… and first passed the post voting.
So much this. Our entire situation is a direct and inevitable result of the system we use. there was no other outcome. we need ranked-choice and we need it on every level of government
I read ranked choice is also limiting due to some failure in how they calculate things. We need whatever it is that we think ranked choice is.
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Star voting? I don’t know a lot about it but it sounds promising.
The main problem with ranked choice voting is that having more candidates still reduces your chances of success. Your second, third, etc votes aren’t counted until your favorite is knocked out. Here’s a simple example:
- A - 45%
- B - 20%
- C - 15%
- D - 10%
- E - 5%
- F - 5%
Let’s say that B and D-F all have C as preferred second, and enough have A as third for A to get >50%. The votes for C won’t ever get counted because A would cross 50% first, even though most people prefer C to A (as in, if the election was just A and C, C would win).
STAR voting solves this by breaking up your vote according to your preferences. So your preference for C over D-F will be counted before anyone is knocked out, and C would likely win the election.
I personally think Approval voting is even better because it’s so simple, you don’t show preferences between candidates, you just pick the ones that are acceptable and the one that’s most acceptable wins.
A simpler demonstration:
45% vote A > B > C.
35% vote C > B > A.
20% vote B > C > A.
FPTP says A wins despite 55% of people preferring B or C instead. This is classic vote-splitting.
RCV eliminates B for having the fewest top votes, making the election 45% A>C vs 55% C>A, so C wins. But 65% of people preferred B instead.
Ranked Pairs does 1v1 comparisons: A-B is 45-55, A-C is 45-55, B-C is 65-35. B wins every possible runoff and therefore the election.
… and yeah, Approval would look something like 45% A, 65% C, 100% B. If everybody checked their top two candidates, everybody would vote B.
Thanks for the simple example!
And this is why I tend to pitch approval voting. You usually get the same results as more complex models, it’s simple to understand, and there’s no scoring model that people can bicker about. You mark the candidates that are acceptable, and don’t mark the candidates that are unacceptable.
I think STAR is technically better, but it’s a harder sell because people need to understand RCV and STAR well enough to understand the differences.
Approval is the same as FPTP conceptually, but with multiple votes thrown in. We already do something similar when there are multiple seats available (e.g. city council) where the top X candidates get the position, but we just set X to 1 for single seats like Senator or President. It’s intuitive, and high numbers for the result is a nice side effect.
Approval should be the default. There’s no good reason not to do it everywhere. “Check anyone you like, most votes wins.” Done. Good results, low regret, no invitations to self-defeating strategery.
Incidentally it’s how presidential elections used to work: every voter wrote two names, and the runner-up became vice president. That ended with the twelfth amendment after a comically inept tie-breaking session needed thirty-five attempts.
Ranked ballots are better but I’m always going to endorse Condorcet specifically because ‘more people wanted this guy’ are what elections are for. RCV finds the first candidate who can scrounge together a simple majority. Condorcet finds anyone who’d beat them. The possibility of someone who’d beat them is all people need to know about why RCV sucks.
Score systems… I don’t see the draw. Intensity of support is individually crucial and collectively impactful, but if everybody counts equally, then the math can’t care. You don’t get to vote harder based on strong feelings. You also shouldn’t be able to throw away half your vote by scoring your favored frontrunner low. STAR does paper over that honesty-punishing shortcoming, but only by expressing what Ranked systems do naturally.
As an off-the-cuff illustration, if C>B>A and B>C>A voters score everyone 3-2-1, but A>B>C voters score everyone 5-3-1, C can be eliminated despite supermajority preference over A. If it’s split about evenly, A averages 1+1+5, B averages 3+2+3, and C averages 3+2+1. The runoff comes down to A and B. B wins, in this case… even if C>B>A ballots outnumber B>C>A ballots.
Approval would be better than we have now but on a personal level I just dislike that I can’t express which I’d my preferred candidate. If Mitt Romney, Trump, Biden, and Bernie Sanders are all running, and I really want Bernie to win, but really don’t want Trump to win, how should I vote? In star voting this is easy. In approval voting I have a tough decision on my hands. Should I also vote for Biden and Romney? My ballot then indicates I am equally happy with these three candidates which is far from true. Or do I vote for Bernie only, knowing he may lose and without my support, the more moderate candidates may also lose to Trump?
