Not only that, it doesn't allow for distributed counts [2], it can wreck the secret ballot [3], and it is not monotonic [4]. Arrow gives us an impossibility result for elections but monotonicity is the worst criterion to give up, especially when the system has so many other flaws.
[0] https://rangevoting.org/TarrIrv.html
[1] see examples cited in https://rangevoting.org/NoIrv.html
[2] sure, you can transmit the contents of all of the ballots, but then it's still a centralized count...
[3] n! grows much much larger than population, so you can encode ballot ID
People come to the question of voting assuming it's easy to understand...We've never had to deal with complexity around the concept so we expect it to be simple.
Introducing an algorithm plays into the fears of people who believe in a deep state which is secretly trying to manipulate people.
We deeply need a better voting system, but one of the core requirements must be that one can explain it to a middle schooler in 30 seconds.
The multiple choice question was: which of these answers lists the planets in order from smallest to largest diameter?
This was for a high school diploma equivalent! I was stumped for a while wondering if I was understanding the question correctly.
Anyway, I passed the test, but the fact this question was on there gave me serious doubts as to the general skill of the populace. I'm a fan of RCV over the current system, but I know it's going to trip a lot of people up.
With any RCV method, you win because math says so. In a normal election you count.
It's basically 100% guaranteed that someone who won most first choices but lost the election will try to delegitimize the election with stupid populism.
The first and most important job of an election is to ensure peaceful transfer of power.
My favorite alternate system is approval voting. Vote any number of candidates rather than just one. Most votes wins. 5 seconds and no nerd required.
And yet it’s happening in NYC:
_“The first Ranked Choice Voting election was on February 2nd, 2021 in a special election for NYC Council District 24 (Queens).”_
If you can make it in NYC, you can make it anywhere.
https://www.nyc.gov/site/civicengagement/voting/ranked-choic...
Some examples:
- Congressional elections are expensive; incumbents have deeper-rooted donor networks to tap.
- Civic groups that are already working with the incumbent want to continue the relationship.
- General voter apathy around primary elections; even regular voters often skip primaries so finding people who will actually vote gets harder.
- Name recognition; if someone shows up to the polls to vote for another ballot item but hasn't followed the congressional race, they'll probably put a box next to the incumbent unless they have a particular reason not to.
I don't necessarily think it's a bad thing -- high turnover of elected officials is disruptive to the system -- but there are clearly cases in which it overcorrects.
This becomes even worse when combined with "safe" districts where whoever wins the primary for the district's ruling party is nearly guaranteed to win the general election as well. It makes one wonder how democratic we should consider such an election to be.
All this is to say that it's important to not just look at whether an institution is democratic in form, but whether it is also democratic in outcomes. The Law of Unintended Consequences will be obeyed.
[https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/UnintendedConsequences.h...]
Then again, the whole point of democracy is that the voters will get what they want and get it good and hard.
Do the 'Mom Test' on any candidate and you will see why 9 out of 10 times a challenger to an incumbent fails [0]. The only challengers who succeed beat the 'good enough test' while simultaneously fending off the current administration's inertia (aptly put by paulgb)
the link seems to be an entire marketing campaign selling a book and a brand, with no "test" clearly specified - can you summarize it, please?
It’s running through questions like so: When you have an issue with county government, how do you handle it?
Their answer will tell you many things. Is it actually a concern the county can address? If it is not an issue the county can address, why do they think it is? If it’s a strong held belief, what experiences solidified it (buying a lot and being told one thing by a realtor, for example) - etc. you then use all of that to create a product (a campaign messaging) that aligns with the candidate and public’s opinion / current default mode.
The "Mom Test" is a term from a book by Rob Fitzpatrick titled "The Mom Test: How to talk to customers & learn if your business is a good idea when everyone is lying to you". It is about customer development and strategies for entrepreneurs to properly validate their business ideas.
The title refers to the notion that even your mom, who generally loves you unconditionally, would lie to you to spare your feelings if your business idea wasn’t good. So, the "Mom Test" suggests a method of asking the right questions to get honest and useful feedback from people, including those who might be predisposed to be nice to you.
The key principles of the Mom Test are:
Talk about their life instead of your idea: Ask about specific behaviors and thoughts in their past and present, not about hypothetical futures. Avoid asking whether they think your business idea is good. Instead, focus on their problems, pains, and needs related to the area your business is focused on.
