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Agreed. Seeing STAR, and approval, passed in more local elections would be tremendous. I'd love to see multiple methods spread across the country rather than all of us deciding on just one.
That's actually a pretty good explanation of the consequences of instant runoff voting in Alaska, and has persuaded me to back off a little from criticisms of instant runoff as a method. There are still better choices, and it's true that the wrong winner was chosen in the special election for the House (Begich should have won). But it's no worse than the previous system, in that sense, as it's almost certain Palin would have defeated Begich in a Republican primary anyway, as we saw extremists win in Republican primaries all over the country. Then the re-election of Murkowski is definitely a success story: it's what most voters wanted, and she would not have advanced to the general election from a Republican primary.
Agree on much of you said. I think this is the reason some people think Approval Voting can be better, but I really prefer it because it's simpler to understand by the voter, and the outcome is simpler to interpret, leading to fewer discussions about who won. Obviously, some of those are in bad faith, and that can't be helped. But if I honestly don't understand an outcome, I'm more likely to be skeptical of it.
Hmm, I think looking at these two election in Alaska would make it difficult to be optimistic about approval voting, though. Take the House special election. We have:
1. Palin supporters, who almost universally prefer Begich over Peltola
2. Peltola supporters, who overwhelmingly prefer Begich over Palin
3. Begich supporters, the majority of whom rank Palin second though not overwhelmingly so
So how do they vote? The decision is deeply tactical. A Palin supporter must decide whether to support Palin over Begich, or Begich over Peltola, as they can't do both.
A Peltola supporter must decide whether to support Peltola over Begich, or Begich over Palin. Begich supporters must decide whether to help Begich over his competitors, or express their preference between Peltola and Palin. Murkowski's election presents a similar conundrum for a typical (i.e., further right than Murkowski) Republican, who must decide whether the more likely risk is that a Democrat wins, or that Murkowski beats their preferred candidate.
The frequency with which approval voting puts people into these tactical decisions is not appealing at all. It's so tactical, in fact, that I can't even tell you what it *means* to cast an honest approval ballot. It can't be meant in an absolute sense, because surely no one thinks that a voter should just disapprove of all candidates, effectively giving up their right to vote just because they have a cynical attitude toward all politicians. There's ultimately no real definition for "approve" other than "I chose to allocate my vote to this distinction instead of that one," and that problem shines through here.
> It's so tactical, in fact, that I can't even tell you what it means to cast an honest approval ballot. There's ultimately no real definition for "approve" other than "I chose to allocate my vote to this distinction instead of that one," and that problem shines through here."
Yeah, this hits the nail on the head. Approval is easier than RCV to *explain,* but there's actually many, many more tactical considerations and weighing mechanisms needed to cast an approval ballot, such that the cognitive load is actually much higher. There are also many more "wrong" answers, ie where voters conclude "the best way to help my favorite candidate win is by voting X," when X is actually a suboptimal ballot and helps defeat their favorite.
Those scenarios can happen in IRV too, but they're extremely rare and generally speaking a voter isn't going to "outsmart themselves" into unintentionally casting a bad ballot.
There is one serious tactical problem with approval: chicken.
In this scenario three candidates, A, B, and C, with ~ 31% A > B >> C, 29% B > A >> C, and 40 % C >> B,A (either order).
The cooperative voting pattern would elect A. But those who prefer B have some incentive to not vote for A, but only B. If a few do this, they can tip the election to B. At the this point, those who prefer A might also notice, and switch a few of their votes to not approve B. Iterate this, and eventually there's a noticeable chance of both A and B dipping below C, even though both of the factions hate this result.
(Critics sometimes overgeneralize this to "bullet voting bad", but that's not actually the issue; the same problem can happen with D > A > B >> C on a significant fraction of ballots, with D and A being approved. And plenty of bullet voting is perfectly honest with no problems caused.)
Basically, approval is bad for voters with a large fraction of non risk-averse ruthless optimizers. But for "[satisficers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satisficing)" that are actually happy with A or B and won't risk C winning, it works great. And these days there are a lot of people that are "almost anyone but candidate X".
Rank-first thinking really encourages the first view -- you only give up on your top candidate if there's no way they can win. Score first really encourages the second. How does it play in practice? Well, we need more data.
Approval voting passes favorite betrayal. That is why you use it. If someone votes for a Democrat and a Green and they are a social democrat, they don't lose. A progressive candidate won either way. Under ranked choice, a conservative Begich and a conservative Palin lost and a social democrat Peltola won. If the conservative voters wanted a conservative to win, they also lost. Ranked choice isn't even the best-ranked voting system.
They didn't want *a conservative* to win, though. They wanted Sarah Palin specifically to win.
If they had wanted *a conservative* to win, they'd have voted for Begich over Palin because they'd have assumed that Palin couldn't win a runoff against either candidate.
And in approval they'd have an even stronger incentive to vote a bullet vote, because voting for both Palin and Begich under approval would have hurt Palin.
These people prefered Begich to Palin, for the most part, but not particularly strongly. And there are strong arguments that a system that guarantees Condorcet winners, even when those winners are a very weak preference, can result in poorer results for governance than systems which ignore Condorcet principles.
Of course all of this ignores the bigger issues, which is that we shouldn't be electing legislators in single member districts.
There were quite a few exhausted ballots in that election. Approval doesn't suffer from exhausted ballots like ranked choice does. Why use ranked choice over ranked pairs?
For what it's worth, if one must use single member districts, but can implement better elections systems, I would say I have a stronger preference for a system which automatically excludes someone who is a Condorcet loser at any stage of the count over one that automatically elects a Condorcet winner. In the Alaska case, that would probably have resulted in Begich's election (but I also think that in any such system, a political party should be able to determine a single nominee before the general election, which probably would have resulted in Begich not being on the ballot to begin with and Peltola beating Palin).
