
Instant runoff voting is the system we need - chuckgreenman
http://chuckgreenman.posthaven.com/instant-runoff-voting-is-the-system-we-need
======
xvedejas
I'm continually upset and confused by Instant runoff voting's popularity. IRV
is, by my reckoning, a much inferior (and more complicated) system than other
systems, like range voting or ranked pairs. And it has some bizarre properties
that make me wonder if it is even worse than the traditional first-past-the-
post.

One property of IRV that makes it so questionable is its non-monotonicity.
This means that you can help a candidate by ranking them lower, and hurt a
candidate by ranking them higher. It is extremely easy to visualize how ill-
behaved IRV is in the charts on this website:

[http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/](http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/)

Meanwhile, ranked pairs (a "condorcet" method) has the property that, if
candidate A is more popular than all other candidates pairwise, then candidate
A will always win. This is _not_ true in IRV.

If you're interested in falling down the rabbit hole of electoral systems, I
recommend looking at this chart that compares their properties:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_electoral_system...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_electoral_systems#Comparisons)

~~~
cwmma
Runoffs are something people understand, IRV is conceptually similar and makes
intuitive sense to people, it's very easy to explain to people, 'if nobody
gets a majority, eliminate last place and redistribute their votes, repeat'.

Compare that to to some of the other systems which often have complex
mathematical descriptions which are hard for people to wrap their heads
around.

Another thing is how big a deal is 'non-monotonicity' is it actually going to
be something that will affect elections all the time, or is it something
that's more minor than say turnout which honestly has no solution and on one
side you have USA where turnout is low so the game is all about making sure
your base turns out, or on the other side you have Australia where voting is
mandatory so making sure people who don't care, don't vote at random is a big
part of the game.

~~~
quadrangle
IRV is more complex in every way than STAR voting.

STAR is just score with a _single_ automatic runoff. It gets everything you
are talking about in terms of intuition, explanation… everything you like
about IRV is present in STAR and basically everything wrong with IRV is fixed
by STAR.

~~~
andrewla
IRV has problems, but complexity, intuition, and explanation are not three of
them.

Intuiting what "giving one star more or less to a candidate" means is really
difficult to understand as a voter. "If more voters had given Kodos four stars
instead of three, he could have won" is a headache inducing explanation.

Approval voting is the only alternative to IRV or plurality voting that seems
to match the level of intuitiveness of both the voting process and the
tabulation process.

~~~
quadrangle
I seriously doubt that anyone would get a headache over "if people had given
that losing candidate _higher_ scores, they would have won". I don't even see
how you can honestly claim that to be anything but completely intuitive to
everyone.

If IRV complexity and explanations were not a problem, we wouldn't see today's
reality where IRV proponents themselves _constantly_ make incorrect claims
about it.

Not always (and not in the linked article here), but often people get the
_intuition_ that their 2nd choice will get counted when their 1st choice is
eliminated, and then try to get them to understand why their 2nd choice was
_not_ counted (because their 2nd choice had already been eliminated) while
someone else's 2nd choice _was_ counted…

What happened in Burlington before they repealled IRV shows not only people
getting intuitions about IRV wrong but people often don't even get what
happened in Burlington because it seems so counter-intuitive.
[https://www.equal.vote/Burlington](https://www.equal.vote/Burlington)

And yet, that scenario is common enough. Burlington is just the case where all
the ballot stats were released so we can study it.

~~~
spankalee
That Burlington result just doesn't look clearly wrong to me.

With FPTP voting, C would have won of the three candidates, and A would have
placed last. If you removed A from the race, B would have won - and did!

Alternate voting systems are supposed to produce different results from
plurality voting, and that's often unsettling the first time it happens.

That page makes the claim that IRV produced a bad result and that's why it was
replaced. But at least the candidate with the 2nd-most 1st place votes won. If
instead the Condorcet winner, A, had won, do they really think it would have
been better? A got the _least_ 1st place votes of the three, who's to say
there wouldn't have been an even larger backlash?

~~~
quadrangle
If you don't see what's wrong with the Burlington result, it just proves how
hard it is for people to understand IRV.

FPTP is even _worse_ than IRV, except that people _know_ how it is bad so they
adapt accordingly.

Of course, it's speculation about the specific backlash, but the core issue in
IRV is this (and it happens in the Burlington case):

ALL the voters whose 1st choice _loses_ in the final round _never_ get any of
their other preferences counted _and_ they lose their 1st choice. They get
NOTHING, no say, totally screwed. They could be as much as 49% of voters. Now,
WITHIN IRV, they can later learn (as people have learned about strategy in
FPTP) that if they _betray_ their favorite and vote for their lesser-evil
choice as 1st, then they WILL swing the election to their lesser-evil instead
of the greater evil.

By ignoring the preferences of some voters and counting others, the weighting
is unequal and people _will_ feel disenfranchised.

Maybe this older more thorough discussion of the Burlington case will help you
understand:
[https://www.rangevoting.org/Burlington.html](https://www.rangevoting.org/Burlington.html)

The _core_ point is that voters in IRV can get a preferable outcome via
__favorite betrayal __(a dishonest strategy). Either they _do_ use that
strategy and we're back to the lesser-evil problems we have now, or they don't
use that strategy and we're back to vote-splitting like we have now, where a
candidate choosing to run can both lose and cause a _worse_ outcome for their
supporters.

~~~
domador
> ALL the voters whose 1st choice loses in the final round never get any of
> their other preferences counted and they lose their 1st choice. They get
> NOTHING, no say, totally screwed. They could be as much as 49% of voters.
> Now, WITHIN IRV, they can later learn (as people have learned about strategy
> in FPTP) that if they betray their favorite and vote for their lesser-evil
> choice as 1st, then they WILL swing the election to their lesser-evil
> instead of the greater evil.

Another way of seeing this could be that such voters had their 1st choice
considered and given value all the way until the last round, whereas many
other voters had their lesser choices considered in their previous rounds. The
1rst-choicers-all-the-way-till-the-end could be considered more favored than
the latter voters I mentioned, who lost their favorite candidates earlier on
in the process.

I'm not saying that this is a better interpretation of the situation you
posit. I'm just using it to illustrate that it's hard, maybe impossible, to
get away from subjective criteria when we consider the virtues of various
voting systems.

------
peacetreefrog
Maine voted on using this system for some elections in 2016.

It passed, but -- perhaps not surprisingly -- many current, established
politicians weren't happy. Maine's governor called it "the most horrific thing
in the world" and the state legislature refused to fund implementation and
voted to delay it until 2022.

So this year the the citizens of Maine voted _again_ to confirm instant runoff
voting, overruling the state legislature and vetoing their delay. It passed by
an even bigger margin this time.

[https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/06/maine-l...](https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/06/maine-
lepage-ranked-choice-voting/562871/)

