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Love how it’s the cousin fucking states and the flyover Midwest.
Did y’all think the regime gonna just let you change the rules of the game that keep it in place…
Cute
“Obey! Resistance is futile 🤖” Thats how you sound my friend. I know it is not easy to see any ways out of the shit the U.S. is in but giving up beforehand is called doomerism and it is one of the biggest cancers alive.
Did you read the same comment as me? I read that as “why would the powers that be wilfully give up the path to that power?”
They’re not saying “obey”. They’re saying this shouldn’t be a surprise.
This is in fact what I meant to convey.
This is a fight worth fighting even if it is futile as it will expose how nasty the oppression really is. Most people assume everything is kosher because they never try to step out from the normie way of thinking where they accept everything as is.
No.
The comment is belittling a call to action as if it is futile because ‘the powers that be’ won’t let you act against them. Which is bullshit. Republicans biggest power comes from political inaction and resignation. They aswell have used the system to play us all and now want every opposition to believe it is too late. Talking about nefarious powers will do exactly nothing but invoke doomerism.
You are injecting heavy opinion here. That’s not what I meant and there others who didn’t read like you did… But sure fight you a wind mill boy
I am not giving up. I am commenting on the current political conditions.
Also, my work speaks for itself and obey aint it ;)
People must exhaust this avenue among others before borne understands the conditions imposed on him/her
At least people are waking so team peasant got that going. It will take a generation or two.
Remember that by the time FDR stepped in plebs spent 2-3 generations shedding blood for the cause. But it still took a cripled nepo baby with sympathy for the common man, along with parasites botching the economy for the change to happen. And it only lasted like 40 years.
My bad. I guess i took the “Cute” the wrong way.
To add on to this: Maine did add RCV, as well as many blue cities in blue states, refer to the map I just added to the post (it’s a screenshot from the source).
If we keep growing interest locally, people will become more familiar with the alternatives. The more cities and counties that use alternative voting systems, the easier it gets to pass these alternative systems statewide.
While many state lawmakers are determined to push back against alternative voting systems, there is always the possibility of flipping the rules back down the line, especially if more states in general flip blue, progressive, or independent.
For real, you better count on sunzu1/2/3 to come out and give up all hope while indirectly giving us his infinite wisdom.
The whole entry is enlightening.
Is anybody surprised that you could replace the orange with red and have a pretty accurate election map?
What are you guys scared of? Democracy?
In Kansas it surprises me that Kelly signed it; I’d be more inclined to believe that the Republican supermajorities pushed it past a veto.
It looks like it passed with a veto proof majority that probably included some democrats. Link
Meh. There are better voting systems such as range voting and STAR.
There are, and my state would have banned those too it they’d heard about them when they were banning RCV. They weren’t making principled objections like monotonicity failures. They likely noticed that most of RCV’s loudest advocates were from the wrong party (and some of the were the wrong color too!), and figured that was a good enough reason to shut it down.
Got some videos here that explains various voting systems if yall are interested.
Electoral Reform Videos
First Past The Post voting (What most states use now)
Videos on alternative electoral systems
STAR voting
Your STAR voting video doesn’t exist on my end, America here if that matters for copyright/prohibition.
France here, the video is unavailable to me too.
You also have to account in human stupidity. If you make the ballot too complex, dumbasses are gonna mess it up and the ballots will be invalidated.
The ballot is the same for all ranked voting methods. The method of determining winner from those ballots varies, and some are clearly worse.
For instance, if a candidate would beat all others 1-on-1 (Condorcet winner), then should a decent method always select that candidate as winner? RCV doesn’t do that.
Example
- A > B > C: 2
- C > B > A: 2
- B > C > A: 1
Who wins according to instant run-off? C. Who wins against every opponent 1-on-1? B.
This nice table compares voting methods by a wide range of properties. I don’t think it hurts to make a more informed decision before backing a method that will be difficult to change. The US got stuck with FPTP through inadequate research, and it’d be great not to repeat that mistake.
While rated voting methods fail the Condorcet winner criterion, by rating instead of ranking candidates they satisfy another set of criteria also worth considering.
Among ranked voting methods, ranked pairs seems most compelling to me. Among rated voting methods, approval seems pretty good (and extremely simple).
I retract this portion of the comment and put in this spoiler
Among ranked voting methods, ranked pairs seems most compelling to me.
I think that’d fail miserably in the real world.