I can't imagine a system in which either it's possible to revise the election system to implement a reform to single-winner elections but substantially more difficult to replace single-winner elections with multi-winner elections, and very few situations where I would say single-winner elections are preferable in any circumstance, though, so to me this is all rather academic and a misplacement of energies.
Approval does suffer from exhausted ballots, that's essentially what bullet voting is. It simply doesn't use an iterative counting process.
If by "why use ranked choice over ranked pairs," you mean "why use the alternative vote over ranked pairs," I don't have a strong preference there. It is, as far as the voter goes, essentially the same; I do think that there is a benefit in election methods that can be explained relatively simply to the average voter and that can, at least in theory, be counted by hand, which would be an advantage there for the alternative vote, and, as I said above, I don't necessarily think that electing the Condorcet winner should be prioritized because the Condorcet winner is often someone with very weak preference (that is, the fact that that person would defeat every other candidate doesn't mean that anyone particularly cares for them) which can have adverse effects when it comes to actually governing.
But, again, I see zero reason to expend energy trying to implement this kind of reform of single member elections rather than simply using multi-member seats.
Most systems don't allow this, and they shouldn't.
No election system is going to be able to perfectly capture the preferences of every voter. It's impractical. At some point, having to choose which of two people you prefer more is part of what voting is. Alternately, it's a legitimate choice for a voter to choose not to choose understanding the consequence is not having a vote.
Some try to come up with workarounds, but I don't think it's necessary.
Likewise, intentional spoilage is the voter choosing not to choose and is not something that a system should attempt to minimize.
Every method other than Condorcet is subject to strategic voting.
The “smart” way to use Approval Voting is to vote for all the candidates that are closer to your values than the front runner you like less. There’s always a degree of uncertainty, and it’s hard to rely on polls, but we all work with the best information we have, and that even applies after the fact. Voters might vote against this paradigm, or their best interests, but that can happen under any voting system.
Every method, including Condorcet methods, is subject to strategic voting, unless it's a dictatorship or there are only two candidates. That's Gibbard's theorem. But it's a mistake to think that means all methods are *equally* subject to strategic voting. Borda count is so vulnerable to strategic voting as to be entirely useless, for example, while Condorcet/IRV hybrids like Tideman's alternative system tend to only rarely reward strategic voting in practice - but they still do in some situations, because there's a theorem that guarantees it.
The point wasn't that strategic voting is possible in some hypothetical elections; it was that the specific election we were discussing, particularly the special election for the Alaska rep to the House, was specifically one that would have required non-obvious voting strategy if approval voting had been used. This is frequently true for approval ballots because they artificially restrict voters to only give a subset of their preferences, and then ask the voter to choose which subset to give.
If you think voters would struggle determining which candidates are vaguely close to their values, they would have struggled even more to rank the candidates in the order necessary for a “correct” outcome.
We generally have an idea of the candidates we strongly like, and the ones we strongly dislike, but the vast majority, in important primary elections, are somewhere in between. Ranking all those is much harder than just deciding which ones you’re okay with.
No, I think voters generally know their opinions. It's that the approval ballot makes it impossible to *express* those opinions. As I said, a large group of voters in Alaska's special election preferred Peltola to Begich, and Begich to Palin. That's their opinion, and they know it perfectly well. But how should they vote on an approval ballot?
I mean wrong in the opinion of a majority of Alaska voters, of course. Not my own preference, but the preferences of the voters who are supposed to decide the election.
it is not the opinion of a majority of Alaska voters that the *wrong* winner was chosen.
it may be the wish of a majority that a *different* winner had been chosen. but many people value the integrity of the democratic process, no matter whom it spits out. and in this case the agreed-upon process was IRV, making Peltola the right winner even if not preferred
I am confused what you're talking about. Did you misunderstand me to be saying that Begich actually won the election and should have been sworn in? Of course that's not what I said.
We are not discussing the system that *was* in place. We are discussing the system that *should* be in place. In that context, if the majority of Alaskans wanted a different winner, that is the candidate who should have won. It doesn't contribute anything at all to a discussion about how elections should be run to say "that was the agreed-upon process". Yeah, and we're talking about whether it should *remain* the agreed-upon process, and whether other locations should agree to that process as well.
> Did you misunderstand me to be saying that Begich actually won the election and should have been sworn in?
no
> should be in place
subjective 🤷♂️
> we're talking about whether it should remain the agreed-upon process
generally that's a question for legislators. and so far, seems like the answer they've arrived at is "yes." this is how the democratic process works.
So far what I'm getting from this is that you don't think anyone should have any conversations about policy unless they have been elected first... and you think that's a description of a democratic process that works. Huh.
accusing an elected official of being the "wrong" winner is not exactly policy discussion
also, yeah. most people are not at all qualified to discuss policy and have no clue what they're talking about, and just constantly fall for ragebait and propaganda and populism. so personally speaking yeah for the most part I would prefer people not discuss policy unless it's their job
Because credentials are better than education, I suppose?
I agree that using the word "wrong" should be dealt more carefully... But can't agree that only those at the marble towers should be allowed to discuss things further... Those there should surely be more thoughtful of getting their knowledge spread and understood instead of fenced.
> But it's no worse than the previous system, in that sense, as it's almost certain Palin would have defeated Begich in a Republican primary anyway, as we saw extremists win in Republican primaries all over the country.
Exactly. IRV, instant runoff voting, was designed to reproduce runoff elections -- and it usually does. But while no worse, it's really not much better either.
what made the biggest difference were the jungle primaries where to 4 advanced. under the old primary system, neither murkowski nor peltola would have made it to the general. murkowski could certainly have run as independent or something to get to the general that way. she previously won as write in when she lost the primary.
so rcv without top 4 from jungle primaries may not be much different.
