New polling results released just weeks away from Election Day show a
majority of Americans want to replace the Electoral College with popular
vote system.
One issue I see with the star system is that people tend to have preconceptions about star ratings. E.g. some people never rate 5 stars on principle or will rate something 3 stars without realizing that is a 60% rating. My point is I think you might see some weird skew in the results based on this.
I can see that happening, which is why I think approval is the best of them all.
And with that said, so long as not all the votes are given equal scores, their votes would still matter even if they don’t believe in 5 star perfection.
And IIRC, there is nothing actually stopping a STAR system from using a 1 to 10 point scale instead of 5, which would further help with that issue.
Let’s ne honest though, that’s not the real issue. The real issue is low info voters aren’t going to have a nuanced opinion like. It will be 0 or 10. All of the votes coming in like this will invalidate any consideration you spent some time working out to decide a 7.5 is the perfect representation of how you feel.
Even more big picture. We are wasting our efforts arguing over the details of a voting system when voting reform isn’t even on the table.
The real issue is low info voters aren’t going to have a nuanced opinion like. It will be 0 or 10.
Yeah. For the reason I think each candidate should be given one page to explain their policy. And that page should be printed out and available to all voters.
For mail in voters it should be included with their ballot.
Far too often I’ve voted in local elections and tried to research the candidate just to find no information on any of them. It’s infuriating trying to make a choice when it’s impossible to know anything.
We are wasting our efforts arguing over the details of a voting system when voting reform isn’t even on the table.
This is the only issue worth campaigning on. Fuck everyone for not realizing it. We will never get this system under control if it continues to misrepresent what the majority wants. There is no amount of bargaining and compromise that will ever bring forth the change we need to stop global climate change. Ranked choice - for its simplicity. Star - for its utility. Etc. Etc. Make the debate strictly about how we will reform voting and push everything else to the end of the list.
BTW, I’m not asking politicians to do this. I’m ask you, the people, if you will make your voice heard and enshrine it with a government that truly represents you.
Every candidate should be campaigning on it. Not until the Republicans are brazenly defending the broken system, or alternatively join the move for reformation because they think they can capitalize on it, is the country moving in the right direction.
When the pollsters call you your answer to every question should be, “I don’t care we need vote reform.”
When the media focus groups you,“I don’t care we need vote reform.”
When the NAZIs try to bait you, “I don’t care we need vote reform.”
I know, this isn’t a fully fleshed out strategy but it is a stance that will elevate the discussion.
You’re not going to like the people campaigning on it, though.
Spoilers: It’s the Spoiler Candidates
…because the Dems and GOP benefit from the current system. Any move away from FPTP harms them, so they aren’t going to support it and any other party is a “spoiler candidate” because of how FPTP works.
Any move away from FPTP harms them, so they aren’t going to support it
Sure. But if you don’t vote for the Democrats then you are implicitly supporting fascism and that will mean an end to all forms of democracy (or so I’ve been told).
As far as wanting to maintain the current electoral system, both parties are the same and they are the same in this one particular thing because they both benefit from it and any move away from it upsets the status quo that keeps the money and power flowing to them.
The only move either party wants to make away from the current electoral system is if they could find a way to reduce it to a single party system and that party was theirs.
They aren’t the same in virtually any other way, to the point of being as extremely and overly opposed on as many other things as possible, in part because presenting everything as a dichotomy of extremes reinforces that system.
Hey I appreciate your thoughtful and insightful response. While I am hesitant to agree entirely, especially in an empirical sense, I think much of your statement is probably very accurate and I certainly am not able to confidently state anything to the contrary, on the fly, at this time. I will keep your ideas in mind and I do thank you for some ideas to chomp on.
I kinda want to resist your confident statements regarding the similarities, but honestly I can’t refute what you stated off the top of my head. And upur rebuttal of the “both sides a0re same” schtick is much appreciated, and well stated.
I honestly am surprised by your considerate and thoughtful response. I do a lot of snarkey and thoughtless responses to what I feel are insincere or flimsy ideas presented everywhere, and rarely do I get a response as kind and thorough, solid as yours.
