Ranked choice is 'the hot reform' in democracy. Here's what you should know
npr.org
npr.org
https://fairvote.org/resources/electoral-systems/comparing-v...
Disclosure: I am a member of FairVote
I knew fans of the various alternatives get a bit competitive but wasn't aware that they'd got to the extremes of claiming the others were worse than the status quo.
Let me be clear: I prefer FPTP over IRV in particular, not over all ranked-choice systems.
I think ranked choice is theoretically good, but it's relatively complicated, and complexity can lead to confusion which provides an opening for unscrupulous candidates (seems to be a much bigger problem than it used to be) to claim the results are illegitimate.
Approval voting is dead simple and seems to solve the same problem. I think it would be a lot harder to argue against approval voting.
In addition to this unnecessary complexity, ranked choice doesn't fix the "spoiler effect", where the presence of a losing candidate can "steal" votes from another candidate who would otherwise have won. Approval voting doesn't have this problem. See Arrow's impossibility theorem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theore...
Regardless, this is hardly an objection to using Ranked Voting over the US "First Past the Post" which suffers to an greater degree(?) to spoiler votes and leads over many iterations to almost identical non representative two party blocs that are hard up against each other and pushing independants out (for fear of spoiling).
It's notable that Australia, a small country of fewer than 30 million, had 10 independants elected to the House last election while the UK, the US, Canada and New Zealand elected only eight between them.
STV is used for the Australian Federal Senate.
The federal lower chamber (House of Representatives) uses optional preferential voting for candidates in a federal electorate.
I'm not sure if NZ is a fair comparison as it uses MMP, which is deliberately designed to favour multiple parties forming coalitions, not independents.
STV is also used in many state and territory local and state elections, see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote#Use
and scroll down to "local bodies" | Australia for a partial list.
The take home poin is that straight up simple Ranked Vote has an issue but is still (IMHO) better than FPTP and there are many ways to take the (minor) curse off of Ranked Vote to make it "better" (far less likely to hit a weird box corner that'll cause arguments | riots | civil war).
I mean, seriously, it's about electing|hiring people to work for the public, in the worst case we should at least just reset and restart, it's not life or death, it's just hiring a few managers that can be fired at any time or charged and imprisoned if they graft or steal.
> if IRV gets repealed often due to its complexity,
Politicians of all stripes have introduced a mix of voting systems here, but remains it is predominantly IRV. When it is changed from IRV complexity is never the reason. It would be surprising if it was, because it isn't that complex and besides complexity doesn't worry the computer systems doing the counting.
The reason is always political: the mob in power chooses the system that benefits them. Invariably when they tinker with the voting system one side is fragmented (eg, there are two conservative parties) and one is not. IRV favours the fragmented one. So if that is the situation and the non-fragmented one is in power, then water down IRV in favour of FPP. If the fragmented one is in power the reverse happens.
The argument proffered in favour of returning to FFP is always "simplicity". It is a lie. They are never doing it to make things simple. They are doing it to keep themselves in office. If you give them the power to change the voting system at the stroke of a pen, they will do it regardless of whether it's IRV, Ranked voting or any other system.
Personally, I'd rank the voting systems from worst to best as FPP, just about anything other the FPP (the difference in outcomes is marginal), and MMP is best of all. The difference between the first two is a bit academic when you allow gerrymandering and don't have compulsory voting like the US. When you can change the rules on who is allowed to vote and where, it's so much easier to do that than change the voting system. MMP makes the system much harder to manipulate like that, and it is harder to undo because usually requires a constitutional change to set up.
it's a reason why voters vote YES to repeal it.
> The argument proffered in favour of returning to FFP is always "simplicity". It is a lie.
you're talking about politicians. the more crucial side of the equation is _voters_, who have to vote on whether to repeal it.
IDK why ranked choice sees more adoption than approval voting. The former seems to have many advantages: it's easy to explain, it's easy to count. The voter gets the choice to say yes to no candidate at all or all candidates at once, if they think that's what they want. They can give votes to fringe candidates without being afraid to have wasted their precious singular vote.
In contrast, ranked choice is harder to explain, uses more complicated ballots that are easier to inadvertently invalidate, and must either use an arbitrary number of ranked favorites (three being a frequent choice apparently) or else allow the use of numbers next to each candidate, or some system where voters somehow can arrange names in their preferred order (hardly possible on a paper ballot, awkward at best when presented with a screen with a longish list of names that will have to be ordered when shown first). Every single one of these options is on a spectrum of arbitrary to awkward to forbiddingly clumsy.
[approval voting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approval_voting)
[ranked choice voting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked_voting)
The way forward is sortition. Not randomly selecting people directly to office mind you, but convening deliberative citizens assemblies to directly weigh in on issues and even potentially to appoint officials to govern. There is a rising movement to implement such reforms that has started to gain a foothold in Ireland, France and Belgium.
Those who want to know more should look into the Sortition Foundation and DemocracyNext.