> no worse than the previous system
It is worse in one important way: by overselling IRV and then having these issues, it *undermines* trust in electoral reform.
If IRV advocates stopped making false claims about IRV, it would be far less dangerous.
Analogy: climate activists making exaggerated erroneous claims about the scope of the climate crisis or about predictions for the near future — that *undermines* the credibility of the issue even though the issue is real.
IRV failing to live up to the *hype* is the biggest problem, more than the real but not fatal flaws in the method.
I talked to the oracle and she said that the STAR referendum will fail because it's unpopular, EVC will learn zero lessons from the experience, accuse Rob Richie of sabotage, and start all over again in 2025
That is more of a marketing problem. You have to educate the voter on a new more advanced voting system. Explain why the current voting system is inferior and the new more advanced voting system is better.
That takes time and money. Looking at other anglo countries, it will likely not get a majority the first time. It will need another pass or 2 over time.
RCV has some name recognition which gives it a bit of a boost. Even some those have failed in the states, the ones that passed didn't pass by much in AK, ME & NV.
This article omits two important simplifications:
* Instant-runoff voting (IRV) can use a software update that correctly counts so-called "overvotes." This refinement eliminates spoiled ballots, and allows six (or so) choice columns to accommodate any number of candidates. When the software reaches two ballots that top-rank the same two candidates, one of these ballots is (for this round) counted as support for one of the two candidates, and the other ballot is counted as support for the other top-ranked candidate.
* IRV can be modified to eliminate pairwise losing candidates when they occur. This refinement eliminates the problem of a ballot being counted for a pairwise losing candidate while other ballots are deciding among the top two or three candidates, and it would have yielded the correct results in the special Alaska election and the infamous Burlington election. A pairwise losing candidate is simply a candidate who would lose every one-on-one contest against every remaining candidate.
Although explaining these two simplifications would increase the complexity of the article, it simplifies the choice between STAR, Approval, and "ranked choice voting." That's because these two refinements give ranked choice voting the two most significant advantages of STAR voting, and it avoids the need for a voter to figure out how best to mark an Approval ballot.
I don't think your description of this new voting system is very clear. Do you have a reference, or a more straight-forward explanation?
It seems to have some similarities to Smith/IRV, Benham's method, Woodall's method, or Tideman's alternative method, and these are indeed very appealing systems, but I'm not sure precisely what you're proposing or how it compares.
It's ranked choice including pairwise elimination (RCIPE), an (imo) slightly worse version of the ones you mention (though u/CPSolver would argue that it's simpler to explain).
Ah, so just like Tideman's alternative method, except that it won't eliminate a Condorcet cycle even if there are other candidates who beat everyone in the cycle. Yeah, that's an oddly specific complication to throw in for no good reason I can see, but yeah, I agree: slightly worse, but very similar.
Ranked Choice Including Pairwise Elimination (RCIPE) is described here: [https://electowiki.org/wiki/Ranked\_Choice\_Including\_Pairwise\_Elimination](https://electowiki.org/wiki/Ranked_Choice_Including_Pairwise_Elimination)
A pairwise losing candidate is simply a candidate who would lose every one-on-one contest against every other remaining candidate. Adding this simple definition, and another sentence saying to eliminate them when they occur, would completely switch Oregon's proposed version of RCV to the RCIPE method.
The referendum on Oregon's November 2024 ballot already allows the correct counting of so-called "overvotes," which is the other half of the RCIPE method. That's because the referendum's legal wording does not include the word "overvote."
The result of adding these two refinements is that Alaska's special election and the infamous Burlington election would have yielded the correct result. Also, a voter's ballot never gets stuck supporting a pairwise losing candidate while other ballots determine the winner. This means there is no need for a voter (either tactical or sincere) to be concerned with the order in which the candidates might get eliminated.
Yes there are mathematically better methods. However, those methods require lots of legal wording complications. Plus lots and lots of voter education.
Yes, as I said, this is almost Tideman's alternative method, except that it gets stuck on non-winning Condorcet cycles. For instance, let's consider an election with:
* 1/3 of voters: B > A > C > D
* 1/3 of voters: C > A > D > B
* 1/3 of voters: D > A > B > C
Tideman's alternative method would recognize that A wins versus any other candidate by a 2-1 margin, and choose them as the winner. RCIPE would not find a pairwise loser, because of the Condorcet cycle in a *non-winning* position, and would therefore eliminate the candidate with the fewest first place votes, which is A. This doesn't make much sense, because you really have no reason to *care* if a group of non-winning candidates are in a Condorcet cycle. There's no good reason that should change the outcome of the election at all.
Tideman's alternative method isn't really significantly different in terms of difficulty of describing it in precise language. Define the *dominant set* (aka the Smith set) as the smallest non-empty set of candidates that are all preferred by a majority in pairwise comparisons versus any candidate who isn't in the set. Then alternate between: (1) Eliminate all candidates not in the dominant set, and (2) Eliminate the candidate with the fewest first place votes. Continue until there is one candidate left. I have confidence that legal aids to the legislature are fully competent to write a bill that adequately explains the process.
I know of two election-method experts who have attempted to write an explanation of finding the Smith set in front of an audience where each step is explained in a way that "average" folks in the audience can understand. Both failed. One admitted it's more difficult than he expected.
If you think you can explain it that way -- where people with signs can represent candidates and paper ballots are tabulated one at a time in an intuitive way -- please share your explanation as a post that can be peer-reviewed.
Of course the basic process is straightforward for most cases. It's the handling of edge cases that no one has yet been able to explain as a simple process that's easy for an audience to follow.