~~~
dbbk
When will it come into effect? Article doesn't seem to say.

~~~
peacetreefrog
They used it in June for a statewide race and they're using it today for the
federal congressional races.

------
ergothus
Sadly, voting terminology is nasty. I've long advocated for a better voting
system than first-past-the-post (or "pick one", as I call it for non-voting-
system nerds). IRV has issues and is not my first choice, but it is better
than FPTP. That said, the major objection I get from people is "anything else
is too hard".

So I say "can you list your choices in order of preference?" They almost
always say that's acceptable. You can run IRV from that, but you can also run
most any Condorcet variant. The only remaining part is to show the results in
a fashion people understand, which is non-trivial but is also not what the
"anything else is too hard" group was complaining about.

So don't say "ranked pair" or "STV"...say "order of preference", and you'll
find people more willing to consider ideas. It's not EASY, but it's definitely
EASIER.

~~~
gaius
_it is better than FPTP._

We use FPTP in the UK because it directly correlates an MP with a
constituency. Even if the candidate you didn't prefer wins, they are still
_your MP_ and have a duty to represent you.

We had a referendum on PR a few years ago (which was rejected) and its
proponents kept banging on about it, then went _very very quiet_ when UKIP got
4 million votes (more than the SNP and the Greens combined).

~~~
ergothus
FPTP is not the only system to do that - if the vote is to decide who
represents _you_, any system can do that. If the vote is instead to give the
party a certain amount of power, it won't do as you want regardless of the
voting system.

~~~
gaius
The people vote for their representatives directly, and the party with the
most has the opportunity but not the obligation to form the government. The
alternative, PR, breaks the link between constituency and representative.
That's why very few wanted it - generally those who thought it would favour
their party (Lib Dems) who are unable to muster much support at the local
level.

~~~
twblalock
I assume that PR means proportional representation. Instant runoff voting does
not necessitate proportional representation. You can have an instant-runoff
vote to elect a single MP for your constituency. All you do is rank the
candidates in order of preference rather than picking just one of them. There
will be one winner, and that's your MP.

------
dlbucci
Why not approval voting? It's much easier to explain to people and is way more
compatible with the current system. You simply approve of any number of
candidates, and the candidate with the highest number of approvals wins. Maybe
in practice people would only ever approve one candidate and the situation
wouldn't change, but I think it's a least a good small step forward.

~~~
specialist
#1 - I switched from advocating IRV to approval voting once I better
understood the election integrity aspects. Tabulating IRV is much harder,
necessitating more software, which obfuscates the process.

#2 - Election administrators hate IRV. They'll oppose, sabotage it at every
turn. We had a local trial run. As an observer, it'd be hard to argue the
admins made an honest effort to make it succeed.

#3 - IRV is confusing to voters. Try explaining it to your parents.

Any changes to our voting systems should be incremental, deliberate. First
with local races and then progressively up ballot. Give people time to adapt.

~~~
jacques_chester
> _Tabulating IRV is much harder, necessitating more software, which
> obfuscates the process._

This is a feature, not a bug. The count should be done by hand. The multiple
rounds increase the probability that shennanigans will be detected, whether by
sheer weight of watching eyes or by numerical irregularities between rounds.

> _Election administrators hate IRV. They 'll oppose, sabotage it at every
> turn._

I don't see how to predict which one they will like.

> _IRV is confusing to voters. Try explaining it to your parents._

My parents are in their 70s and have voted this way since before I was born.
My paternal grandparents were voting this way before my parents were born. My
maternal grandparents voted this way when they moved to Australia.

Tens of millions of Australians vote this way and have done so for about a
century.

It does not seem statistically likely that somehow Australia has had an
uninterrupted run of particular genius at a multi-decadal/multi-million-person
scale that nobody else in the world can replicate ever again.

~~~
specialist
How many races (contests) does a typical urban Australian election have? How
many candidates for hotly contested races? How many ballots are procssed?

My jurisdiction often has 30+ contests. We had 22 belligerents for mayor 2
years ago. I think we had 12 for senator in our most recent primary. I dimly
recall my county counts 450k ballots.

~~~
jacques_chester
> _How many races (contests) does a typical urban Australian election have?_

Commonwealth, state and local elections are held separately.

 _How many candidates for hotly contested races?_

For Senate elections it is not uncommon for there to be literally hundreds of
names on the ballot, which is why "above the line voting" is an option.

 _How many ballots are procssed?_

For a Commonwealth and State elections, millions, with an indicative count
(ie, whether there a clear winner on first preferences) made on the same night
by tallying across hundreds or thousands of polling stations.

More to the point: it scales. The indicative count is easily parallelised to
any level, since summation is a commutative operation.

I think your implication is that Australia doesn't do it at a large enough
scale and that therefore, our experiences don't count. That isn't true.
Commonwealth elections are comparable in scale and complexity to the
operations of those run by the largest states in the USA to handle federal
elections.

~~~
specialist
Of course your experience counts. I'm just making sure we're comparing apples
to apples. It appears my very shallow understanding of Australian election
administration is WAY off. (I'll need to find some sample ballots.)

If you're handling large scale, complicated IRV elections with ease, than that
should inform the efforts of our local proponents (eg fairvote.org).

~~~
jacques_chester
I'm sorry for being touchy.

~~~
specialist
No worries. You and I have already crossed swords a few times before. And my
writing style has been described as "aggressive". I do appreciate you setting
me straight on this. I hate being wrong.

------
aidenn0
Many people talk about proportional representation; my favorite PR system is
the "Random Ballot." It is a very simple voting system and is the only voting
system I know of that never suggests strategic voting (when voting in a way
different from your preferences is required to get your preferred outcome).

