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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?

#421

Post by Gatsky »

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…

Very odd argument indeed, particularly because it equally applies to non-mandatory voting. The deisre to vote could be based on randomness and candidate exposure. Thus whatever underlying assumptions one makes, more people voting gives better representation for any meaningful definition of representation.

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

#422

Post by brightball »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #123
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…

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…

The goal of voting for a 3rd party is go get to 5% of the popular vote to fully fund the party across the next election cycle.

Libertarian party has come the closest, earning 3.1% in 2016 while total 3rd party votes were over 5.5%. If the Green Party voters had voted LP we’d have validated a 3rd party that year.

So much political messaging focuses on fear of the other major party that people feel they have to vote opposition rather than voting for who they really want. US elections have been fear driven for years.

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

#423

Post by juped »

sjfidsfkds wrote: post #288
elihu wrote: post #276

This isn't very good reporting by NPR. The downsides they list are just straw men easily dismissed by RCV proponents, and they give an appearance of fair-and-balanced coverage while making opponents of RCV sound like Luddites. (It also seems like they got all their information from, say, chatting with people from FairVote and not by actually reading online discussions like this one here.) RCV does have some serious p…

If I approve of two candidates, but I like one more than the other, approval voting doesn’t seem to allow me to express that preference. Do I vote for both candidates, or only the one I like the most? As a naive voter who isn’t going to research that question, will I make the right choice?

you approve anyone who you approve of

approval voting is a special case of score voting where the range of scores is limited to 0 and 1. if you want to express different levels of preference, you can expand this range and get full score voting. the downside is this puts a heavier burden on the voter to decide on scores (if it's 0-99, i give my first choice 99, but what do i give my second choice? 98? 75? 50? my choice might depend on what i expect other voters to think makes sense as a score)

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

#424

Post by juped »

dane-pgp wrote: post #177
throw5away wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd go as far as to say Approval > FPTP > IRV. FPTP has good properties like monotonicity (for a good example see http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/ ), easily distributed counting, and preservation of the secret ballot that IRV does _not_ have. You really don't get much bang for your buck by switching to IRV; I'd say it's a negative deal overall.

If we're comparing Approval and FPTP in terms of easily distributed counting, it's worth noting that a ballot paper with N candidates can be marked in N different ways with FPTP and 2^N ways with Approval. That may not be a problem for computers, but if you want to avoid the potential failure modes of (and conspiracy theories related to) electronic voting machines, there is a big difference between an election offici…

you cannot compare single-winner and multiple-winner systems at all

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

#425

Post by JohnWhigham »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #325
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. There's much more to it than that. The two-party system is codified into many laws. A lot of effort goes into maintaining it; the voting system isn't up to that job.

That's just a circular argument though. It's codified because the voting system has historically only allowed for two parties to flourish.

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

#426

Post by tialaramex »

samoube wrote: post #279
tialaramex wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ba…

Here’s a sample ballot from today’s primary in Brooklyn. Voting was for 7 offices, 5 of which were RCV. https://nyc-static.electionhub.com/sampleballots/384760/12/2...

Yeah :/ that does seem excessive. Delegates to the Judicial Convention in particular don't look to me to have a role that justifies expecting citizens to choose eleven of them each cycle.

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

#427

Post by goodpoint »

adventured wrote: post #335
crazygringo wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Welcome to actual democracy Fake democracy where you get to choose viable candidates exclusively from one party, and only one party. Aka a party dictatorship, the same as they have in most authoritarian states, and ideologically enforced in a similarly regressive manner. If you're not of the party, you will be an outcast and blockaded from any chance at winning. The opposite of democracy, and very clearly so.

Are you hinting at the Overton Window? It's notoriously small in the US.

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

#428

Post by Zak »

pandem wrote: post #396
barsonme wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Government and politics are primarily local because most problems are local. For instance, I have zero clue about life in NYC. Letting me directly influence decisions in NYC is wholly unfair. I have no skin in the game! How good or bad their transportation is doesn’t affect me. Whether their local tax rate is high or low doesn’t affect me. But it most definitely does affect them. Likewise, nobody in NYC is affect…

The Congress does not decide the New York local tax rate or how west coast cities handle their forest. You can have a local government and Congressional elections that are not tied to your specific location. As far as I know now the only position that both someone in California and someone in New York would vote for is POTUS.

Congress does, however decide how western states manage much of their land - a majority in some states.

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

#429

Post by mkoubaa »

grumblenum wrote: post #418
thought_alarm wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So voters almost got what they wanted and not what established interests thought they should be allowed to have? Frightening.

Imagine unsarcastically arguing that "Ranked Choice Voting gives too much power to voters"

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

#430

Post by ameister14 »

nine_k wrote: post #344
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…

Imagine there are two major party candidates, D and R, and also a third candidate X who is well-kmown and well-loved, but few believe X can win. Now voters go to the election and mostly put R or D on top place, but consistently put X on the second place. X has a really fair chance to win. This is how the two-party system can be cracked. This is how an already well-known person can be elected without having to join ei…

I think most people would put X in first place, then D or R in second just in case. If X can't get enough votes, then they fall back on D or R
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