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My vote on voting systems

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Re: My vote on voting systems

#21

Post by throwaway_1224 »

int_19h wrote: post #20
throwaway_1224 wrote: post #18

I think the state of democracy in the "factory bamboozling" era is such that we need a system that reflects direct voter preferences less , not more. The trick is coming up with a system that diverges towards the interest of the masses, rather than the elites or the corrupt or the foreign. Basically, the system must get the voters' preferences wrong, but get them wrong right . This is really akin to the nature of rep…

This is a very long-winded way to say that democracy is a bad idea if it's not just for show.

"Just for show" would be foregone conclusion elections like Russia's or ignored elections like Venezuela's. Voters must still be central to the system and get the final say for it to be democratic.

The system just needs to be wiser and more resilient. For instance, the Electoral College was originally intended to be more than a bunch of sworn minions. In Europe, many parliamentary democracies have strong party infrastructures that prevent their takeover by "memetic" forces. There are endless possible improvements.

Re: My vote on voting systems

#22

Post by int_19h »

bongodongobob wrote: post #13
yellowapple wrote: post #6

It's weird to me how little score/approval voting has caught on (at least here in the US) amid the push to replace FPTP. It's a lot simpler to explain than RCV, and has a lot fewer downsides overall than both RCV and FPTP.

I think fundamentally it's because you have to convince the elected to pass laws that potentially undermine the way they got there, essentially asking them to kick out the ladder from underneath them. Couple that with the average person thinking that FPTP is the most fair because explaining why it isn't is counterintuitive, nothing is ever going to change.

Explaining why FPTP is unfair in the abstract is not difficult at all.

The problem is that US specifically has a political climate which can be summed up as, "the ends justify the means". While both parties still ritually extoll the importance of democracy and fairness, as soon as it's down to one particular wedge issue, winning is more important than preserving the integrity of the system.

To a large extent, this is because there's basically zero trust between differing factions - it is assumed that your political opponents will squeeze out every advantage they can out of the system when they are in power, no matter how unfair, and so when you are in power, if you don't do the same, you basically hand them victory on policy long-term. Arguably was originally Republicans who triggered this cycle during the Obama presidency, but it's hardly important now - the point is that once trust is broken, it quickly becomes a positive feedback loop.

So, getting back to electoral system, your average voter looks at those proposals to replace FPTP with RCV or whatever, and the first thing they ask is not, "is this more fair?", but rather, "how will this affect the balance of power?". And in any given constituency, the answer is that it will take power away from the current majority (or plurality) and hand it to their opposition. This is both obvious and easy to explain, so that's the usual agitprop angle, and it sells very well.

Re: My vote on voting systems

#23

Post by cogman10 »

throwaway_1224 wrote: post #18

I think the state of democracy in the "factory bamboozling" era is such that we need a system that reflects direct voter preferences less , not more. The trick is coming up with a system that diverges towards the interest of the masses, rather than the elites or the corrupt or the foreign. Basically, the system must get the voters' preferences wrong, but get them wrong right . This is really akin to the nature of rep…

What we need, IMO, is direct legislation. Many states have this and I think federally having the ability to put up and vote on a bill would do a lot to correct many of the issues we currently face.

Barring that, RCV would do wonders for the current political ecosystem.

Re: My vote on voting systems

#24

Post by ajuc »

Proportional + threshold is simpler and better in practice than most of these. Yes it's not a direct equivalent (you have to change the problem so it has a good solution).

Also the problem in some countries isn't the voting system alone, it's the unlimited donations by billionaires, unchecked gerrymandering and general institutional decay.

System doesn't matter when people get away with ignoring it.

Re: My vote on voting systems

#25

Post by smitty1e »

12-year election officer here. This idea is great for small groups of informed voters.

However, I submit that there are (at least) three other crucial discussions to have:

- Does my status as an informed voter bias me toward a system for which I have done all the homework?

- Does my script that works fine in my dev system with relatively clean test data scale to an enterprise deployment and real-world loading?

- How significant in improvement is needful to pay for the switching costs? Twice as good? An order of magnitude?

Because I submit that, for all the virtues we informed types can see in RCV, it is prone to malicious attacks, e.g. flooding the ballot with a bunch of relatively unknown candidates.

Furthermore, if there is any sort of contention involved, the complexities are going to lead to (likely unfounded) claims of tinkering.

I'm a huge fan of the ditt-kuh-pow! (DTTCPOW, the Dumbest Thing That Could Possibly Work):

- Make Election Day a federal holiday

- Paper ballots

- In-person voting except in strictly controlled, marginal cases (e.g. deployed military).

Everyone trading security for convenience is misguided, in my opinion. You want to mark a ballot and cast it in secret so that, whatever you have to say to appease the shrieking neighbor, you and your ballot are as physically secure as possible.

Staff the process so that pollbooks are <5k people. We get it done with ~20 people in my county for 13hrs on election day. ~240 precincts in the county. Not cheap, and yes, exhausting to staff. So, what? Staff, equip and support them and elections, can be a positive experience for all involved.