Basically if you have e.g. 100 seats in your house, you choose 100 ballots at
random and whomever is voted for on those ballots are the representatives. It
averages out to proportional representation, while still allowing
geographically distributed candidates.

It also satisfies all of Arrow's criteria[1], which no deterministic system
can.

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

~~~
jhauris
Isn't detecting fraud harder in a non-deterministic system? Theoretically in
any deterministic system you can recount if there's a question.

~~~
DennisP
You would definitely need a random source that everyone can verify.

------
gwbas1c
I used to support instant runoff voting, (and I still do.) Based on my state's
politics, we keep getting candidates who "play the game" with the small group
of people who enjoy politics as a hobby, but then fail in a general election
because they have no general appeal to the wider group of people who vote.

But, there is a much more nuanced flaw. It's very hard to be an informed
voter. A few nights ago, my wife and I spent a lot of time researching most of
the candidates on our ballot.

If every race had many candidates, than instant runoff would make being an
informed voter much harder. (Granted, my ballot had many unopposed candidates,
and in some cases where information wasn't easy to find, I just voted by
party.)

IMO, a much simpler thing to start with is just making it easier to be an
informed voter. When I lived in CA, I got a pamphlet with statements from all
candidates. It was very easy to choose who to vote for in local elections.
Where I live now, I just don't get this kind of information.

~~~
specialist
No voter's guide? Not even online? That's really, really bad.

Following declared party, endorsements are a good signal. Some friends created
[https://www.readysetvote.org](https://www.readysetvote.org) that serves that
purpose. Type in your address, see all the candidates and their endorsements.

Alas, thus far it's just for King County WA.

~~~
gwbas1c
We got a pamphlet for the ballot initiatives.

------
scythe
Back in the day, the Georgia Tech Linux Users' Group had a very simple two-
round system. The first round was approval voting; the second round was a run-
off between the top two candidates. We voted like this every week to decide
where to eat dinner. This extremely simple system satisfies participation,
monotonicity and a _weak_ form of Condorcet, where the winner always won
pairwise against other candidates in terms of _expressed_ preferences (but not
all preferences are expressed). The participation criterion and Condorcet
criterion are incompatible in the full sense, so this is as close as you can
get. The run-off acts as a correction to AV's tendency to select
underqualified moderates.

However, it is a two-round election. A run-off is always necessary. But it can
be made one-round via what I call rank-and-star: voters rank candidates by
preference, and put a star next to the top N that they like. The two
candidates with the most stars are then compared on rankings. It's pretty easy
to prove this is mathematically equivalent to the two-round system, but it's
not a ranked-choice method because the ballots (1-2-3) and (1-2-3) are
different.

Interestingly, it might still be possible to satisfy both participation and
monotonicity if you expand the run-off to three candidates and use minimax
Condorcet for the final round. For three candidates, minimax = Schulze =
ranked-pairs and they satisfy participation; for four or more candidates, no
Condorcet method satisfies participation. However, doing this costs you the
attractive simplicity of the method (but minimax Condorcet is simple to
understand, relative to IRV or ranked-pairs).

Anyway, this puts me in the odd position of advocating a voting system nobody
has ever heard of =p

------
eftpotrm
Straight IRV is an improvement in that it removes the third-party candidate
spoiler effect and the incentive for negative campaigning, yes, but it can
actually make results less proportional than FPTP.

What's needed isn't just IRV but STV - think IRV but districts grouped
together and multiple winners. That way, you can actually get results that are
proportional to the votes cast because the difference between a narrow win and
a landslide changes who gets elected down the ticket.

~~~
xvedejas
The multi-winner system that appeals the most to me is either range (score) or
approval voting, with seats allocated proportionally. Unlike STV, it would be
possible to support or oppose as many candidates/parties as the voter wants
simultaneously. And so it avoids some of the nasty properties of IRV and STV.

~~~
eftpotrm
There's no problem with opposing candidates in IRV / STV - you just rank them
at the back of the list. I can't claim to be an expert on all the finer points
of STV versus range or approval voting, but it's significant to me that the
Electoral Reform Society
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_Reform_Society](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_Reform_Society))
continue to back STV.

~~~
xvedejas
It's not obvious to me that all the information about your ranking gets
percolated up to the final decision, especially since your middle rankings can
disappear without warning during intermediate stages. If you can't do anything
to prevent your #2 from getting eliminated, might as well rank them last as
far as the system matters.

~~~
singingboyo
One very important part of getting STV to work well is the quota - if a
candidate has enough votes to guarantee that they would be elected (so, for a
3-seat district, 25%+1 of votes) then additional votes should be transferred
BEFORE eliminating any candidates.

Some systems do this randomly (randomly choose ballots and take the next
preference), and some do this fractionally (e.g. transferred votes are worth
whatever fraction wasn't needed to elect their previous choices). Overall,
though, the point is that if your middle choice is eliminated, then either
your vote wasn't enough, or a previous choice needed your support already.

That said, most systems 'skip' over previously elected candidates as well.
Strictly speaking, doing that can mean ballots with a losing first candidate
are more powerful than ballots where the first candidate is elected by a
narrow margin[1]. That said, as per the wiki link, there's a solution
(recalculate all instead of skipping previously elected) and tactical voting
around that issue isn't seen in practice anyway.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Issues_affecting_the_single_tr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Issues_affecting_the_single_transferable_vote#Tactical_voting)

~~~
xvedejas
It is possible to have a quota in the range voting system I imagine. And,
well, it's simpler.

------
gmiller123456
While I think IRV is a better system than we have, I think it concentrates on
the wrong problem. In practice it only really works on high profile elections
where all of the candidates get plenty of public scrutiny. The lower houses
like the Senate and House, especially at the state level, usually receive very
little scrutiny compared to governors and presidents. But the real power lies
more in these lower houses than with the heads of state. They really only have
power because their political party already has a significant control in the
lower houses. The lower houses usually have the power to override anything the
head of state does, and the vast majority of the power the head of state has
are just things the lower houses has designated to him/her, which they can
just as easily take away.

So I think the real issue is to open up the lower chambers to third parties,
and that's best done through the use of Proportional Representation. IRV will
not work at that level, because very few races are scrutinized by the public
very much. Proportional Representation also eliminates Gerrymandering (or
significantly reduces it depending on how it's implemented).

Once you've got a significant number of third parties in the lower chambers,
whoever is head of state really doesn't matter that much. Since they'll have
to work with pretty much everyone in the lower chambers to get anything done.

