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What Is Voter Satisfaction Efficiency?

electionscience.github.io

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Re: What Is Voter Satisfaction Efficiency?

#2
Looking at the results, it's a wonder that IRV (aka "ranked-choice voting") gets more lip service than STAR and approval voting. These latter two seem obviously and measurably superior.

My guess is that it all comes down to a lack of education. Maybe civics ought to be a required course in high school and/or college?

Re: What Is Voter Satisfaction Efficiency?

#3
post #2

Looking at the results, it's a wonder that IRV (aka "ranked-choice voting") gets more lip service than STAR and approval voting. These latter two seem obviously and measurably superior. My guess is that it all comes down to a lack of education. Maybe civics ought to be a required course in high school and/or college?

I think it’s because most often advocates are not promoting a specific methodology but a broad set of possible electoral reforms. Even people who study this in depth (like the article author) get substantially different results based on what they value and measure, and by methodology. That’s not something a civics class is going to address for people who want more fair choice at the ballot box but can’t possibly know the outcome of one approach or another without seeing it in situ.

Edit: I’m saying this from the perspective of someone who’s spent a lot of time reading on the subject and wouldn’t dare pick a favorite for my country (US) or locality. I just want the opportunity to try systems that are likely more fair.

Re: What Is Voter Satisfaction Efficiency?

#4
post #2

Looking at the results, it's a wonder that IRV (aka "ranked-choice voting") gets more lip service than STAR and approval voting. These latter two seem obviously and measurably superior. My guess is that it all comes down to a lack of education. Maybe civics ought to be a required course in high school and/or college?

I feel like STAR in practice ends up being approval voting with more complexity. I just learned about V321 though - interesting concept for sure and also holds the important property perhaps as approval voting if I understood it - can be counted by hand once and you can figure out the results.

Re: What Is Voter Satisfaction Efficiency?

#5
post #2

Looking at the results, it's a wonder that IRV (aka "ranked-choice voting") gets more lip service than STAR and approval voting. These latter two seem obviously and measurably superior. My guess is that it all comes down to a lack of education. Maybe civics ought to be a required course in high school and/or college?

I'm not sure there's any voting scheme that people would agree shouldn't be changed.

Re: What Is Voter Satisfaction Efficiency?

#6
Interesting (but surprising; this is a routine and hard to describe as anything other than intentional “oversight” in analyzing these methods) that Approval gets two forms, but none that recognize that honest ballots in Approval aren’t either of those constants, but a cultural variable that varies within an electorate, and that the similar issues with all restricted preference (approval and 3-2-1 from this list) and score based (score and STAR from the list) methods are completely ignored.

Re: What Is Voter Satisfaction Efficiency?

#7
Not knowing on the same day who won the NYC primary is much more annoying than I thought it would be. I wonder if there is a psychological effect in play here, like lag in a game controller. Makes you feel less like you’re actually in control.

Re: What Is Voter Satisfaction Efficiency?

#8
post #2

Looking at the results, it's a wonder that IRV (aka "ranked-choice voting") gets more lip service than STAR and approval voting. These latter two seem obviously and measurably superior. My guess is that it all comes down to a lack of education. Maybe civics ought to be a required course in high school and/or college?

> Looking at the results, it's a wonder that IRV (aka "ranked-choice voting") gets more lip service than STAR and approval voting. These latter two seem obviously and measurably superior.

They are obviously and measurably superior when you construct a measure designed around their shared features while ignoring the cultural variation in honest ballot marking for these methods resulting from the fact that the ballots for them ask a question that doesn't have an objective relationship to preferences.

Re: What Is Voter Satisfaction Efficiency?

#9
post #2

Looking at the results, it's a wonder that IRV (aka "ranked-choice voting") gets more lip service than STAR and approval voting. These latter two seem obviously and measurably superior. My guess is that it all comes down to a lack of education. Maybe civics ought to be a required course in high school and/or college?

Personally, I fail to see how STAR and approval are superior.

If I were to lobby for some electoral change, I would lobby for approval votes, because they are easy to lobby for (just change "you gt ONE vote" into "vote for as many people you like"). But compared to ranked choice, it creates a situation where you can't differentiate candidates between who you clearly have a preference, and this has large odds of changing the outcome.

Re: What Is Voter Satisfaction Efficiency?

#10
post #2

Looking at the results, it's a wonder that IRV (aka "ranked-choice voting") gets more lip service than STAR and approval voting. These latter two seem obviously and measurably superior. My guess is that it all comes down to a lack of education. Maybe civics ought to be a required course in high school and/or college?

In Seattle, many of us reached the same conclusion as you did. We’re now trying to change Seattle’s primary elections to use approval voting: https://seattleapproves.org/

Approval voting is extremely effective at capturing voters’ preferences, simple to implement, and incredibly easy to explain - not just the ballot, but how the ballots are tabulated and how the winner is chosen.

The entity you linked to, The Center for Election Science, has a “howto” for bringing better elections to your city or county: https://electionscience.org/take-action/approval-voting-chap.... That’s where we started and I can vouch for it.

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