
Ranked-choice voting is on the ballot in New York City - Reedx
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/15/opinion/new-york-ranked-choice-voting.html
======
crazygringo
I absolutely support ranked-choice voting as an improvement to the current
system.

BUT, the proposed system is specifically Instant Run-Off Voting (IRV), which
does _not_ make a centrist third-party candidate likely to win. Because it
removes whoever gets the least first-place votes, the only improvement it
gives is that a third-party candidate doesn't _spoil_ an election, because
your second-place vote will still count. (E.g. Nader wouldn't have taken votes
from Gore, so Gore would have won instead of Bush.) But you're still stuck
with one of the polarizing two-party candidates who will win.

Contrast this to the Borda Count [2], where points are assigned by rank. In
this case, suppose about half of everyone votes first-place for an extreme
liberal, and the other half vote first-place for an extreme conservative. But
everyone votes second-place for a moderate centrist they can live with, and
third-place for the opposite-party candidate they detest. With IRV, the
centrist is ignored and one of the extremists will win. But with Borda, the
centrist candidate will win.

So to really get away from the poisonous political polarization of our times,
ranked choice is necessary, but it needs to be Borda or similar, _not_ IRV.
Still -- it's a start, and I'm grateful for that alone.

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

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borda_count](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borda_count)

~~~
gradys
Totally with you on supoorting ranked-choice voting. It seems like a clear and
obvious upgrade over what we're doing now in ways that can be mathematically
verified.

Question though - why prefer the Bourda Count over a Condorcet method[1] like
the Schulze method[2]?

I recently went down the voting method rabbit-hole when recreationally
overengineering the procedure for selecting a fun offsite activity for my
team. I picked the Schulze method basically because it satisfies more[3] of
the formal criteria that seemed important, including the Condorcet criterion,
which seems especially important.

The Bourda Count method doesn't[4] seem to satisfy the Condorcet criterion, so
it's possible that a candidate that would win every head to head match up
would lose the election. Also, like most (all?) methods that allocate variable
numbers of points to candidates, it's subject to tactical voting[5], i.e. it
might be rational not to allocate any points to your second place candidate in
order to maximize the margin between your first place and second place
candidates, even if you prefer your second place candidate to several others.

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

2 -
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulze_method](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulze_method)

3 -
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulze_method#Comparison_ta...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulze_method#Comparison_table)

4 -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borda_count#Evaluation_by_crit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borda_count#Evaluation_by_criteria)

5 -
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borda_count#Potential_for_ta...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borda_count#Potential_for_tactical_manipulation)

~~~
pwagland
One way to think about the Borda is that it gives you the least hated
candidate, instead of the most liked.

From Wikipedia: The Borda count is intended to elect broadly-acceptable
options or candidates, rather than those preferred by a majority, and so is
often described as a consensus-based voting system rather than a majoritarian
one.

~~~
learnstats2
I don't think it works though.

Unless you are careful, partisan voters will likely vote their candidate
maximum and other candidates minimum - this is called bullet voting on
Wikipedia.

Non-partisan voters will likely vote genuinely.

Since bullet voting is the dominant strategy, the election essentially reduces
to First Past the Post and contains all the bad (majoritarian) incentives that
FPTP does.

~~~
vkou
Most people aren't completely partisan, when given multiple palatable choices.
This is less relevant in the US, with its two-party system, but is quite
relevant outside of it.

~~~
paulgb
My concern is that if even a small number of people bullet vote, other people
will see that their votes have less impact and adjust accordingly, in a self-
perpetuating cycle.

------
whack
Every time the topic of IRV comes up, people immediately wonk out and start
debating the pros/cons of Borda, Condorcet and other alternatives to IRV. Even
worse, they start intricately detailing all the ways in which IRV is "bad",
relative to other voting systems that they prefer. And then people respond to
them with with a long list of reasons as to why their proposed voting system
is also bad, and actually worse than IRV. Finally, someone brings up the Arrow
impossibility theorem and proves that all voting systems are fundamentally
flawed in some way.

Can we put our wonk-hats away for a second though and acknowledge something:
IRV may not be perfect, but it is heaps better than the current system. Every
time we get into a IRV-Borda-Condorcet debate, everyone else tunes out,
decides that it's best to just leave things well alone, and nothing ever
changes.

Are there other voting systems that are better than IRV? Probably. But at this
point, IRV is the most credible challenger to the status quo. It is simple,
easy to understand, the average joe is open to it, and it has considerable
momentum. Instead of tearing it down because it isn't perfect, can we just
throw our weight behind it and help it make it a dent in the dysfunctional
status quo. Once that happens, we can wonk out as much as we want, and debate
what voting system to use in a referendum to determine the ideal voting-system
for future elections. But it would be great if we could just focus for now on
getting something done.

~~~
oehpr
British Columbia recently had a referendum on our provincial voting system.

The first time we did this, we lost, 60 to 40. 60 on the reform side btw, we
needed a super majority.

