
Maine Ranked Choice Voting Initiative Approved - coryfklein
https://ballotpedia.org/Maine_Ranked_Choice_Voting_Initiative,_Question_5_(2016)
======
kevlar1818
I'm very proud of my state. We also voted to legalize marijuana.

RCV was especially relevant to Maine because our Republican governor, Paul
LePage, won his seat -- twice -- with around 35%-45% of the vote, primarily
due to votes being split between the Democratic and Independent candidates
(a.k.a The Spoiler Effect).

To me, LePage and his path to election and re-election closely mirrors Trump
and his campaign. He ran on "telling it like it is", "being a businessman, not
a politician", and "draining the swamp". He has said some really horrible
things about minorities and his fellow politicians, he's vetoed a record
number of bills, and he's held very controversial policy stances.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/30/us/controversial-gov-
paul-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/30/us/controversial-gov-paul-lepage-
maine-list.html)

[http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2016/10/06/samantha_bee_...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2016/10/06/samantha_bee_compares_maine_governor_paul_lepage_to_trump_video.html)

Edit: I never meant to imply blame of any candidate in creating the Spoiler
Effect, and as such I modified my comment to reflect this.

~~~
tanderson92
The Democratic candidate came in 3rd place with only 19%. I believe that makes
the Democrats the "spoiler" in that election. To not recognize it as such is
to prop up the 2-party system.

~~~
Ph0X
While that may be true, either of the two could've been the actual winner if
real ranked voting was used.

People usually flock to the candidate who has the best mix of "likely to win"
and "shares my values". Preferably, only the latter should count.

It's also important to note that First-Past-The-Vote forces candidates to try
to differentiate themselves as much as possible from each other, and that also
includes popular 3rd parties. They will say more extreme things that they
often don't really believe in. So that too would skew the results.

All in all, ranked voting will completely change how the whole process
happens.

~~~
_samihasan_
I'm wondering why doesn't the US implement a system like "Two-round system" as
a part of electoral reforms because as I see it the current system in place is
not fair for the electorate or even the candidates themselves.

~~~
mtgx
Two-round system would be an improvement as well to the FPTP system. It would
also fix the spoiler effect and the lack of majority support for winner
problems. It's also simpler than RCV.

However, I don't think it reduces negative campaigns like RCV does (though it
might improve on the "blue or red" campaigns that exist with FPTP). Another
objective may be that the election "costs too much" (basically double or
more), although I don't think this is a real objective. Democracy costs money.
Deal with it. But I could see the objection gaining traction with some
politicians, for the same reason the removal of voting polls gained traction
in states with budget deficits.

I'd be content with either RCV or two-round system.

~~~
lambertsimnel
RCV is better than the Two-Round system, which is an expensive and time-
consuming way of doing Supplementary Vote. Supplementary Vote is a system we
use in the UK to elect mayors and Police & Crime Commissioners, and is a form
of RCV in which voters are limited to only two preferences.

~~~
ClayShentrup
Not certain. [http://scorevoting.net/Honest](http://scorevoting.net/Honest)
Runoff.html

~~~
lambertsimnel
The address should be
[http://scorevoting.net/HonestRunoff.html](http://scorevoting.net/HonestRunoff.html)
(without the space)

Perhaps not certain, and I do agree that there's far more to be gained by
replacing plurality voting by either, but I think that page has some mistakes.

> IRV leads to stifling 2-party domination

I suspect that's because of poor voter information. You can't address every
political problem effectively with a choice of voting system.

> with IRV, that one round is more complicated and it cannot be done on
> ordinary "dumb totalizing" voting machines ... > IRV is more complicated for
> both voters and talliers.

I find IRV simpler as a voter because of the reduced need for tactical voting
in the first round.

IRV isn't complicated to count by hand. (In my country, vested interests said
we couldn't afford the necessary voting machines, but we already conduct hand
counts suitable for IRV.) You simply separate the ballot papers by candidate
and count each candidate's vote, as we do under plurality voting. If no
candidate has a majority, eliminate the last candidate, redistribute that
candidate's votes to the highest ranked candidate (as marked on each ballot
paper) still in the race, count only the redistributed votes and add them to
the total from the previous round. Keep going until a candidate has a
majority.

> we certainly cannot argue that one system is better than the other under all
> circumstances.

You have to choose an electoral system before you can know the exact
circumstances of an election, but the he main thing is to avoid plurality
voting.

------
Houshalter
A number of places in the US have tried this over the last century. It's never
caught on, and in most places it's been reversed:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-
runoff_voting_in_the_U...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-
runoff_voting_in_the_United_States)

IRV is not really a good voting system. It's better than plurality, but it
still doesn't really allow viable third parties. If a third party ever catches
on, they could steal first votes away from a major party, and cost both of
them the election. Demonstration here:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Q7rzqJ0YS8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Q7rzqJ0YS8)

I would recommend a condorcet method, or approval voting. Condorcet methods in
particular have a lot of nice mathematical properties and are close to optimal
with honest voters. I think it's the most likely to allow third parties to
actually get elected. You can see some results of simulated elections with
different voting systems here:
[http://rangevoting.org/BR52002bw.png](http://rangevoting.org/BR52002bw.png)
[http://rangevoting.org/BayRegsFig.html](http://rangevoting.org/BayRegsFig.html)

They claim that just approval voting is the same level of improvement from
plurality voting, as plurality voting is from monarchy. Based on the massive
voter satisfaction index improvement. It really is crazy that we still use
plurality voting.

~~~
losvedir
As a supporter of Gary Johnson, I grew frustrated with the fear of the
"spoiler effect" of our current system and spent a day looking into
alternative voting systems and their pros and cons.

I, too, came away with approval voting being my favored approach.

One question to ask yourself, though, is this: in an election where candidate
A is loved by 55% of the population and hated by 40%, and candidate B is loved
by no one, but tolerated by 80% of the population, who "should" win? It's more
of a philosophical question, but depending how you answer it influences how
you should choose a voting system.