Approval voting still encourages strategic voting and “dishonesty” and does not strongly correlate with actual preference. If there are three candidates, Love, Tolerate, and Hate, 60% could strongly prefer Love, and 30% strongly prefer Hate, but both groups would prefer Tolerate over the other alternative, then Love voters would be smart to not make a second choice even though they would approve of Tolerate.
Australia has optional preferential voting. If there is 10 candidates, you can list them in order you want, but you don’t have to pick them all. You can stop at any point. Pick 3 or 4 in order, or say 7, but you don’t have to rank the nazi at all.
I don’t see the point. In preferential voting you choose your candidates in a ranked order, so if number 5 doesn’t make the cut in the final count, your next vote (number 4) kicks in, and so on. Not exactly - all number 1 votes are tallied, and the losers are eliminated and then the second vote from the loser candidate gets tallied and so on until the winner is chosen. In this way your ranked choice is never exhausted until a winner arises. Your number 3 choice may get voted in. All votes are potentially important. FPTP sounds like a crap shoot.
Because that may be the most accurate description of your actual preference, which is what a vote should be.
If your vote retabulates when someone is eliminated, you still need to be strategic with your rankings. you want to make sure that your preferred candidates are not eliminated, but you also want to make sure that you’re ranking doesn’t cause one of your preferred candidates to be eliminated prematurely. with star voting, vote always counts.
I’m afraid that I still don’t get it, most probably because I am thick.
Someone has to be eliminated. That’s the whole point of elections. OPV means that your choice counts, well your preferences do. It also means that you don’t have to vote for the person you don’t want to, but you can rank your preferences. It is very rare that I would rank a bunch of people the same value. It is generally easy to rank candidates.
In our senate we sometimes have to rank over 100 candidates. If you do that you must number every box and can’t make a mistake. Or, the parties have registered their preferences and you just tick one box for your chosen party and that’s it. So it’s either one box ticked or 100 or so. The optional thing is that you don’t have to pick all 100, but that changes sometimes due to party politics playing with the system. One the whole, our electoral system limits how much political parties can mess about with elections. For instance, no party chooses electoral boundaries. Gerrymandering doesn’t happen here anymore. It used to, but not now.
The goal of approval voting isn’t to pick the candidate the thinnest plurality are the most ecstatic about, but rather to pick the candidate the largest majority consider acceptable. It trends towards moderates by design.
Moderation is not inherently virtuous, and compromise is not always the best path forward. Have you read Project 2025? As an American, that shit is terrifying, and the idea that we should find a middle ground with Christian nationalists is abhorrent. Trending toward moderation encourages extremism and obstructionism, because you get more leverage on the center from the edges. Look at what is happening in France right now, where they use simple ballots but will have runoff elections until majority candidates are elected. Moderation, cooperation, and compromise on the left led to failure.
rending toward moderation encourages extremism and obstructionism, because you get more leverage on the center from the edges.
No, you don’t. What you’re thinking of is a consequence of runoff elections (including instant runoff) that doesn’t apply to preference voting. Preference voting functionally works to blunt the extremes down, unless you have a sufficiently large base radicalized to be you or nothing but then if a majority is dead set on you or nothing that base was going to win regardless of the electoral system.
Have you read Project 2025? As an American, that shit is terrifying, and the idea that we should find a middle ground with Christian nationalists is abhorrent.
Except an approval vote wouldn’t be a vote to find a middle ground on every issue in Project 2025. The idea that Trump or any other Heritage Foundation stooge is a moderate candidate that’s likely to get enough votes to win in an approval vote system where they wouldn’t also win under FPTP or ranked choice or STAR is frankly absurd.
Approval voting is where you mark any number of candidates that you want, and the person with the most marks is the elected person.
The most important issues with a fair voting system are eliminated by this method. Strategic voting will always happen under our performative democracy, which means that all parties are pathways for getting close to the actual goal. It’s only a problem if people are overly worried about genuinely “voting your truth”.
