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Comment by jeff_tyrrill | Hacker News Reader

I wouldn't choose to use the word "dishonest" but I sympathize - in nearly all news media explanations of "ranked choice voting", the description solely explains instant runoff, and makes no mention whatsoever that there is a choice of algorithm that comes with the choice to use ranked ballots, such as Condorcet. The words "instant runoff" are almost never mentioned.

Choice of language matters, and "ranked choice voting" (to solely mean "instant runoff voting") is a conceptually misleading term meant to load the debate. It dis-educates rather than educates on how voting systems work.

Advocates of other voting systems have to first start out by explaining this misdirection and unpacking the wrong mental model, then get to the merits of one voting system vs. another - because people have been told that "ranked choice voting" works a certain way and only a certain way.

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I’d say that part of the cost of switching voting systems is educating voters how the new system works. Many voters simply don’t care about the finer details and just have a couple desiderata—we want to have our vote count, and we want to be able to vote for our favorite candidate.

Instant runoff is super easy to explain and achieves those desiderata, at least to some extent.

It’s hard to quantify the differences in mathematical terms against soft concerns like “we can educate voters and explain how this system works”. For that reason, I would like to see a non-mathematical argument against IRV, one that accounts for the other half of the voting problem.

I'm always baffled by this claim that simple explanations favor instant runoff.

Here's approval voting: "Upvote the candidates you like. The candidate with the most total votes wins." It's not just mathematically simpler, it's simpler in informal terms, a smaller change from current plurality voting, and it seems less messy in the strategic dynamics insofar as we've tested these different systems for real.

Even score voting is easier than IRV. You can rank if you want to. But you can better specify preference because you're not ranking with the same preferential distance between candidates and people. We use score all over the place (we could call Hacker News score voting with a small range: -1/0/+1).

> Instant runoff is super easy to explain and achieves those desiderata, at least to some extent.

Except IRV doesn't. Not only are cardinal systems easier but IRV doesn't achieve the most desired feature that people are looking for: no spoilers (or alternatively put, allowing votes for 3rd parties without "wasting" your vote). In fact IRV increases spoilage while cardinal systems (which is alternatively proposed) decreases[0]. Meaning we're doing the opposite of what we're trying to accomplish.

As for simpler, I'll refer you to this[1]. The short story is just rate candidates. And if you end up ranking, no worries. It's more difficult to mess up.

[0] https://www.rangevoting.org/SPRates.html

[1] https://medium.com/election-science/star-voting-is-simpler-t...

But there's no point in Condorcet because score voting, STAR voting, and approval voting have superior performance and are simpler.

https://www.rangevoting.org/CondorcetExec.html

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