Re: My vote on voting systems

#26

Post by johngladtj »

jfengel wrote: post #14
theluketaylor wrote: post #11

The mathematical challenges of voting systems is one of the reasons I've come to support multi-member districts. When only a single person can represent a jurisdiction you're always going to have people disappointed in the choice and we have have plenty of proofs that perfect voting isn't possible, so we need to aim for best reasonable compromise. Voting is even more about identifying who didn't win than who did win.…

Multi member districts does circumvent one of the assumptions of Duverger's Law, which predicts a two-party system. But you still need to work around collusions between candidates. Candidates will be pushed to run on a slate of N candidates for N seats, and promise to support each other. Voters who want any of their positions will avoid somebody who would interfere with their own top priority. The result acts the sam…

>Even at that I'm not sure it really helps. Lawmaking is still fundamentally a "single member" operation: a bill either passes or it doesn't. You still get pushed to be in either the majority or minority coalition.

The solution for that is to not make it a simple binary pass/fail, but to have how it passes and fails affect the outcome.

A simple and consistent way of doing this is by making it so that all laws have a built in expiration date, and how big the majority for passing the bill affects how long the law is in effect from.

A 50% + 1 margin of victory should result in the law becoming void the moment the parliament composition changes.

Perhaps a 60% margin might allow it to go for 10 years, a 70% margin for 15 years, and so on.

Constitutional changes should essentially require unanimity ( and a referendum on top of it) since they are the only permanent laws.

Some laws would be more or less "permanent" since every 30 years or so you'd like get a 99%+ majority for a "theft is illegal" type low, but other more controversial would likely be on the ballots every few years.

Re: My vote on voting systems

#27

Post by exmadscientist »

smitty1e wrote: post #25

12-year election officer here. This idea is great for small groups of informed voters. However, I submit that there are (at least) three other crucial discussions to have: - Does my status as an informed voter bias me toward a system for which I have done all the homework? - Does my script that works fine in my dev system with relatively clean test data scale to an enterprise deployment and real-world loading? - How…

FWIW, after living in an all-mail voting state (WA), I never want to go back to voting in person. It is amazing having a couple weeks to mark a ballot at my leisure, do as much research as I want, and then just drop it in a box (or mail it, I guess, but the drop boxes have definitely been more reliable for me).

But it's true I don't have a shrieking neighbor or brutal spouse to worry about.

Re: My vote on voting systems

#28

Post by valiant55 »

cogman10 wrote: post #23
throwaway_1224 wrote: post #18

I think the state of democracy in the "factory bamboozling" era is such that we need a system that reflects direct voter preferences less , not more. The trick is coming up with a system that diverges towards the interest of the masses, rather than the elites or the corrupt or the foreign. Basically, the system must get the voters' preferences wrong, but get them wrong right . This is really akin to the nature of rep…

What we need, IMO, is direct legislation. Many states have this and I think federally having the ability to put up and vote on a bill would do a lot to correct many of the issues we currently face. Barring that, RCV would do wonders for the current political ecosystem.

We should do away with voting and select our representatives randomly, similar to jury duty. We'd need a society that places value on civil service and is better educated and willing to listen to experts to hash out legislation.

Elections are only good for finding the most popular candidate instead of the most qualified for office. Keep terms medium length (e.g. four years) and you'll have people focus on the greater good instead of personal benefit because at the end of their term they have to live in the society they helped build.

Re: My vote on voting systems

#29

Post by exmadscientist »

cogman10 wrote: post #23
throwaway_1224 wrote: post #18

I think the state of democracy in the "factory bamboozling" era is such that we need a system that reflects direct voter preferences less , not more. The trick is coming up with a system that diverges towards the interest of the masses, rather than the elites or the corrupt or the foreign. Basically, the system must get the voters' preferences wrong, but get them wrong right . This is really akin to the nature of rep…

What we need, IMO, is direct legislation. Many states have this and I think federally having the ability to put up and vote on a bill would do a lot to correct many of the issues we currently face. Barring that, RCV would do wonders for the current political ecosystem.

The direct legislation initiatives we just had here in WA were a total crapshow and I hope we never see their like again. They got tarred with the same brush because they came from the same sponsor (which is somewhat reasonable), even though they were not all equally popular or even sane. Then some were written in the negative and some were written in the positive, so it was very difficult to figure out what you were actually voting for. And one of the special interest groups figured out their favorite position was "all no", which is really easy to advertise, even if many voters in that block would have actually preferred yes on one of the initiatives.

And of course the Legislature had gone in and muddled with them even before they made the ballot (which, to be fair, is explicitly the Legislature's job in the WA initiative system, but it didn't help the confusion).

It was not a pretty election. I am convinced that direct democracy is not the answer, and that was with just four relatively inconsequential initiatives.

Re: My vote on voting systems

#30

Post by em-bee »

valiant55 wrote: post #28
cogman10 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What we need, IMO, is direct legislation. Many states have this and I think federally having the ability to put up and vote on a bill would do a lot to correct many of the issues we currently face. Barring that, RCV would do wonders for the current political ecosystem.

We should do away with voting and select our representatives randomly, similar to jury duty. We'd need a society that places value on civil service and is better educated and willing to listen to experts to hash out legislation. Elections are only good for finding the most popular candidate instead of the most qualified for office. Keep terms medium length (e.g. four years) and you'll have people focus on the greater…

what i like about your idea is that it makes everyone a potential candidate. and i think rather than randomness, that that is really the key. don't allow any candidates at all, but allow every voter to select a number of people they would like to see elected from the whole population. no candidates, no promotion of certain people, ..., just vote for the people that you believe are best suited. now this still favors more popular people who are more visible in the public, but it doesn't limit the choices to self-selected candidates.
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