We did another referendum on it it, we lost 50 50.

We did it again, this time giving a bunch of options for voting preferences,
but first asked "fptp, yes or no?". We lost 60 to 40, 60 against.

I am in agreement with the lesson you're talking about. I'll take basically
anything over FPTP.

I wish we had learned that lesson 10 years ago. Because at this junction, BC
is sick of the question being asked, and we're basically stuck with this
poisonous voting system forever.

A strange coincidence, the party that promised to reform Canada's federal
election but deliberately pulled out on the results of the worlds strangest
online poll, just got back in to power last day.

So not only is reform on it's own nearly impossible, it seems impossible to
ask reform of people whom got in to power with FPTP.

The people debating the merits of the various voting systems really need to
open their eyes to how thoroughly stuck they are with the worst choice.

~~~
kennywinker
“Just got back to power” with a mandate from 21% of eligible voters. Hooray
for FPTP :(

~~~
lambertsimnel
And, also thanks the FPTP, the party with the most votes didn't get the most
seats.

~~~
caf
That's actually thanks to single-member-electorates.

As long as you have single memeber electorates, you can have one party
narrowly win a whole lot while another party wins crushing landslides in
fewer. In the Canadian election the Conservatives 'wasted' a lot of votes
running up the popular vote scoreboard in Alberta and Saskatchewan.

~~~
lambertsimnel
I agree, but arguably switching to multi-member districts entails replacing
FPTP. (Another way of looking at it is that closed party-list PR, single non-
transferable vote and/or multiple non-transferable vote are generalisations of
FPTP to multi-member districts. The non-transferable vote systems have a lot
of disadvantages.)

------
uoaei
Shortly after the 2016 election I did some research into election and social
choice theory. First-past-the-post is clearly the worst system possible. But
ranked-choice also has strange artifacts where voting for your actual favorite
as your first-rank choice means they might have a lower chance of winning.

A much simpler method in my opinion is approval voting: the ballot instructs,
"Who do you think would perform the duties of the office to your approval?
Check all names that apply." Then whoever gets the most checkmarks in
aggregate is the winner. No spoiler effect, easily-understood vote tallying
system, and reflects true approval in the population of voters. It can be
adapted to multi-seat races just by taking the top _n_ winners.

Ka-Ping Yee simulated elections using a number of recognized methods for
counting votes[1]. I believe that the best system will be one which is easily-
understood at the ballot box and behaves as similarly to the Condorcet method
as possible. According to these simulations, it appears that approval voting
is the best.

No election method will meet all the requirements for an ideal one[2] so it
comes down to which conditions you want to enforce and which are less
important. IMO, monotonicity is very important while the later-no-harm
criterion can be interpreted as a compromise which is necessary for strategic
voting.

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

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theore...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theorem)

~~~
jetrink
As a casual observer, I wonder why ranked-choice captured the mind share when
people who are passionate about voting systems seem to universally prefer
approval. Maybe there's something about voting for multiple candidates that
just doesn't sit right with people?

~~~
NickM
This may be too cynical, but I have to wonder if it's _because_ of its flaws
that the two parties in power are allowing RCV to gain ground. RCV eliminates
the spoiler effect for non-competitive third-party candidates, but
conveniently fails to do so when third parties start to become threatening.

Approval voting, on the other hand, always allows people to show support to a
third-party candidate without risking throwing away their vote....

~~~
macawfish
In my mind it's something a little more subtle but to the same effect. I think
that ordinal and cardinal voting systems attract/repel people with different
psychological tendencies, probably not unlike the tendencies described here,
related to tolerance for uncertainty:
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3092984/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3092984/).

Ordinal systems impose a strict rank on peoples' choices, whereas cardinal
systems allow people to settle on superpositions of choices, to explicitly
give up control.

To me, being forced to order my choices is an unfair imposition. I want to be
able to say "I'd be okay with fish or vegan food, someone else who cares more
should make the final call". I don't want Rob Richie telling me that I should
vote for fish over vegan food because I happen to really like fish. In doing
that, I'd be alienating my vegan friend, and because I'm totally up for eating
vegan food, I find it unacceptable to be pressured into ranking one over the
other. This is the very dynamic that creates splitting, and I'm offended by
it.

Being forced to rank my choices is unnatural to me, but I've heard ordinal
voting advocates claim that ranking choices is natural and intuitive to
everyone/most people, even after sharing my position that it feels funny. Go
figure.

I'd expect ordinal voting advocates to be more likely to agree with statements
like "everyone has a favorite color".

~~~
jsmith45
A good ranked choice system like Schulze, avoids that issue.

You can give multiple people the same rank, to express no preference between
them. So you could have two or more choices you don't want to express an
opinion between both marked 1, then perhaps the lesser but still acceptable
candidates marked 2, the unacceptable candidates as 3, and extremely
unacceptable candidates as 4.

Meanwhile, somebody else can come along and rank all the candidates with a
unique number if they prefer.