If you think the 80% tolerated candidate should win, then approval voting is
for you. If you think being loved by 55% of the population should be the
winner, then IRV or another system may be better.

I personally prefer the boring, centrist 80% tolerated outcome, so I like
approval.

Another thing I realized, is that a lot the research doesn't seem to take into
account polls ahead of time and iterated preference making. Approval voting
might be terrible if it's once-and-done, but if you have polls leading up to
it, you can calibrate your "approval level" a little better.

E.g., if Hitler is running, you might say "I approve of everyone else". But if
you see polls suggesting that no one is approving of Hitler, then you might
raise your standards a bit and not approve of some more candidates.

~~~
Houshalter
I find that people tend to like the voting system that (they believe) will
give their favorite party the best odds. So people that have radical political
ideologies, tend to prefer systems that are more likely to allow radical
candidates.

Note that in practice, people start to vote tactically to prevent radical
candidates, so there really isn't any voting system that works great for that
purpose anyway.

I think the centrist option is probably the best for a number of reasons. I
think a particularly bad president can do much more harm, than an unusually
good president can do good. E.g. start WW3, or destroy the economy. Not to
mention dividing the country and polarizing our political system.

Second there is a phenomenon called wisdom of crowds. That if you take the
middle of the estimates given by a large number of uninformed people, it
usually comes out very close to the true answer. The same should apply to
voting. The middle preference of a large number of uninformed voters, should
be close to optimal.

Third there are studies that show that centrists and moderates tend to have
much more accurate beliefs than others. As in, their predictions of future
events were the most accurate. Ideological people were extremely biased and
inaccurate. That's probably the closest we can get to scientifically measuring
how good their policies would be.

Lastly, for values questions, where there is no "right answer", the middle
should be chosen. It's the fairest choice.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
I'm a radical leftist (seize the means of production!) and I actually favor
Approval Voting. It allows for a democratic compromise on single-seat offices,
and it can also be more-or-less automatically adapted to a multi-seat body
with proportional representation. It allows a voice to small parties or
factions without spoiler effects, while being dead simple to implement and
making tactical voting _relatively_ difficult.

>Lastly, for values questions, where there is no "right answer", the middle
should be chosen. It's the fairest choice.

As a radical, my problem with this is that the "middle" is _defined_ by the
power struggle between the "extremes": it always tracks the _formerly_
"extremist" positions of the winning side. For instance, until last week,
nobody would ever have said that privatizing Medicare was anything but
extremist far-right lunacy. Coming this year, we're going to hear that it's a
mainstream, centrist position. That's not even being said as a statement of
fact, since it's transparently false -- people love Social Security and
Medicare! It's being said as an _imposition of hegemony_ on the part of the
electoral winners, as how "we create our own reality now".

------
Wildgoose
Approval Voting makes the most sense, seeing as this concerns the election of
a single individual.

Basically, vote for ALL of the candidates of whom you approve.

Whoever gets the most approval (votes) wins.

Simple.

With a paper system such as we have in the UK, then if you don't like any of
the candidates you can use a blank ballot paper to record your DISapproval,
with the option that if the disapproval ballots exceed the winning total of
approval votes then a new election should be called with a new slate.

Mathematically, for a single candidate election, it gets extremely close to
the optimum Condorcet result.

~~~
mtgx
I've seen the data (at least from the organizations that support approval
voting), and it seems to deliver the most optimum results.

However, I have some concerns. The way I see the two voting systems is like
this:

Advantages approval voting:

\- much simpler

\- eliminates spoiler effect

\- may give third-party candidates better chances in most elections

\- reduces negative campaigning, since the winner would have to be "approved"
by like 70% of the country in typical elections.

Disadvantages AV:

\- the winner may be someone who was #2 on 80% of the country's wishlist. So
51% of country won't _love_ the candidate, as they may with RCV or two-round
voting systems, but also the other 49% won't _hate_ the candidate (perhaps
only 20% will). So from that point of view, it would be "better". But it would
be someone most are just content with.

\- I believe even the organizations supporting it admit that it would lead to
"centrist" leaders. Perhaps in most situations a centrist is preferable, but
what if the country has gone in the wrong direction for 2 decades, and it
needs a completely new direction? Would a centrist still be enough? Or would
the approval voting system and people pick exactly the guy that is willing to
go in a different direction this one time? I'm not sure what would happen in
this scenario.

Advantages RCV:

\- eliminates spoiler effect

\- also reduces negative campaigning, because a candidate would need some of
the opponent's voters, too, to rank them as #2 on their list.

\- easier transition to multi-winner RCV system for state legislature and
Congress - and this alone is much bigger than _just_ using approval voting
system. Proportional representation beats all single-winner voting systems,
including approval voting

Disadvantages RCV:

\- it may eliminate spoiler effect, but other than that, it won't do much else
to help third-parties. The main two parties would likely still be elected for
a long time, at least until population's thinking about at least one of the
the two parties changes in a major way \- a bit more complicated to understand
how votes are counted by the average person, and a higher number of "lost"
votes (I believe 5% or so, compared to about 1% or less for AV).

I believe both could also be used strategically - as in rank #1 the person you
think is more likely to win with RCV, or only vote for the person that's more
likely to win with AV, instead of multiple people.

So I would qualify the two as: AV would be a _great improvement_ over FPTP,
while RCV would be a moderate, but still well worth it and welcome improve,
for the fact that it would eliminate spoiler effect alone. However, if single-
winner RCV makes it much more likely that multi-winner RCV (STV) is also
adopted for state legislature and Congress, then I would definitely choose RCV
over AV, because the ultimate goal should be to adopt proportional
representation in the US.

