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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?

#461

Post by [deleted] »

godelski wrote: post #448
adamjb wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Yes? I said those 4 examples use different election styles, not that Canada doesn't use FPTP... FPTP is a winner takes all electoral system. You said Canada had "a parliament where seats are assigned proportionately to votes (there's no winner take all)". >Winner-take-all refers to >>> a legislative body is elected by dividing the jurisdiction into geographic constituencies, each electing exactly one representative.…

> As you haven't made it very clear at all, what is your point? I think the issue we're having here is that you're focusing on a very narrow part of my argument which I'm saying isn't actually that important. The majority of my argument hasn't actually been addressed. I've historically learned not to argue with those that greatly narrow your argument (as opposed to focusing on one part).

[deleted]

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

#462

Post by godelski »

rswail wrote: post #437
godelski wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but up here in Canada we have a parliament and we're drifting toward a two party system Actually this is kinda my point: Canada: Liberal + Conservative = 81.1% (90.5% with Bloc, 97.6% w/ NDP, ) Australia: Liberal + Labor = 84.8% (95.4% with National) Germany: CDU + SPD = 56% (68% w/ AfD, 79.7% w/FDP, 89.4% w/ Left) France: REM + LR = 71.8% (79.9% w/ MoDem, 85.4% w/ UAI, 90.8% w/SOC) I can continue if needed... Thes…

The difference is that RCV results in the "least worst" candidate winning. They receive the most #1 votes, but unless they achieve an outright majority, if they only have a plurality then they only win by being the most preferred alternative vote by the voters. So the situation is that the leading parties have to spread their ideological base to incorporate more of the electorate. In addition, Australia has compulsor…

> The difference is that RCV results in the "least worst" candidate winning.

This isn't quite true. IRV actually increases spoilage[0]

[0] https://medium.com/election-science/star-voting-is-simpler-t...

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

#463

Post by bootlooped »

postalrat wrote: post #441
bootlooped wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You could be honest and pick the ones you approve of. Or if you just dont want some candidate(s) to win pick everyone else.

I don't think it's as simple of a question as you suggest.

Think of a food you disapprove of. Ok, now if you're stranded on a desert island, do you approve of it now? If you're at your usual grocery store you might disapprove of certain foods, but if you have to go to a much smaller one you may switch some of those to approve.

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

#464

Post by ClayShentrup »

magila wrote: post #238
godelski wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Arrow’s impossibility theorem First off, Arrow's doesn't apply to all systems. You'll need to look into both Gibbard's and Gibbard-Satterthwaite's theorems. Second off, just because you can't find a global optimization in a highly dimensional space doesn't mean there aren't local optimizations along criteria we care more about. Appealing to Arrow's is a cop-out. > Approval voting I think is much too tactical and, s…

One big problem with approval voting is that it presents voters with a difficult conundrum: what do you do with candidates you don't particularly like but would still strongly prefer over one-or-more other candidates? If people are too lenient with their approval it increases the risk of someone no one really likes getting elected over someone a majority would have preferred. If people are too stringent you start run…

1. Extensive game theoretical analysis, and even computer modeling, has shown that approval voting resists tactical behavior better than virtually any other voting method.

https://electionscience.org/library/tactical-voting-basics/

There's even an entire book focused on the game theory and tactics of voting methods, which advocates score voting, approval voting being score voting on a 0 to 1 binary scale.

https://electionscience.org/library/tactical-voting-basics/

Approval voting elections have been successfully held in 2020 and 2021 in Fargo in St Louis respectively, and there were no indications of voter confusion or anything like that.

https://electionscience.org/press-releases/st-louis-voters-u...