In Schulze, all the numbering is doing is expressing who you would pick in a
one-on-one race any pair of candidates.

Ranking candidates the same (tied), simply means you would have left that
question blank on a traditional FPTP ballot because you don't care which of
the two wins, either because you find them equally good/bad or you feel they
sufficiently close that you would prefer to let those who care more decide.

For example, I don't own a home, or have kids, so i will usually leave school
property tax levy questions blank. I may have some super slight preference one
way or another, but I'm mostly unaffected, so I will let those who actually
care about this decide.

------
jefftk
I completely agree that this is better than nothing and some sort or ranking
would be good, and that IRV is not great. But Borda count is vulnerable to
very bad tactical voting. People will put candidates who "can't win" above
people who they like better but don't want to win. And when this goes wrong
you'll have people elected who no one wants. See this chart, showing that
fully tactical Borda is abysmal :[http://electionscience.github.io/vse-
sim/vse.html](http://electionscience.github.io/vse-sim/vse.html) (from
[http://electionscience.github.io/vse-
sim/VSE/](http://electionscience.github.io/vse-sim/VSE/))

If we're going to do rankings we should use something that meets the Condorcet
criterion, but overall I think Approval is probably the best for its
simplicity.

A resource I like:
[https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/D6trAzh6DApKPhbv4/a-voting-t...](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/D6trAzh6DApKPhbv4/a-voting-
theory-primer-for-rationalists)

~~~
jacques_chester
Approval voting is too similar to FPTP. Enough voters will continue to mark a
single box that you're not better off in practical terms. Major candidates
will aim to muddy the waters because they won't want "leakage" to third
parties.

~~~
moultano
The proximate problem in US elections is the spoiler effect, and Approval
solves that as effectively as any other system. We won't have to have endless
debates about whether Nader voters "would have" voted for Gore. We'll know for
sure.

~~~
bcrosby95
People's votes aren't spoiled because they will always approve of their
preferred candidate and the singular mainstream candidate. Because of this,
one of the two mainstream ones will always win. So there's basically zero
chance of the non mainstream candidate to win, even if a majority of people
would pick them as their #1 choice.

~~~
jacques_chester
> _People 's votes aren't spoiled because they will always approve of their
> preferred candidate and the singular mainstream candidate. Because of this,
> one of the two mainstream ones will always win._

This is demonstrably untrue.

Minor parties are represented in every legislature in Australia, including in
single-member lower house electorates.

------
epistasis
In California, the governor recently vetoed legislation that would have
allowed most cities to use ranked-choice voting. His explanation is a bit odd:

> Ranked choice is an experiment that has been tried in several charter cities
> in California. Where it has been implemented, I am concerned that it has
> often led to voter confusion, and that the promise that ranked choice voting
> leads to greater democracy is not necessarily fulfilled.

[https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-
content/uploads/2019/10/SB-212-Vet...](https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-
content/uploads/2019/10/SB-212-Veto-Message.pdf)

Newsom's own San Francisco is one of the places that has used ranked-choice
voting, and I've not once heard of voter confusion. So the explanation seems
rather disingenuous.

~~~
bxparks
I worked as a poll worker in San Francisco during the 2016 elections. I
answered so many questions about ranked choice voting that I got tired of it
by the end of the day. I would guess that more than 50% of voters were
somewhat confused. Some of them were so confused that they botched the ballot
twice, and had to return to the desk to pick up new ballots. Other times, the
voter thought they had filled it out correctly only to have it rejected at the
voting machine. These problems definitely increased queue times and size of
the waiting line.

Newsom may have other motives but I don't think his explanation is
disingenuous.

Edited: "confused" -> "somewhat confused"

~~~
alistairSH
Do you have any sense for whether the confusion was related to ranked choice
itself, or a poorly laid out ballot?

When rolling out ranked choice, I would expect to need lots of additional
messaging before and during polling so nobody is surprised. And also a
complete re-evaluation of the ballot's layout to ensure it's usable. I have no
idea if either of those happened in CA.

Edit - looking at TimJRobinson's post below, if that's how CA cities laid out
their ballots, I'm not surprised there were many errors. That sea of bubbles
is hard to read and very easy to apply a pen mark in the wrong place. At
minimum, the bubbles themselves should be filled with the number which they
represent.

------
s_dev
Ireland uses this appraoch. We call it STV.

STV Explained --
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8XOZJkozfI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8XOZJkozfI)

It just a better democracy because it's more representative.

It's solves the "wasted vote" problem people have with democracy and why many
democracies result in a two party system. This way it ensures your vote is
counted and multiple parties exist.

~~~
gmiller123456
Actually, that's a form of Proportional Representation. What's being adopted
by NY still results in one winner, not a percentage of seats awarded based on
the percentage of votes a party got.

~~~
pmyteh
Instant Runoff Voting is essentially STV in the degenerate case of single seat
constituencies rather than multi-member ones. So you're both right! It is in
some sense the same system, but it plays very differently in that the results
are majoritarian rather than proportional.