Think about the average voter. They see this ballot:
A vs B?
A vs C?
A vs D?
B vs C?
B vs D?
C vs D?
Yea I think they’re gonna freak out upon seeing this ballot. Right now, the most important goal should be to get rid of the spoiler effect and FPTP, rather than finding the best system.
approval seems pretty good (and extremely simple).
I can see a bit of strategic voting happening.
Let me demonstrate:
For the sake of simplicity, let’s say we have 3 candidates, and no term limits:
Trump, Biden, Sanders
Biden and Sander voters dispise trump, their preference in RCV is (example):
Biden>Sanders>Trump: 30%
Sander>Biden>Trump: 25%
Trump>Sanders>Biden: 23%
Trump>Biden>Sanders: 22%Okay, so lets say they all approve their top 2:
Biden: 77%
Sanders: 78%
Trump: 45%Okay we have president Sanders! Congrats, right?
Well, now the trumpers who approved sanders are like: “Hey wait a minute, we made our daddy lose because we approved Sanders”
All the trumpers now have a meeting and decided that next election, they don’t approve Sanders or Biden as a strategic vote.
So now, Election 2 Results:
Biden: 55%
Sanders: 55%
Trump: 45%Oh great, it’s a tie. The law says that the election have to be re-done to solve the tie:
Now this next election, all people who preferred Sanders first go to a Sanders supporter meeting and started saying: “Lets disapprove Biden so Bernie can win!”
Simultaneously, Biden voters will be like: “Lets disapprove Sanders so Biden can win!”
Next election results:
Trump: 45%
Biden: 30%
Sanders 25%Congrats, we have a glorified FPTP and spoiler effect yet again!
Now, other election systems could also have strategic voting, but its less likely with, for example, RCV, since you can rank candidates.
Yea I think they’re gonna freak out upon seeing this ballot.
I think you missed the first sentence I wrote:
The ballot is the same for all ranked voting methods.
Maybe explaining what you think that means would clear up confusion?
I can see a bit of strategic voting happening.
Yes, approval voting is indeed susceptible to strategies including burial, which leads to a “chicken dilemma”.
Ah nvm, I thought the ballot was gonna lok like this:
A vs B?
A vs C?
A vs D?
B vs C?
B vs D?
C vs D?
I misunderstood, I get it now, its all tabulated in the background, same ballot as Ranked-Choice voting.
But my point about the approval voting still stands.
RCV isn’t monotonic, meaning that in the right circumstances you can harm your chosen candidate’s chances by ranking him higher. Doesn’t matter how rare it is; what a ridiculous quality for a voting system to have.
I agree it’s a flaw, but the answer isn’t to move to an even worse and more gameable system, it’s to move to proportional systems like MMP.
Cardinal voting systems are terrible because strategic voting is as trivial as it is in FPTP. In IRV situations where strategic voting would be possible exist, but they’re rare and hard to predict. In cardinal systems it’s always best to give the maximum score or the minimum score, and never anything in between.
And when that happens it just defaults to approval, which is still non-monotonic and better than IRV, but it’s been proven anyway that that doesn’t happen and most people are honest (or would learn to be honest after few iterations). IRV is also not devoid of strategy, as it can be better to rank your true favourite lower
IRV is also not devoid of strategy, as it can be better to rank your true favourite lower
I think you missed the part where I said that it can happen, but that it’s rare and hard to predict.
Approval Voting is bad because of the simple fact that it doesn’t let you express any preference. There’s no ability to say “I’ll take this guy if I really have to, to avoid the worst outcome, but if possible I would much prefer this other guy”. In single-winner systems, having some mechanism to express that one candidate is better than another is absolutely crucial.
I think you missed the part where I said that it can happen, but that it’s rare and hard to predict.
Yea, sorry, my wording wasn’t the clearest. I meant to say that it is actually not that rare, and hoped that the linked source would help support that claim. From the same website:
We can [assume that] “all votes [are] equally likely except that the probabilities that A,B,C will be middle-ranked of the three in that vote are 30%, 30%, and 40% respectively” where C is the 3rd-party candidate. Then in IRV as #voters→∞, C’s probability of winning is probably exponentially tiny so that Joe Voter is justified in assuming C only a very tiny […] chance of winning. Indeed C only has a tiny chance of merely surviving the first round.