I think proportional representation coupled with a limit of $200 of individual
donations and a ban on any other political donations would greatly improve
democracy in the US, and these are the main changes Americans should fight
for, if they want _all of the other issues_ (as Lessig often says) to be
solved as well. First fix democracy and change the system to a better one, so
that the people that actually represent you get to pass laws in your favor for
whatever issue you (the People) want.

~~~
ClayShentrup
No, IRV does not eliminate the spoiler effect.

[https://youtube.com/watch?v=JtKAScORevQ](https://youtube.com/watch?v=JtKAScORevQ)

Score Voting and Approval Voting are simpler and better.

[http://scorevoting.net/CFERlet.html](http://scorevoting.net/CFERlet.html)
[http://www.electology.org/approval-voting-vs-
irv](http://www.electology.org/approval-voting-vs-irv)

~~~
cpeterso
While I am a fan of Approval Voting, it doesn't eliminate the spoiler effect
entirely:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approval_voting#Strategic_voti...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approval_voting#Strategic_voting)

~~~
quadrangle
"The spoiler effect" generally means that if you vote for your _preferred_
candidate, it can backfire and give you the least-preferred. Approval can't do
that. In approval voting, it _never, ever_ hurts to vote for your favorite
candidate.

It's true that voting for other candidates you approve of could take the
election away from your favorite, but that's not what people usually mean with
spoiler effect. As long as you do approve of the winning candidate, your vote
isn't spoiled. In Approval Voting, there's no context where any form of
voting, strategic or honest, will have you worrying that your vote helps
someone you don't approve of.

------
michaelbuckbee
Wikipedia has a really comprehensive article [1] on this type of voting, but
for most purposes of discussion this is the relevant paragraph:

"Proponents of IRV note that by reducing the spoiler effect, IRV makes it safe
to vote honestly for marginal parties, and so discourages tactical voting:
under a plurality system, voters who sympathize most strongly with a marginal
candidate are strongly encouraged to instead vote for a more popular candidate
who shares some of the same principles, since that candidate has a much
greater chance of being elected and a vote for the marginal candidate will not
result the marginal candidate's election."

It's generally viewed as a means of gradually stepping away from some of the
problems of a two party system.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-
runoff_voting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting)

~~~
ClayShentrup
[http://scorevoting.net/AustralianPol.html](http://scorevoting.net/AustralianPol.html)

------
dangjc
This is really exciting electoral reform. I don't think our current system
captures the diversity of political opinion now, and we could really use a
couple more parties. Like a democratic party that is anti establishment or a
republican party which is not particularly religious but more libertarian.

And maybe if we had more parties, voters wouldn't be so tribal. There's a deep
sense of "us vs them" now in America. It's good guys vs bad guys, and whatever
their side says, our side cannot believe. It leads to complete nonsense like
climate change denial. But if there were many parties, your 25% couldn't be
against the other 75%. You'd have to recognize your perspective is just one of
several and you have to look for common ground.

------
Heliosmaster
I found this video of CGP Grey to be a nice explanation of the Ranked Choice /
Instant Runoff:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Y3jE3B8HsE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Y3jE3B8HsE)

~~~
tantalor
Also, this video by Exploratorium has great examples of paradoxes in Ranked
Choice / Instant Runoff voting:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJag3vuG834](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJag3vuG834)

~~~
astrocat
I found this extremely insightful, specifically Arrow's impossibility theorem
[1]

It really seems like this should get more attention: _Every voting system is
flawed._ You cannot design a voting system that will, in every possible case,
be "fair."

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theore...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theorem)

~~~
AngrySkillzz
You have to look very closely at what the definition of "flawed" is. The
dictator rule in Arrow's thm is not what it is commonly portrayed to be. All
it says is that there should be no voter whose preferences are the same as
those produced by the choice function. That doesn't really sound all that
objectionable. Often people word the dictator rule as "one person decides the
outcome" but that is not what it is at all.

And like the other response said, the fact that no scheme is "perfect" doesn't
mean all schemes are equally flawed.

~~~
jackpirate
I'm pretty sure your characterization of the non-dictatorship rule is wrong.
According to wikipedia, the rule states that there should be no voter whose
preferences are _always_ the same as those produced by the choice function:

> There is no individual, i whose strict preferences always prevail. That is,
> there is no i ∈ {1, …, N} such that ∀ (R1, …, RN) ∈ L(A)N, a ranked strictly
> higher than b by Ri implies a ranked strictly higher than b by F(R1, R2, …,
> RN), for all a and b.

~~~
AngrySkillzz
It does not mean always as in "the same voter every time." What it means is
that if more than two voters have a preference ranking which is digested by a
social choice function, the outcome should not be exactly the same as any
individual voter. I argue that doesn't make any sense, because there are
plenty of situations where the best choice of ranking might coincide with the
preferences of a particular voter, completely by coincidence.

------
cardiffspaceman
Arrow's impossibility theorem
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theore...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theorem)
is often trotted out in the discussion of RCV and similar systems. It seems to
me that the problem with mentioning that theorem is that if you admit that
every system for judging among more than 3 choices has some flaw, and that
flaw makes the system anti-democratic because it allows tactical voting, then
why not admit that the status quo is worse, under the same framework, and
therefore admit that something else other than plurality voting should be
used?

~~~
mseebach
I can't completely follow the argument, but I think Arrow's is mostly used to
counter the "utopians" (roughly; people who argue that one system is
Inherently Unfair(tm) and the alternative is Inherently Fair(tm)).

You're replacing one flawed system with another flawed system, so you should
not argue in terms of the presence or absence of flaws, but rather argue why
one is better than the other.

RCV can still have outcomes that a majority will disagree with, but it should
be less common than FPTP, and also make third parties competitive in practise.
That may be better than the old system (and it also may _not_ be), but it's
not going to resolve the fundamental tensions of representative democracy.

~~~
tehwalrus
Instant runoff matches four of the postulates, including all three that FPTP
matches. It is a superset of the fairness of the other, they are not "equally
unfair in different ways" or anything like that.

~~~
tehwalrus
Edit time threshold passed so I'll have to reply to myself.

I've just read up on Arrow, and this theory only has four postulates not five:
I'm pretty sure I've either misremembered or am talking about a different
theory. Apologies, anyway.

------
mtgx
I wish they also enacted _multi-winner_ ranked choice voting (also called
Single Transferable Vote) for legislature. Fair representation beats winner-
takes-all systems every time, because it guarantees more than just two parties
get to be in charge, much like in parliamentary systems (which also use some
kind of fair/proportional representation voting system). But it's still a good
start, and maybe other states will take a look at both, and choose a better
system next time.