------
bhauer
Although instant run-off and other ranked or "preferential" voting models are
an improvement over plurality, we should be advocating for better and simpler
models such as approval voting or score voting. Approval and score voting are
cardinal methods that do not require that the voter order their preferences.
Preferential models such as IRV require a strict preference order be specified
by the voter and are much more complicated.

My go-to resource for voting reform is the Center for Election Science [1].

Perhaps the worst feature of IRV is that it's non-monotonic, meaning that in
some cases, voting your sincere preference can actually hurt your preferred
candidate. See the linked part of the video in [2].

[1] [https://www.electionscience.org/](https://www.electionscience.org/)

[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2q_eMUGCU5U&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2q_eMUGCU5U&feature=youtu.be&t=487)

~~~
specialist
Yup. Approval Voting is the best balance between fairness and ease.

Only Score Voting is (somewhat) more fair.

No other system is as easy to teach, implement, audit. (Unlike IRV.) A big win
for us election integrity types.

~~~
ClayShentrup
STAR Voting is reasonable.

[https://star.vote/](https://star.vote/)

~~~
specialist
Belated response; apologies.

Terrific share, thank you. Show vs tell. Very effective.

------
gmiller123456
Certainly a small step in the right direction. But what's really needed to
give voters their voice is Proportional Representation. That's were the
legislative houses are made up of parties given the percentage of seats based
on the percentage of votes they received.

Ranked choice voting still results in a "first past the post" system, where
significant portions of the voters (up to 49.999...%) get no voice at all.

~~~
cortesoft
Proportional Representation doesn't work for a single office election

~~~
mywittyname
The House should have more seats anyway. We only have 435 because of the
Apportionment Act; the Constitution allows for no more than one Rep per 30,000
people.

~~~
24gttghh
Which would mean we should have up to something like 11,000 representatives
given our current population. Clearly something is wrong when the average
representative:constituent ratio is 1:700,000! It was originally 1:34,000.

11K is perhaps far too many to be manageable, but 435 is clearly far too few.

Edit: the 14th amendment may have changed this math before the 1911
Apportionment bill fixed it at 435, but 1:700K is still far too high.

------
anthony_romeo
My locality uses ranked-choice voting for its city elections. It also uses
paper ballots. While I believe philosophically that this is a far more
representative way of voting, the ballot was laid out as a giant matrix of
circles to fill in. It was pretty daunting, even for me. I could see that
ballot leading to serious issues for the voting rights of the elderly. It's
vital that the right type of ballot is chosen for this to really work.

I almost feel that ranked-choice voting would need to go hand-in-hand with a
switch to electronic voting machines (for a more clear and dynamic UI), which
I'm philosophically against and comes with its own host of usability issues
and problems with disenfranchisement. Hard to find a satisfying middle ground
on this one. Has anyone come across a more reasonable paper ballot for this
type of voting?

~~~
TimJRobinson
In Australia we write the rank number in boxes, I'm unsure what happens if you
double up a number or the OCR machine can't figure out what it is.

The ideal solution IMO is a touch screen machine with a list of candidates,
you drag and drop your order of preference, then when you're done it prints
out a paper ballot which you can double check is correct then drop in the
ballot box.

~~~
ferzul
For single member electorates, the count is done by hand. On the night, they
quickly allocate ballots to their first preference, and then they allocate
them according to which of the two most likely winners is on top. (Usually,
that means whoever came first and second last time, even if a repeat isn't all
that likely, but with a powerful enough justification they sometimes make a
different choice.) The full count is done by hand starting on Monday at the
earliest. It may have to wait up to two weeks if it's close - government is
formed on the basis of the unofficial, indicative counts.

OCR is mostly used for multmember electorates which aren't a problem in the US
due to being prohibited by federal law (when they were used, it was block
voting not proportional, so very badly antidemocratic). In that case, when the
machines confidence is low, it gets done by hand.

------
macawfish
My concern with ranked choice voting is that it doesn't reduce the problem of
splitting, it just obscures it from human view. My hunch is that data analysis
methods will still be just as capable of manipulating RCV as they are FPTP.
It'll just be harder to detect and reason about. Ordinal voting systems have
certain game theoretical properties in common.

I'm a huge fan of non-ranked (cardinal) voting systems, as they don't force
people to order their choices. Forcing people to order their choices filters
out information about peoples' preferences and therefore distorts them.