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

#465

Post by ClayShentrup »

ad8e wrote: post #393
godelski wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fine, go STAR or Score/Range. Honestly I prefer those systems (in that order and I'd argue most people that are pro cardinal systems have that same preference[0]). Nice benefit is that people can bullet vote and we collapse to Approval which is a "good enough" system. > but would still strongly prefer over one-or-more other candidates? In fact, this is why I argue for STAR or score. It encodes information for better…

Small correction: The term "bullet voting" means voting for one candidate only (001000), rather than voting 0 or 1 on each candidate (101011). It is caused by low engagement from the voters, who only take the time to learn about one candidate, their favorite. It has been a problem for approval voting in practice, and it is unclear to what extent it affects score methods in practice. I think STAR is slightly worse tha…

There is absolutely no evidence that bullet voting has been a problem with approval voting.

https://www.rangevoting.org/BulletBugaboo.html

> I think STAR is slightly worse than Score

I would say they are probably roughly equal, but the best computer modeling we have shows that star tends to perform a little better.

https://electionscience.github.io/vse-sim/VSEbasic/

> However, STAR's main benefit may be in overcoming political resistance, if its properties are simpler to convince voters. Majority criterion sounds nice even when it is inefficient.

You're definitely correct on this.

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

#466

Post by ad8e »

ClayShentrup wrote: post #465
ad8e wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Small correction: The term "bullet voting" means voting for one candidate only (001000), rather than voting 0 or 1 on each candidate (101011). It is caused by low engagement from the voters, who only take the time to learn about one candidate, their favorite. It has been a problem for approval voting in practice, and it is unclear to what extent it affects score methods in practice. I think STAR is slightly worse tha…

There is absolutely no evidence that bullet voting has been a problem with approval voting. https://www.rangevoting.org/BulletBugaboo.html > I think STAR is slightly worse than Score I would say they are probably roughly equal, but the best computer modeling we have shows that star tends to perform a little better. https://electionscience.github.io/vse-sim/VSEbasic/ > However, STAR's main benefit may be in overcoming…

Out of respect for you taking the time to respond, I will elaborate my claims more specifically. My assertion regarding bullet voting is isolated to elections where the voting body cannot be bothered to engage carefully, because they barely care about the race. In addition, the drawbacks must be then compared with other voting methods, which may face the same bullet issue in equal measure. The bullet voting comparison I am making is between Score and Approval; I think Score will face less bullet voting than Approval does.

A typical example where bullet voting should occur is a down-ballot election. Examples of low-engagement elections at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approval_voting#Other_organiza... bear out that these elections degrade in behavior to plurality. However, it can't be determined just from this behavior that IRV or Condorcet would do any better.

> https://www.rangevoting.org/BulletBugaboo.html

1-3 have major engagement from voters and I do not expect approval voting to suffer unduly from bullet voting. 4, an alumni association, should. However, the question then becomes, what about other voting methods? Because if the voter has weak information on the other candidates, he may simply bullet vote under all voting methods. In this context, Score needs testing. Voting values between 0 and 1 would give a much better idea of how voter engagement is affecting their votes, rather than their second choice always collapsing to zero. This is why I claim that it is "unclear to what extent it affects score methods in practice". Granular cardinal scores in even one such election would mean a lot for determining voter behavior.

I do not support FairVote's arguments and consider them dishonest. Notice that in my original post, I carefully describe bullet voting as a consequence of low engagement, which is supported by past real-world low-engagement elections. This is very distinct from FairVote's arguments, which are not sophisticated and demonstrate a willingness to make blind claims. The distortions that FairVote argues for require more justification than they give.

> https://electionscience.github.io/vse-sim/VSEbasic/

I don't believe much in that simulation. While I agree with your characterization of it as the "best computer modeling" in voting theory, it would still be considered a fatally flawed paper under the standards of most fields, and I faced some heavy obstacles when trying to analyze it. I think this field needs more/better academics. I described some of my objections at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27612876

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

#467

Post by smitty1e »

cryptgno wrote: post #457
smitty1e wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 16th and 17th Amendments, plus the Federal Reserve Act, all in 1913, along with the capping of the House of Representatives at 435 members in 1910, have driven the growth of the Administrative State. And the debt. So now there is a quasi-aristocracy running plays and putting on these electoral shows every couple of years. Calls for substantial reform. Technical people understand the need for clean architecture an…

I agree that our political system is a train wreck, but I don't see why the political positions of the people you're suggesting amend the Constitution wouldn't be relevant.

Ah, so.

I submit that perhaps the communication challenge may be rooted in the modern insistence in making ansolutely everything political.

