
To Build a Better Ballot (2016) - anchpop
https://ncase.me/ballot/
======
Taikonerd
For Americans who are interested in alternative voting systems, I recommend
The Fulcrum: [https://thefulcrum.us/](https://thefulcrum.us/) They cover good-
government type reforms, including voting reforms.

For example, the city of Fargo just switched to approval voting -- coverage
here: [https://thefulcrum.us/voting/approval-
voting-2646444809](https://thefulcrum.us/voting/approval-voting-2646444809)

~~~
tfehring
I'll also plug
[https://www.electionscience.org](https://www.electionscience.org), an awesome
and underfunded nonprofit that helped get Fargo's approval voting initiative
passed. (I've donated to them but have no other affiliation.)

~~~
specialist
Approval voting has best balance between fairness and simplicity. Election
integrity wise, less complex is better.

RCV is a smidge more fair than Approval Voting and three smidges more complex.
Both are much better than FPTP, by both criteria.

I support my local RCV effort. If I truly wanted Approval Voting, I should
have put in the hard work.

Source: Worked as poll inspector, was an election integrity activist for about
10 years.

~~~
ClayShentrup
Approval voting is fairer and better than IRV in every way.

[https://www.electionscience.org/library/approval-voting-
vers...](https://www.electionscience.org/library/approval-voting-versus-irv/)

~~~
specialist
Thanks. Great survey of all the talking points.

File under narcissism of small differences:

I've been equating RCV with Score Voting, not IRV. I'll review the literature
and see where I'm wrong.

I do not support IRV. It's an election integrity nightmare for little or no
gain over Approval Voting.

My introduction to election stuff was thru IRV advocacy. Then I learned about
tabulation complexity.

Over time, my position changed to PR for assemblies and Approval Voting for
executives. I now wonder if Approval Voting could (should) also be used for
PR.

That's all to say my strong-opinions-loosely-held about voting systems is
motivated by us forging a better democracy, not any particular implementation.
I'll realpolitik support any path forward.

~~~
anchpop
Approval Voting is just Score Voting with only two scores (0 and 1). Turns out
you don't lose that much!

------
dwd
But what about the best alternative of all - the single transferable vote?
Call me biased as an Australian but it's served us well for giving small
groups a chance in the Senate and electing 3rd party candidates such as Adam
Bandt.

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

~~~
cyphar
The reason why our Senate has third parties is because states act as multi-
mumber electorates (it's not winner-takes-all as it is for the House of
Representatives). This means that a uniform 20% vote for party X in a given
state (either first-preference or after runoffs) will result in about 20% of
seats being held by party X. The same is not true for winner-takes-all systems
-- 150 electorates with 20% of people uniformly voting for party X will yield
0 seats for party X. That's why we only have 4 seats in the House of
Representatives being held by third parties, compared with 14 Senate seats
(though still not as many as you might like).

To take Adam Bandt as an example, he got 49% of _first-preference_ votes in
his electorate[1] -- most third parties aren't going to get that many votes in
a single electorate (the centre of Melbourne is probably the only place you
could see the Greens getting that many votes but they do have a consistent 10%
first preference rate in polls).

Don't get me wrong, I do think our voting system is pretty good and better
than most, but it does suffer from some of the issues described we could
definitely improve it.

[1]:
[https://results.aec.gov.au/24310/Website/HouseDivisionPage-2...](https://results.aec.gov.au/24310/Website/HouseDivisionPage-24310-228.htm)

~~~
dwd
In the US context who would get voted in using the Australian Senate model is
an interesting thought.

GOP and Dems would obviously pick up the majority, but I could imagine a
fishing/hunting coalition (with possible NRA support) picking up a few seats,
a few religious groups similar to Family First doing the same, and a whole lot
of others. The scary thought would be a QAnon supported candidate gaining
enough votes for a seat.

The point with Bandt and for other 3rd party candidates is that these models
give them a chance as it removes the issue of split/spoiler votes and people
are free to vote how they want but fall back on who they would prefer from a
major party.