My favorite voting systems are approval voting and STAR voting.

~~~
DominikPeters
IRV does reduce the problem of vote splitting: if a candidate would win, but
is then split into two or more “clones” such that all voters rank these clones
in adjacent positions, then a clone still wins the election.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independence_of_clones_criteri...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independence_of_clones_criterion)

------
patrickmay
Almost any change to first-past-the-post will be an improvement. To really
give it teeth, we need a binding none-of-the-above-are-acceptable (NOTA)
option. Anyone who loses to NOTA is not eligible for the runoff.

------
jredwards
The real power of this is if you combine it with open primaries.

If you're in a competitive district, ranked choice allows you to prefer a less
traditional candidate with no penalty, instead of worrying that you'll give
away the election.

If you're not in a competitive district, open primaries mean that instead of
voting for the candidate from the party you prefer (who is destined to lose no
matter what), you can vote for whichever candidate you feel more comfortable
with and have an impact.

With both, the more primary seats you allow in your open primary, and given
ranked choice voting, the more likely you are to elect a candidate who
genuinely lies somewhere near the middle of the spectrum of the electorate,
instead of lying at the extreme of whichever party is in the majority of the
electorate.

------
rpmisms
I've been a huge fan of this system ever since CGP Grey made an excellent
video on how it works and why it's great.

Link:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Y3jE3B8HsE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Y3jE3B8HsE)

------
foresto
In case anyone here wants a quick primer on the differences between voting
systems, or just something easy to hand to friends and relatives who don't
have time for deep study, Politics in the Animal Kingdom by CGP Grey is a
great start.

At least one of the videos has already been mentioned, but here's the whole
series:

[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkLBH5Kzphe0Qu8mCW1Le...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkLBH5Kzphe0Qu8mCW1Leef2xSxPK1FIe)

[http://www.cgpgrey.com/politics-in-the-animal-
kingdom](http://www.cgpgrey.com/politics-in-the-animal-kingdom)

------
Spooky23
Few elections in New York are competitive.

Third parties are not centrists, they are usually sponsored by some big
brother. There’s a party that’s an arm of big labor unions, and at one point a
billionaire had his own party.

IMO third candidates are almost always bad in the US system. We’re not a
parliamentary system and I’ve never seen a third candidate who didn’t benefit
the incumbent.

~~~
jefftk
_> I’ve never seen a third candidate who didn’t benefit the incumbent_

This is probably an effect of the current voting system.

The proposal here is to change the voting system, which will make third-party
candidates less spoiler-y.

~~~
Spooky23
They still need to caucus to get a majority in a legislature. Encouraging
third party people, especially now, is just encouraging fringe lunatics.

------
vinay427
This has been used in San Francisco for city/county elections for a while now,
and was recently updated to allow up to ten rankings for each office. I really
wish it were used for other single-representative offices (governor, etc.).

------
mrybczyn
I came here to see nerding out of epic proportions on voting schemes. Was not
dissapointed.

Obviously - it's a tremendously difficult subject - and one that will not be
easy to convince the general public on.

Moving away from FPTP is necessary - but how to make it happen? Given that any
party in power - got there because of FPTP. they have strong incentive to keep
it...

------
sova
Ranked Choice Voting or Instant Run-Off voting could save the Union. It can
crush bicameralism at the root, I really hope we can apply it on the state-
level one day for Representatives. Districts and re-districting are more or
less Jokes in today's world, due to Gerrymandering. The person in Charge of
the whole left half of Colorado has the same number of people as the person in
charge of a set of towns on the eastern ridge. It's not like you can appease
such a wide area. Now, on the other hand, if all the representatives were
accountable to all state regions, you could call any one of them and start
getting progress on state issues. You could even ask them to work together.
Would this help or harm? Hard to say. I think it would definitely help.

~~~
zjaffee
Completely disagree, instant run off voting almost universally protects the
status quo, as it forces people to compromise their beliefs and vote for
someone either to the right or the left of where they personally stand,
leaving significant levels of disapproval in the legislature.

What we need is to eliminate the concept of districts within one of the houses
for a bicameral state legislature, and instead you'd vote for a party slate.
The current system where you vote for both legislatures by varying districts
doesn't do anything to improve government and only makes things less
democratic.

~~~
sova
How does instant voting force you to vote for someone not perfectly aligned?
You rank your choices from #1 to #10 or whatever. Wouldn't you agree that
that's a finer grain filter than my #1 choice or bust? Voting for a party that
has a ranked list of candidates is a nice idea, but that's what they use in
Germany right? and I don't see it working all that well. Can you point out
where this works well or better?

------
iambateman
We just worked with FairVote on an app to help people understand RCV:
rankit.vote.

It’s in beta, and still a little buggy, but it’s free to use. Would love some
feedback!

------
lkrubner
Here is a place where mathematicians miss the human psychology of run-off
elections. It's true that in terms of the math, ranked choice voting is the
same as having multiple run-off elections, but in reality, there is a
practical difference. Many people have a first choice candidate that they
study and get to know. They rarely know much about their second choice, or
their third choice. If there was a run-off election between an opponent and
their second choice candidate, people would suddenly pay much more attention
to their second choice candidate. Their preferences might shift.

For practical reasons, I'd favor run off elections instead of ranked choice.

------
jszymborski
I've been thinking a lot about electoral reform after the Canadian elections
yesterday.

I've been feeling really disillusioned about the likelihood of abolishing
first-past-the-post because of the current incentive structures, but is
changing the way we vote municipally maybe the beginning of the answer?

The barrier to get getting municipal electoral reform might be lower because
of the general lower stakes, shorter terms, and because it's a more direct
form of democracy.

If voters are used to voting with IRV municipally, get to understand it better
as a result, and perhaps like the outcomes better, it might be easier to get a
critical mass of the population to demand reform.

------
schappim
We’ve had this in Australia my entire life.

Next up you guys should adopt the Democracy Sausage[1].

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