~~~
specialist
Approval voting for executive positions, proportional representation for
assemblies.

The upper house (eg Senate) in bicameral systems is a special case. I'm
undecided if they should be abolished (7 states have more Senators than
Representatives) or our state boundaries redrawn.

~~~
philwelch
The Senate, and the changes to Senate balance caused by granting statehood,
already was a contributing factor to one civil war. It also disenfranchises
many Americans: DC has large populated areas that aren't part of any state,
but Democrats insist on turning DC into a state in its own right (which would
give them 2 extra Senators) while Republicans don't want the Democrats to have
2 extra senators, so the most they would agree to is retrocession to Maryland
(similar to how Alexandria was retroceded to Virginia), which the Democrats
won't accept because then they get 0 extra senators. (Most DC residents would
prefer statehood, but then, most DC residents would also vote Democrat, and
it's hard to tease out the conflicting motivations of "we want to have
representation" and "we want our side to be more powerful in Congress".)

Puerto Rico also seems to want statehood, but there's no progress on getting
it for them for various reasons I don't fully understand.

Redrawing state boundaries would either be politically impossible, or could
only happen with a large enough national one-party supermajority that it would
basically amount to gerrymandering anyway.

------
nestorD
Here is a very good simulator to get a feel for the different voting systems :
[https://ncase.me/ballot/](https://ncase.me/ballot/)

~~~
rstuart4133
ncase.me is very good, but it neglects what I consider to be the elephant in
the room - dictatorship of the majority.

If you have a country with 60% A, 30% B and 10% C, then you might like to a
parliament roughly representative of that. (A, B, and C could be anything -
attitudes to same sex marriage, daylight saving - there are always many ABC
sets.) If parliament consists people elected in geographic regions, and A, B
and C are uniformly distributed over the regions than all voting systems here
will give you a parliament consisting only of A's.

People here seem to enjoy pointing out some perverse outcomes for IRV, but the
Arrow's impossibility theorem proves (and ncase.me beautifully demonstrates)
all voting systems have perverse outcomes. Yet none are as bad as electing all
A's to represent a diverse country and every one of them will do that if used
the wrong way, which also happens to be the most common way they are used.

Back to the topic - IRV does have its downsides, but it's not perverse
outcomes. Australia tries to use IRV everywhere. The Australia Federal Senate
has a voting system that does fix the dictatorship of the majority and
naturally they try to use IRV there too. If you ever have the unfortunate
experience of voting in an Australian Senate election you'll see why IRV isn't
so good in that situation. In fact it's so bad not even the Australian's can
use it in its pure form. If you are wondering why, it leads asking the public
to number 100 odd boxes in strictly consecutive order, on a 1m wide ballot
paper that can't lie flat in the ballot box with writing so small they had to
issue magnifying glasses so you could read the candidate names.
[https://www.abc.net.au/news/6870332](https://www.abc.net.au/news/6870332)

------
eli
There's a big unaddressed obstacle to IRV which is that it's a little
confusing and complicated to explain. This is a much bigger problem than it
might first sound like. It is an absolute requirement of any voting system
that voters understand how it works and feel confident in it.

~~~
0xffff2
This is deeply unfortunate if it's really true, because the prime factor in
favor of IRV is that it is the second-easiest system to explain after FPTP.

~~~
quadrangle
IRV is nowhere near the second easiest to explain.

Approval voting: you can vote for any of the candidates you like, not just
one.

Way simpler than IRV.

Score voting: give any or all candidates scores.

Easy explanation.

STAR: score the candidates, there's an auto-runoff where the two highest-score
candidates get checked to see which is preferred by more voters.

At least as easy to explain as IRV, and _much_ easier to actually understand
overall, particularly in making sense of the results and following what
happened.

~~~
jboles
IRV: Rank the candidates by your preference, 1st to N'th. Your vote is applied
to each candidate in turn, until one wins majority (50% + 1).

There -- simple!

~~~
quadrangle
Your vote is NOT applied to each candidate in turn. That happens to SOME
voters sometimes. But you can also have your 1st choice eliminated _after_
your 2nd choice, and then your 2nd choice is NEVER counted.

------
skrap
I wish we could just _try_ something. Ok, so maybe IRV is worse than some
other things, or maybe it's better. Let's try it. Or let's try range voting.
Or approval. Or Condorcet IRV. Or whatever.

We have lots of choices of voting systems. If we only had a way to decide! I
hope the irony is not lost on all you bikeshedders out there.

Quit bikeshedding. Start advocating for change. Start at the local level. Get
your city or town to switch to the system of your choice. Don't just post on
the internet about it.

~~~
xvedejas
My city is already IRV. If I had any clue how to change that, I would.

------
daze42
Just the other day, I discovered a group that is pushing for this very thing.
If you're interested in making this system the norm, start pushing for a
change in your local area.
[https://www.fairvote.org/](https://www.fairvote.org/)

~~~
quadrangle
Or you could learn more about other options and critiques of IRV in order to
realize that our effort at reform would be _better_ spent on STAR voting (or
maybe approval voting), even though IRV is better than the status quo.

IRV has the fundamental flaw in that it counts _some_ voters' preferences and
ignores others. It's an overly-complex and mediocre _unequal_ system.

Check out [https://www.equal.vote](https://www.equal.vote) to understand what
it means to have voting equality and how we can pursue systems that honor
that.

------
StavrosK
I must be misunderstanding something, because it seems to me that this
basically gives the top candidate their votes, and the second top candidate
_every other vote_. What am I missing?

EDIT: Oh, on one of the rounds the top candidate might become the bottom
candidate, I see.

~~~
daze42
Let's say Clinton, Trump, and Sanders on on the ballot. Some voters could rank
their choice, from most to least preferable, Sanders -> Clinton -> Trump,
while others could rank Sanders -> Trump -> Clinton. If Sanders received the
least amount of votes, voters with the first ranking would have their vote
transferred to Clinton while the voters with the second ranking would have
their votes transferred to Trump. It wouldn't necessarily reallocate votes to
third and lower ranking candidates to the second ranking candidate.