Approval voting counts all “approve” votes equally, which doesn’t eliminate the spoiler effect or create a more fair system than FPtP. Star voting eliminates the benefits of strategic voting and creates the most fair and accurate system possible. Genuinely voting your truth is the only measure of a fair election.
how does approval voting allow for spoilers? The experts that study election systems consider it eliminated under approval voting. It’s literally impossible to be a spoiler, because there’s nothing to spoil. There could be 4 real candidates and 16 no-name candidates, and nothing would prevent people from voting for 18 candidates. All of the eliminations you’re concerned about happen all at once, because it’s about having the most total votes. Votes for “spoilers” does literally nothing to affect the chances of other candidates.
As for “genuine voting”, how does one determine whether a vote was strategic vs genuine? Why does everyone have to conform to a ranked system that is highly susceptible to runoff upsets? I don’t care if people vote strategically, because if the options are check boxes or not, strategy is very limited. STAR is based on instant runoffs with a bit of range voting mixed in. Both are highly susceptible to strategy, as well as several undesirable traits that don’t exist with approval. Please explain to me how it prevents strategic voting.
how does approval voting allow for spoilers? The experts that study election systems consider it eliminated under approval voting. It’s literally impossible to be a spoiler, because there’s nothing to spoil.
I suspect he’s thinking of it’s tendency to trend towards moderates. Like say 60% strongly prefer A, 30% strongly prefer C, but many supporters for either would also be OK with B. Under a lot of ranked choice and similar systems, B has no chance and A definitely wins but under approval if enough A and C voters also tick the box for B then B will win, even if B was only the top choice for a tiny minority because they were “good enough” for enough people.
I’ll take better over perfect especially since better is on the ballot as an option this year for me, but who knows might try to get approval voting on the ballot for next time
My pet peeve is that RCV has a lot of the same issues as FPtP voting, and some local and state governments that have started using RCV are rolling back their progress.
Better might not be good enough, and if it’s not good enough, it lends credence to the argument that progress is bad and the old corruption is better than the new corruption.
The biggest problem opponents are using to block or roll back RCV is transparency and time. Hand counts take longer and may get vastly different results if there are discrepancies. But those concerns are mostly smokescreen from groups that benefit from the status quo. Any hand recount takes time, and if you fully tabulate the entire vote, it’s easy to locate potential problems with the computer count.
My concerns are transparency and honesty, and both stem from the fact that only your first remaining choice counts in each round, and one candidate is eliminated in each round. Because only your first preference counts, the most important selection is your first choice. Everyone’s second choice gets no votes in the first round and will be eliminated, even if they get 100% of the second choice selections.
Several candidates from the same ideological neighborhood split and dilute the vote from those voters for the first round. If everyone doesn’t rally around one specific candidate, all of those candidates could be eliminated in instant runoffs as the lowest vote getter. You have to vote strategically to make sure that the spoiler candidate on your side is eliminated before the spoiler candidate on their side.
Like, let’s say we have five fictional candidates, and arbitrarily assign them Green, Blue, Purple, Red, and Nazi. Blue and Red are the front runners, Green is the spoiler for Blue and Nazi is the spoiler for Red. Purple is a third centrist party
Blue voters assume Green voters will pick Blue or Purple as their second choice, and Red voters assume Nazi voters will pick Red or Purple as their second choice. It’s in both Blue and Red’s interest to see Nazi and Green beat Purple in the first round and then have their opponent’s spoiler beat their spoiler in the second round. This creates a scenario where strong Blue supporters are strategically voting for Nazi as their first choice, even though that would be there last preference.
So let’s say the preferences roughly break down into 6 categories
30 BPG
30 RPN
15 GPB
15 NPR
5 PGB
5 PNR
With a FPTP election, Blue and Red would convince everyone that Green, Nazi, and Purple have no chance of winning, and therefore voters should pick a frontrunner. And they’d be right, because FPTP sucks balls. But the winner would be whichever frontrunner can convince enough voters to pick their third choice.
