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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?

#381

Post by Taniwha »

alexitorg wrote: post #297
Taniwha wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I'm Australian so I might be biased, but I don't like MMP. It seems to be optimising for democratic outcome (well at least a parliament that looks like the distribution of first party votes) while ignoring all other factors. Many countries that use it seem to have weak governments that can't get much done. There is parties that won't work together because one is secessionists (Catalans), right wing (national rally in…

It works well here in NZ - I think that part of it is that we've built a political culture around MMP that understands that to be successful at MMP parties need to build coalitions and compromise (very transparent public compromises) - the current government is the first we've had in 3-4 decades where one party could form a government by themselves, and they still formed a coalition of sorts

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

#382

Post by sellyme »

throw5away wrote: post #152
subsubzero wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this achieves widespread in the US I could see regional libertarian and green candidates picking up spots in certain areas in US.

Do you have something US-specific to indicate that this would be the case? Neither empirics nor theory support your claim. https://rangevoting.org/TarrIrvSumm.html

The very first line of your source references Australia as an example of why ranked voting would not give third parties any influence.

This seems like an odd choice, given that Australia currently has five different parties in Parliament, and has in recent history had a third party be the deciding "vote" on who forms government. It seems like an even odder choice for you to reference it as a counterpoint in this specific case given that one of those parties is literally called "the Greens".

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

#383

Post by nappy »

In a reality where people have limited time and mental energy to properly rank order all candidates for all positions, the jungle (non-partisan) primary practiced in Louisiana and some other states is a wonderful alternative. The unfortunate reality of RCV is that it provides a disproportionate amount of voting power to those who have more resources to spend time on assessment of their true preferences.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonpartisan_blanket_primary

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

#385

Post by rlayton2 »

glangdale wrote: post #112

A lot of nitpicking here, as is typical on HN, but the Australian experience is instructive. We can vote for the Greens without "throwing our left-of-centre" vote away and still preferring Labor to Liberal. Ranking only up to 5 is reasonable - if you want the simplicity of the old system, and don't want to research beyond 3 candidates, don't! I can't see the weird complaining about having to learn more about candidat…

There is another great little thing in Australian voting that plays on this - political parties get paid per #1 vote (I think it is about $4 or something).

This means you pick the party you want to win, they get paid, and then preference from there.

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

#386

Post by bootlooped »

postalrat wrote: post #254
adjkant wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What's not simple is where to draw the approve/disapprove line.

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

#387

Post by weswpg »

godelski wrote: post #374
e1g wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A democratic society, where all votes are equal, benefits when everyone votes, even without a testing how well-informed they are. It encourages personal ownership of collective problems. For every apathetic member who is voting based on ignorance, there is a zealous member voting based on dogma. The more votes we collect, the more accurate is the representation of the whole.

> The more votes we collect, the more accurate is the representation of the whole. This isn't true. If voters are voting randomly (or effectively randomly) then that's just noise in the system. Worse, if voting is based on candidate exposure (i.e. voting on who had more TV ads rather than policy) then the votes are explicitly not representative of voter preference (unless the candidate that advertises the most also h…

I think you're making an assumption about the assumptions of the person you're replying to.

Many voter beliefs are implicit and how we express our political preferences can sometimes be reducible to a simple matter of group allegiance.

People don't need to be highly informed to effectively participate if the voter's top priority is to support a certain group interest (i.e., a union member supporting labour) rather than individual legislators or laws.

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

#388

Post by r00fus »

gene91 wrote: post #318
mabbo wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> RCV is non-monotonic, which means it's possible that ranking someone first might actually cause them to lose. I'm intrigued. Can you explain how that works? I'm not saying I don't believe you- I'll bet it is possible, but I cannot see how, and I want to!

https://www.fairvote.org/rcv_faq#monotonicity Read "22. Does RCV satisfy the monotonicity criterion?" Say, there's 3 candidates. You want A to win. You think A will lose to B in a 1-on-1 match, but would win C. So you vote C-A-B (or C-B-A, doesn't matter) to increase the likeliness that B got eliminated in the 1st round. Of course, you're now saying that you prefer C over A in a 1-on-1 race. But that's fine because o…

I simply don't get why the person preferring A doesn't rank A first. This scenario only works if you have exactly 3 candidates and the numbers are tight and everyone is tactically voting instead of voting their conscience.

In reality most preferential voting schemes have many candidates, and there's too much chaos to coordinate this kind of scenario.

Meanwhile plurality voting has candidates winning with way less than 50% of the vote, and claiming some mandate from god.

The sooner we ditch FPTP the sooner we get to something like Condorcet, or STV with multimember districts.

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

#389

Post by asteroidbelt »

e1g wrote: post #339
asteroidbelt wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And lower than 90% turnout is better, right? Because when people are forced to vote, they are on average more likely to vote for a random name they heard on TV than for a candidate with a program they read and the background they studied.

A democratic society, where all votes are equal, benefits when everyone votes, even without a testing how well-informed they are. It encourages personal ownership of collective problems. For every apathetic member who is voting based on ignorance, there is a zealous member voting based on dogma. The more votes we collect, the more accurate is the representation of the whole.

> the more accurate is the representation of the whole

Accurate representation is not a goal. The goal is freedom, wealth, stability, happiness, etc.

Also, people who vote for a random names just because they are forced to, are not exactly represented by those who they are technically voted for.

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

#390

Post by weswpg »

glangdale wrote: post #112

A lot of nitpicking here, as is typical on HN, but the Australian experience is instructive. We can vote for the Greens without "throwing our left-of-centre" vote away and still preferring Labor to Liberal. Ranking only up to 5 is reasonable - if you want the simplicity of the old system, and don't want to research beyond 3 candidates, don't! I can't see the weird complaining about having to learn more about candidat…

This video [0] argues that most Australians fail to understand how the system works and that the mainstream political parties actively mislead voters into thinking that their voice is "wasted" if they vote for a 3rd party

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bleyX4oMCgM

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