However, Joe reasons, if Joe and friends by honestly-ranking C top do manage to make C survive the first round, then that will almost certainly happen only at the cost of eliminating Joe’s second-favorite candidate A. If the A votes then transfer equally to C and B (which in “1-dimensional politics” with C A B arranged along a “line” in that order, seems likely) then C will almost certainly still lose, and will have deprived A of victory in the process.
The idea then would be that the behavior of mid-ranking the 3rd party candidate would be self-reinforcing in IRV: an assumption of a slight bias that way like we just made (40% versus 30% […]), then leads to it being strategically wise for Joe Voter to do it, leading to a larger bias that way, etc. – positive feedback, self-reinforcing 2-party domination.
Approval Voting is bad because of the simple fact that it doesn’t let you express any preference.
I agree and that’s why I support Score Voting over it! The mechanism to express that one candidate is better than another one is to just give them honest scores! And there’s studies proving that’s the reality is, the vast majority of people are at least somewhat honest when filling out a Score ballot
And there’s studies proving that’s the reality is, the vast majority of people are at least somewhat honest when filling out a Score ballot
- It’s never been used at the scale of an actual large country’s national election. The stakes are so fundamentally different than any small-scale study.
- Even if true, that’s not necessarily a good thing. It just makes the vote of those who do vote strategically all the more powerful.
Cardinal systems devolve into approval, and approval doesn’t allow expressing preference. And being unable to express preference lends itself to some of the worst strategic voting and reintroduces the spoiler effect in the place it’s most important to avoid the spoiler effect: serious 3-(or more-)way races. If I’m an A voter, B is centrist, and C is worst, then under approval it’s fine for me to approve of A and B if I know A can’t win. But the moment A is a serious contender, choosing to approve of B decreases the chance A might win. But not approving of B increases the chance C might win. I’m stuck with having to make a terrible decision.
Ordinal systems don’t do this. Some ordinal systems might be better than IRV and avoid the biggest criticisms of that system, but ordinal systems beat cardinal systems nearly every time.
But the main thing about all of this is that every single-winner system is always worse than proportional multi-winner systems. Moving to any system other than FPTP should be the first priority, but if you’re going to spend time knocking down suggestions to improve to the most well-proven alternative, you might as well go all the way and advocate MMP or direct proportional, and on shoring up some of the weaknesses of that system (such as problems with party lists letting parties choose who gets in even if people don’t like the candidate of the party they like, or how minimum thresholds can lead to some people’s votes being effectively wasted).
The point of RCV isn’t to ensure your chosen candidate wins; it’s to ensure that whoever does win has at least some amount of approval from the majority of voters.
It does still have flaws, but it’s still far superior to the current system the US uses.
Really, anything other than FPTP is fine. RCV only has the same outcome as FPTP, where the least liked candidate can win, in ~10% of outcomes which is fairly uncommon. Really we should be okay with promoting most of the alternatives since they can be modified down the line as well. I personally promote Ranked Robin, STAR, and Score more but RCV is always worth supporting if it’s on your local ballot vs FPTP. Most people are more familiar and accepting of RCV if they have heard of some of these alternatives.
I think most people would agree that it does matter how rare it is.
Even if imperfect, ranked choice voting would give voters considerably more voice than they have now. That could be used to, for example, vote in another method in the future.
Ok, I’m sold, let’s do this
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For those non-USians reading this, the pattern is: states which tend to vote Republican and thus have majority Republican governance. So called “red states”.
As a Texan, it’s a relief to finally not be included on one of these lists for once.
Don’t worry, there’s always 2026!
Don’t be too relieved. There’s a bill banning RCV that passed the Texas Senate and is being considered by the House: https://www.billtrack50.com/billdetail/1751192
[yeehaws sadly]
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Why did you add like a hundred spaces in front of the list of states? That makes it a code block that requires tons of horizontal scrolling to read. I didn’t even recognize it as such at first.
You know Lemmy has spoiler syntax, right? If that’s what you were going for?
Does it also shock you that Iowa is on the short list to do the same?
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I’m curious what you got for I.O.W.A. I hate this place, so I love anything that bags on us.
I’ve always known it as “Idiots Out Wandering Around”
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You’d think it would be democrats worried about another Bernie Sanders coming along.
What is it the republicans are worried about with RCV?
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The magas only gained their stranglehold on the party, despite being a minority, due to the neocons splitting their primary ballots.