~~~
qubax
That seems managable when you have 3 candidates. What happens when there are
10 or 20 candidates? Would voters have to list their top 10 or 20 choices?

~~~
Macha
If all your choices are eliminated, then for future rounds it counts as
abstaining. If enough people do so that no one crosses the threshold, the
process repeats until the last candidate remaining is (normally) deemed
elected without reaching the quota (though it could also be treated as cause
for a rerun if preferred).

In practice here, even in such large contests the top 5 candidates normally
end up with 90% of the vote and there's enough overlap between the parties
(the further left parties transferring to centre left, the two centre right
parties transferring to each other) that there's normally a clear leader by
then, it's rare that e.g. a candidate with 48% gets eliminated in favour of a
candidate with 49% in the last round.

------
dragonwriter
> Instant runoff voting is the system we need

No, it's not.

It's better than FPTP, but then if you threw a dart at a list of single-winner
voting methods, you are nearly guaranteed to hit something better than FPTP.

Not only are there better single-winner methods, what we really need need is
multiseat candidate-centered (i.e., not party list) proportional methods. STV,
IRVs multiwinner cousin, isn't a bad choice here, though arguably not the
best. (Degree of effective legislative proportionality is strongly linked to
popular satisfaction with the resulting government across modern democracies,
and single winner systems inherently produce poor proportionality and,
thereby, poor satisfaction—the government fails to represent the electorate,
and he electorate tends to dislike the goverment for that reason.)

Single winner systems maximize the distortion of representation due to
districting (which is bad even when it isn't _corruptly_ bad in single-member
legislative district systems), and maximize the number of people that lack
effective representation through voting.

------
jonbronson
Ranked voting is sorely needed in the US. Plurality vote, the predominant US
vote tallying system in the US, actually maximizes voter dissatisfaction. That
is, if your candidate loses you are most likely to end up with a winning
candidate that is polar opposite of your values.

------
cr4zy
Maybe this is the wrong place to ask, but are there any voting systems that
allow arbitrary representation? A special case of this is the pure democracy,
but most people would likely let someone else vote on most issues for them.
Then, on certain issues, you could choose to vote yourself or even change
representatives. Also since your representative could be changed at any time,
the waste that goes into campaign seasons and partisanship would be replaced
with a more realtime focus on issues. Perhaps this is too big a change for the
U.S., but it seems like we could try this out, i.e. on StackOverflow, Reddit,
or Wikipedia before implementing new governments on Mars and beyond.

------
gumby
I don't know why people thing IRV is complicated. Australia has been using
this approach for more than a century with no problems.

~~~
quadrangle
If you want to see how it is complicated, review
[https://www.rangevoting.org/Burlington.html](https://www.rangevoting.org/Burlington.html)
and (A) see if you even understand (I've seen people literally deny the basic
facts or miss the point if they _happen_ to feel politically happy with the
outcome in that one example), (B) see if you can understand the situation
enough to explain to someone else what happened and why people see it as a
problem.

Simply _running_ IRV is easy enough. Understanding it and its ramifications is
complex enough that even the majority of IRV advocates don't understand it.

~~~
gumby
Well of course, Arrow's theorem shows that you can have pathologies in every
system. This is also true of every apportionment system as well. As we live in
the real world, the point is to choose voting systems that have the best
outcome. What are the criteria?

\- people need to believe it is fair.

\- it should avoid lop sided results (one party always wins regardless of
vote) yet should avoid excessive diffusion (i.e. you don't want to have only
fragile coalitions of many small parties).

\- others, all with the aim of _clarity._

As there is no magic bullet people use combinations of different systems:

\- Australian ballot (secret ballot) which most systems use these days; hard
to enforce in USA because of first amendment.

\- quasi-independent apportionment processes/committees (as used in CA, AZ et
al)

\- party lists (not used in USA) or party-plus-candidate (e.g. Germany)

\- non-party systems (e.g. CA)

\- multi-candidate districts (not used in the US)

\- proportional representation (most democracies) or first-past-the-post (most
dependents of Westminster). I'm a fan of the latter BTW.

\- IRV

Mix, match, iterate until an overwhelming majority of people are satisfied.

~~~
quadrangle
Arrow's theorem only applies to _ranked_ ballots. But there's another concept
that still shows how nothing can be perfect.

But really, the question isn't whether pathologies are _possible_ ever, the
question is how _likely_ they are. What systems have the best balance to be
the most robust while still being practical? STAR Voting and 3-2-1 voting.
Definitely _not_ IRV. IRV's pathologies have high enough probability that they
_do_ and will continue to show up significantly.

Good starting reference from one of the leading voting theorists:

[https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-best-single-winner-
voting-...](https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-best-single-winner-voting-
method-for-electing-presidents-mayors-or-other-executives)

~~~
bscphil
STAR voting is good, but it makes the (IMO) mistake of taking the average
rating as each candidate's score. I think it's absolutely crucial in a voting
system to make it resilient to manipulation, and that means that taking the
median rating (as in Majority Judgement) is the way to go.

~~~
quadrangle
STAR does NOT make that mistake. I mean, it literally doesn't. It uses the SUM
of scores, NOT the mean _or_ the median. But sum is effectively the same
result as taking the median.

~~~
dragonwriter
Sum is effectively equivalent to mean, not median.

~~~
quadrangle
Well, the main concern most people have with mean is if it ignores
abstentions. Sum does _not_ ignore abstentions, they are the same as a marked
0. But you're right that sum is like mean if mean counts all the abstentions
as 0's.

I'm open to the idea that actually using median is superior. Could you expound
on that?

------
mjevans
A re-evaluation of voting systems with ideas from Bruster's Millions would be
nice too.

    
    
        * None of the Above (NotA) / No Confidence **Note
        * Requiring a fully ranked ballot (at least until after NotA)
    

If NotA then all of the candidates who've run for the current vacancy in "this
election cycle" are banned, and a special election is held from scratch. About
1 month to get signatures/on the ballot and then directly to a special
election no greater than 3 months from the date of the failed election.

I still prefer weakest looser elimination (
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulze_method](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulze_method)
) and feel that the above tweaks would greatly improve many of corner cases.

The Wikipedia articles are sufficient to avoid watching the film.