By the way, this is exactly the sort of thing Sam Altman should be fighting
for, along with joining Wolf-Pac, Represent.Us, and others to get money out of
politics. Not try to use GOTV tactics to get people to vote for his preferred
candidate. That is, if Altman still cares about this, and the "improve
democracy thing" he pushed for earlier wasn't just a one time ruse to get
people to vote for Clinton.

If Altman is serious about improving democracy, these right here are _by far_
the best ways to do it - _way_ better than just trying to "increase turnout"
in an election. Because for one, fair representation voting systems increase
turnouts by default, because people feel better represented and have more
reasons to go out and vote, and second, STV also eliminates gerrymandering,
which would also greatly improve democracy by making seats less safe.

[http://www.wolf-pac.com/](http://www.wolf-pac.com/)

[https://represent.us/](https://represent.us/)

STV by CGP Grey:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8XOZJkozfI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8XOZJkozfI)

Droop method for STV is probably preferable:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRc630BSTIg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRc630BSTIg)

Also preferred by FairVote:

[http://www.fairvote.org/fair_representation#what_is_fair_vot...](http://www.fairvote.org/fair_representation#what_is_fair_voting)

~~~
herge
Ireland currently uses a PR-STV system, and if you ask any Irish person about
their politicians, you will probably get an ear-full.

STV pushes majors parties to sit on the political middle, where they might not
collect as many '1's', but will collect a lot of 2s,3s,4s, etc, as more
divisive parties/candidates will be ranked highly by a segment of the
population but very lowly by the rest.

~~~
mtgx
I'm not really stuck on STV, per se. Whatever proportional voting system the
US chooses is fine by me. However, I think that if RCV is adopted, STV would
be a natural extension to that. Plus, something like STV (or Dion's P3, which
I actually like a bit more:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyLeClCrfgQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyLeClCrfgQ))
is more likely to be adopted in the US, than say something like list-based
voting, because Americans like to _directly elect_ candidates from their
districts.

But I do think STV is still far preferable to winner-take-all FPTP, where the
winner may only represent 35-40% of the voters in a given district, or even
RCV, where the winner may represent 50%+1 to ~55% of the voters in a district,
which is obviously better, but it's still less preferable to being 3-5 winners
in a larger district and from 3-5 parties, whereas RCV would still mostly
allow the two main parties to rule, with some exceptions in a few districts.

------
anonymoushn
One desirable property of FPTP is that if you want to maximize the chances of
your candidate being elected, you should vote for your candidate first before
all other candidates. In IRV, sometimes you should not vote for your candidate
first before all other candidates. Is that okay?

Here are some interesting diagrams of the results of applying various voting
algorithms including IRV:
[http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/](http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/)

~~~
r00fus
Those diagrams aren't very intuitive to me. Do the different shaded regions
represent turnout? What is the coordinate of the candidate, position on a
2-axis political scale?

~~~
anonymoushn
A point on the 2d plane represents a preference (if we imagine that there are
only 2 real-valued issues in the world). The regions shaded in a particular
color are the regions where a normal distribution of popular preferences
centered there will elect the corresponding candidate.

I assume that individual simulated voters just rank candidates from least to
greatest by cartesian distance, or do that and then use a random cutoff for
approval voting.

------
hota_mazi
I'm really not sure people realize how chaotic and unpredictable ranked choice
voting can be, and how easily it can be gamed.

For example, there are scenarios where it's better to put your favorite
candidate in #3. You pick #1 to help an undervoted candidate and therefore,
causing one candidate to drop off. Same for #2. By the time the choice comes
to #3, your minority candidate has suddenly managed to eliminate stronger
opposition just by playing numbers.

We've seen this scenario happen repeatedly in all countries and counties that
have tried this approach.

There's a reason ranked choice voting is hardly ever used anywhere: it's
really not such a good idea.

~~~
mcbits
I don't follow your scenario. Can you give a real example? If you put your
favorite candidate in the #3 spot, it would make them more likely to be the
one that drops in round 1 or 2, no?

~~~
Chathamization
Here's a couple of examples of how RCV might have played out if it was in
effect for the 2016 election:

Scenario 1: Clinton, Sanders, and Trump are all running. Clinton and Sanders
supporters assume Trump will lose. Clinton and Sanders spend most of their
time attacking each other. Since supporters of Clinton and Sanders don't
bother making a second pick (since they don't want to support their opponent,
and assume Trump is going to lose anyway). Clinton and Sanders each get 32%,
and Trump wins with 36%.

Scenario 2: Imagine a scenario where there are lots of candidates running.
Something like the GOP and Democratic primaries this year, but everyone
running in the general. Like this year, there are 5 candidates running on the
left and 17 running on the right. Most voters aren't going to bother ranking
all 22 candidates, and only rank 1-3. This causes the left to win simply
because they have fewer candidates.

The thing is, many comments seem to assume that people would rationally rank
all of their choices. But people don't really act like that. Some will, some
will just pick their favorite, some will rank only the people they're familiar
with, etc. The current system (with the primary acting as a run-off vote)
allows people to reflect on new information (these are the top two candidates
and this is what they believe) before making a choice. RCV seems to just kind
of hope that people think about these things ahead of time (and people usually
don't).

~~~
TimJRobinson
Both of those outcomes are because the hypothetical voters made stupid
decisions, not because the system is flawed. If they choose to not take
advantage of writing out all their preferences it's their own fault when they
don't get what they want.

I don't see how FPTP would be better in either example, you'd just get the
same or worse outcome.

------
syphilis2
Would someone explain the counterpoint that this will, "further disenfranchise
voters by using the recounted ballots of the loser to determine the winner"? I
can't understand how counting voter's second and third choices until a
majority agree on a candidate could be seen as disenfranchisement.