With RCV, it is better but still not great. This scenario would be deadlocked at the second round, so Red attempts to convince a few Nazis that their candide cannot win and switch their vote from NPR to RNP. Blue tries a different strategy, and takes some of their own voters to switch from BPG to NBP. Both frontrunner candidates are still vying to convince some of the Purple supporters to change their minds. Anyone that picks some combination of GNP risks having their ballot expire, so they have to pick R or B even if they hate both equally.
So there’s still almost no chance that a third party will win, only now it’s more complicated. Plus if there’s a hand recount, a few votes one way or the other can dramatically change the final tally by changing who comes in last. A better name for RCV is Last Past the Post. It’s better, but it’s still not representing the true will of the voters, and it’s not encouraging campaigns to win hearts and minds. It promotes gamesmanship and back-room deals over voter outreach and turnout.
Approval voting is pretty good, someone else mentioned that one. The only problem I have with that is that it encourages negative campaigning. Every campaign would be attacking Purple, and promoting party purity and loyalty as an ideology. Compromise becomes the enemy, because you have to control the ball.
Star Voting is fair. Every vote counts, and every vote is an accurate representation of the voter’s preference. There’s only one instant runoff, so a recount might change who is included, but there’s no reason to be strategic with your votes. Negative campaigning is discouraged, and candidates are rewarded for finding common ground because ratings are not mutually exclusive. And the best advantage, there’s no way for the frontrunners to use demagogeury or political maneuvering to box out new candidates with their clout.
My biggest concern with RCV is that its flaws are dampening enthusiasm for change. People recognize that the current system sucks balls, but if RCV ends up disappointing those who were on the fence about change, they aren’t going to look for new solutions. They are going to retreat to the devil they know.
Right…I’ll preface all this by saying I live in an RCV country which used to have a 2 party system way back when. The question was genuine because I’m very happy with our voting system and if there were flaws I’m interested to explore better options.
The hypothetical you’re discussing there never happens. I’ve been voting for 30 years and have never come across (or myself done) the kind of shenanigans you mention. There’s just no need for it.
You go in, rank your options in order and the fairest option for you (with some small caveats) comes out on top. Our recent European elections in my district are a good example. There were 4 seats up for grabs and 8 parties and a bunch of independents up. The larger parties will frequently field 2 candidates. In that election, the 5th place candidate overtook 4th on eliminations from the 6th place preferences to take the last seat.
In the case of the nazi’s, they get eliminated first round here then 90+% of their votes will pass to some other right wing party with 10% not counting because they are the end of the line for that voter.
One example I’ll give is for a centre left voter. They would hypothetically vote some combination of labour, greens and centre left independents. Once those options had run out on the ballot, you’re looking at whether they’re more likely to go far left or centre right. Where I live, a large number of the votes will actually fall centre right as they’re closer idealogically than far left.
For what it’s worth, here’s how the breakdown of voting was in my district:
The counting thing actually adds a bit of spice and voter excitement because you’re keen to see how votes transfer in each round. Certainly I was checking in regularly and was keen to see if the pundits were right on the final elimination I mentioned above (they were).
Recounts are rarely necessary but do happen in the event that it’s looking close for an actual seat and not who’s going to be eliminated next.
I have heard of star voting and must read more on it, but I am very happy with RCV for now and I’m not sure Star would represent any meaningful change in a country that moved from 2 party to many party with a strong independent voice in our parliament.
Edit: One thing I like about RCV is voting for a candidate even though I feel they’re likely to get eliminated simply because they match my views closely, knowing that my further down preferences will count and if they are elected well all the better. That is just not really an option with FPTP. It’s a horrible system.
We should put all options for voting on the ballot. Then FPtP will win because the reform vote will be split and the status quo people will vote as a bloc.
Cool. Can we also get moving on Ranked Choice Voting?
I’d take RCV over nothing, but STAR and approval are significantly better like the other user said.
Some reasons for approval
A longer form explanation of some of the other stuff:
https://dividedwefall.org/star-and-approval-voting/
Approval voting sounds good.
One issue I see with the star system is that people tend to have preconceptions about star ratings. E.g. some people never rate 5 stars on principle or will rate something 3 stars without realizing that is a 60% rating. My point is I think you might see some weird skew in the results based on this.