They gained their stranglehold from 20+ years of systematic takeover. The Tea Party became MAGA. It didn’t happen over night
I never said it did. First past the post is what allowed that to happen.
The left wing vote is split, so the Republicans can win just by getting the largest number of votes with first-past-the-post.
Can anyone explain to me why a BAN was even needed? If a State is FPTP that’s the way it is; why do they need to say a different way is not allowed? Especially because of that different way were to actually be viable enough to become law it would just be a one two step - repeal the old, then institute the new.
The link gives some arguments. It’s mostly stupid right wing claptrap.
Opponents of ranked-choice voting argue that it benefits voters with more time and information, leads to decreased voter confidence in elections, and disconnects voting from important issues and debates. Opponents of ranked-choice voting also argue that RCV winners do not necessarily represent the will of the voters.
It goes on to giving statements for those reasons from such respectable organizations as The Heritage Foundation, so do what you want with that.
I’m an opponent of RCV for none of those reasons.
No, I hate it because it’s deeply flawed and provides zero of the benefits that proponents claim it does.
Rather than help third parties, it actually hurts them.
The inventor of the system, created it as an example of a bad voting system. This was in 1790.
There’s far more ballot spoilage when compared to any other system.
It doesn’t eliminate the spoiler effect, just kicks it down the ballot a bit,
It’s confusing to count, which has led to the wrong candidate being sworn in.
It requires centralized counting, which is a single point of failure or attack.
And finally there are better, simpler systems that actually do the things that RCV proponents claim RCV
Because they don’t believe in choice, freedom, or even democracy. They merely support the ideal and facilitate the illusion.
Anything that empowers voters to either dilute the two-party hegemony (where both parties are accountable to the same pool of donors) or elect party members that haven’t been carefully vetted by insiders is a threat to entrenched power structures. Adding roadblocks now ensures that transitions to better systems are made that much more challenging via peaceful and lawful means.
To be fair I’m really starting to get tired of “peaceful and lawful means”, solely because it’s being used to trample our rights.
rcv would threaten gop stranglehold on a state, also would negate certain things like voter suppression toa certain extent.
Alaska passed it. The election results didn’t go as expected. Everyone in one party (guess) freaked out and started passing bans nationwide.
They tried to repeal RCV in Alaska too, but it failed by a slim count
even after 100:1 repeal money advantage. They’ll probably try again: https://alaskapublic.org/elections/2024-11-20/alaskas-ranked-choice-repeal-measure-fails-by-664-votesEdit: misread the fundraising number.
Nope, the “No” campaign (keeping ranked choice voting) outspent the campaign to repeal ranked choice voting by 100:1, largely with out of state money.
Former Lt. Gov. Loren Leman, an advocate for repeal, said he hopes the Legislature will pass a law getting rid of the voting system, but if that doesn’t happen, another repeal initiative is possible.
“I would say half of Alaskan voters were influenced, at least in part, and maybe in large part, by big money from outside the state,” he said by phone. “And ours was a grassroots, homebody campaign.”
The No on 2 campaign attracted nearly $14 millionin contributions, largely from outside the state, and outspent the Yes on 2 campaign by a 100-to-one margin.
My bad. Corrected.
Thanks!
I just read about it. Apparantly, most voters preferred the republican Begich over other 2 candidates and Begich is the Condorcet winner, so I could see why they’d be upset at the result.
Fun fact, Condorcet is the inventor of RCV, and threw it out because it almost never produces the Condorcet winner.
The Ohio HoR just overwhelming voted to remove all state funding from any city that implements ranked choice voting. It threatens the parties in power, so they are both eager to stomp it out
It’s an attempt to proactively prevent any progressive progress.
Changing the voting system involves changing the law, doesn’t it? Can’t you just revert the ban in that very same bill?
Edit: Ah, I just saw in another comment that this affects lower levels of government that wouldn’t have the power to make this change.
They don’t want sub-divisions of the State (cities/towns) to implement RCV in their local elections. Probably to avoid the idea to spread. It like Democracy/Republicanism. When the French got rid of their monarchy, all the monarchs of nearby countries were afraid the sentinment would spread, same thing here.