[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088850/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088850/)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brewster%27s_Millions_(1985_fi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brewster%27s_Millions_\(1985_film\))

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

------
gojomo
I like IRV, but it leads to longer ballots and more-complicated voter ranking
decisions, and hard-to-predict results in corner cases.

I'd prefer a variant I've not seen discussed elsewhere, but I'll call
"Candidate-Delegated Instant Runoff Voting". Rather than allowing each voter
to supply a unique 2nd, 3rd, etc choice, each _candidate_ may select another
candidate that's considered the "next choice" of 'their' voters, if the
selecting candidate is eliminated. They'd have to irrevocably declare this
"backup choice" before voting started.

That is: each voter still only selects a single candidate. But in the event
that candidate is eliminated, there's a predictable, known-before-hand other
candidate to whom their votes get re-assigned in the instant-runoff. There's
greater predictability as to who will be helped by a certain vote, and the
full result is calculable from the 1st tally of direct votes (or somewhat
forecastable from an accurate pre-election poll of voters' top choices).

~~~
lotyrin
Not sure why this wouldn't devolve into the same two party game theory you get
with FPTP -- Vote for Greater Evil with a runoff to Actual Satan vs Lesser
Evil with runoff to Milquetoast Sockpuppet.

~~~
gojomo
Like IRV, it’d help address the ‘spoiler’ issue where an emerging constituency
is essentially penalized for growing strength, by sabotaging the major party
closest to them. This, and IRV, instead gives them positive influence in
proportion to their growing strength.

As such, also like IRV, it doesn’t totally end tendencies towards two major
parties. Even fully proportionate representation systems often trend that way,
and such coalitions aren’t all bad: they help sinplify choices, making the
outsones of elections more gradual and predictable, and make it more likely
some stable coalition that together represents a plausible majority can form a
working government. But it still creates new competitiveness around the edges,
that single-member plurality suppresses.

------
fabianhjr
STAR (Score Then Automatic Runoff) is the system we need. (Or V321 in case
there can't be a runoff)

[https://www.equal.vote/](https://www.equal.vote/)

or RRV (Reweighted Range Voting) for proportional representation.

[https://rangevoting.org/RRV.html](https://rangevoting.org/RRV.html)

------
juancampa
This makes a lot of sense as a system, but who came up with "instant runoff"?
should be called "ranked voting"

~~~
xvedejas
There are many kinds of voting which involve the voters ranking their choices.
The difference is in how those choices are resolved. You can get very
different election results depending on whether you do instant runoff voting,
or use a condorcet method, or use borda count. They're all ranked voting, but
they have very different properties.

~~~
juancampa
Interesting, thanks for the clarification. I didn't realize how nuanced it can
be. For example, when using the Condorcet method there's a chance of not
having a winner. From wikipedia[1]:

> This is sometimes called a Condorcet cycle or just cycle and can be thought
> of as Candidate Rock beating Candidate Scissors, Candidate Scissors beating
> Candidate Paper, and Candidate Paper beating Candidate Rock.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_method](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_method)

------
infimum
One of the most eye-opening moments of my CS studies was, when we discussed
the Gibbard-Satterthwaite Theorem [1] in a class about Algorithmic Game
Theory. I always like to bring it up in discussions about voting. In brief it
states that every voting system is either 1\. dictatorial (only 1 vote really
counts) 2\. limiting the number of outcomes to 2 3\. is not strategy-proof
(you have to vote tactically, for example ranking your favourite lower to
achieve a better result)basically people have to 'game' the system to get what
they want)

It would be interesting to know how different proposed system tackle this.
[Iirc one of the more reasonable approaches seemed to be relaxing No. 3 to
make strategic voting computationally hard].

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibbard%E2%80%93Satterthwaite_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibbard%E2%80%93Satterthwaite_theorem)

------
aurizon
The USA has created a political currency - each vote in Congress, (both
houses) is a visible and countable action. This means it can be monetized, and
it has been by bags of cash, trips to foreign shores and by many other ways
thought up by creative lobbyists - such as wire transfers to Swiss banks. This
is the unforeseen consequence of allowing the voter to hold his representative
accountable to him/her. Sadly, it has brought the USA the worst of all abuse.

Why not allow the vote to be private? Just give each representative a button
and this goes to a simple counter that accumulates the total votes cast. It
will be unhackable - a self contained system without connection to any
network, and includes a 'vote once' latch to stop voting twice. We need to
remove the representatives from all forms of bribery by this simple
demonetization.

~~~
maxxxxx
Seems this opens the path to a lot of hidden bribery. I think it would make
things much worse.

~~~
aurizon
Well, we now have hidden as well as open bribery!!!

------
eggestad
It never ceases to amaze me that people fail to see what is the real cause of
dysfunction in your election system.

 _It 's the single member constituency._

Also known as single member districts. This is what really ails your election
system.

You can toy around with IRV, STV, AV, two round voting, etc etc etc but you
will never really fix it. It seem that people think a "real fix" is a three
party system. I call BS, you really need 6 to 8. That means multi member
constituencies.

Once you go multi member you're very quickly arrive at _party list
proportional representation_ as your election system.

------
eli
This is an aside, but:

> _Some publications even blame third party voters for Hillary Clinton 's loss
> in 2016._

I don't think there is any plausible reason to believe Clinton would have won
in 2016 if not for third-party candidates running. The math just doesn't add
up.

~~~
tzs
The raw numbers are there for third party candidate to make a difference. It
would only have taken Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin going to Clinton
instead of Trump to have changed the result.

In Michigan, Trump won by around 11k votes, and there were around 223k third
party votes (172k Johnson, 51k Stein).

In Wisconsin, Trump won by 22k votes. Johnson got 107k there and Stein got
31k.

In Pennsylvania, Trump won by 46k. 147k went to Johnson and 50k to Stein.

I'd guess that almost all Stein voters would pick Clinton over Trump, so take
Stein out of the race and in all three of those states Clinton wins that
statewide vote unless the Stein voters decide to stay home. I'd guess that
those who would vote for Stein would be sufficiently "anyone but Trump" to not
stay home.

Those states are all winner-takes-all for the Electoral College, so that would
do it. (Maine and Nebraska are the only states that split their electoral
votes).

What would have happened without Johnson is a harder call. Trump and Clinton
are both terrible from a Libertarian point of view. I'd expect Libertarian
voters to be more likely to go Republican than Democrat if there is no
Libertarian on the ballot most years, but Trump is so different from what had
been mainstream Republicans before that I have no idea who the majority of
Libertarians would have picked.

Also, I suspect that many of the Johnson voters were "never Trump" Republicans
rather than Libertarians, who would agree with conservative writer and
research fellow at the Cato Institute P.J. O'Rourke who said that Clinton lies
about everything and is wrong on every issue, but he was endorsing her over
Trump because she was wrong "within normal parameters".