I can see that happening, which is why I think approval is the best of them all.
And with that said, so long as not all the votes are given equal scores, their votes would still matter even if they don’t believe in 5 star perfection.
And IIRC, there is nothing actually stopping a STAR system from using a 1 to 10 point scale instead of 5, which would further help with that issue.
Let’s ne honest though, that’s not the real issue. The real issue is low info voters aren’t going to have a nuanced opinion like. It will be 0 or 10. All of the votes coming in like this will invalidate any consideration you spent some time working out to decide a 7.5 is the perfect representation of how you feel.
Even more big picture. We are wasting our efforts arguing over the details of a voting system when voting reform isn’t even on the table.
Yeah. For the reason I think each candidate should be given one page to explain their policy. And that page should be printed out and available to all voters.
For mail in voters it should be included with their ballot.
Far too often I’ve voted in local elections and tried to research the candidate just to find no information on any of them. It’s infuriating trying to make a choice when it’s impossible to know anything.
Agreed. But we can dream.
I love how this video explains the differences between the voting methods. It’s what made me prefer STAR over RCV.
https://youtu.be/Nu4eTUafuSc
I am a little disappointed that they didn’t include approval as one of the examples.
But still a fantastic video.
This is the only issue worth campaigning on. Fuck everyone for not realizing it. We will never get this system under control if it continues to misrepresent what the majority wants. There is no amount of bargaining and compromise that will ever bring forth the change we need to stop global climate change. Ranked choice - for its simplicity. Star - for its utility. Etc. Etc. Make the debate strictly about how we will reform voting and push everything else to the end of the list.
BTW, I’m not asking politicians to do this. I’m ask you, the people, if you will make your voice heard and enshrine it with a government that truly represents you.
You’re not going to like the people campaigning on it, though.
Spoilers: It’s the Spoiler Candidates
Every candidate should be campaigning on it. Not until the Republicans are brazenly defending the broken system, or alternatively join the move for reformation because they think they can capitalize on it, is the country moving in the right direction.
When the pollsters call you your answer to every question should be, “I don’t care we need vote reform.”
When the media focus groups you,“I don’t care we need vote reform.”
When the NAZIs try to bait you, “I don’t care we need vote reform.”
I know, this isn’t a fully fleshed out strategy but it is a stance that will elevate the discussion.
…because the Dems and GOP benefit from the current system. Any move away from FPTP harms them, so they aren’t going to support it and any other party is a “spoiler candidate” because of how FPTP works.
Sure. But if you don’t vote for the Democrats then you are implicitly supporting fascism and that will mean an end to all forms of democracy (or so I’ve been told).
I respectfully disagree. Any attempt to frame both parties as the same is a big fat down vote from me. You sound insightful and intelligent though.
As far as wanting to maintain the current electoral system, both parties are the same and they are the same in this one particular thing because they both benefit from it and any move away from it upsets the status quo that keeps the money and power flowing to them.
The only move either party wants to make away from the current electoral system is if they could find a way to reduce it to a single party system and that party was theirs.
They aren’t the same in virtually any other way, to the point of being as extremely and overly opposed on as many other things as possible, in part because presenting everything as a dichotomy of extremes reinforces that system.
Hey I appreciate your thoughtful and insightful response. While I am hesitant to agree entirely, especially in an empirical sense, I think much of your statement is probably very accurate and I certainly am not able to confidently state anything to the contrary, on the fly, at this time. I will keep your ideas in mind and I do thank you for some ideas to chomp on.
I kinda want to resist your confident statements regarding the similarities, but honestly I can’t refute what you stated off the top of my head. And upur rebuttal of the “both sides a0re same” schtick is much appreciated, and well stated.
I honestly am surprised by your considerate and thoughtful response. I do a lot of snarkey and thoughtless responses to what I feel are insincere or flimsy ideas presented everywhere, and rarely do I get a response as kind and thorough, solid as yours.
Keep up the food work 8)
Tough luck, if you want to ask the people and want to have a say in national discourse, you have to buy a media outlet like billionaires do.