~~~
jacques_chester
It is depressing how many discussions of voting systems in the US are (a)
always being theorised from first principles instead of referring to a century
of experience over thousands of elections at all scales from local to
national, (b) focus on one (1) mayoral election as "proof" that IRV is "worse"
and (c) assume that all counting methods are equal in terms of the logistics
of actually _counting_ the ballots.

As an Australian living in the USA it drives me fairly bonkers.

------
ferzul
Changing the voting system in America will have little effect on the party
system. However, the adoption of non-partisan runoffs like in Louisiana and
California will have a great effect on the people who are chosen.

The current duopoly exists despite the voting system. Look at Canada and the
UK, which have thriving national third parties and regional additional
parites. And consider that NZ switched to MMP and Australia switched to IRV
because of third party upsets. Canadians don't really worry if a vote for the
NDP is a wasted vote - they vote NDP, and maybe their candidate gets up or
maybe not.

The duopoly exists because various states basically have laws requiring it -
granting special privileges like ballot access or membership of the state
gerrymandering commission to the too two parties. There may also be a
contribution from the fact that electoral districts have vastly too many
voters.

Non-partisan runoffs increase the chances of a meaningful choice on voting
day. IRV merely lets you vote for someone who won't get in. NPRV won't change
the duopoly because that's required by law. But if you get a choice between
the moderate Strawberry Pie party candidate and the extreme Strawberry Pie
party candidate, you can get a good result from that.

------
pjkundert
Instant Run-Off may not be the ultimate voting system, but it is a
incontrovertible step-improvement vs. First Past the Post.

The idea of marshaling your _entire_ _population_ , and then _discarding_
everything except their selection of the _least-worst_ candidate is ...
laughable or tragic? Comical, maybe?

Respect for basic thermodynamics demands that, at least, you discover your
citizens' true ranking of preference, and respect that.

------
gumby
This system has been used in Australia longer than I have been alive so it
should not be difficult for New Yorkers, and should be an improvement.

Another improvement would be multi-candidate districts (which would also be
constitutional for federal elections except, of course, {vice,}president. In
that case use not only the first but first n preferences.

~~~
lambertsimnel
I agree, but note that proportional representation with ranked-choice voting
and multi-member districts doesn't require a different number of preferences
or votes per voter. It simply involves transferring each voter's one vote if
their first preference is eliminated and a fraction of it if their first
preference is elected, and then repeating with second and subsequent
preferences until all vacancies are filled.

------
currymj
one thing I think about a lot is that Australia has the sort of voting system
that voting system nerds here in the US dream about. yet their political
situation seems to be about as dysfunctional as ours.

of course first past the post is a pretty bad system and it would be good to
replace it, but I don’t think it will make a huge difference to the overall
political climate.

~~~
JacobAldridge
Australian chiming in. I think it depends on what you mean by dysfunction -
the Australian electorate seems fairly evenly split between the two major
parties, while adding some minor parties thanks to IRV (in the House of
Representatives) and proportional voting (in our Senate). This has created a
sequence of minority governments - where neither party has a majority in
either chamber - or slim majorities in the lower house (where our Executive /
Prime Minister is chosen from).

That does create some gridlock and there’s no clear mandate for a change of
direction.

I think that’s still a fair ways removed from some of the major-party
obstruction (specifically the GOP, and specifically Mitch McConnell leading
the US Senate) which defines current US politics from the outside.

