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Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party

forwardparty.com

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Re: Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party

#151

Post by vintermann »

lalaland1125 wrote: post #35
tryptophan wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ugh I support electoral reform, but why the obsession with ranked choice? It is the second WORST voting system after first past the post, which is what we have now.

Ranked choice has a lot of advantages over the alternatives that are often underestimated by people too worried about theory. The big advantage of ranked choice is that it is simple to understand and implement. In elections, it is essential that the average person understand exactly how the system works. An election result that people don't understand/trust is worse than useless.

No it isn't, technically. I can guarantee you that most people in Norway can't explain the Sainte-Laguë divisors method which delivers proportional representation.

What is true, is that simplicity is a propaganda advantage for actually getting it passed, since "It's too complex so we can't trust it" is a good attack line even if it isn't true.

I'm not sure that advantage is worth it, given that 1. it's a terribly long shot anyway, and 2. It's the same argument which will be used to defend the status quo.

Re: Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party

#152

Post by ZeroGravitas »

torginus wrote: post #142

Does the 3rd party make sense in the US election system? My impression was that 3rd parties are unhelpful, since they steal voters from ideologically similar parties, thus helping the opposition.

The parties have changed in the past, so if you felt that a shift was coming up, then you might want to get ahead of it.

I don't want to seem too optimistic but the US seems overdue for a more European style politics so if a big shift happened you could still end up with two parties, broadly left and right and Democrats (that remain) could be either of them.

Re: Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party

#153

Post by doomrobo »

vkou wrote: post #136
aazaa wrote: post #2

The Platform page lists a selection of positions that I think would not be very controversial. https://www.forwardparty.com/platform Surprisingly, the issue that Yang is known for, UBI, is not on the list. UBI is, however, present here: https://www.forwardparty.com/whyforward I wonder if that was accidental.

> The Platform page lists a selection of positions that I think would not be very controversial. The positions may not be, but voting for anything but R or D is very controversial, because by voting third party in the US, you are helping the choice you like least win. There is exactly zero chance that a third party will gain any meaningful amount of power, so all you are doing is throwing your vote away. Maybe you're…

NYC mayoral elections are ranked-choice

Re: Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party

#154

Post by 29083011397778 »

vkou wrote: post #136
aazaa wrote: post #2

The Platform page lists a selection of positions that I think would not be very controversial. https://www.forwardparty.com/platform Surprisingly, the issue that Yang is known for, UBI, is not on the list. UBI is, however, present here: https://www.forwardparty.com/whyforward I wonder if that was accidental.

> The Platform page lists a selection of positions that I think would not be very controversial. The positions may not be, but voting for anything but R or D is very controversial, because by voting third party in the US, you are helping the choice you like least win. There is exactly zero chance that a third party will gain any meaningful amount of power, so all you are doing is throwing your vote away. Maybe you're…

This is a little self-defeating, even for our current political systems.

Recently, there was a Canadian election. While we use FPTP here, many chose to vote NDP. They are effectively a third party, and were unlikely to hold even a minority government.

But neither incumbent party put forward anything, or anyone, more compelling. So those voting NDP were given two choices: they could vote for something barely better than the other guy, or they could treat their ballot as a mixture of optimism and a spoiled ballot, to voice their disappointment at the current state of affairs in the hope it might lead to something better, someday.

Re: Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party

#155

Post by akvadrako »

carlosdp wrote: post #98

I feel like a lot of people take it as obvious that ranked-choice is just better. I have an alternate take: We just went through a simple first-past-the-post election in the US that a significant percentage of voters believe was rigged. This is the simplest system imaginable, the data is easily available to verify it was not rigged. Do we really think the average american will be able to grok how ranked-choice voting…

It's obvious that it's easier to show someone how public vote tallies are calculated then convince them the entire chain of custody for ballets was secure.

Even if they don't understand it themselves, it's just simple math done in public which would be easy to refute by any educated person.

Re: Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party

#156

Post by fighterpilot »

nyczomg wrote: post #61
seancoleman wrote: post #17

I really wish they went with a logo that was a bit more different than that of a literal trash company ( https://www.republicservices.com )

I like Andrew Yang, but if we are being petty… I also am just not a fan of “the forward party”. When I hear it the first thing that comes to mind is this https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HqjhHVUzl8o

It reminds me of when some atheists ran a campaign to be called The Brights. A name that can be seen as a little pretentious doesn't help. I think calling his party the Liberal Party, to borrow from Canada and Australia, would have worked well.

Re: Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party

#157

Post by jbaber »

carlosdp wrote: post #98

I feel like a lot of people take it as obvious that ranked-choice is just better. I have an alternate take: We just went through a simple first-past-the-post election in the US that a significant percentage of voters believe was rigged. This is the simplest system imaginable, the data is easily available to verify it was not rigged. Do we really think the average american will be able to grok how ranked-choice voting…

This is one of the arguments for approval voting. It's simple enough to be trusted by everybody with all the good properties of RCV and some superior things like rendering negative campaigning useless.

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

https://electionscience.org/

Re: Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party

#158

Post by Karto »

The top line, "Not Left. Not Right. Forward." kind of reminds me of Macron's "En Marche" ("Let's Go") that took over France in a storm, taking over the presidency AND the parliament only one year after its foundation, with very few previously known political figures in its ranks.

The whole thing looked like doing management rather than politics, and offered an alternative to fed-up voters who didn't dare turn to the usual far-right and far-left "protest votes".

Headed with a nimble tactical vision, the formula was extremely efficient... for one mandate.

Re: Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party

#159

Post by jagrsw »

".. because our founding fathers .."

It's interesting to see that all sides of political dispute in US, even parties (like this one) which want to cater to the seemingly more rational and less emotional part of the populace use the argument of "the founding fathers wanted it this way, so... that must be the correct way of doing things forever".

Re: Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party

#160

Post by vintermann »

lalaland1125 wrote: post #39
kevmoo1 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ranked Choice (IRV) is better than Plurality, but there are better options. Read about the Condorcet Method

The Condorcet Method has a huge disadvantage that it is hard to understand. Being simple to understand is crucial for voting systems and I would argue is the most important factor since an election without public buy-in is worse than worthless.

The Condorcet property (not method) is easy enough to understand.

"Imagine this candidate ran in a two person race against each of the other candidates in turn. If he'd win ALL those races individually, he should win when running against all of them at the same time too."

Now, explaining various methods which guarantee this property is not as easy - nor is it easy to understand why you might prefer one such method to another.

But this isn't actually a big deal. In the many, many countries that use proportional representation, it's the outcome ("parties share of seats in parliament should be roughly the same as parties share of votes in the election") which is agreed upon. The actual mathematics to achieve it are somewhat counterintuitive and not many people are aware of them, but that doesn't matter. We can all see it works, and so we would in an election with, say, Ranked Pairs.

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