels that IRV is perhaps the worst possible alternative voting system to advocate for? It feels like someone at some stage must be very dishonest, or otherwise dangerously uninformed, to think that IRV is worth advocating for over alternatives like approval voting, range voting, or any Condorcet voting system. I'm very worried that most places will have the political will to…

Two reasons: Arrow’s impossibility theorem and the fact that people are not perfect logicians. I honestly thought that after learning Arrow’s impossibility theorem that Condorcet is not especially important. Since we can’t have a perfect voting system, we have to pick an imperfect one, and among the alternatives, it’s important to capture information from voters. Instant runoff captures a lot of information. Approval…

> Approval voting I think is much too tactical and, strictly speaking, worse than IRV.

On the contrary, approval voting gets better results than IRV with any measure of strategic or honest voters. See extensive computer simulation results by Harvard stats PhD and voting methods expert Jameson Quinn. Brown (50/50) is probably the most realistic setting.

https://rpubs.com/Jameson-Quinn/VSE5key

A simple example of IRV strategy is next year's Alaska senate race. Murkowski would beat either rival head-to-head but is likely to be eliminated based on first-place votes. So Democrats want to strategically rank Murkowski 1st in order to help her survive to beat Tshibaka (Trump Republican) so they at least get their lesser evil.

Here's a good comparison of approval voting vs. IRV by experts. Full disclosure, I was a CES co-founder and have written extensively on this topic for 15 years.

https://electionscience.org/library/approval-voting-versus-i...

> I honestly thought that after learning Arrow’s impossibility theorem that Condorcet is not especially important.

I've visited Kenneth Arrow at his home and co-founded a non-profit that interviewed him. His theorem only applies to social welfare functions, not voting methods, if properly understood. But if anything, the moral is to AVOID ranked voting methods and instead use rated voting methods.

https://www.rangevoting.org/ArrowThm

Re: What is ranked-choice voting and why is New York using it?

#214

Post by ClayShentrup »

jeff_tyrrill wrote: post #199
klodolph wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two reasons: Arrow’s impossibility theorem and the fact that people are not perfect logicians. I honestly thought that after learning Arrow’s impossibility theorem that Condorcet is not especially important. Since we can’t have a perfect voting system, we have to pick an imperfect one, and among the alternatives, it’s important to capture information from voters. Instant runoff captures a lot of information. Approval…

I wouldn't choose to use the word "dishonest" but I sympathize - in nearly all news media explanations of "ranked choice voting", the description solely explains instant runoff, and makes no mention whatsoever that there is a choice of algorithm that comes with the choice to use ranked ballots, such as Condorcet. The words "instant runoff" are almost never mentioned. Choice of language matters, and "ranked choice vot…

But there's no point in Condorcet because score voting, STAR voting, and approval voting have superior performance and are simpler.

https://www.rangevoting.org/CondorcetExec.html

Re: What is ranked-choice voting and why is New York using it?

#215

Post by ClayShentrup »

tadmilbourn wrote: post #116
godelski wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you push IRV rather than simpler methods with higher VSE like Approval or STAR? Shouldn't we be highly advocating for a system that does not fail the favorite betrayer criterion? And I think Arizona is the perfect example why transparency and low complexity is essential (higher VSE is an added bonus given these).

Simple...because it's being used in a significant (and growing) number of places. Approval and STAR are great methods as well. But they're not what's in use in Maine. Or NYC. Or will be in use in Alaska. So, in the spirit of focusing where I can have the most impact, I've chosen to most directly support RCV. First past the post is the enemy here. Not RCV, STAR, or Approval.

If anything, this "momentum" argument says you get more value by supporting STAR voting and/or approval voting than a method that already has traction.

https://clayshentrup.medium.com/momentum-e5fd12ffce2a

Re: What is ranked-choice voting and why is New York using it?

#216

Post by jffry »

Interesting anecdote: When I lived in Cambridge, MA in 2015, we had an election for 9 city council seats with 23 candidates.

Here's a specimen ballot from that election (PDF): https://www.cambridgema.gov/election/~/media/483A54C6BC8546F...

The "slate" strategy (called "horse-trading" in this article) was strongly entrenched for that election. The idea is that if you and other people all support some "slate" that is a subset of the running candidates, then if you all rank those candidates in the same order on your ballot, it can boost every one of those candidates chances of being elected (this strategy is most effective in multi-seat races, such as this 9-seat city council race).

The reason this works is that if a candidate meets the quota of first-choice votes needed to earn a seat, they are elected. If more people chose them as first choice than the quota, some of the ballots will instead roll over and count for their second choice (etc etc).