Defeatism
Keep carrying water for them.
Star Voting is better in every way.
Approval voting is the only method that meets all the requirements for a fair election without elevating an unpopular candidate.
Approval voting still encourages strategic voting and “dishonesty” and does not strongly correlate with actual preference. If there are three candidates, Love, Tolerate, and Hate, 60% could strongly prefer Love, and 30% strongly prefer Hate, but both groups would prefer Tolerate over the other alternative, then Love voters would be smart to not make a second choice even though they would approve of Tolerate.
Australia has optional preferential voting. If there is 10 candidates, you can list them in order you want, but you don’t have to pick them all. You can stop at any point. Pick 3 or 4 in order, or say 7, but you don’t have to rank the nazi at all.
That’s pretty much star voting, except you can give candidates the same ranking
Ok. But why rank them the same?
I don’t see the point. In preferential voting you choose your candidates in a ranked order, so if number 5 doesn’t make the cut in the final count, your next vote (number 4) kicks in, and so on. Not exactly - all number 1 votes are tallied, and the losers are eliminated and then the second vote from the loser candidate gets tallied and so on until the winner is chosen. In this way your ranked choice is never exhausted until a winner arises. Your number 3 choice may get voted in. All votes are potentially important. FPTP sounds like a crap shoot.
Because that may be the most accurate description of your actual preference, which is what a vote should be.
If your vote retabulates when someone is eliminated, you still need to be strategic with your rankings. you want to make sure that your preferred candidates are not eliminated, but you also want to make sure that you’re ranking doesn’t cause one of your preferred candidates to be eliminated prematurely. with star voting, vote always counts.
I’m afraid that I still don’t get it, most probably because I am thick.
Someone has to be eliminated. That’s the whole point of elections. OPV means that your choice counts, well your preferences do. It also means that you don’t have to vote for the person you don’t want to, but you can rank your preferences. It is very rare that I would rank a bunch of people the same value. It is generally easy to rank candidates.
In our senate we sometimes have to rank over 100 candidates. If you do that you must number every box and can’t make a mistake. Or, the parties have registered their preferences and you just tick one box for your chosen party and that’s it. So it’s either one box ticked or 100 or so. The optional thing is that you don’t have to pick all 100, but that changes sometimes due to party politics playing with the system. One the whole, our electoral system limits how much political parties can mess about with elections. For instance, no party chooses electoral boundaries. Gerrymandering doesn’t happen here anymore. It used to, but not now.
I shall have to investigate the STAR system.
There’s no runoff If I remember, all your votes are tallied instantly, so you rank them the same if you feel the same towards them
Ok
Ireland also has this. It’s great. I believe that’s what’s being referred to as “ranked choice voting” in this thread.
I would generally go quite far down the ballot though I do believe some stop at 1 or 2.
That’s certainly better than what we have.
The goal of approval voting isn’t to pick the candidate the thinnest plurality are the most ecstatic about, but rather to pick the candidate the largest majority consider acceptable. It trends towards moderates by design.
Moderation is not inherently virtuous, and compromise is not always the best path forward. Have you read Project 2025? As an American, that shit is terrifying, and the idea that we should find a middle ground with Christian nationalists is abhorrent. Trending toward moderation encourages extremism and obstructionism, because you get more leverage on the center from the edges. Look at what is happening in France right now, where they use simple ballots but will have runoff elections until majority candidates are elected. Moderation, cooperation, and compromise on the left led to failure.
No, you don’t. What you’re thinking of is a consequence of runoff elections (including instant runoff) that doesn’t apply to preference voting. Preference voting functionally works to blunt the extremes down, unless you have a sufficiently large base radicalized to be you or nothing but then if a majority is dead set on you or nothing that base was going to win regardless of the electoral system.
Except an approval vote wouldn’t be a vote to find a middle ground on every issue in Project 2025. The idea that Trump or any other Heritage Foundation stooge is a moderate candidate that’s likely to get enough votes to win in an approval vote system where they wouldn’t also win under FPTP or ranked choice or STAR is frankly absurd.