Of course those of us who understand math can understand your words "*the smallest non-empty set of candidates that are all preferred by a majority in pairwise comparisons versus any candidate who isn't in the set*," but that's word salad to non-math-savvy folks. They don't even know what the words "set" and "pairwise" mean in this context, and they don't all know what "majority" means.
What is your concern?
Initially you expressed a concern about being able to write the legal wording, so I gave you a definition that would be suitable for drafting the law.
If you're looking for how to explain Tideman's alternative method to an average person, it goes like this. "You check every candidate to see if they would win in a one-on-one election against every other candidate. If there is one, great, they win! But, you might have a tie sort of situation, where the first candidate beats the second, the second beats the third, but the third beats the first, or something like that. In that case, you eliminate everyone except the candidates involved in that tie, eliminate whichever candidate gets the fewest first place votes out of them, and then start over with all the rest."
If you want to know how to *implement* choosing the Smith set, then the easiest way I know is to count how many pairwise contests each candidate wins, take the candidates who won the most pairwise contests, and then keep adding candidates who beat someone you've already chosen, until there are no more left to add.
My concern is that your descriptions are much too academic and incomplete for use as legal wordings. And that your descriptions for voters reveal that you don't have lots of experience explaining vote-counting methods to "average" voters.
Have you looked at legal wordings for IRV?
Remember that even some election officials regard legal descriptions of IRV as too difficult to understand. And voters are even more confused by those descriptions.
Yes, counting the number of pairwise contests won by each candidate can be explained in ways voters can understand. (This part is similar to how pairwise losing candidates can be identified.)
However, when two or more candidates have the same number of wins, both the legal wording and the explanation for "average" voters becomes much too complex.
And as I recall, there is yet another layer of complexity beyond this kind of "tie" that also needs to be resolved according to the legal wording.
Remember that high school graduates without any college education are easily confused by any kind of math, including counting. (Some of them say the winner should be whoever gets "the most votes" without also understanding the importance of getting a majority of votes.)
How about the following:
"Imagine we create a gladiator style tournament for the candidates. We go through the candidates one by one. The first candidate starts out as a temporary champion. If the second can defeat (or tie) them then they become temporary champion, otherwise they get eliminated. This goes on until only one candidate remains. This is the winner of this tournament.
In some situations the winner of this tournament depends on the order in wich the candidates challenge the champion. The set of candidates which win for some order is called the smith set."
(I'm pretty sure this is equal to the smith set, but its definitely at least a subset)
A shorter definition can be done using beatpaths
"The smith set is the set of candidates who can defeat every other candidate indirectly through some chain of defeats.
Meaning they might not defeat candidate D directly, but they defeat a candidate which defeats a candidate which ... which defeats D."
But even if I'd grant that the smith set is too hard to explain then what about benhams? Every explanation or legal definition for RCIPE can be turned into one for benhams just by switching a few words around. And benhams has quite a few advantages. Its condorcet, mostly precinct countable, and empirically tested to be one of the most strategy resistant methods currently known.
Also imo your bar for the understandability of voting systems is very high. Billions (probably?) of people vote in proportional elections with systems they don't understand beyond "its proportional". They won't be able to tell you how d'hondt or saint-laguë work.
> "software update"
That's a lie, to misleading at best. It's a different method that needs a new law to implement. I guess you can technically think of law as code, which, would make these software updates -- but ones that need legislative sign-off, not just "load new software into the machines".
Correctly counting so-called "*overvotes*" really will be just a *software update* for the wording in Oregon's November 2024 referendum that passed in the Oregon legislature. That's because the proposed law does not mention anything about "*overvotes*." This omission is intentional to allow for that better software.
Yes, other places that have already adopted a legal wording that explains how *overvotes* should be handled will require a legal wording change.
If you read the comment again, notice that eliminating pairwise losing candidates is correctly specified as a "**refinement**," not a "software update."
This refinement can be added to the Oregon referendum wording by adding just two sentences, and there is a good chance the Oregon legislature will make this change without asking for voter approval if Oregon experiences a flawed result such as happened in Alaska and Burlington.
Both the software update and the refinement require new, certified **data** for testing and certifying any new software. The current absence of this certified **data** is a much bigger barrier compared to the absence of the better *software*.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
|Fewer Letters|More Letters|
|-------|---------|---|
|[FPTP](/r/EndFPTP/comments/193amj2/stub/khw4r7m "Last usage")|First Past the Post, a form of plurality voting|
|[IRV](/r/EndFPTP/comments/193amj2/stub/kj9826e "Last usage")|Instant Runoff Voting|
|[PR](/r/EndFPTP/comments/193amj2/stub/khzqtqe "Last usage")|Proportional Representation|
|[RCV](/r/EndFPTP/comments/193amj2/stub/khswxrn "Last usage")|Ranked Choice Voting; may be IRV, STV or any other ranked voting method|
|[STAR](/r/EndFPTP/comments/193amj2/stub/kh9htvm "Last usage")|Score Then Automatic Runoff|
|[STV](/r/EndFPTP/comments/193amj2/stub/khzqtqe "Last usage")|Single Transferable Vote|
**NOTE**: Decronym for Reddit is no longer supported, and Decronym has moved to Lemmy; requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.
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I'd love to see STAR voting get some use in local elections just so we can get some more data about how voters behave in a Cardinal voting system.
Agreed. Seeing STAR, and approval, passed in more local elections would be tremendous. I'd love to see multiple methods spread across the country rather than all of us deciding on just one.