I think IRV is a good thing for promoting a wider array of voices in politics,
but I don’t suspect it will do much to prevent inherent checks-and-balances
from becoming partisan roadblocks to policy.

~~~
jacques_chester
The wider range of voices in the upper houses is due to multi-member
electorates, not preferential voting _per se_.

Australia's hung parliaments are historical aberrations; I expect that the
historical pattern of clear lower house majorities to resume over time. The
economics of bloc formation and ordinary logistics create constant pressure on
any party. It's possible that Labor will be replaced by the Greens, or that
they will form a permanent coalition like the Liberals/National/LNP/CLP
chimera. But that will still be a de facto 2-party system.

------
Animats
This is what Brexit really needed. There are several options, none of which
really has a majority. That's why the UK is stuck.

------
gremlinsinc
I've thought about a voting mechanism where you'd get 100 'points' that you
can divy up... you can also convert points to 'negative' points.

Say for example you had:

Sanders,

Warren,

Gabbard,

Biden

and you despise biden... but like the other two... you could do something like
:

Sanders: 50

Warren: 20

Gabbard: 10

Biden: -20

Then you'd add up all the scores, the negative 20 you gave Biden would cancel
out a 20 someone else gave him in a positive sense.

This would probably need to be electronic to auto-calculate things as I'm sure
many people might end up doling out 110% or 90% if they don't do the math
right.

Could also have a button to auto-divvy if you have no preference, or auto-
divvy by party if no preference as long as they're a democrat, etc.... I've
not researched all the voting theories out there, but I'm curious if this type
of system would work or not?

I'm not sure if IRV/ranked choice will work better, but I know what we have
now is a major failure, so I'm excited that we're at least testing and willing
to break things to get a system that works for more people.

------
gbronner
In NYC, this is a democrat protection scheme. In a few elections, one
republican runs against a field of democrats. There's some concern that the
Republican might win against a splintered field of Democrats -- can't recall
it ever happening, but the Republicans, who are a small minority, are forever
hopeful.

This will ensure that none get elected.

~~~
lambertsimnel
That's a feature, not a bug. Fair minority representation requires multi-
member districts. I understand democracy as implying majority rule, and where
there is only one winner, that should have majority support.

There should be multi-member districts where possible to avoid one-party
domination, but in cases where there can be only one winner, isn't it
democratic to allow a party with majority support to win?

~~~
gbronner
Kind of depends if you believe that representation depends on people vs party.
The party apparatus is controlled in a not-particularly democratic way, which
strongly affects who gets on the ballot, and historically it was possible to
win a major election with about 2% of the population of the district voting
for you.

There was another proposal a few years ago to make local elections non-
partisan.

Random ballot elections are the most representative.

------
privateSFacct
Quick solution: Open primaries.

California has an open primary, first two past the pole approach.

In practice this has driven a big move to the center. Two democrats past the
pole first? The more moderate one wins. Two republicans? Again, more moderate
one wins in general.

IRV with highly partisan primaries is still a losing game. Go to an open IRV
process and you have gold.

------
zestyping
Approval voting is:

• easier to participate in than IRV (IRV means lots of spoiled ballots)

• easier to understand the overall behaviour of (with IRV, the overall
behaviour of the system is nearly incomprehensible)

• cheaper to implement than IRV (you can even keep using existing paper
ballots!)

• able to eliminate the spoiler effect, which IRV does not

• able to reveal a reasonable measure of total support for each candidate
(e.g. for analysis and news reporting), which IRV cannot

Ranked ballots also introduce bias. IRV means 5–10% spoiled ballots instead of
~1%, and guess where those spoiled ballots are? Disproportionately in poorer
communities: [https://www.yes2repeal.org/spoiled-
ballots](https://www.yes2repeal.org/spoiled-ballots)

For single-winner elections, approval is an excellent method, and in my
opinion the best way to escape dysfunctional two-party control.

------
Elzear
I am working on an application[1] and library[2] to create smalls polls using
(so far) 8 different voting systems (approbation, borda, instant-runoff,
kemeny, majority, minimax, schulze, two-round-runoff). Feel free to play with
it, but it is still unstable, and I drop the database often times.

Condorcet.vote[3] is the only similar application that I know, it lets you use
14 different methods!

[1] [https://www.elzear.de/poll/BLIwuJIX](https://www.elzear.de/poll/BLIwuJIX)

[2] [https://gitlab.com/lzear/votes](https://gitlab.com/lzear/votes)

[3] [https://www.condorcet.vote](https://www.condorcet.vote)

~~~
DominikPeters
Academics working on voting theory have several of these as well:
[https://voting.ml/](https://voting.ml/)
[https://opra.cs.rpi.edu/](https://opra.cs.rpi.edu/)
[https://pnyx.dss.in.tum.de/](https://pnyx.dss.in.tum.de/)
[http://www.robovote.org/](http://www.robovote.org/)
[https://whale.imag.fr/](https://whale.imag.fr/)

------
whiddershins
Can someone comment on whether this really does what we want it to do?

I recall reading that a similar system in Australia (or New Zealand or
somewhere) didn’t enable third party candidates at all, which was explain
because of _something something_ math.

I’d love to know is what the deal is.

~~~
macawfish
Ranked choice voting systems are still ordinal voting systems, just like
_first past the post_. Which means it's still susceptible to similar kinds of
strategic voting as the current system. Although it obscures them from being
usable via common sense, I don't think it prevents algorithms with lots of
data from exploiting them.

All ordinal systems are susceptible to Arrow's Theorem:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoiler_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoiler_effect)

~~~
lambertsimnel
First Past the Post isn't actually an ordinal system. "Ordinal" is simply a
synonym of "ranked choice". Arrow's impossibility theorem isn't relevant to
FPTP, but that doesn't make it a satisfactory system.

~~~
macawfish
Ah, yeah I was wrong about that. (It does reduce to an ordinal system in a
two-choice election though!)