Which ballots move on? This is largely influenced by the overall proportion of second-choice votes. So if everybody packed the two candidates in the same order, it maximizes the number of ballots for that candidate that will be used in the second-choice tally.

All voting systems have tradeoffs. The nice property of this one is that I was able to elect multiple city councilors who supported policies that mattered to me. Likewise, as long as 1/9th (plus one) of the city's population put a candidate as their #1 choice in that election, that candidate was guaranteed a seat. That sounds pretty fair to me!

Re: What is ranked-choice voting and why is New York using it?

#217

Post by ClayShentrup »

tadmilbourn wrote: post #62
lalaland1125 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very nice work! Do you think there is a need to educate voters on how to tactically vote in ranked choice voting? Every voting system has strategies to use it effectively and most voters are not used to the tactics necessary for ranked choice voting. We see a lot of education in how to use the ballot simply, but very little education on "advanced tactics". In particular, a lot of NYC voters aren't ranking either Wile…

Thanks! The idea is to use software to promote this reform (as well as Final-Five Voting...which is Open Primaries + RCV) As for advanced tactics, if you're really into it, Rob Richie, the CEO of FairVote (leading national advocacy org) put this in the New York Times over the weekend. It spells out a bunch of scenarios (e.g. "I want Garcia to win and Stringer to lose.") and how to tactically vote for each. https://ww…

IRV has the same problem. Democrats in next year's Alaska senate race want to strategically rank Murkowksi (R) 1st to stop Tshibaka (Q).

https://twitter.com/Beyond2Parties/status/140537245401753600...

Score voting or approval voting actually solve this and are much simpler.

Re: What is ranked-choice voting and why is New York using it?

#218

Post by ClayShentrup »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #26

We've had this in Australia since day 1 of Federation. One important factor the article didn't quite emphasise is how this voting system can break up the two party duopoly without creating 1920s-Reichstag-esque anarchy. It's completely normal to put a third party as your first preference, while still indicating that you'd prefer Kodos to Kang. In practical terms, it means the Dems would actually have to do some work…

> We've had this in Australia since day 1 of Federation.

Australia adopted the preferential system in 1918.

> It's completely normal to put a third party as your first preference, while still indicating that you'd prefer Kodos to Kang.

The evidence shows most voters don't, which is why Australia's IRV elections still maintain a duopoly. In spite of the fact that the senate, which uses (proportional) STV, has escaped duopoly.

http://scorevoting.net/AustralianPol

Re: What is ranked-choice voting and why is New York using it?

#219

Post by caf »

twelvechairs wrote: post #53
AussieWog93 wrote: post #26

We've had this in Australia since day 1 of Federation. One important factor the article didn't quite emphasise is how this voting system can break up the two party duopoly without creating 1920s-Reichstag-esque anarchy. It's completely normal to put a third party as your first preference, while still indicating that you'd prefer Kodos to Kang. In practical terms, it means the Dems would actually have to do some work…

Worth noting Australia is still generally a 2-party system in the lower house (1 representative each area) but less so in the senate (where each state elects the top 12 senators). Australians still look at envy at the New Zealand and German systems of Mixed Member Proportional representation (MMP) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed-member_proportional_re...

The two jurisdictions in Australia that use Hare-Clark (Tasmania and the ACT) no longer have a political duopoly.

MMP would probably work well in South Australia (where overall the electorate is fairly evenly split right-left, but many of the right-leaning voters are locked up in a few geographically large rural electorates and the left-leaning voters are distributed more evenly across more urban and suburban electorates).

Re: What is ranked-choice voting and why is New York using it?

#220

Post by ajmurmann »

lostdog wrote: post #127
6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #109

Here's my obligatory plug for approval voting. Approval is the "checkboxes instead of radio buttons" voting method. Select any, instead of select one. Vote for whoever you want and the candidate with the most votes wins. It gets rid of a lot of the drawbacks of FPTP while retaining its simplicity, unlike IRV. I've always wanted to get people to vote on voting systems with a variety of voting methods and see what wins…

So many plugs for approval voting in these threads, but it just seems so terrible for what people really want to express. For example, in 2016, plenty of people wanted Sanders more than Clinton. Who are they supposed to "approve?" Many of them would note their preference by just approving Sanders and not Clinton, which is the opposite of what a voting system is supposed to help achieve.

That's where something like STAR voting is even better. Just score people 0 to 5 on how much you like them. Gets rid of strategic voting, spoiler effect and works super well for large sets of choices as well. It's in essence like we score movies or restaurant reviews which makes it familiar as well.
Post reply on HN