Edit: spelling
That makes a lot of (unfortunate) sense, other than Kelly approving it (I’m in Kansas). I’ll need to dig in more and make sure it wasn’t just a veto overridden by the Republican supermajorities, or else wasn’t a poison pill attached to must have legislation.
https://www.billtrack50.com/billdetail/1781139
Blue State Republicans are usually more “liberal” than Red State Democrats. State politics and Federal politics are different.
absolutely shocked that southern states with the worst education and track history of the most oppressive laws would do this to their constituents
they’ve been nothing but whored-out welfare states the whole fucking time
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Really bugs me how americans talk about “ranked choice voting” because you guys seem to mean STV, which is a form of proportional representation with multi-member districts.
But in Canada, “ranked ballots” meant IRV, which was basically FPTP with a ranked ballot, and ironically exacerbated the worst parts of FPTP like the trend to a two party system.
Stick with the real names of electoral systems!
and ironically exacerbated the worst parts of FPTP like the trend to a two party system
Umm. Hi, Australia here. We’ve used IRV for our House of Representatives since 1918. IRV is definitely flawed, and I’ve said in the past it’s the “worst acceptable system”*. But it’s better in every way than FPTP, and definitely doesn’t exacerbate a trend towards two parties. It doesn’t create a proportional result that truly helps break the two-party system like STV (most notably used by Australia’s Senate or Ireland’s Dáil) or MMP (notably used in New Zealand and Germany) would, but it doesn’t entrench it any more than FPTP. In fact, as of today, Australia’s crossbench consists of only 1 fewer person than its Opposition, because independents and third parties have been rising considerably over the past 15 years or so, particularly at the 2022 and 2025 elections.
You’re right that people should be clear about whether they mean IRV, STV, or another ordinal system, though.
* the intent being to highlight that FPTP is an entirely undemocratic and unacceptable system to ever use.
We studied it in Canada, including how it was used in Australia, and it was the only electoral systems out of all the ones listed that actually widened the gap between voter intention and seat distribution from FPTP.
https://www.ourcommons.ca/documentviewer/en/42-1/ERRE/report-3/page-174#49
Specifically here, where it is called “Alternative Vote”:
I’m mostly just frustrated about how it keeps getting renamed.
But it is entirely possible to invent an electoral system that is worse than what we have now, and it seems politicians might have done that with IRV.
Specifically here, where it is called “Alternative Vote”
Yeah that seems to be a very common alternative name. I’m especially not a fan of that name, since all it tells you is that it’s “not FPTP”. At least “Preferential voting” or “ranked choice voting” tells you something of the ballot.
Really bugs me how americans talk about “ranked choice voting” because you guys seem to mean STV, which is a form of proportional representation with multi-member districts.
But in Canada, “ranked ballots” meant IRV, which was basically FPTP with a ranked ballot, and ironically exacerbated the worst parts of FPTP like the trend to a two party system.
Stick with the real names of electoral systems!
This is in the context of US State Legislations, Ranked-Choice Voting is what most laws refer to them as.
In most contexts, we’re mostly talking about Single-Winner elections.
Sometimes, the same concept has different names to different people, there isn’t a name that’s more “real” than others.
I don’t really care what the law calls it. One time an American law tried to call pi equal to 3.2. Had it passed both houses instead of only one, that still wouldn’t have changed what pi actually is.
Ranked-Choice describes a feature of a large number of voting systems. Namely, any system that involves ranking candidates in order of preference. Instant-Runoff Voting and Single Transferable Vote are the two most popular such systems, but there are many others, including the Borda method and Ranked Pairs. It’s better to just be clearer about what it is you actually mean, rather than use an ambiguous term that’s going to lead to more confusion.
In most contexts, we’re mostly talking about Single-Winner elections.
In the context of electoral systems, “Congress” and “Senate” are multi-seat legislatures. Hence the talk about proportional representation, IE how many Americans vote Democrat vs how many Democrats get elected. Without that discussion you’ll never get a 3rd party elected.
The senate is voted only within a state, one senator at a time. the house of representatives again is done by states, but has a different number for each state.
Americans complain about the two party system and do absolutely nothing to change that. It’s like watching a soap opera but everyone’s fell of the horse and lost their memory.
It’s almost like those in power make the laws that are used to elect those in power 🤔
It’s even worse than that - they don’t just “do absolutely nothing to change that”, they actively whip each other into line by loudly blaming third party voters for not giving them the votes that they somehow owe to their big money party.
Lol go to r/conservative and you’ll see all those idiots having doublethink simultaneouly saying that they support term limits for congress and support for ranked-choice voting, yet continues to vote in conservatives that oppose the very policies they claim to support.