Ask for specifics in the past instead of generics or opinions about the future: People's predictions about their future behaviors are typically inaccurate. By asking about their past actions, you can gather more reliable information.
Talk less and listen more: This is about them, not about you or your idea. The goal is to gather insights, so avoid leading questions and let them do the talking.
1) You opponents campaign manager will lie about their candidate without qualms. 2) Donors will give money to a scoundrel, as long as they think the scoundrel will win. 3) Voters are actually good at picking up bullshit - in aggregate. 4) Rich white liberal female voters will not vote for a man. 5) Plenty of Black, Asian, and Immigrant voters are conservative, but many reflexively vote liberal. 6) Do it, even if you lose by a small amount like I did, you'll learn a lot and have a lot of fun
I'm conservative and found that I have so much in common with so many people that I'm sort of pissed that our culture has done it's best to keep us apart.
Has many advantages over RCV / IRV (Ranked Choice Voting / Instant Runoff Voting). For one - no need to change ballots; educating the public is a single sentence rather than a more-complicated explanation.
Imagine a case where I really really want one guy, and between the remaining two I have a strong preference for one over the other. RCV lets me express that.
Approval would have been stuck. Should I mention the 2nd guy? I do want them if it came to having to choose but I’d hate to place them on even footing with my top top pick.
https://medium.com/election-science/expressiveness-6ef8c034b...
tl;dr - for any two candidates, X and Y, the voters who approve only one of them express a "ranked preference" between them. and because those voters are, on average, a good statistical sample of the X-vs-Y preference of the entire electorate, approval voting turns out to measure voter preferences very accurately.
whereas instant runoff voting can actually have much bigger problems in preference detection because it only looks at one layer of preferences at a time. for example:
35% left center 33% right center 32% center
in this example, center is preferred to both the left and the right by a LANDSLIDE 2/3rds majority, yet is the first candidate eliminated. this happens because of "vote splitting" (spoiler effect) between the two more partisan candidates. so it might _feel_ like you expressed your preferences better. but you didn't really.
and what about STRATEGIC VOTING?
if right wins, then the left supporters will wish they had strategically voted for center to prevent that. and if left wins, then right supporters will wish they had strategically voted for center to prevent that.
approval voting satisfies the "favorite betrayal criterion", which means it cannot possibly hurt you to support your sincere favorite candidate.
for these and many other reasons, approval voting is vastly superior to ranking. https://electionscience.org/library/approval-voting-versus-i...
They all have different strengths and weaknesses. We should be trying to move to more optimal systems.
Meanwhile approval voting is exhaustively explained by "vote for as many candidates as you like. Candidate with the most votes wins."
A "more optimal" voting system doesn't exist in a vacuum, public understanding and trust make a voting system more optimal. Just not more mathematically optimal.
approval voting is just score voting on a 0-1 binary scale. star voting is score voting on a 0-5 scale, followed by an "instant runoff" between the top two highest rated candidates.
> public understanding and trust make a voting system more optimal.
star voting: score the candidates from 0 - 5 and the winner is the majority favorite between the two highest rated overall.
there's no risk with public understanding here. i've worked on this subject since 2006, and conducted exit polls with score voting ballots within months of getting into this issue. people understand it just fine. it's radically simpler than ranking.
Alaska has the right idea: a jungle primary where the top-4 advance, followed by an RCV general. RCV by itself doesn't do much. You have to weaken the primary electorate, as Alaska does.
I've seen this happen in the real world in Italy.
(Yes, there are primaries, but the DNC and RNC hold an astronomical amount of power in picking the candidates and influencing the winners.)
Or, if the Senate is really meant to represent the states rather than the people, it should only be concerned with state issues: which issues belong at the federal level, and which at the state level, for example.
Can't be much worse and statistically it should have basically the same outcome.
Weekend at Bernie's should remain a farce and not a commentary on reality.
And while ranked choice voting is probably superior, it'd be a lot easier for one of the parties to implement RCV internally then call it a day. The major problem is that the primary system is too incumbent-friendly, making it hard for challengers to grow organically.
And I don't buy the argument that the US Congress Regulars have done a good job. They look like they've mucked a lot of stuff up, badly, and left a series of ruins behind them. Literally in many cases.