~~~
eli
_" I'd guess that almost all Stein voters would pick Clinton over Trump..."_

I see absolutely no reason to believe that.

~~~
tzs
Compare:

[https://www.isidewith.com/candidate-guide/jill-stein-vs-
hill...](https://www.isidewith.com/candidate-guide/jill-stein-vs-hillary-
clinton)

[https://www.isidewith.com/candidate-guide/jill-stein-vs-
dona...](https://www.isidewith.com/candidate-guide/jill-stein-vs-donald-trump)

Also check them all out at ontheissues.org.

Stein was the Green Party candidate, and Trump was pretty much the anti-Green
candidate. Clinton ranges from agreeing with the Green party to indifferent on
most of their major issues.

Even where Trump and Stein agree, such as on getting rid of Obamacare, they
are massively incompatible (Stein wants to get rid of it for a single-payer
system, Trump for just letting the market work it out).

~~~
eli
Your theory is that people decide to vote and then study each candidate’s
positions to decide who to vote for?

~~~
tptacek
And your theory is that you're right because you say you are?

------
legohead
CGP Grey video on IRV / Alternative Vote:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Y3jE3B8HsE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Y3jE3B8HsE)

------
excalibur
Having voters rank all the candidates from most to least desirable is a great
idea. The IRV method of tabulating their choices is pretty questionable. There
has to be a better way.

~~~
0xffff2
There are better ways, but they are generally more complicated and thus harder
to explain to voters. IRV already gets a lot of flack for being too hard to
understand, but it's the second-easiest system to explain after FPTP.

------
Sniffnoy
This piece seems to have been written by someone with no knowledge of voting
methods other than first-past-the-post and IRV. Looking outside these two
options there are clearly better ones, such as approval voting, which is even
simpler. IRV isn't even monotonic!

I don't know why IRV seems to be such an attractive nuisance. Please, skip
IRV, just use approval voting.

------
bryanlarsen
If you really wanted to encourage 3rd party candidates, then Proportional
Representation would work even better.

Both are better than first past the post, but agreeing on an alternative is
HARD.

The situation in Canada is instructive: the governing left-central Liberals
promised to replace first past the post, but reneged on their promise when
they realized that the committees studying the issue were going to come back
with a Mixed Member Proportional recommendation which would hurt them and help
the left-wing New Democratic Party, rather than the ranked ballot mechanism
that would help them.

(That's speculation, of course. They gave some other BS reason for breaking
the promise)

~~~
olliej
Proportional voting is a vastly superior system for arranging many-people
blocks (senate and congress in the US), and also completely breaks
gerrymandering.

It doesn’t work for individual candidate positions like president, because you
can’t have a non whole number percentage of a single candidate

~~~
incompatible
Electing the president separately, when the president is a position of power
and not just ceremonial, doesn't make sense anyway. With a multiparty system,
you are better off waiting for a coalition to form in parliament and letting
that select the president. Otherwise, either the president or the parliament
can act as a roadblock.

Compare with how the system of the Netherlands works: a single country-wide
electorate, and no threshold except for the number of votes needed for a seat.
The outcome is numerous parties in parliament (i.e., far more democratic than
the US) and coalition governments which must be formed or at least supported
by parties that got a majority of the votes between them.

~~~
singingboyo
I'd argue that if the president is intended to be a position of power, then a
separate election is good - otherwise, one party (presumably the largest) in
the ruling coalition has power far beyond what their vote count would justify,
and the person gets power without real input from the electorate.

Especially with many parties, if parties A and B are reasonably similar, it's
quite plausible to like party A's platform while preferring party B's
presidential candidate. A separate presidential election accounts for that,
allowing you to elect A for the house, and B for president.

Note that parties A and B are similar - I'd argue that they'd have to be, and
that it's extraordinarily unlikely to get a president the ruling coalition is
incapable of compromising with. This works out because overall, the vote for
president should be ideologically similar to the votes for
congress/parliament. (That working, of course, is contingent on some form of
ranked voting for the president, rather than the FPTP system the US has now.)

All that said, I'm from Canada, and I don't really agree with the idea of a
single person with large amounts of power, but that's my take if there must be
one.

~~~
incompatible
Well, in Canada you have a Prime Minister who is elected by the House of
Commons? Would it be so much better if the Prime Minister was elected
separately? How would a Prime Minister run a government if his/her party was
in opposition?

------
jeffdavis
I am more and more convinced that democracy just needs to be one input to the
political process, not the only one and maybe not even the primary one.

The United States was never intended to be a strongly democratic place, at
least at the national level. Presidents are elected by electors, who are
divided among the states according to population, and directed by the state
legislatures. Senators were originally chosen by state legislatures, and there
are two per state. All federal judges are appointed.

That basically leaves the House of Representatives, who are selected by the
people. And they have the most power over spending, which makes sense as a
check on entrenched powers.

Over time, we've become more democratic either through amendments or
convention. I'm not entirely convinced that's a good thing.

IRV is trying to help choose from the options on the democratic menu, but it
doesn't solve the problem of what to put on the menu in the first place.

In California, right now voters are considering a proposition about dialysis
treatment centers and what they can charge. If I vote yes (like the insurance
companies would prefer) then I am apparently damning dialysis patients to the
grave. If I vote no (like the private equity firms that own the centers would
prefer) then I am allowing poor patients to be overcharged and subjected to
unsanitary conditions. At least that's what the TV tells me.

It just seems like a bad idea to put every technical issue out for a vote. I
think that's the logical conclusion of democracy and I don't think it's a good
place to go. But it seems like all the new voting systems assume that it is
what we all want.

------
chrisco255
I think this should be implemented at the Party primary level. It's too hard
to change the Constitution and all 50 states to some kind of run off system.
But at the party level, I think it makes sense and would be much easier to
roll out and implement.

~~~
dlbucci
The purpose of the change is to move away from a two-party system, where
people are forced to vote red or blue, because green and grey are too small to
have a real chance. Only making the change within parties wouldn't fix that at
all.

