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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?

#221

Post by alisonkisk »

throw5away wrote: post #186
dane-pgp wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 don't need the n bits of information from each ballot. You can just transmit the aggregate counts. A human can easily put tally marks in each of n buckets. In fact, a computer would likely do the same instead of creating an exponential number of buckets... If you insist on a degenerate formulation, just split the ballots into n different elections and transmit the results of each one of those elections. We can us…

Even simpler, an approval voter can cast up to N (different) ballots.

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

#222

Post by dane-pgp »

coryrc wrote: post #183
s0ss wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to elaborate? I fail to see how it "doesn't do anything it purports to do". It allows people to pick/rank multiple candidates, which neuters the whole "least of two evils" problem traditional elections have. It would also destroy the two party duopoly, If it were used more widely. That'd be great.

IRV has nearly the same effect as FPTP on the two-party system. Sorry, I don't know if this is a good link: https://electionscience.org/library/irv-degrades-to-pluralit...

Even if IRV keeps the same two parties in power forever, there is still scope for it vastly improving politics by improving the platforms of those parties.

For example, if large numbers of Democrat voters decided it was safe to vote Green and put the Democrats as their second choice, the Democrats would quickly start to adopt more Green policies for fear that the two-party system kicks them out and the Greens become the major left-wing party.

As another example, if the Democrats were confident that there are more voters out there who are moderates than far-left voters, they could confidently oppose some far-left policies while knowing that they would still be the second-preference of far-left voters. That would allow them to appeal to more GOP voters and avoid being associated with fringe policies, while also expanding the Overton Window.

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

#223

Post by caf »

lobe wrote: post #79
AussieWog93 wrote: post #26

We've had this in Australia since day 1 of Federation. One important factor the article didn't quite emphasise is how this voting system can break up the two party duopoly without creating 1920s-Reichstag-esque anarchy. It's completely normal to put a third party as your first preference, while still indicating that you'd prefer Kodos to Kang. In practical terms, it means the Dems would actually have to do some work…

It looks like the article got the Australian implementation somewhat wrong. Under cons, it says that voters have to rank all candidates on the ballot paper. In reality you have a choice. You can either rank all, or if you are lazier you can just select your favourite candidate and then your first choice candidate's preferences will be used instead. Also for some larger ballots (usually the senate with nearly 100 opti…

In reality you have a choice. You can either rank all, or if you are lazier you can just select your favourite candidate and then your first choice candidate's preferences will be used instead.

This is not true. In the elections for the Australian House of Representatives (single-member electorates, comparable to the mayoral election under discussion where there is a single winner), you must number every box for your vote to count.

In elections for the Australian Senate (multiple member electorates) you don't have to number every box, but you have a choice: you can either vote "below the line" for individual candidates, in which case you must number at least 6 boxes for your vote to count (the ballot paper advises you to number at least 12); or you can vote "above the line" for groups of candidates (in which case you only have to number one, but the ballot paper advises you to number at least 6). A vote "above the line" for a group is equivalent to numbering the candidates in that group in order from top to bottom, but it doesn't imply a vote for a candidate in any other group.

The voting systems in Australian states and territories vary from the above; some of them do allow only numbering a single candidate in single-member elections ("Optional Preferential Voting" or OPV) and some still have group-ticket voting in multi-member elections where you can assign your vote to the preference ticket submitted by a candidate (though hopefully the last few jurisdictions to still have this will be getting rid of it, because it is being gamed).

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

#224

Post by mzs »

dragonwriter wrote: post #180
koolba wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Statistically, in the US a 3rd party has a 0% chance of winning because a third party has never won. Not recently for President, but third parties have won at every other level of government including Governors, Representatives, and Senators.

> Not recently for President, Not ever. The Federalists collapsed before we got a Whig, and the Whigs before we got a Republican, and those and the Democratic (ex-Democratic-Republican) parties are the only four that have won the Presidency. > but third parties have won at every other level of government including Governors, Representatives, and Senators. Sure, but its easy to overcount them; state two-party systems…

It was MN not MO:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Farmer%E2%80%93Labor...