~~~
cyphar
> The point with Bandt and for other 3rd party candidates is that these models
> give them a chance as it removes the issue of split/spoiler votes and people
> are free to vote how they want but fall back on who they would prefer from a
> major party.

Multi-member electorates are still preferential voting systems (just like our
Senate elections are a preferential voting system) and thus still have that
property.

The point I was making is that winner-takes-all elections result in smaller
parties being unrepresented because a party needs to get the majority of votes
in an electorate in order to get any representation. If you had 10
representatives per electorate and chose them using the Hare-Clarke system
(which is used in Tassie and the ACT for the state government elections --
though their districts have 5 members) you would expect at least one
representative to be a Green on average (since they poll around 10%
nationally). Right now, the Greens have only 0.6% representation (1/150) in
the House of Representatives despite having a 10% first-preference rate across
the nation.

As for the more general point about spoilers, that is true but a lot of people
(about 80%) still vote for the two major parties as their first preference --
possibly because they were never told how preferential voting works (I learned
about it in primary school, but I don't know how common of an experience that
is -- and it was never mentioned while I was at high school.)

~~~
dwd
I've been voting 3rd party in the Senate since I first got to vote (originally
the Democrats and lately Greens) but probably got that notion from my parents
who would have instilled Don Chipp's "Keep the bastards honest" in me. I was
hoping Turnbull might have taken up Fraser's manifesto for a new party but
that seems to have gone nowhere now.

Interesting to read about the Unity2020 movement who are trying to chart a
similar path of taking the centre but are likely doomed to fail unless someone
pumps a few billion into their advertising. The lack of preferential voting
also doesn't help their cause.

I personally find the calculation of the redistribution and weightings in the
Senate to be fascinating - but the math probably goes over the head of a lot
of people.

------
Taikonerd
This is an exciting time for ranked-choice voting in the US. In addition to
the big victory in Maine, there have been several ballot measures to start
using it in other cities and states:
[https://www.fairvote.org/ranked_choice_voting_wins_in_2020](https://www.fairvote.org/ranked_choice_voting_wins_in_2020)

~~~
ClayShentrup
STAR voting and approval voting are simpler and much better than IRV ("RCV").

[https://www.equal.vote/star-vs-irv](https://www.equal.vote/star-vs-irv)

[https://www.electionscience.org/library/approval-voting-
vers...](https://www.electionscience.org/library/approval-voting-versus-irv/)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyBm_Hcu4DI&t=487](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyBm_Hcu4DI&t=487)

------
schwartzworld
Really interesting.

I'm all about Approval voting, just vote for everybody who you would want as
president, and whoever gets the most votes win. Want to vote for everybody? Go
ahead!

Besides the spoiler effects listed in the article, voting has been made
deliberately difficult in America. There is a deliberate effort to
disenfranchise voters to keep things from changing. Anything that makes voting
EASIER will create fairer elections, which neither party really wants
unfortunately. Approval voting is the hardest for the voter to mess up, and
therefore will likely be the fairest. You can screw up Ranked Choice. The
Borda / Condorcet methods involve more complex math which can be screwed up.
Approval voting is just simpler, which means your vote is more likely to be
counted the way you meant for it to be.

This could, of course, be coupled with other measures that make voting easier.
Instead of a single day, make it a month so that people can go around their
work schedule and lines will be shorter.

In fact, in person voting is easier to scam than mail-in voting, so the
fairest option would be to make mail-in voting very very easy. Print off your
ballot online or pick one up at the post office or whatever, and send it in.
When you vote in person, mistakes/hacking/etc are simpler because you can
target a district that seems like it will skew a certain way. Mailed in votes
should be scanned and counted and the anonymized scans should be made publicly
available so the populace/press can verify the results themselves.

It won't happen because both parties have a vested interest in preventing it
from happening. Fairer elections don't produce candidates like Trump and
Biden.

~~~
ClayShentrup
Well, Fargo adopted approval voting by a 64% majority, and a ballot measure to
bring it to St Louis this November is polling at 72% support.

~~~
schwartzworld
I meant on a national scale.

~~~
anchpop
Doing it on a national scale is tricky because to do it right you need to do
it in a majority of states at once