~~~
stanleydrew
I'm not sure it can be explained. To borrow a phrase from economics, moving to
instant runoff has always seemed Pareto efficient to me. Which would mean that
there are no possible counterpoints.

~~~
bandrami
Arrow's theorem[1] demonstrates that no voting system can be "efficient" in
the normal sense of the word. That is, no voting system can guarantee:

1\. If every voter prefers A over B, the electorate prefers A over B

2\. If no voter changes preference between A and B, the electorate's
preference of A and B is unchanged

3\. No single voter can always change the electorate's preference

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theore...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theorem)

~~~
wutbrodo
That's a different issue from what the parent comment is talking about. He's
not saying that IRV will be fully efficient, but that the switch itself will
be Pareto efficient (which means that each entity is better off, or the same).

This actually isn't true, because major party candidates will be worse off,
but I think he meant something like Hicks-Kaldor efficient, or positive sum.

~~~
stanleydrew
Yes, I wasn't claiming that there is a perfect voting system. Just that IRV
seems strictly better for pretty much all voters than FPTP.

I am also seeing several comments that try to take into account the
preferences of the candidates themselves, or their parties. Why? Aren't we
talking about efficiency from the perspective of the electorate? To the extent
that the candidates are themselves members of the electorate, and can vote for
themselves, shouldn't we ignore them in this analysis because their
preferences are inherently biased?

~~~
wutbrodo
> I am also seeing several comments that try to take into account the
> preferences of the candidates themselves, or their parties. Why? Aren't we
> talking about efficiency from the perspective of the electorate? To the
> extent that the candidates are themselves members of the electorate, and can
> vote for themselves, shouldn't we ignore them in this analysis because their
> preferences are inherently biased?

I fully agree with you. I was just being precise in my usage of Pareto
efficiency, which includes all agents in a situation. Especially because it's
used so often when Hicks-Kaldor improvement is meant (which means that there's
the possibility for Pareto improvement after redistribution of gains).

------
BurningFrog
San Francisco, Oakland and 1-2 other Bay Area cities have had this for a
while. I think it works well, and the electorate and politicians are getting
used to it.

The implementation, at least here in Oakland, is a bit clunky. When there are
only two candidates, they still let you pick your first, second and third
choice...

Having it at state level opens things up to a whole different level. Now a
popular and/or centrist third party candidate can realistically get elected as
US senator, and that's _real_ power.

~~~
spqr0a1
That implementation is a feature, not a bug! Write-in candidates are an
important part (as documented up-thread) of our electoral process.

~~~
BurningFrog
I haven't seen a way to write in candidates on these ballots. They're scanned
by a machine that detects where you drew a line, so I that would have to be
detected manually.

TBH, I haven't looked hard for a way to write in people, and it's possible it
exists.

------
spynxic
Why does it cost nearly a million dollars to print new ballots and update the
firmware in existing ballot machines?

Specifically regarding the ballot machine update, if the installers are
charging ridiculous prices when I'd bet others would be willing to start an
open source project that met security needs

------
z1mm32m4n
It's actually quite concerning to see the media attention that IRV has
received as a result of Maine passing the RCV measure. A much better voting
system (across many different metrics for what a "better" voting system means)
is range voting. For a comparison of the differences between the two, see
here[1].

[1]:
[http://rangevoting.org/IrvExec.html](http://rangevoting.org/IrvExec.html)

~~~
lambertsimnel
Why is it concerning? As I understand it, Range Voting supporters object that
IRV performs poorly (in terms of Bayesian regret) because voters don't
understand how it works. Maybe the attention will help to educate voters and
improve its performance. Also, isn't it enough to improve on the status quo?

------
mrfusion
This is amazing news. I'm now wondering how voter training will work?

I feel like a lot of people might get it backwards and mark the third party as
their second or third choice. Also the mainstream candidates with the most
money would have an incentive to spread misinformation.

~~~
retsibsi
Here in Australia, volunteers for the political parties hand out 'how to vote
cards' at polling places: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How-to-
vote_card](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How-to-vote_card) . It's not a
perfect system,[1] but it should be enough to prevent most people from
completely messing up their vote. (Especially in the US, where voluntary
voting presumably means that those who turn up are motivated to make their
vote count.)

[1] The most obvious risk is misinformation -- e.g. someone claiming to be
from Party A, handing out Party A branded leaflets that actually direct people
to vote for Party B -- but in practice that doesn't seem to be a significant
problem. I'm sure it happens at small scales online, but in person it's hard
to get away with, so at least the information seen immediately before voting
is accurate. (Though admittedly I have heard of one or two borderline cases,
e.g. cards with colour themes chosen to misleadingly hint that they're
associated with a particular party.) What is prevalent is 'preference trading'
between political parties, as a significant number of voters do seem to more
or less blindly follow their party's suggested ordering. This is arguably a
problem, but it doesn't usually get too crazy, as preference deals between
ideological enemies both look bad and can easily backfire.

~~~
flukus
And the people handing out voting cards, who tend to be the "extremists" on
either side get to spend a pleasant day with the other side. As nasty and
divisive as things get at the top, that doesn't seem to transfer to the
ground.

------
carrigan
If anyone is interested in using Single Transferable Vote for unofficial uses,
I recently wrote an implementation in Elixir and wrapped it in a small JSON
API. It is a toy in its current state (it uses cookies to see if people have
voted and the link to close an election can be somewhat easily found even if
you are not the creator of the election) but we use it around or office for a
few things and I would be interested in continuing work on it if anybody would
like to jump in. I have an instance of this running on my site; ping me if
you'd like to try it.

STV Algorithm: [https://github.com/carrigan/elixir-
stv](https://github.com/carrigan/elixir-stv) Phoenix API:
[https://github.com/carrigan/vote-service](https://github.com/carrigan/vote-
service)

------
davexunit
Nice to hear some good political news out of Maine, home to one of the worst
governors in the country. Maine is a great place that deserves better.

