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

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

#251

Post by godelski »

cosmojg wrote: post #233
ClayShentrup wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 s…

For those who want to better understand VSE simulations and those who want to compare even more voting methods, see: http://electionscience.github.io/vse-sim/VSE/

Or if you want to see an animated version narrated by the gp of this comment (Clay) see this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4FXLQoLDBA

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

#252

Post by lostdog »

ajmurmann wrote: post #220
lostdog wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I would take STAR voting!

The only downside is having to hear politicians ask for 5 stars in every speech!

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

#253

Post by elihu »

karmelapple wrote: post #165
djbebs wrote: post #42

Personally I don't see much benefit for this system, opposed to approval voting.

Both are miles beyond first past the post, and both scare many people just because it's something new and different. Hopefully you can support any change locally that gets us off of first past the post. Once we get some voting changes, hopefully that makes future changes even easier to make... though I know that's wishful thinking.

> Both are miles beyond first past the post,

Actually, that's debatable. There was an interesting simulation done awhile back [1] that compared voting systems, and they found that if people voted honestly then IRV is better, but if people vote strategically the result isn't any more democratically optimal than FPTP. Which is what we should probably expect to happen when voters figure out that it's only safe to put your first choice first when they're the overwhelming favorite to win or they have no hope of winning. Otherwise it's complicated: you could cause your favorite candidate to lose by ranking them too high.

Obviously this is one simulation and results would be different with different assumptions. But I think it's worth pushing back on the idea that IRV is way better. It solves the problem of minor candidates being spoilers, but what if people actually start voting for minor candidates and they become major candidates? With 3 or more major candidates IRV starts looking like not such a great system.

The problem with talking about this is that the problems with FPTP are readily apparent and easy to explain. The problems with IRV aren't obvious and are harder to explain.

[1] https://electionscience.org/library/tactical-voting-basics/

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

#254

Post by postalrat »

adjkant wrote: post #184
lostdog wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Exactly. What about if it was Sanders, Clinton, Kasich, and Trump? As a far left voter, do I have to approve Kasich if I really don't want Trump to win? In RCV, it's simple: Sanders, Clinton, maybe Kasich to ensure Trump doesn't win. There are 100% problems in IRV that Clinton or Kasich may be the first elimination there, meaning moderates can get screwed even with preference, but it's still way better than Approval…

Vote Sanders and Clinton. Or Sanders, Clinton, and Kasich. Or just Sanders.

Vote for as many as you approve of. Simple.

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

#255

Post by cosmojg »

adjkant wrote: post #184
lostdog wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Exactly. What about if it was Sanders, Clinton, Kasich, and Trump? As a far left voter, do I have to approve Kasich if I really don't want Trump to win? In RCV, it's simple: Sanders, Clinton, maybe Kasich to ensure Trump doesn't win. There are 100% problems in IRV that Clinton or Kasich may be the first elimination there, meaning moderates can get screwed even with preference, but it's still way better than Approval…

> Basically, approval voting has its place, but it should be within RCV.

An "approval-within-RCV" system would replicate multiple score voting (aka range voting). Why not skip the charade and advocate for a score voting system like STAR instead?

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

#256

Post by godelski »

caf wrote: post #210
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…

The non-monotonicity tactical voting possibility is overblown: it only really works in the toy "which is the favourite pizza of these 30 students" examples. In real world elections, the conditions where it is even theoretically possible arise only rarely (A > B > C with three choices, but B > A and A > C with two choices, and A's lead over B significantly greater than B's lead over C in the three choice scenario, and…

The non-monotonicity is actually pretty important and we have real world examples of this. Clay mentions the Alaska race in this comment[0]. We've seen this issue in Southern states that used this to disadvantage black voters. This is also the reason Bernie would spoil Biden (and vise versa). So I'm not sure what you're getting at.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27598975

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

#257

Post by MichaelApproved »

thought_alarm wrote: post #176
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…

It's not fool-proof. In Canada in 1952, the province of British Columbia switched to a ranked ballot and it nearly ended in disaster. The ranked ballot was an attempt by the traditional Liberal and Conservative parties to keep a rising socialist party from gaining power, as they assumed no Liberal or Conservative voter would choose the socialists as their second choice. But there was so much animosity between the par…

Why are people presenting examples from parliamentary systems for an American voting process?

The two systems are so dramatically different that no cautionary tale would ever be meaningful.

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

#258

Post by aimor »

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.

They are supposed to approve of each candidate individually. This avoids problems such as the one you allude to in your example where Sanders may lose to Clinton despite more total people approving of Sanders, simply because Clinton supporters (the larger group) rank Clinton>Sanders while Sanders supporters (a minority of voters) only rank Sanders.

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

#259

Post by KMag »

username90 wrote: post #203
ineedasername wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you say is true if general elections in the US, but often not the primary elections where a party determines who its candidate will be. At that stage it's pretty common to have a wider field of candidates. Also, ranking could change the US dynamic of only have 2 choices. Being able to vote 3rd party and then then choose someone from one of the two main parties might drive a lot more people to vote 3rd party beca…

With that argument China is also a democracy, since you can vote who will get to run the party. I'd argue that a proper democracy requires new parties to be easily formed and quickly gain momentum and power if they have support from a fraction of the population. I don't think that ranked choices allows for that, as even if the third party "Greens" in this case got 25% of the votes they'd get thrown away in favour of…

Minor nit: I believe only party members vote on party leadership, and it's actually difficult to get into the party. Also, I'm under the impression that the voting is multi-tiered, where you vote on your level and region on which member gets elevated to the next level.

It's actually an interesting system, and as usual, it seems adding indirection solves some problems while introducing others.

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

#260

Post by paretoman »

Here's an interactive explainer for Ranked Choice voting and more: https://www.smartvotesim.com/irv

Yesterday, I was pleasantly surprised to see another great interactive explainer by Harry Stevens in the Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/interactive/2021/ran...

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