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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?

#261

Post by dane-pgp »

alisonkisk wrote: post #221
throw5away wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need the n bits of information from each ballot. You can just transmit the aggregate counts. A human can easily put tally marks in each of n buckets. In fact, a computer would likely do the same instead of creating an exponential number of buckets... If you insist on a degenerate formulation, just split the ballots into n different elections and transmit the results of each one of those elections. We can us…

Even simpler, an approval voter can cast up to N (different) ballots.

I like this, although with paper ballots it would mean counting (up to) N times as many pieces of paper, which would be (up to) N times slower/more expensive.

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

#262

Post by nojokes »

Ericson2314 wrote: post #187
dane-pgp wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MMP is a fantastic system, but it can face resistance if it relies on Closed Party Lists[0], which allow a party to put a potentially controversial candidate at the top of the list, almost guaranteeing them a seat and forcing party supporters to accept that as the cost of choosing the party. Open lists are better, but I believe they still have the problem that they make it unclear where representatives' mandates come…

I don't see a practical party with closed list, as long as the minimum threshold isn't too low. Don't like the people at the top? Vote for a small party which will join the coalition. Even more fundamentally, politics is a "team sport". The vetting of individuals when power boils down to alliances and other relations with the politicians is stupid waste of voter's time.

There is also electoral threshold https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_system_of_Germany#El...

By voting for a small party you risk wasting your vote.

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

#263

Post by tialaramex »

crazygringo wrote: post #225
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this US, you would rarely need to do any additional research. There are almost always only 2 choices - the Democratic candidate and the Republican candidate. Anyone voting for another candidate is simply saying that's who they /REALLY/ wish would win, but most people aren't willing to throw their vote in the garbage to virtue signal. That 3rd party candidate almost never has a chance at winning. Neither does the a…

Incorrect. I voted in today's NYC mayoral primary. There are 13 candidates on the Democratic primary ballot. Perhaps 3 are considered "front-runners" but everyone's aware it's entirely possible at least a couple of the others could wind up winning. The race is entirely up in the air. Because NYC is overwhelmingly Democratic, this election almost certainly determines who will be mayor. And not only do you need to do y…

> And not only do you need to do your research on these many candidates, but there are similar lists of more than 2 candidates for Borough President, Comptroller, etc.

Can you say how many such choices "etcetera" was eliding here? And if possible if there were roles where you had no idea about any of the candidates beyond stuff like incumbency ? I can see New York City is too big to make just having a Mayor on the ballot enough to properly establish democratically elected local government, but in general it seems Americans elect way too many roles.

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

#264

Post by cryptgno »

smitty1e wrote: post #188
xdennis wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The USA is a two-party state because of the voting system. If people could confidently vote for another party there wouldn't be just two parties. It's even reflected in the language, like how people task about being "bi-partizan" instead of "non-partizan".

> The USA is a two-party state because of the voting system. If people could confidently vote for another party there wouldn't be just two parties. There are plenty of other parties, for example: Libertarian, Green, and Constitution. In practice, these minor parties (could be) funded by the opposite end of the spectrum to weaken the other side (just a hunch). But that gets at one possibility of why these minor partie…

Plurality voting systems lacking runoff elections lead to two-party states. Maurice Duverger pointed this out in 1964.

The Convention of States is a campaign by the Tea Party movement to form an Article V convention, but they are more likely to present a balanced budget amendment, not electoral reform. Key people involved like Jim DeMint have also advocated for a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage—a pretty silly idea if you ask me.