~~~
josefresco
I refer to this as the "LePage Law".

~~~
davexunit
Ha! I wasn't aware of the context because I don't closely follow Maine
politics, but some of the other comments here cleared it up for me.

------
hackuser
Something to consider: Democrats have won the popular vote in 6 of the last 7
presidential elections. Another way of saying it: They lost a nationwide vote
once in the last quarter century.

Generally I support the electoral college, but those are undemocratic results.

Also: In the 2014 House of Representatives elections, Republicans won 51.2% of
the vote (per Wikipedia) yet held the largest majority in the House since WWII
(IIRC).

EDIT: In the 2012 House of Representatives elections, Democrats won more votes
(48.8 - 47.6%) but fewer seats (201-234).

~~~
flukus
You're making the mistake of assuming that voting patterns would remain the
same without the electoral college. I'm sure there are large numbers of
republicans in blue states that don't bother voting currently.

~~~
hackuser
An interesting hypothesis regarding presidential elections but ...

1) It doesn't affect House elections

2) Any such second-order effects could also favor Democrats

3) There is no evidence; we're just wildly speculating

------
mozumder
If I were to change the system, I would have ballots ask 10 or 20 or so
questions based on issues, and each party gives their own response to each
question.

The voters then choose their answers they favor for each question, and they
can choose multiple answers they agree with, and a point goes to the party for
each answer.

The party that gets the most total points among all voters wins, they then
decide the people to run that position.

We really have to focus on issues politics, instead of people politics.

~~~
stanleydrew
I think this is a mistake, but probably not for the reason you think.

We need to stop thinking about politics so statically. Positions on issues can
and should change as new information becomes available. Your current preferred
position on an issue is really just a rather poor proxy for your preferred
method of problem-solving or thought process that reached the conclusion of
your preferred position.

You want to elect the person that "thinks and learns in your preferred
manner", so that when they are asked to reach a conclusion on a totally
unexpected issue, they reach the "correct" conclusion.

I'd almost rather just have all candidates take an IQ test or something and
then elect the top scorers.

~~~
hx87
Then instead of asking questions about positions directly, take a page from
the Elder Scrolls games and ask questions whose answer imply a certain
thinking process.

------
mlinksva
I'd approve of some other systems even more, but this is better than the
usual.

Maine has also had voluntary public campaign financing since 1996,
strengthened a bit in 2015
[http://www.maine.gov/ethics/mcea/](http://www.maine.gov/ethics/mcea/) ... I'd
be really curious to read an up-to-date analysis of its impact, and prospects
in combination with RCV.

------
nitrogen
There's a simulated comparison of the practical perfomance of several
different voting systems at
[http://zesty.ca/voting/sim](http://zesty.ca/voting/sim). It looks like
approval and ranked voting fare the best, with approval being more likely to
get voters to express their true preferences (IIRC).

------
stevesearer
RCV seems like an okay idea, but the root of many complaints about elections
seems to be with voters not feeling represented as opposed to the actual
election mechanics.

My proposal is to increase the number of representatives in the House so that
there is a much more reasonable chance for voters to be represented. Something
like 1 rep per 50k or 100k seems like it would be a better system.

Any thoughts on this from HN?

~~~
StormChaser_5
Ireland has at least one representative per 30K people [0] and that works
reasonably well. At least you can usually meet and speak in person with your
representative in the run up to an election.

Of course the flip side is you probably get a lot more 'parish-pump politics'.
Candidates looking after their one tiny constituency to the detriment of the
country as a whole.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A1il_%C3%89ireann#Number_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A1il_%C3%89ireann#Number_of_members)

~~~
bzbarsky
Ireland has a population of ~6.5 million. At 30k/representative, that gives
~216 representatives. In practice, not all the people in Ireland vote (e.g.
some are children), so you get 150-160 representatives per your citation.

The US has ~200 million registered voters [1] and the number actually eligible
to vote is somewhat higher than that. But if we go with the 200 million
number, at 100k/representative you get 2000 representatives. That's a lot more
unwieldy than 150-160 in terms of actually getting anything done. Yes, you can
meet with your representative and all, but that representative may have no
effect on pretty much anything in practice.

I'm not saying "435" is some sort of magic number that is obviously the right
number of representatives, of course. But it's not obvious to me that 2000 is
better.

[1] [http://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/how-many-registered-
vo...](http://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/how-many-registered-voters-are-
in-america-2016-229993)

~~~
stevesearer
Good points -

A debate on whether or not being represented should be sacrificed for the sake
of expediency and getting things done is an important one to have. From my
perspective, getting less done could be a feature of such a system rather than
a bug.

Perhaps the federal government would focus on large problems in need of a
countrywide consensus with smaller things bouncing back to the states?

~~~
bzbarsky
Getting less done is a feature of the US system as initially set up, sure.

I feel that there are less pleasant failure modes of a too-big legislature
than just gridlock leading to _less_ getting done:

1) "Everyone always votes the party line" as opposed to "nothing gets done",
because there are too many things being introduced and no time to think about
any of them. This already happens to some extent, but in general this seems
like a problem that should get worse as the legislature gets bigger.

2) Confusion and chaos in the legislature leading to it having no power and
the executive grabbing all the power for itself instead.

Yes, I realize those are somewhat mutually exclusive.

------
c1505
Is this for Presidential contests or only ones up to the state level?

~~~
kevlar1818
_This initiated bill provides ranked-choice voting for the offices of United
States Senator, United States Representative to Congress, Governor, State
Senator and State Representative for elections held on or after January 1,
2018._

[https://votesmart.org/elections/ballot-measure/2128/an-
act-t...](https://votesmart.org/elections/ballot-measure/2128/an-act-to-
establish-ranked-choice-voting)

------
tehwalrus
It will be very interesting to see what effect this has on the two party
system. AV (as it was called in the UK's 2011 referendum) allows voters much
greater freedom in expressing their first preference, and I will be interested
to see how first preference votes differ the first time people are given this
additional choice.