A Federalist construct would seek to assign appropriate tasking to each level of government, and have DC manage international and inter-State concerns.

Arguably, a single, monolithic state try to manage every personal and local concern leads to gridlock, Q.E.D.

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

#468

Post by nickik »

laurencerowe wrote: post #404
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…

> There are almost always only 2 choices - the Democratic candidate and the Republican candidate. I’m an immigrant so some of this may be wrong, but the party system in the US seems to operate very differently to that in most other countries. Primaries make races far more focussed on the individual representative so there is less incentive for serious third parties to emerge as their potential candidates can instead…

The whole point of this kind of voting is that you would have to relay on primaries. You can just put up 2 or 5 candidates per party without hurting the parties chances of winning.

This is the whole point of such voting systems.

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

#469

Post by NickM »

cheriot wrote: post #452
NickM wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suppose you have three candidates, A, B, and C, and the votes look like this: 45% of voters rank A 1st, B 2nd, C 3rd 25% of voters rank B 1st, A 2nd, C 3rd 30% of voters rank C 1st, B 2nd, A 3rd Nobody has the majority, so B is eliminated, and A wins round 2 with 70%. But 30% of voters preferred B over A, and if they had ranked B first, then B would've won in the first round with 55%. By voting honestly, the C voters…

All of the strategic situations with instant runoff seem to require more detail on the outcome than anyone can predict in practice. So I’m not sure this will ever actually be a thing for voters think about.

I'm struggling to find a source, but I did read an article once about how some elections in Australia have fallen back to "lesser of two evils" precisely because of the need to vote strategically in order to make sure your vote isn't spoiled.

But suppose you're right and voters rank candidates honestly because they can't predict how to vote strategically; ultimately, I think that is arguably even worse, because even if voters can't predict how to vote strategically in advance, they can certainly still feel resentful after the fact when the results are tallied and it becomes clear that they got screwed over by voting honestly. At least in plurality voting, it's easy to understand the tradeoffs and choose whether you want to vote for a spoiler candidate or not. Surely it will not lead to greater voter enfranchisement for people who find out after they voted that they accidentally spoiled their own votes, and could've had a say in the outcome if they'd expressed their rankings differently.

If this still all sounds hypothetical, keep in mind that this is exactly what happened in the 2009 Burlington, VT mayoral election. The Republican candidate acted as a spoiler for the Democrat (who had the broadest popular support) and instead the Democrat was eliminated and the third-party Progressive candidate was elected. This led to wide-spread dissatisfaction and IRV was repealed there in 2010.

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

#470

Post by NickM »

cheriot wrote: post #452
NickM wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suppose you have three candidates, A, B, and C, and the votes look like this: 45% of voters rank A 1st, B 2nd, C 3rd 25% of voters rank B 1st, A 2nd, C 3rd 30% of voters rank C 1st, B 2nd, A 3rd Nobody has the majority, so B is eliminated, and A wins round 2 with 70%. But 30% of voters preferred B over A, and if they had ranked B first, then B would've won in the first round with 55%. By voting honestly, the C voters…

All of the strategic situations with instant runoff seem to require more detail on the outcome than anyone can predict in practice. So I’m not sure this will ever actually be a thing for voters think about.

Also, if my example seemed too abstract, let's imagine a real-world presidential election using IRV in a red state like West Virginia. In 2020, Trump got about 70% of the vote. Now suppose Mitt Romney ran as well in a three-way race against Trump and Biden. Since Romney is also a Republican, then it's likely some of the Trump voters would've ranked him first, but most of the Democrats would've still preferred Biden. But since Romney is more moderate than Trump, the Democratic voters would probably still prefer him over Trump. Now the results might look like this:

45% of voters rank Trump 1st, Romney 2nd, Biden 3rd

25% of voters rank Romney 1st, Trump 2nd, Biden 3rd

30% of voters rank Biden 1st, Romney 2nd, Trump 3rd

This seems like a fairly plausible real-world situation, and it also seems pretty easy to imagine how Democrats could look at the polling numbers and realize that Biden is never going to win in their state, and that ranking Romney 1st is their only chance to stop Trump.

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