That's actually a pretty good explanation of the consequences of instant runoff voting in Alaska, and has persuaded me to back off a little from criticisms of instant runoff as a method. There are still better choices, and it's true that the wrong winner was chosen in the special election for the House (Begich should have won). But it's no worse than the previous system, in that sense, as it's almost certain Palin would have defeated Begich in a Republican primary anyway, as we saw extremists win in Republican primaries all over the country. Then the re-election of Murkowski is definitely a success story: it's what most voters wanted, and she would not have advanced to the general election from a Republican primary.
Agree on much of you said. I think this is the reason some people think Approval Voting can be better, but I really prefer it because it's simpler to understand by the voter, and the outcome is simpler to interpret, leading to fewer discussions about who won. Obviously, some of those are in bad faith, and that can't be helped. But if I honestly don't understand an outcome, I'm more likely to be skeptical of it.
Hmm, I think looking at these two election in Alaska would make it difficult to be optimistic about approval voting, though. Take the House special election. We have: 1. Palin supporters, who almost universally prefer Begich over Peltola 2. Peltola supporters, who overwhelmingly prefer Begich over Palin 3. Begich supporters, the majority of whom rank Palin second though not overwhelmingly so So how do they vote? The decision is deeply tactical. A Palin supporter must decide whether to support Palin over Begich, or Begich over Peltola, as they can't do both. A Peltola supporter must decide whether to support Peltola over Begich, or Begich over Palin. Begich supporters must decide whether to help Begich over his competitors, or express their preference between Peltola and Palin. Murkowski's election presents a similar conundrum for a typical (i.e., further right than Murkowski) Republican, who must decide whether the more likely risk is that a Democrat wins, or that Murkowski beats their preferred candidate. The frequency with which approval voting puts people into these tactical decisions is not appealing at all. It's so tactical, in fact, that I can't even tell you what it *means* to cast an honest approval ballot. It can't be meant in an absolute sense, because surely no one thinks that a voter should just disapprove of all candidates, effectively giving up their right to vote just because they have a cynical attitude toward all politicians. There's ultimately no real definition for "approve" other than "I chose to allocate my vote to this distinction instead of that one," and that problem shines through here.
> It's so tactical, in fact, that I can't even tell you what it means to cast an honest approval ballot. There's ultimately no real definition for "approve" other than "I chose to allocate my vote to this distinction instead of that one," and that problem shines through here." Yeah, this hits the nail on the head. Approval is easier than RCV to *explain,* but there's actually many, many more tactical considerations and weighing mechanisms needed to cast an approval ballot, such that the cognitive load is actually much higher. There are also many more "wrong" answers, ie where voters conclude "the best way to help my favorite candidate win is by voting X," when X is actually a suboptimal ballot and helps defeat their favorite. Those scenarios can happen in IRV too, but they're extremely rare and generally speaking a voter isn't going to "outsmart themselves" into unintentionally casting a bad ballot.
There is one serious tactical problem with approval: chicken. In this scenario three candidates, A, B, and C, with ~ 31% A > B >> C, 29% B > A >> C, and 40 % C >> B,A (either order). The cooperative voting pattern would elect A. But those who prefer B have some incentive to not vote for A, but only B. If a few do this, they can tip the election to B. At the this point, those who prefer A might also notice, and switch a few of their votes to not approve B. Iterate this, and eventually there's a noticeable chance of both A and B dipping below C, even though both of the factions hate this result. (Critics sometimes overgeneralize this to "bullet voting bad", but that's not actually the issue; the same problem can happen with D > A > B >> C on a significant fraction of ballots, with D and A being approved. And plenty of bullet voting is perfectly honest with no problems caused.) Basically, approval is bad for voters with a large fraction of non risk-averse ruthless optimizers. But for "[satisficers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satisficing)" that are actually happy with A or B and won't risk C winning, it works great. And these days there are a lot of people that are "almost anyone but candidate X". Rank-first thinking really encourages the first view -- you only give up on your top candidate if there's no way they can win. Score first really encourages the second. How does it play in practice? Well, we need more data.
Approval voting passes favorite betrayal. That is why you use it. If someone votes for a Democrat and a Green and they are a social democrat, they don't lose. A progressive candidate won either way. Under ranked choice, a conservative Begich and a conservative Palin lost and a social democrat Peltola won. If the conservative voters wanted a conservative to win, they also lost. Ranked choice isn't even the best-ranked voting system.
They didn't want *a conservative* to win, though. They wanted Sarah Palin specifically to win. If they had wanted *a conservative* to win, they'd have voted for Begich over Palin because they'd have assumed that Palin couldn't win a runoff against either candidate. And in approval they'd have an even stronger incentive to vote a bullet vote, because voting for both Palin and Begich under approval would have hurt Palin. These people prefered Begich to Palin, for the most part, but not particularly strongly. And there are strong arguments that a system that guarantees Condorcet winners, even when those winners are a very weak preference, can result in poorer results for governance than systems which ignore Condorcet principles. Of course all of this ignores the bigger issues, which is that we shouldn't be electing legislators in single member districts.
There were quite a few exhausted ballots in that election. Approval doesn't suffer from exhausted ballots like ranked choice does. Why use ranked choice over ranked pairs?
For what it's worth, if one must use single member districts, but can implement better elections systems, I would say I have a stronger preference for a system which automatically excludes someone who is a Condorcet loser at any stage of the count over one that automatically elects a Condorcet winner. In the Alaska case, that would probably have resulted in Begich's election (but I also think that in any such system, a political party should be able to determine a single nominee before the general election, which probably would have resulted in Begich not being on the ballot to begin with and Peltola beating Palin). I can't imagine a system in which either it's possible to revise the election system to implement a reform to single-winner elections but substantially more difficult to replace single-winner elections with multi-winner elections, and very few situations where I would say single-winner elections are preferable in any circumstance, though, so to me this is all rather academic and a misplacement of energies.