Approval voting is where you mark any number of candidates that you want, and the person with the most marks is the elected person.
The most important issues with a fair voting system are eliminated by this method. Strategic voting will always happen under our performative democracy, which means that all parties are pathways for getting close to the actual goal. It’s only a problem if people are overly worried about genuinely “voting your truth”.
Approval voting counts all “approve” votes equally, which doesn’t eliminate the spoiler effect or create a more fair system than FPtP. Star voting eliminates the benefits of strategic voting and creates the most fair and accurate system possible. Genuinely voting your truth is the only measure of a fair election.
how does approval voting allow for spoilers? The experts that study election systems consider it eliminated under approval voting. It’s literally impossible to be a spoiler, because there’s nothing to spoil. There could be 4 real candidates and 16 no-name candidates, and nothing would prevent people from voting for 18 candidates. All of the eliminations you’re concerned about happen all at once, because it’s about having the most total votes. Votes for “spoilers” does literally nothing to affect the chances of other candidates.
As for “genuine voting”, how does one determine whether a vote was strategic vs genuine? Why does everyone have to conform to a ranked system that is highly susceptible to runoff upsets? I don’t care if people vote strategically, because if the options are check boxes or not, strategy is very limited. STAR is based on instant runoffs with a bit of range voting mixed in. Both are highly susceptible to strategy, as well as several undesirable traits that don’t exist with approval. Please explain to me how it prevents strategic voting.
I suspect he’s thinking of it’s tendency to trend towards moderates. Like say 60% strongly prefer A, 30% strongly prefer C, but many supporters for either would also be OK with B. Under a lot of ranked choice and similar systems, B has no chance and A definitely wins but under approval if enough A and C voters also tick the box for B then B will win, even if B was only the top choice for a tiny minority because they were “good enough” for enough people.
I’ll take better over perfect especially since better is on the ballot as an option this year for me, but who knows might try to get approval voting on the ballot for next time
My pet peeve is that RCV has a lot of the same issues as FPtP voting, and some local and state governments that have started using RCV are rolling back their progress.
Better might not be good enough, and if it’s not good enough, it lends credence to the argument that progress is bad and the old corruption is better than the new corruption.
I’m curious to hear what those issues are?
I feel well represented under RCV.
The biggest problem opponents are using to block or roll back RCV is transparency and time. Hand counts take longer and may get vastly different results if there are discrepancies. But those concerns are mostly smokescreen from groups that benefit from the status quo. Any hand recount takes time, and if you fully tabulate the entire vote, it’s easy to locate potential problems with the computer count.
My concerns are transparency and honesty, and both stem from the fact that only your first remaining choice counts in each round, and one candidate is eliminated in each round. Because only your first preference counts, the most important selection is your first choice. Everyone’s second choice gets no votes in the first round and will be eliminated, even if they get 100% of the second choice selections.
Several candidates from the same ideological neighborhood split and dilute the vote from those voters for the first round. If everyone doesn’t rally around one specific candidate, all of those candidates could be eliminated in instant runoffs as the lowest vote getter. You have to vote strategically to make sure that the spoiler candidate on your side is eliminated before the spoiler candidate on their side.
Like, let’s say we have five fictional candidates, and arbitrarily assign them Green, Blue, Purple, Red, and Nazi. Blue and Red are the front runners, Green is the spoiler for Blue and Nazi is the spoiler for Red. Purple is a third centrist party
Blue voters assume Green voters will pick Blue or Purple as their second choice, and Red voters assume Nazi voters will pick Red or Purple as their second choice. It’s in both Blue and Red’s interest to see Nazi and Green beat Purple in the first round and then have their opponent’s spoiler beat their spoiler in the second round. This creates a scenario where strong Blue supporters are strategically voting for Nazi as their first choice, even though that would be there last preference.
So let’s say the preferences roughly break down into 6 categories
30 BPG 30 RPN 15 GPB 15 NPR 5 PGB 5 PNR
With a FPTP election, Blue and Red would convince everyone that Green, Nazi, and Purple have no chance of winning, and therefore voters should pick a frontrunner. And they’d be right, because FPTP sucks balls. But the winner would be whichever frontrunner can convince enough voters to pick their third choice.