~~~
chrisco255
I understand that, but from a pragmatic point of view, you have little chance
of achieving that. As long as Congressional districts are winner-take-all. And
Senate seats are winner-take-all (there's only one seat up for each state at a
time, usually). Nothing will change at the Federal level. And as for the
Presidency, each state gets to decide how they allocate their electoral votes.
Game theory currently suggests it's in a state's best interests to allocate
all of their votes to the winner of the popular vote in that state.

And in the meantime, you're going to hit roadblock upon roadblock in trying to
get a major disruptive system installed at the Federal election level.

You would have a much easier time getting the system to change from within the
Democrat and Republican parties for the primary system, since those rules are
set by the parties themselves and not by the states.

So long as the parties are open and accessible to anyone, I don't see a big
problem. The parties themselves are composed of many smaller factions (greens,
libertarians, evangelicals, etc, etc).

~~~
dragonwriter
> You would have a much easier time getting the system to change from within
> the Democrat and Republican parties for the primary system, since those
> rules are set by the parties themselves and not by the states.

In any state with citizen initiatives, it involves _less_ wrangling with
esconced elites to change statewide rules than party internal rules. That's
where the real big changes are likely to happen.

------
WillPostForFood
Trying to fix politics by modifying the voting system is like trying to fix
dysfunctional corporate culture by implementing some new task tracking system.
It actually might have some small benefits, but it ignores tackling the real
problem.

------
ClayShentrup
[https://results.sos.nd.gov/resultsSW.aspx?text=BQ&type=CIALL...](https://results.sos.nd.gov/resultsSW.aspx?text=BQ&type=CIALL&map=CTY&area=Fargo&name=Fargo)

------
quadrangle
What we need is STAR voting or 3-2-1 voting.

[https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-best-single-winner-
voting-...](https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-best-single-winner-voting-
method-for-electing-presidents-mayors-or-other-executives) lays it out
clearly.

STAR is on the ballot in Lane County, OR. We just might find out tonight or
tomorrow that we'll see the first ever implementation of a more equal voting
system.

IRV is _not_ an equal system, it counts _some_ people's preferences and
discards others. [https://www.equal.vote/star-vs-
irv](https://www.equal.vote/star-vs-irv)

------
fallingfrog
I’m happy with rcv as we have for the federal races in Maine. There was none
of the predicted chaos and confusion and the results were well accepted by the
voting public.

------
elicash
While IRV weakens the major parties, you still end up with a two party system.
If you want more parties, then support a parliamentary system.

~~~
craftyguy
> you still end up with a two party system

Can you explain why you think that is the case?

~~~
elicash
When I look at the UK for instance, which has real variety of parties, you see
a parliamentary system with first-past-the-post voting.

~~~
Sean1708
> which has real variety of parties

We really don't, historically (for the last century or so) it's been pretty
cut and dry between either Labour or Conservatives with the occasional
coalition (always involving one of those two parties).

~~~
elicash
Hm, I must be mistaken then. Thanks!

------
arikr
See also: [https://represent.us/](https://represent.us/)

------
manicdee
Hare-Clarke or bust.

Also: multi-member electorates, otherwise the system trends towards two
parties exclusively.

------
anotheryou
good video series on voting algos:
[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7679C7ACE93A5638](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7679C7ACE93A5638)

------
TangoTrotFox
IRV doesn't solve the right problem. The biggest benefit of IRV is that it
helps to reduce the spoiler effect, but not much else. But I don't think when
people talk about election change that they are talking about the spoiler
effect. Rather I think the thing people see is this weird trend in society
today. Fewer people than ever identify as republican or democrat, yet very
nearly 100% of all seats in office at all levels of government are filled by
republicans or democrats.

Let's imagine a state had 100 representatives (to keep the numbers nice). And
in this state 35% of the population most strongly identified as republican.
34% most strongly identified as democrat. 16% most strongly identified as
green, and 15% most strongly identified as libertarian. And this state had a
really good geographic mix of people, so everybody was completely evenly
distributed. As a nice aside there you don't even need to worry about things
like gerrymandering - any sample of any area will have an identical mix of
people as any other area. That's good... right?

What would be the most reasonable result for the makeup of their
representatives? What would we actually get? I think most of everybody would
say the same thing for the most reasonable result. 35 republicans, 34
democrats, 16 greens, and 15 libertarians. Few would correctly answer what
we'd actually get - 100 republicans. And in a nutshell, _this_ is the real
problem. District based plurality elections, be it first past the post or IRV
will trend towards domination of two major parties. The only solution is
proportional representation. You get 10% of the votes and if there's at least
10 seats then you're guaranteed to get at least one.

Proportional stands next to no chance of being implemented since it would
require the current political establishment to sign their own [political]
death warrants, but if we're going to change the electoral system I think we
should at least look at solutions that would actually solve the problem.

------
rustcharm
The only people who want to change voting systems are the ones whose preferred
candidates don't win.

~~~
quadrangle
Except for people who actually want a healthy society and see the bigger
picture.

If my candidate wins with a plurality and is stymied and sabotaged by a
divided population with many people feeling totally unrepresented, that does
not create a world I prefer. I want a society where as many people as possible
feel included and trust the system. I don't want a situation where losers feel
disenfranchised and interested in undermining democracy.

If my views are actually democratically popular, I will be okay with a fairer
voting system. If I like that the current system is _unfairly_ weighted in my
favor, then it's still very short-sighted for me to defend that system.

Incidentally, I don't advocate for IRV, it's a flawed system. Much better
options are STAR, 3-2-1, or approval voting.

------
vertline3
Seems like it pushes everything to a lukewarm center, change already difficult
to enact would be even harder, it goes to "who sorta kinda appeals to the
most". I imagine turnout would decline.

~~~
empath75
You end up with the candidate who most voters at least like while offering
more choices. Seems like it would wipe out the ‘rile up the base’ strategy in
favor of trying not to offend anyone.

~~~
vertline3
Right, I'm saying it's a stable but stale form where candidates optimize being
tepid. May seem fine but I see how it would lead to further entrenchment of a
ruling class