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

#225

Post by crazygringo »

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…

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 your research on these many candidates, but there are similar lists of more than 2 candidates for Borough President, Comptroller, etc.

Welcome to actual democracy where you suddenly do get to express meaningful choices that aren't just between a single candidate preselected by two parties! And know that if your first-choice candidate doesn't win, your vote isn't effectively thrown out. :)

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

#226

Post by Taniwha »

ineedasername wrote: post #158
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…

What you say is true if general elections in the US, but often not the primary elections where a party determines who its candidate will be. At that stage it's pretty common to have a wider field of candidates. Also, ranking could change the US dynamic of only have 2 choices. Being able to vote 3rd party and then then choose someone from one of the two main parties might drive a lot more people to vote 3rd party beca…

Americans may not know that most countries don't have public primaries the way that the US does - here in NZ it varies from party to party - at one extreme the Greens hold a very public transparent democratic process, at the other the National party use closed 'smoke filled' rooms

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

#227

Post by godelski »

klodolph wrote: post #195
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…

I disagree that cardinal voting is understandable. It’s how we rate restaurants and review products on Amazon, and I don’t think it translates to an election with multiple options. The issue here is not just how logical humans “homo economicus” behaves, but how actual voters behave. Not really interested in engaging with the rest of this comment right now, but suffice it to say that I don’t think you’re accounting fo…

> I disagree that cardinal voting is understandable. It’s how we rate restaurants and review products on Amazon, and I don’t think it translates to an election with multiple options.

I disagree but also don't see this as a problem. If you rank candidates you still get the majority of the desirable properties. Rank with non-equal distances, even better. Hell, it isn't even bad if you bullet vote (that's just approval voting). Investigating non-optimal ways of voting under any voting system is an extremely important analysis. So for the voter there is no problem. I'm also kinda put off that you give real world examples of humans using cardinal methods and then claiming that we can't understand it (HN is using cardinal voting...)

But we also have to consider the counting of votes side of "understandable." Plurality is pretty damn easy, and this is clearly why we use it. Approval is almost as easy (just just sum multiple columns). Range/Score isn't much harder. Then STAR introduces 2 rounds of counting. Then we look at IRV and we see that we have tons of rounds. This isn't typically so bad in a presidential election where there are realistically about 4 candidates, but that complexity increases real fast elsewhere. Just watch NYC. There's going to be at least 5 rounds (probably more). This is far more complex. We only have to look at Arizona to understand why this part of the "understandable" question is important.

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

#228

Post by djrobstep »

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's still a huge problem with the Australian system - seat-based voting. I live in one of the safest seats in Australia, and thus my vote has literally zero effect on any election result - votes only have impact in swing seats.

This is also very unfair on third parties - under proportional representation, winning 10% of the vote nationwide means 10% of seats. Under Australia's system, unless those votes are very concentrated in specific seats, it means zero seats.

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

#229

Post by Taniwha »

erentz wrote: post #202
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".

> If people could confidently vote for another party there wouldn't be just two parties. If multimember districts are used with RCV yes. If not it tends to maintain a duopoly. Australia’s Senate uses RCV like voting with multimember districts and has more diversity than its House which uses single member districts. That said there is some benefit to using RCV even with single member districts as in theory it tends to…

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

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

#230

Post by dane-pgp »

dekhn wrote: post #67

back when I was a postdoc my group had a journal club and some joker decided to include a paper comparing different alternative voting schemes (US seems to be mostly "majority vote and full runoffs with ties). We made it through instant runoff, and a few other approaches, and then Of course, the Joker decided to lay a landmine at the last minute ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theore... ) at w…

Did the Joker admit that Arrow's impossibility theorem doesn't apply to score-based voting systems, or to single-winner elections at all?

Some people just want to watch the world learn.

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