Comment by bluecaribou | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bluecaribou | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Pitting "ranked choice" versus "approval" (versus "range") voting is not really the way to think about it. Consider a "relaxed" version of ranked choice where voters are allowed to give multiple candidates the same rank. (Sometimes voters really do have no preference between two candidates.)

Approval voting then is just a "restricted" subset of "relaxed ranked choice". That is, any preference expressed in an approval voting ballot can also be expressed in a relaxed ranked choice ballot. Similarly, relaxed ranked choice voting can be considered a restricted subset of range voting. And our traditional "single choice" voting can be considered a restricted subset of all of them.

And really you should separate the mechanism for expressing voter preference from the mechanism for picking a winner. Those are separate things that, in theory, can be mixed-and-matched to produce various voting systems.

So, clearly range voting is in some sense the best (or tied for the best) ballot, in the sense that it allows the voter to express a range of preferences that is a superset of the other systems.

But there is also the issue of ballot simplicity. Some people might prefer the simpler ballots of the approval system, or even the traditional single choice system. But since those ballots have corresponding "range voting" ballots, you can deploy a "range voting" election while allowing voters to use the kind of ballot they are comfortable with.

Indeed you can imagine the idea of a "progressive ballot" in which the voter starts of with a simple "single choice" ballot, and can optionally refine their preferences with an approval ballot, then a ranked choice ballot, then, ultimately a "range" ballot.

I've actually implemented such a thing [1].

[1] http://macd.tk/pollplace - Note, this is running on an underpowered test server not intended for public use, so be gentle.

> And really you should separate the mechanism for expressing voter preference from the mechanism for picking a winner.

Thank you for highlighting that. Too often the ballot and the aggregation method are conflated.

On https://modernballots.com/elections/zombies/vote/ I implemented 5-star ratings as the default. Everyone's familiar with this kind of rating and it allows indifference between two options.

> Pitting "ranked choice" versus "approval" (versus "range") voting is not really the way to think about it. Consider a "relaxed" version of ranked choice where voters are allowed to give multiple candidates the same rank. (Sometimes voters really do have no preference between two candidates.)

I think Ranked versus Approval/Score is a proper comparison.

Ranked voting requires that you order candidates. That additional complexity is undesirable to proponents of Approval or Score Voting, such as myself.

You've suggested removing the requirement to order candidates and called it "Relaxed Ranked Voting." Removing the ordering requirement makes "Relaxed Ranked Voting" approximately equivalent to Score Voting (sometimes known as "Range Voting") [1]. The difference is that the numbers are reversed. In Score Voting with a range of 0 to 100, the highest score—that is, 100—is given the the candidate(s) you like the most. In your "Relaxed Ranked Voting," I assume the best score would be a 1. This seems needlessly confusing to the voter. Just use a scoring system that everyone is familiar with from public high school, where 100 is the best.

Relaxed Ranked Voting seems additionally complicated by each elected office on a ballot having its own bounds (a three-candidate race would presumably permit scores of 1 to 3; a five candidate race would be 1 to 5; etc.) Meanwhile, Score Voting, once adopted, would use a consistent score range for all elected offices. For example, 100 is always best.

Am I missing something else about Relaxed Ranked Voting that makes you prefer it versus Score Voting?

I find it frustrating that IRV has more momentum than Approval and Score. I am worried that we will squander an opportunity to adopt a truly superior system such as Approval or Score voting [2] if we end up with IRV. I want to get rid of Plurality as much as anyone, but replacing it with IRV seems a half-success that will temporarily exhaust regular voters' tolerance of change.

As you point out, a reason so many of us on the Approval and Score Voting hype-train talk about Approval more than Score is that it's largely compatible with existing ballots. You just mark as many as you want. Super simple. In fact, I argue that Approval voting is simpler than plurality voting because it removes the "select only one" constraint.

[1] https://electology.org/score-voting

[2] https://electology.org/approval-voting-versus-irv

The point is that "approval" voting and "score" (aka "range", aka "rating") voting are not fundamentally different systems. Approval voting is just score voting where the voter is restricted to giving each candidate a score of either 0 or 1.

Similarly, "relaxed rank" voting is also just a restricted version of score voting. You might argue that a paper version of the "relaxed rank" voting ballot wouldn't be as clear or intuitive to the average voter as an approval or score ballot would be. And I wouldn't necessarily dispute that.

What I'm saying is that instead of forcing every voter to learn and embrace a new ballot, you can let them vote as they always have and, optionally, allow them to "refine" or "supplement" their ballot by additionally filling out an approval ballot along with their traditional one. (If the approval ballot contradicts the original one it is discarded/ignored.) If the voter has chosen to fill out an approval ballot, they can subsequently further refine their ballot by filling out a score ballot.

I'm just pointing this out because it may be an option that is more acceptable to more people. In fact, you could add these optional "refining" ballots to existing elections with the understanding that they will have no effect on the election, but allow people to see how the election would have turned out had the "refining" ballots been counted. (Like, maybe John Kasich would have been president or something.)

If you go to the link I posted, you can login anonymously and try out these "progressive ballots" for yourself. If you register (no personal info required or anything), you can create your own polls if you want to experiment further. (Note that this is not a real site or anything. Don't rely on it, and don't use it for anything serious. Not yet anyway.)

Just to clarify, when I say "relaxed rank voting is just a restricted version of score voting", I'm talking about the ballots, not the method for evaluating the winner. As I said, those two things should be separated. I agree that "instant runoff" is a rather sub-optimal choice as an evaluation method. But once "ranked choice" ballots are established in Maine (or wherever), they could later upgrade the evaluation method to, for example, use the Schulze method[1] instead, without changing the ballots.

The point is, whatever type of ballots you're using - traditional single choice, approval, ranked, relaxed ranked, or score/range - the ballots should all be converted to score/range ballots and evaluated by an optimal score/range evaluation method (probably Schulze or something like it).

This also means that the ballots don't even have to be all the same type. Each voter could choose the type of ballot they feel most comfortable with, knowing that whichever type of ballot they choose, their vote will count as much as any other voter.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulze_method

Reply on news.ycombinator.com