Fair. I just like the simplicity. STAR voting is nice, I just don’t know if it’ll be a hard sell.
It was a hard sell in Oregon. I’m also a STAR proponent. The problem is the average voter is scared by conservative headlines and they already don’t like the idea of mail in voting. Changing the votting system even further would be some Communist conspiracy outside of the Metro area, with a non trivial number in the Metro area believing the same lies.
Ranked Pairs, or another ranked Condorcet method.
Or just do Approval where you check all the names you like. Same ballots as now, somehow gets Condorcet results, most votes wins. No good reason we’re not doing it already.
What’s broken is human behavior. None of these clowns would be there if we all weren’t so dysfunctional. I really thought, “2016 will be the year the third party wins the presidency, I mean look at those two scumbags out there!”
That election was when I realized, it’s not just Republicans that are the problem.
The biggest problem with American politics is the century old cap on representatives. Doubling it would solve a lot of problems.
I do actually support that reform but it would have pretty marginal effects.
Read “American Nations” by, iirc Woodard.
The US couldn’t possibly have avoided Civil War Part2.
Now it is going to be having what it has been enforcing/setting-up for decades.
The confederates only pretended to surrender, and now they are using a brilliant remapping of Leninism from left to right, using TV instead of schools for the brainwashing, to produce the proletariat/populist dictatorship that their cabal can highjack the country with, courtesy of Murdoch’s Right-Leninism, and it was all forseeable.
2024 the Biden institution loses, due to the economic-collapse & the rabid backlash of wounded-narcissism,
2025 “democracy” ( actually bribed/“lobbied” “representative” republic, perpetually gaslighting about being democracy ) is decapitated, and the ocean-of-butchery begins begins pouring blood/lives out…
It’ll be about 7 years before total-collapse, from then.
Trump’s already made it clear he backs Russia, not NATO, so Ukraine is hamburger, then.
Pretence/denial/entitlement is the fakest “immune system” there is, and it is going to “protect” nobody.
All preventable, IF everything had been done strategically, for decades, but when you allow moneyarchy to manufacture whole-population broken-parenting, and generations of trashed-lives, and you allow moneyarchy to wage successful war against living wages for workers…
…you don’t have a country, you have a prison that is pretending to be a country, destroying God’s gift to lives for sake of psychopathic machiavellian ego-crimes.
I expect to see Biden’s head on a pike, outside, where the Jan 6 insurrection people were, in early 2025, as a trophy of the new dictatorship.
Human nature has not changed one bit, in the last few millenia…
The sickening denial of everybody, in the situation… “I’m not responsible: I couldn’t have seen it coming!” ??? Bullshit/lies.
It’s been visible for decades, just when & how, were undecided.
And the pseudo-journalism of the left, which “shut down” ( their term ) the diversity of issues & voices, in order to make a nice, conforming only-Biden-institution left…
they’ll never tolerate any responsibility for their part, either.
Humanity is about to get what it invested-decades-in-getting, and it all could have been prevented, if honest & real strategic investment-in-real-worth had been consistently normal, but catering to money’s narcissism was the devotion preferred, so…
: \
Nah, the Republicans being like that are just a symptom of the process of collapse of US empire.
…and the so-called Democratic Party
They function. Maybe not the way many would like. Republicans simply don’t. And worse, Republicans campaign on their malfunction.
Are you kidding? Have you see how many subsidies are given to corporations? And tax custs to the rich?
Seems like they both function very well to serve the interests of the plutocrats that run both parties.
You just disproved your own point. Regardless disingenuous critique like yours isn’t fooling anyone. Well, maybe yourself. But no one else.
My point is that both parties are the same and terrible
Then your point is wrong and baseless. Yes both parties have their problems. As a socialist I’m not going to defend them when they don’t deserve it. But as someone who’s in touch with reality I’m not going to pretend they’re the same either. 1980 really terrified the Democrats. And made them timid to do a little more than go along with what the fascist wanted mostly. They’re slowly breaking away from that. But people like yourself certainly are not the solution to the problem.