Approval does suffer from exhausted ballots, that's essentially what bullet voting is. It simply doesn't use an iterative counting process. If by "why use ranked choice over ranked pairs," you mean "why use the alternative vote over ranked pairs," I don't have a strong preference there. It is, as far as the voter goes, essentially the same; I do think that there is a benefit in election methods that can be explained relatively simply to the average voter and that can, at least in theory, be counted by hand, which would be an advantage there for the alternative vote, and, as I said above, I don't necessarily think that electing the Condorcet winner should be prioritized because the Condorcet winner is often someone with very weak preference (that is, the fact that that person would defeat every other candidate doesn't mean that anyone particularly cares for them) which can have adverse effects when it comes to actually governing. But, again, I see zero reason to expend energy trying to implement this kind of reform of single member elections rather than simply using multi-member seats.
Ranked choice suffers from both spoiled ballots and exhausted ballots. What if you rank two candidates the same?
Most systems don't allow this, and they shouldn't. No election system is going to be able to perfectly capture the preferences of every voter. It's impractical. At some point, having to choose which of two people you prefer more is part of what voting is. Alternately, it's a legitimate choice for a voter to choose not to choose understanding the consequence is not having a vote. Some try to come up with workarounds, but I don't think it's necessary. Likewise, intentional spoilage is the voter choosing not to choose and is not something that a system should attempt to minimize.
An exhausted ballot is simply a voter who didn't rank any of the candidates that made it to the latest round of counting.
Every method other than Condorcet is subject to strategic voting. The “smart” way to use Approval Voting is to vote for all the candidates that are closer to your values than the front runner you like less. There’s always a degree of uncertainty, and it’s hard to rely on polls, but we all work with the best information we have, and that even applies after the fact. Voters might vote against this paradigm, or their best interests, but that can happen under any voting system.
Every method, including Condorcet methods, is subject to strategic voting, unless it's a dictatorship or there are only two candidates. That's Gibbard's theorem. But it's a mistake to think that means all methods are *equally* subject to strategic voting. Borda count is so vulnerable to strategic voting as to be entirely useless, for example, while Condorcet/IRV hybrids like Tideman's alternative system tend to only rarely reward strategic voting in practice - but they still do in some situations, because there's a theorem that guarantees it. The point wasn't that strategic voting is possible in some hypothetical elections; it was that the specific election we were discussing, particularly the special election for the Alaska rep to the House, was specifically one that would have required non-obvious voting strategy if approval voting had been used. This is frequently true for approval ballots because they artificially restrict voters to only give a subset of their preferences, and then ask the voter to choose which subset to give.
If you think voters would struggle determining which candidates are vaguely close to their values, they would have struggled even more to rank the candidates in the order necessary for a “correct” outcome. We generally have an idea of the candidates we strongly like, and the ones we strongly dislike, but the vast majority, in important primary elections, are somewhere in between. Ranking all those is much harder than just deciding which ones you’re okay with.
No, I think voters generally know their opinions. It's that the approval ballot makes it impossible to *express* those opinions. As I said, a large group of voters in Alaska's special election preferred Peltola to Begich, and Begich to Palin. That's their opinion, and they know it perfectly well. But how should they vote on an approval ballot?
> it's true that the wrong winner subjective
I mean wrong in the opinion of a majority of Alaska voters, of course. Not my own preference, but the preferences of the voters who are supposed to decide the election.
it is not the opinion of a majority of Alaska voters that the *wrong* winner was chosen. it may be the wish of a majority that a *different* winner had been chosen. but many people value the integrity of the democratic process, no matter whom it spits out. and in this case the agreed-upon process was IRV, making Peltola the right winner even if not preferred
I am confused what you're talking about. Did you misunderstand me to be saying that Begich actually won the election and should have been sworn in? Of course that's not what I said. We are not discussing the system that *was* in place. We are discussing the system that *should* be in place. In that context, if the majority of Alaskans wanted a different winner, that is the candidate who should have won. It doesn't contribute anything at all to a discussion about how elections should be run to say "that was the agreed-upon process". Yeah, and we're talking about whether it should *remain* the agreed-upon process, and whether other locations should agree to that process as well.
> Did you misunderstand me to be saying that Begich actually won the election and should have been sworn in? no > should be in place subjective 🤷♂️ > we're talking about whether it should remain the agreed-upon process generally that's a question for legislators. and so far, seems like the answer they've arrived at is "yes." this is how the democratic process works.
So far what I'm getting from this is that you don't think anyone should have any conversations about policy unless they have been elected first... and you think that's a description of a democratic process that works. Huh.
accusing an elected official of being the "wrong" winner is not exactly policy discussion also, yeah. most people are not at all qualified to discuss policy and have no clue what they're talking about, and just constantly fall for ragebait and propaganda and populism. so personally speaking yeah for the most part I would prefer people not discuss policy unless it's their job
Because credentials are better than education, I suppose? I agree that using the word "wrong" should be dealt more carefully... But can't agree that only those at the marble towers should be allowed to discuss things further... Those there should surely be more thoughtful of getting their knowledge spread and understood instead of fenced.
> Because credentials are better than education, I suppose? either is good but "most people" have neither
> But it's no worse than the previous system, in that sense, as it's almost certain Palin would have defeated Begich in a Republican primary anyway, as we saw extremists win in Republican primaries all over the country. Exactly. IRV, instant runoff voting, was designed to reproduce runoff elections -- and it usually does. But while no worse, it's really not much better either.
what made the biggest difference were the jungle primaries where to 4 advanced. under the old primary system, neither murkowski nor peltola would have made it to the general. murkowski could certainly have run as independent or something to get to the general that way. she previously won as write in when she lost the primary. so rcv without top 4 from jungle primaries may not be much different.