Its actually quite ridiculous. Republican legislators consistantly oppose raising the minimum wage or abortion, yet, the republican voters votes in favor of those policies, while simultaneously vote for the legislators that oppose them.
I’m just like… Why??? Why do y’all vote like this? 🤦♂️
I think we should just go the Swiss-route and do direct democracy; representatives don’t even represent their constituents anymore.
I think we should just go the Swiss-route and do direct democracy;
That’s literally the Anarchy system. I.e Laws and no leaders.
As an Australian who has ranked choice (we call it preferential) it’s not the panecea folks here seem to think it is to bring about the enlightenment.
I’m 58, have voted in every election from when I was eligible through to this year. We don’t have ICE but we have Border Force and we routinely deport non citizens, we inspect digital devices at the border, we off shore legal refugees in internment camps, we have zero care for the enviorment and love penis shaped defence spending, we are a car dependent shit hole with few redeeming qualities… It’s ever been thus, Donad Horne oponed on this in the 1970s.
We don’t have feedom of the press or freedom of speech, so often these things are unable to even be reported on at all and our most egregious atrocities have widespread support amongst the broader population. In that respect its not as big a divisor as. n the US as we’re all arseholes :) We’re happy to allow religious scumbags to discriminate against LGBQT folks, happy to have our privacy removed, are quite fond of fucking over our indigenous peoples and the wider enviorment and near zero concern for exestential issues like climate change. We’re happy to shit over homeless people and have unaffordable housing and racism is broadly endemic.
We have never elected a government that i think is anything but objectively fucking horrible, we have our tongue firmly stuck up the US foreign policy asshole and follow them into every stupid dumb shit military action. We have had the occasionally decent poltican but then so does the US (Bernie etc) .
Like us, your people are broken and you’re not going to cure what ails ya’ with RCV.
Put simply: if RCV had been in place for the US presidential race in 2024, the Gaza issue wouldn’t have split the Democratic vote.
I’m just like… Why??? Why do y’all vote like this?
Looks awkwardly at the voting history of every (non-local) politician I have voted for…
Yeah. Those Republicans sure look silly rallying behind people who immediately betray them once in office.
Awkward cough.
In Colorado last year RCV was on the ballot as part of an initiative. It was shot down easily because both parties campaigned against it. Not sure what to do when the weight of all incumbents is thrown against something
In Colorado, one of my wife’s friends is what most people (I say this, knowing the Lemmy political scale is vastly different from most Americans) would consider super liberal. She’s also very outspoken and politically active, so she has no problems telling everyone she knows how to vote on every issue.
Last election, we were at her house and she mentioned that she was against ranked choice voting. When I asked her why, she pointed to her voting guide provided by the Colorado Democratic Party. She just blindly accepts that because the party says it’s bad, then it’s bad.
After seeing that, it wasn’t surprising to me when the proposition failed.
Fuck thai boils my blood
This may shock you, but there’s a lot of us. It’s not the same people doing both.
In MO. Voted on it last year. The ballot was intentionally worded to be misleading.
It said each person can only cast one vote. Making it sound like it was to prevent people from voting twice even though that person as already not allowed.
So dumb.
They just pulled that in the Ohio House this week. They have been calling it “One Person, One Vote” and are going to withhold state funds to any municipality that uses ranked choice voting. It passed our house 22-5 iirc
Missouri Amendment 7, Require Citizenship to Vote and Prohibit Ranked-Choice Voting Amendmen
I hate it here in the South.
Approval and STAR are better anyway. Not that they wouldn’t find a piss poor excuse to ban those as well.
STAR? Sure.
Approval? Nah
Gonna copy paste my comment again:
I can see a bit of strategic voting happening.
Let me demonstrate:
For the sake of simplicity, let’s say we have 3 candidates, and no term limits:
Trump, Biden, Sanders
Biden and Sander voters dispise trump, their preference in RCV is (example):
Biden>Sanders>Trump: 30%
Sander>Biden>Trump: 25%
Trump>Sanders>Biden: 23%
Trump>Biden>Sanders: 22%Okay, so lets say they all approve their top 2:
Biden: 77%
Sanders: 78%
Trump: 45%Okay we have president Sanders! Congrats, right?