------
naasking
Lots of problems with IRV:

* Realities Mar Instant Runoff Voting 18 Flaws and 4 Benefits, [http://electionmathematics.org/ucvAnalysis/US/RCV-IRV/Instan...](http://electionmathematics.org/ucvAnalysis/US/RCV-IRV/InstantRunoffVotingFlaws.pdf)

* Instant Runoff Voting: A Cure That is Likely Worse Than the Disease, [https://www.uvm.edu/~dguber/POLS125/articles/langan.htm](https://www.uvm.edu/~dguber/POLS125/articles/langan.htm)

* Instant Runoff Voting: Looks Good--But Look Again, [http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/~unger/articles/irv.html](http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/~unger/articles/irv.html)

~~~
rtkwe
If you're going to link to ~50 pages of content the least you could do is
summarize or pull out some interesting bits.

Some of these are real logistical issues but are certainly solvable. There's
no real reason that we have to know the results immediately other than a
desire to know. And a couple examples like ex 4 in your third link are really
unlikely to happen because to make them work you have to have a lot of
information about the ranked choices of other voters.

~~~
bradbeattie
An example of IRV's misbehaviour:

* 8 people vote: A, C, B

* 5 people vote: B, C, A

* 4 people vote: C, B, A

IRV eliminates C and elects B, but the majority of voters prefer C over B (12
to 5). The order of elimination dropped 8 ballots' information that they
prefer C over B. To put that generally, IRV ignores the secondary preferences
of large demographics.

Perhaps another example of why I think single winner voting systems should
take all preferences into account (as Condorcet methods do):

* 100 people vote CentristX

* 101 people vote PolarizedCandidateA > CentristX

* 101 people vote PolarizedCandidateB > CentristX

* 101 people vote PolarizedCandidateC > CentristX

* 101 people vote PolarizedCandidateD > CentristX

The example is a bit contrived, but it highlights how disregarding secondary
preferences (IRV's main feature) isn't a good idea. 403 people prefer
CentristX over every other polarized candidate, yet CentristX is dropped in
IRV's first round.

Disclaimer: I run modernballots, a voting website that makes use of the
Schulze-family of voting systems:
[https://modernballots.com/elections/zombies/vote/](https://modernballots.com/elections/zombies/vote/)

~~~
dragonwriter
Without going through whole way to Condorcet methods, you can eliminate the
problems associated with IRV's elimination step by just dropping the
elimination step; set the election quota as the the smallest integer greater
than half the ballots cast, if no one reaches the quota with just first
preference votes, then add in second preference votes and see if there is a
winner, and so on until someone wins.

This also has (compared to both Condorcet methods and base IRV) relative
simplicity of tallying ballots and processing them to get a result.

~~~
bradbeattie
Alternatively, why not just go full Condorcet? The Schulze Method has a
significant backing:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulze_method#Users](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulze_method#Users)

If you really want simplicity though, I suppose you could use IRV as your tie
breaker amongst the Schwartz set.

~~~
albinofrenchy
While I think the argument that voters won't understand how winners are chosen
for IRV is a bit overstated, I think it'd be completely true with the Schulze
method -- its safe to say that the average voter doesn't have a strong
understanding of graph theory.

Which isn't to say it isn't a good system; but its definitely a draw back.
Supporting IRV seems like a good first step in which we don't let perfect be
the enemy of good.

~~~
bradbeattie
Barring edge cases, Condorcet methods can be described like single-elimination
tournaments which pretty much everyone is familiar with.

Yes, graph theory comes into play for tie breaking (assuming we can agree that
cyclic Condorcet paradoxes are ties of sorts), but the core of the idea is
already understood by an overwhelming majority in concept if not by name.

~~~
dragonwriter
Condorcet methods are more like a particular method of choosing the winner of
a round-robin tournament; they don't really map naturally to a single-
elimination tournament.

Of course, if you assume consistent relative performance, then _any_ single
winner tournament that you construct among the candidates in a Condorcet
election would choose the Condorcet winner of one exists, and some member of
the Smith set in any case (though different initial bracket structure can
choose different Smith set members in the absence of a Condorcet winner.)

------
nxzero
Has anyone seen analysis of elections nullified by vote?

For example, voters would be allowed to put the status of any and all
candidates as null and/or a top vote as null. If the majority of votes cast as
were null, another election would be run with all candidates from the prior
election removed.

~~~
herge
In the mean time between the next election (with all the time it would take to
find/vet brand new candidates!), would the incumbent keep his/her spot?

~~~
nxzero
That would be the most obvious resolution in the case that another election
was required, though might be exploited as a means to get around term limits.

Another option might be the delegation of responsibility to the voting
population to force a timely resolution of the election, greater understanding
of the issues at hand, etc.

------
wscott
A very nice video that explains the various voting paradoxes.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJag3vuG834](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJag3vuG834)

Yeah ranked voting has issues, but it is still way better than the spoiler
effect.

------
ccvannorman
California would do well to follow this lead.

------
hatsunearu
This is a huge step in democracy.

I'm hoping that we can get fully digital, cryptographically verifiable
elections before I die.

------
a_imho
Why not sortition based election? They seem like the most reasonable way to
implement democracy as the name implies.

------
wang_li
The US Presidential Election Campaign Fund provides monies for parties that
reach 5% of the vote. How will votes in Maine be handled going forward? Does
it mean that candidates who are eliminated in the first pass of counting
officially receive zero votes? Seems like it should be something like that.

~~~
lambertsimnel
I don't know, but I think it would make more sense for candidates that receive
5% of first preferences to receive those monies.

------
pklausler
Here's an idea: give each voter a positive vote _for_ their most preferred
candidate and another negative vote _against_ their least acceptable
candidate. Award the race to the candidate with the greatest net sum.

EDIT: If no candidate has a positive sum, throw them all out and do it over.

------
sfifs
It will be interesting to see how an electronic voting UI is built for this
that is simple enough for non techy people to use. Almost all examples of this
on Wikipedia appear to be paper ballot based.

I was part of counting a Ranked Choice ballot in my college but it was again
paper voting - not online

------
jonathanstrange
Kudos to them, from my (cursory) knowledge of Social Choice that's a fairly
good voting method.

------
k_lander
This gives me a lot of hope. Its time we looked at alternate voting systems
seriously.