With RCV, it is better but still not great. This scenario would be deadlocked at the second round, so Red attempts to convince a few Nazis that their candide cannot win and switch their vote from NPR to RNP. Blue tries a different strategy, and takes some of their own voters to switch from BPG to NBP. Both frontrunner candidates are still vying to convince some of the Purple supporters to change their minds. Anyone that picks some combination of GNP risks having their ballot expire, so they have to pick R or B even if they hate both equally.
So there’s still almost no chance that a third party will win, only now it’s more complicated. Plus if there’s a hand recount, a few votes one way or the other can dramatically change the final tally by changing who comes in last. A better name for RCV is Last Past the Post. It’s better, but it’s still not representing the true will of the voters, and it’s not encouraging campaigns to win hearts and minds. It promotes gamesmanship and back-room deals over voter outreach and turnout.
Approval voting is pretty good, someone else mentioned that one. The only problem I have with that is that it encourages negative campaigning. Every campaign would be attacking Purple, and promoting party purity and loyalty as an ideology. Compromise becomes the enemy, because you have to control the ball.
Star Voting is fair. Every vote counts, and every vote is an accurate representation of the voter’s preference. There’s only one instant runoff, so a recount might change who is included, but there’s no reason to be strategic with your votes. Negative campaigning is discouraged, and candidates are rewarded for finding common ground because ratings are not mutually exclusive. And the best advantage, there’s no way for the frontrunners to use demagogeury or political maneuvering to box out new candidates with their clout.
My biggest concern with RCV is that its flaws are dampening enthusiasm for change. People recognize that the current system sucks balls, but if RCV ends up disappointing those who were on the fence about change, they aren’t going to look for new solutions. They are going to retreat to the devil they know.
Right…I’ll preface all this by saying I live in an RCV country which used to have a 2 party system way back when. The question was genuine because I’m very happy with our voting system and if there were flaws I’m interested to explore better options.
The hypothetical you’re discussing there never happens. I’ve been voting for 30 years and have never come across (or myself done) the kind of shenanigans you mention. There’s just no need for it.
You go in, rank your options in order and the fairest option for you (with some small caveats) comes out on top. Our recent European elections in my district are a good example. There were 4 seats up for grabs and 8 parties and a bunch of independents up. The larger parties will frequently field 2 candidates. In that election, the 5th place candidate overtook 4th on eliminations from the 6th place preferences to take the last seat.
In the case of the nazi’s, they get eliminated first round here then 90+% of their votes will pass to some other right wing party with 10% not counting because they are the end of the line for that voter.
One example I’ll give is for a centre left voter. They would hypothetically vote some combination of labour, greens and centre left independents. Once those options had run out on the ballot, you’re looking at whether they’re more likely to go far left or centre right. Where I live, a large number of the votes will actually fall centre right as they’re closer idealogically than far left.
For what it’s worth, here’s how the breakdown of voting was in my district:
https://www.rte.ie/news/elections-2024/results/#/local/fingal-county-county
The counting thing actually adds a bit of spice and voter excitement because you’re keen to see how votes transfer in each round. Certainly I was checking in regularly and was keen to see if the pundits were right on the final elimination I mentioned above (they were).
Recounts are rarely necessary but do happen in the event that it’s looking close for an actual seat and not who’s going to be eliminated next.
I have heard of star voting and must read more on it, but I am very happy with RCV for now and I’m not sure Star would represent any meaningful change in a country that moved from 2 party to many party with a strong independent voice in our parliament.
Edit: One thing I like about RCV is voting for a candidate even though I feel they’re likely to get eliminated simply because they match my views closely, knowing that my further down preferences will count and if they are elected well all the better. That is just not really an option with FPTP. It’s a horrible system.
We should put all options for voting on the ballot. Then FPtP will win because the reform vote will be split and the status quo people will vote as a bloc.
First I’m hearing of this. I’ll look into it.