Well, now the trumpers who approved sanders are like: “Hey wait a minute, we made our daddy lose because we approved Sanders”
All the trumpers now have a meeting and decided that next election, they don’t approve Sanders or Biden as a strategic vote.
So now, Election 2 Results:
Biden: 55%
Sanders: 55%
Trump: 45%Oh great, it’s a tie. The law says that the election have to be re-done to solve the tie:
Now this next election, all people who preferred Sanders first go to a Sanders supporter meeting and started saying: “Lets disapprove Biden so Bernie can win!”
Simultaneously, Biden voters will be like: “Lets disapprove Sanders so Biden can win!”
Next election results:
Trump: 45%
Biden: 30%
Sanders 25%Congrats, we have a glorified FPTP and spoiler effect yet again!
Now, other election systems could also have strategic voting, but its less likely with, for example, RCV, since you can rank candidates.
STAR voting is also acceptable, but its also less heard of, and as far as I know, it hasn’t ever been done in a real-life election. I doubt that’ll get popular any time soon, might as well find another easier to implement Non-FPTP system to rally behind.
It’s mathematically proven that no voting system is perfect, so you’ll have to choose what you value most in a voting system. There is no clear best system.
I think the arguments for approval voting are strong. It’s simple and easy to understand, no need for complex multiple rounds of counting. Since you can’t rank candidates it doesn’t suffer from the spoiler effect.
In your hypothetical scenario you’re forgetting the Trump voters who will vote for Sanders again after they see Biden nearly beating him. RCV has a bigger problem which is called the spoiler effect where, without strategical voting a loser can influence the election results. And am I missing something or should the numbers in your RCV list add up to 100%?
https://electionscience.org/education/approval-voting-vs-rcv
Voters get together and decide who to vote for
Okay, I’m going to stop you right there. What about the voting populace makes you think we’re capable of that?
The bigger problem in my opinion is more about the fact that all elections that select a single winner will always end up in stupid degenerate systems like this where flaws and imperfections exist.
The best thing to do (again, my opinion) is to abolish all single winner races and have multiple winners with proportional representation. Get rid of directly elected presidents and have a prime minister selected by a proportionally representative parliament instead. All presidential systems suck, and the larger the number of people voting, the harder and harder it sucks. It’s not just a USA problem - you also see it in France and Turkey, where they also have an all-powerful president that is elected nationally and the election is a complete shit-show every time without fail. On the other hand, having a prime minister selected as the head of state from a proportionally elected parliament is a much fairer and more stable system in my opinion. It has downsides too of course, but nowhere near as bad as nationally elected presidential systems.
In any case, the example you pointed out is a potential flaw in approval voting, but I don’t think it’s very likely to happen. First of all, it would require all those voters in the second round to conspire a particular way, which isn’t very likely. Secondly, there’s the fact that the numbers would have to line up in a very particular way which has a very low probability of happening - tweak a few numbers here and there, and the spoiler effect vanishes. Sure, the scenario you point out is a hypothetical flaw in approval voting, but I think it’s a much smaller effect and probability of actually influencing anything - definitely nowhere near as much of a strategic voting effect as in plurality voting systems.
Congrats, we have a glorified FPTP and spoiler effect yet again!
Not quite. As you’ve just observed, this kind of strategic voting is risky, and self destructive. Which means that many would recognize this, and not use this voting strategy. Its a game of chicken, and lots of people prefer not to play such a game and instead support the safe bet, which means supporting those you genuinely support.
And as [email protected] pointed out, it isn’t possible to have a perfect voting system.
Then there is the fact that there is more to this than just voting strategies. There are the other effects to keep in mind. For example approval is far simpler to explain than RCV, especially when you explain how the counting works.
Another example is that approval is purely an additive process for counting, RCV is not. That means auditing results is significantly easier and quicker under approval than RCV. That leads to higher voter confidence in results than RCV audits.
Now, other election systems could also have strategic voting, but its less likely with, for example, RCV, since you can rank candidates.
RCV still can experience the spoiler effect just as FPTP, because it is in effect FPTP taking place over some number of instant rounds.
🇦🇺 heh, amateurs… But seriously this is ridiculous, and straight up anti-democtatic. Single member first past the post is the worst voting system out there.
Inb4 they make mulit-member electorates winner-take-all (all seats to the party who got the plurality of votes).
This is THE fight USA. In my opinion, your ridiculous voting systems is probably why it’s so easy to suppress you.