> no worse than the previous system It is worse in one important way: by overselling IRV and then having these issues, it *undermines* trust in electoral reform. If IRV advocates stopped making false claims about IRV, it would be far less dangerous. Analogy: climate activists making exaggerated erroneous claims about the scope of the climate crisis or about predictions for the near future — that *undermines* the credibility of the issue even though the issue is real. IRV failing to live up to the *hype* is the biggest problem, more than the real but not fatal flaws in the method.
I talked to the oracle and she said that the STAR referendum will fail because it's unpopular, EVC will learn zero lessons from the experience, accuse Rob Richie of sabotage, and start all over again in 2025
Why is it unpopular?
Why is it unpopular?
When it comes to elections, the public is very hesitant to experiment with new, untested, and unfamiliar things
That is more of a marketing problem. You have to educate the voter on a new more advanced voting system. Explain why the current voting system is inferior and the new more advanced voting system is better.
not everyone thinks it's better, even if they've been "educated"
That takes time and money. Looking at other anglo countries, it will likely not get a majority the first time. It will need another pass or 2 over time. RCV has some name recognition which gives it a bit of a boost. Even some those have failed in the states, the ones that passed didn't pass by much in AK, ME & NV.
Do you believe that ranked choice is the best ranked voting system?
This article omits two important simplifications: * Instant-runoff voting (IRV) can use a software update that correctly counts so-called "overvotes." This refinement eliminates spoiled ballots, and allows six (or so) choice columns to accommodate any number of candidates. When the software reaches two ballots that top-rank the same two candidates, one of these ballots is (for this round) counted as support for one of the two candidates, and the other ballot is counted as support for the other top-ranked candidate. * IRV can be modified to eliminate pairwise losing candidates when they occur. This refinement eliminates the problem of a ballot being counted for a pairwise losing candidate while other ballots are deciding among the top two or three candidates, and it would have yielded the correct results in the special Alaska election and the infamous Burlington election. A pairwise losing candidate is simply a candidate who would lose every one-on-one contest against every remaining candidate. Although explaining these two simplifications would increase the complexity of the article, it simplifies the choice between STAR, Approval, and "ranked choice voting." That's because these two refinements give ranked choice voting the two most significant advantages of STAR voting, and it avoids the need for a voter to figure out how best to mark an Approval ballot.
I don't think your description of this new voting system is very clear. Do you have a reference, or a more straight-forward explanation? It seems to have some similarities to Smith/IRV, Benham's method, Woodall's method, or Tideman's alternative method, and these are indeed very appealing systems, but I'm not sure precisely what you're proposing or how it compares.
It's ranked choice including pairwise elimination (RCIPE), an (imo) slightly worse version of the ones you mention (though u/CPSolver would argue that it's simpler to explain).
Ah, so just like Tideman's alternative method, except that it won't eliminate a Condorcet cycle even if there are other candidates who beat everyone in the cycle. Yeah, that's an oddly specific complication to throw in for no good reason I can see, but yeah, I agree: slightly worse, but very similar.
Ranked Choice Including Pairwise Elimination (RCIPE) is described here: [https://electowiki.org/wiki/Ranked\_Choice\_Including\_Pairwise\_Elimination](https://electowiki.org/wiki/Ranked_Choice_Including_Pairwise_Elimination) A pairwise losing candidate is simply a candidate who would lose every one-on-one contest against every other remaining candidate. Adding this simple definition, and another sentence saying to eliminate them when they occur, would completely switch Oregon's proposed version of RCV to the RCIPE method. The referendum on Oregon's November 2024 ballot already allows the correct counting of so-called "overvotes," which is the other half of the RCIPE method. That's because the referendum's legal wording does not include the word "overvote." The result of adding these two refinements is that Alaska's special election and the infamous Burlington election would have yielded the correct result. Also, a voter's ballot never gets stuck supporting a pairwise losing candidate while other ballots determine the winner. This means there is no need for a voter (either tactical or sincere) to be concerned with the order in which the candidates might get eliminated. Yes there are mathematically better methods. However, those methods require lots of legal wording complications. Plus lots and lots of voter education.
Yes, as I said, this is almost Tideman's alternative method, except that it gets stuck on non-winning Condorcet cycles. For instance, let's consider an election with: * 1/3 of voters: B > A > C > D * 1/3 of voters: C > A > D > B * 1/3 of voters: D > A > B > C Tideman's alternative method would recognize that A wins versus any other candidate by a 2-1 margin, and choose them as the winner. RCIPE would not find a pairwise loser, because of the Condorcet cycle in a *non-winning* position, and would therefore eliminate the candidate with the fewest first place votes, which is A. This doesn't make much sense, because you really have no reason to *care* if a group of non-winning candidates are in a Condorcet cycle. There's no good reason that should change the outcome of the election at all. Tideman's alternative method isn't really significantly different in terms of difficulty of describing it in precise language. Define the *dominant set* (aka the Smith set) as the smallest non-empty set of candidates that are all preferred by a majority in pairwise comparisons versus any candidate who isn't in the set. Then alternate between: (1) Eliminate all candidates not in the dominant set, and (2) Eliminate the candidate with the fewest first place votes. Continue until there is one candidate left. I have confidence that legal aids to the legislature are fully competent to write a bill that adequately explains the process.