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

#265

Post by gwright »

Taniwha wrote: post #229
erentz wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If people could confidently vote for another party there wouldn't be just two parties. If multimember districts are used with RCV yes. If not it tends to maintain a duopoly. Australia’s Senate uses RCV like voting with multimember districts and has more diversity than its House which uses single member districts. That said there is some benefit to using RCV even with single member districts as in theory it tends to…

I think that RCV is at best a hack, a compromise for people who don't want to get too far from FPP. IMHO if you are electing individual people (a mayor, a US president, a city council, a US Senator) then STV is more equitable (it is pretty close to RCV if you are electing a single person). But if you are electing parties (like the US House) then MMP is a fairer solution

> But if you are electing parties (like the US House)

I'm not sure why you are phrasing it this way. Voters don't pick a party for their House representative, they pick a candidate. Each House district election is independent of all the others.

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

#266

Post by MichaelApproved »

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.

Let’s be honest, it’s hard enough getting Americans to the ballot on Election Day, we don’t need to introduce more complexity.

Ranking requires far less brain power than a rating system would.

Maybe the energy expenditure between the two is small for the HN group but for the general public, the aversion to doing the mental work would be enough to dramatically reduce turnout.

This goes for all countries, not just America.

Not to mention how easy it is to spread lies for something as simplistic as FPTP. The more complicated a system is, the easier it’ll be to spread lies about it.

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

#267

Post by [deleted] »

wyre wrote: post #142
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this US, you would rarely need to do any additional research. There are almost always only 2 choices - the Democratic candidate and the Republican candidate. Anyone voting for another candidate is simply saying that's who they /REALLY/ wish would win, but most people aren't willing to throw their vote in the garbage to virtue signal. That 3rd party candidate almost never has a chance at winning. Neither does the a…

Statistically, in the US a 3rd party has a 0% chance of winning because a third party has never won. Maybe within the first 100 years; history isn’t my strongest subject.

[deleted]

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

#268

Post by dllthomas »

crazygringo wrote: post #234
dllthomas wrote: post #80

I don't like instant runoff. It seems like it systematically rejects compromise, and I think finding the proper compromise is an important goal of a voting system. For instance, imagine a sectarian society split roughly equally between 3 religions, with 4 candidates running. The first three push theocracy favoring their respective religion, while the fourth favors tolerance and secular government. If, statistically,…

I agree that's the greatest weakness in theory. But in practice that's extremely unlikely -- because there's always a significant proportion of the population that isn't tribalistic (or religious, in your case) the fourth candidate will tend to receive a decent proportion of first-place votes. Alternatives have their own problems as well, where approval voting doesn't let you specify intensity of preference, or syste…

> But in practice that's extremely unlikely

I don't think that's true at all. I agree that I picked a particularly extreme example to make the issue clear, but fundamentally IRV is a statement that the compromise we choose must be the first choice of a large portion of the population. I think that is a bad strategy, and situations where it picks poorly won't be uncommon.

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

#269

Post by _spduchamp »

We had a ranked ballot election here in Canada and it was amazing! Candidates when out knocking on doors could say, "I might not get your first choice but help me understand what I could do to be your second choice." It was a less divisive election and there were new young candidates were on the ballot that wouldn't have run under the old first-past-the-post system. There is less incentive for attack campaigns in these types of elections.

Here's a nicely done report about that... https://www.unlockdemocracy.ca/londonleads

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

#270

Post by hash872 »

gadi1993 wrote: post #33

I'm Israeli and I was recently shocked to learn the rest of the world trusts electronic voting and vote by mail. We have a very simple and strict voting process here - the key feature which builds the trust in voting is that every 4 poll workers are responsible for the integrity of only up to 800 votes. We don't have fraud allegations because you would have to blame over 150 different people simultaneously (and often…

>We have a very simple and strict voting process here - the key feature which builds the trust in voting is that every 4 poll workers are responsible for the integrity of only up to 800 votes

Can you say more about this? So at each polling place 4 workers are assigned 800 votes, and then they rotate out to a different group of 4? I don't see how that inspires more trust than our current system, the government could simply be lying that they rotated the 4 poll workers out. Or, in a large city this would be a complete cluster as you'd need hundreds of poll workers on standby to rotate in & out every 30 minutes or so. I would definitely be interested in hearing more though

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