------
sandGorgon
Does anyone know how the votes are actually counted ? Because it seems to me
that you need to count all the votes together (in one location) rather than
counting them on each district,etc.

~~~
lambertsimnel
You don't need to count them all in the same place. You could conduct each
round of counting at the district level. Then, when the round finishes, you
add the district counts together to see whether there is a candidate with a
majority. If not, you eliminate the last placed candidate from all districts
(i.e. the same candidate from each district), redistributing votes for him/her
where possible, count the redistributed votes and add them to the last sum.

~~~
sandGorgon
It's the redistributing part that I'm not clear on. How do you count PAPER
votes in a manner that allows you to redistribute them.

Or do you actually have to count AGAIN?

~~~
lambertsimnel
You have a pile for each candidate. The pile for the eliminated candidate is
redistributed to the other existing piles in the following way. Each
redistributed ballot paper is directed to the highest preference marked on it
that is still in the race, if any. Only the redistributed votes need counting
at this stage. You don't combine the redistributed votes with the existing
piles until you have counted them.

~~~
sandGorgon
I understand this. Which means that there needs to be these many actual
physical recounting.

I believe an explanation is in order - in India we have up to 20 candidates in
constituencies. We don't have a 2 party system. It's unfeasible if paper has
to be counted 10-15 times.

Which is why I wanted to figure out if there was a one time counting system
that lets us reassign votes without the need to physically recount again.

~~~
lambertsimnel
Well, papers with a first preference for any candidate that stays in the race
until the last round of counting are only counted once, which might save a lot
of time with many candidates if there is one very popular candidate (and even
if there is a higher small number of popular candidates).

With large numbers of candidates, voters probably leave more unranked. When
there are no more valid preferences on a ballot paper, there is no further
need to count it. (I would prefer their votes to go to compromise candidates,
instead of being exhausted, though.)

It depends on circumstances, but I expect votes for the candidates to be
eliminated earliest would fairly quickly be redistributed to compromise
candidates.

Consider an election between n candidates who are left/right-of-centre to
varying extents. If my first preference is for a candidate at one extreme and
my subsequent preferences are in order of similarity to that extreme and there
are n-1 rounds of counting and my vote is counted every time, then my vote is
probably quite unusual, because my favourite candidate was eliminated first
and must therefore have had the fewest first preferences. However, the
election itself is unusual, because the eventual winner is the kind of
decisive fringe candidate that usually attracts few votes other than first
preferences, but if such a candidate won on the strength of first preferences
alone, there would be only one round of counting and no ballot papers would be
counted more then once.

I don't know what the upper limit is on the number of counted preferences (as
a function of the numbers of candidates and voters), but I would be interested
in finding out.

~~~
sandGorgon
I spent some more time on this - for a large number of candidates (which is
extremely common in India), the IRV mechanism is impractical.

The Indian elections are the largest elections of any kind in the world. The
number of eligible voters are 814 million and a total of 8k candidates
contested for the 500 odd seats.

Perhaps something like the Kemeny-Young pairwise comparison might be the most
efficient way of doing this.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kemeny%E2%80%93Young_method](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kemeny%E2%80%93Young_method)

I wonder why this was not chosen - the claims seem to indicate that IRV does
not account for second choices
([http://www.votefair.org/compare.html](http://www.votefair.org/compare.html))

~~~
lambertsimnel
Thanks for the interesting links, but I don't think they support your
conclusion that IRV is less practical to count. The Kemeny-Young method can't
practically be counted without a computer. IRV can easily be counted by hand
or computer.

I think IRV is used as widely as it is not only because of its simplicity, but
also because of familiarity; it is a preferential form of the multi-round
Exhaustive Ballot system and a special case of Single Transferable Vote (which
in other cases is a system of proportional representation).

For your legislative elections, a system of proportional representation would
be better than IRV, Kemeny-Young or any other single-winner system.

~~~
sandGorgon
> For your legislative elections, a system of proportional representation
> would be better than IRV, Kemeny-Young or any other single-winner system.

that is a much harder battle. Changing the election system is easier than
change the representation system.

So I agree that IRV is simpler - but I'm still looking for a tabular format
that will allow count-once-but-execute-multiple-reassignment-round mechanism.

Sorry - I'm really interested in these things for the electoral system in
India... which is far more complicated than the two party systems in the US.

------
shmerl
What about reforming electoral college to full popular vote?

------
3531591548
qq

------
marcoperaza
Plurality voting is the best system. You can't view the actual casting of the
ballots as the only part of the process. The campaigns and surrounding public
discourse are the opportunity for the coalitions of our society to decide on
two broad-appeal candidates. The "runoff" happens in conversations between
citizens, and in primaries within established coalitions, not inside a ballot
counting machine.

~~~
harpastum
It's not possible for a candidate with zero first preference votes to win [1].
If they have zero first preference votes, they will be eliminated in the first
round.

Ranked choice doesn't always get the correct result, but it's a lot closer
than a simple vote.

"If no candidate receives a majority, the candidate with the fewest first
choices is eliminated and voters who liked that candidate the best have their
ballots instantly counted for their second choice."

\-
[http://www.rcvmaine.com/how_does_ranked_choice_voting_work](http://www.rcvmaine.com/how_does_ranked_choice_voting_work)

~~~
baddox
How are you defining "correct result?" One formal definition could be the
Condorcet winner (the candidate that would win a one-on-one election against
each other candidate), but some elections don't even have a Condorcet winner.
Also note that neither plurality voting nor instant runoff voting are
guaranteed to select the Condorcet winner if one exists.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_criterion](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_criterion)

~~~
skrap
I'm of the uninformed opinion that any national election will probably have a
Condorcet winner. IF that's true, then we could literally pick any Condorcet
method, and just go with that.

Condorcet IRV seems a reasonable choice, in that it's relatively easy to
explain to people (compare to beatpath, for example).

I think all the discussion about the merits of different methods is just so
much bikeshedding. It might matter, but it's far more important to pick
_something_ than to stick with plurality!

In that spirit, I am totally in support of Maine's choice to go with IRV, even
with its warts.