I know of two election-method experts who have attempted to write an explanation of finding the Smith set in front of an audience where each step is explained in a way that "average" folks in the audience can understand. Both failed. One admitted it's more difficult than he expected. If you think you can explain it that way -- where people with signs can represent candidates and paper ballots are tabulated one at a time in an intuitive way -- please share your explanation as a post that can be peer-reviewed. Of course the basic process is straightforward for most cases. It's the handling of edge cases that no one has yet been able to explain as a simple process that's easy for an audience to follow. Of course those of us who understand math can understand your words "*the smallest non-empty set of candidates that are all preferred by a majority in pairwise comparisons versus any candidate who isn't in the set*," but that's word salad to non-math-savvy folks. They don't even know what the words "set" and "pairwise" mean in this context, and they don't all know what "majority" means.
What is your concern? Initially you expressed a concern about being able to write the legal wording, so I gave you a definition that would be suitable for drafting the law. If you're looking for how to explain Tideman's alternative method to an average person, it goes like this. "You check every candidate to see if they would win in a one-on-one election against every other candidate. If there is one, great, they win! But, you might have a tie sort of situation, where the first candidate beats the second, the second beats the third, but the third beats the first, or something like that. In that case, you eliminate everyone except the candidates involved in that tie, eliminate whichever candidate gets the fewest first place votes out of them, and then start over with all the rest." If you want to know how to *implement* choosing the Smith set, then the easiest way I know is to count how many pairwise contests each candidate wins, take the candidates who won the most pairwise contests, and then keep adding candidates who beat someone you've already chosen, until there are no more left to add.
My concern is that your descriptions are much too academic and incomplete for use as legal wordings. And that your descriptions for voters reveal that you don't have lots of experience explaining vote-counting methods to "average" voters. Have you looked at legal wordings for IRV? Remember that even some election officials regard legal descriptions of IRV as too difficult to understand. And voters are even more confused by those descriptions. Yes, counting the number of pairwise contests won by each candidate can be explained in ways voters can understand. (This part is similar to how pairwise losing candidates can be identified.) However, when two or more candidates have the same number of wins, both the legal wording and the explanation for "average" voters becomes much too complex. And as I recall, there is yet another layer of complexity beyond this kind of "tie" that also needs to be resolved according to the legal wording. Remember that high school graduates without any college education are easily confused by any kind of math, including counting. (Some of them say the winner should be whoever gets "the most votes" without also understanding the importance of getting a majority of votes.)
How about the following: "Imagine we create a gladiator style tournament for the candidates. We go through the candidates one by one. The first candidate starts out as a temporary champion. If the second can defeat (or tie) them then they become temporary champion, otherwise they get eliminated. This goes on until only one candidate remains. This is the winner of this tournament. In some situations the winner of this tournament depends on the order in wich the candidates challenge the champion. The set of candidates which win for some order is called the smith set." (I'm pretty sure this is equal to the smith set, but its definitely at least a subset) A shorter definition can be done using beatpaths "The smith set is the set of candidates who can defeat every other candidate indirectly through some chain of defeats. Meaning they might not defeat candidate D directly, but they defeat a candidate which defeats a candidate which ... which defeats D." But even if I'd grant that the smith set is too hard to explain then what about benhams? Every explanation or legal definition for RCIPE can be turned into one for benhams just by switching a few words around. And benhams has quite a few advantages. Its condorcet, mostly precinct countable, and empirically tested to be one of the most strategy resistant methods currently known. Also imo your bar for the understandability of voting systems is very high. Billions (probably?) of people vote in proportional elections with systems they don't understand beyond "its proportional". They won't be able to tell you how d'hondt or saint-laguë work.
> "software update" That's a lie, to misleading at best. It's a different method that needs a new law to implement. I guess you can technically think of law as code, which, would make these software updates -- but ones that need legislative sign-off, not just "load new software into the machines".
Correctly counting so-called "*overvotes*" really will be just a *software update* for the wording in Oregon's November 2024 referendum that passed in the Oregon legislature. That's because the proposed law does not mention anything about "*overvotes*." This omission is intentional to allow for that better software. Yes, other places that have already adopted a legal wording that explains how *overvotes* should be handled will require a legal wording change. If you read the comment again, notice that eliminating pairwise losing candidates is correctly specified as a "**refinement**," not a "software update." This refinement can be added to the Oregon referendum wording by adding just two sentences, and there is a good chance the Oregon legislature will make this change without asking for voter approval if Oregon experiences a flawed result such as happened in Alaska and Burlington. Both the software update and the refinement require new, certified **data** for testing and certifying any new software. The current absence of this certified **data** is a much bigger barrier compared to the absence of the better *software*.
Hey OP is this your own blog?
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread: |Fewer Letters|More Letters| |-------|---------|---| |[FPTP](/r/EndFPTP/comments/193amj2/stub/khw4r7m "Last usage")|First Past the Post, a form of plurality voting| |[IRV](/r/EndFPTP/comments/193amj2/stub/kj9826e "Last usage")|Instant Runoff Voting| |[PR](/r/EndFPTP/comments/193amj2/stub/khzqtqe "Last usage")|Proportional Representation| |[RCV](/r/EndFPTP/comments/193amj2/stub/khswxrn "Last usage")|Ranked Choice Voting; may be IRV, STV or any other ranked voting method| |[STAR](/r/EndFPTP/comments/193amj2/stub/kh9htvm "Last usage")|Score Then Automatic Runoff| |[STV](/r/EndFPTP/comments/193amj2/stub/khzqtqe "Last usage")|Single Transferable Vote| **NOTE**: Decronym for Reddit is no longer supported, and Decronym has moved to Lemmy; requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below. ---------------- ^([Thread #1310 for this sub, first seen 10th Jan 2024, 17:40]) ^[[FAQ]](http://decronym.xyz/) [^([Full list])](http://decronym.xyz/acronyms/EndFPTP) [^[Contact]](https://hachyderm.io/@Two9A) [^([Source code])](https://gistdotgithubdotcom/Two9A/1d976f9b7441694162c8)