~~~
lambertsimnel
> (It does reduce to an ordinal system in a two-choice election though!)

Yes. There was recently a two-choice election in the UK for the leader of a
party that has ordinal voting as one of its policies. Amusingly, voters still
ranked their choices rather than treating the election as FPTP.

------
burtonator
Ironically, so is alternative-choice and cordocet voting so they split the
vote /s

------
linsomniac
The biggest benefit, and the biggest reason it will never happen, is that it
would break the "two party system". There are many people who have an interest
in keeping that alive.

------
anigbrowl
Voting should be abolished; it's a relic of slow communications and travel
times, and the voting mechanism has been gamed to hell and back by political
rent-seekers.

We could either move to a participative legislative model like Wikipedia for
legal code, or just get rid of legislative terms and require all legislators
to attend district assemblies once per month or quarter where agendas can be
discussed and legislators confirmed or replaced.

~~~
lambertsimnel
I'd just like to point out that representative democracy can coexist with
other forms of decision making. For example, the revising chamber of a
bicameral legislature could be populated by sortition, and there could be
direct democratic voting in referendums on policies rather than on people.
(Switzerland does the latter.) Strictly speaking, I think the other forms of
decision making I have in mind still involve voting, just not voting for
representatives.

Also, most developed countries have legislative elections that are more
resistant to gaming than those in the US, UK and Canada are. (Switzerland is
also one that has has an electoral system more resistant to gaming.)

------
strictnein
Mathematically, logically, etc these type of ballots and voting systems make
sense.

They will also prove disastrous in terms of voter confidence in the electoral
system.

------
ehPReth
man, I wish Canada had this yesterday

~~~
umeshunni
How would this have changed the Canadian results?

~~~
Kylekramer
Would have given Liberals a more convincing victory given that the Canada left
is split into three to four parties while right just has one.

~~~
yifanl
It's more of a 3-2 split, no?

Afaict, the Bloc are a right-leaning party. (Not familiar with Quebecois
politics, so I could definitely be wrong)

~~~
Kylekramer
Bloc is harder to categorize given it is a party mostly to promote one
province's preferred policies. In general, their positions are fairly left
wing because Quebec itself is quite left, but has a few oddball positions that
skew right.

Platform (en francais, bien sur) is mostly leftish positions with an emphasis
on making sure Quebec gets their cut: [https://www.blocquebecois.org/wp-
content/uploads/2019/10/Pla...](https://www.blocquebecois.org/wp-
content/uploads/2019/10/Plateforme_Bloc2019_web-1.pdf)

------
justinzollars
First I am a former elected DNC Delegate.

I absolutely hate Ranked choice voting. I never know where my vote will end up
being allocated. Its deliberately confusing. This helps no one.

~~~
nebulous1
Have you read up on the system? Do you genuinely believe that it has been
deliberately designed to be confusing?

~~~
dragonwriter
I'm quite familiar with Instant Runoff Voting (“Ranked Choice Voting” is a bad
name that attempts to usurp the entire space of ranked-choice methods, of
which it is very nearly the worst) and, whether intentional or not, the loser-
elimination step makes it needlessly chaotic _and_ produces worse outcomes
than dropping that step and simply choosing first (and, if tied there,
farthest).past the election quota without loser-elimination.

~~~
lambertsimnel
What system(s) do you recommend for single-winner elections? What about
Coombs' method or Condorcet systems?

I'm quite fond of IRV, partly because it isn't plurality voting and it's what
you get when you reduce the number of winners to one under STV. Maybe the
Schulze method and Schulze STV are the optimal choices.

~~~
dragonwriter
> What system(s) do you recommend for single-winner elections? What about
> Coombs' method or Condorcet systems?

Condorcet systems are, IMO, analytically ideal (that is, any system that
guarantees it chooses the Condorcet winner of one exists or a member of the
Smith set otherwise is.) They aren't administratively ideal, though;
particularly, they aren't straightforward to tally and sum (neither is IRV,
really!). For that reason, I like Bucklin despite the fact that it is not
analytically ideal in results.

~~~
lambertsimnel
Do you know of a proportional form of Bucklin voting? What do you think of the
Borda count and the Quota Borda system? I believe they're straightforward to
tally and sum (at least the single-winner form), and that between them they're
suitable for both single-winner and multi-winner elections.

I wonder how important summability is. If voters submit paper ballots, why
can't election officials scan them locally and electronically transmit them to
a central location for machine counting? Couldn't that make non-summable
Condorcet systems work?

~~~
dragonwriter
> Do you know of a proportional form of Bucklin voting?

Since Bucklin is essentially IRV with the same thresholds and no loser-
elimination, the natural proportional generalization would be essentially STV
without loser elimination (you'd keep STV’s _winner_ elimination, of
course)—and you could, as for STV, use either the Hare or Droop quota.

> I wonder how important summability is. If voters submit paper ballots, why
> can't election officials scan them locally and electronically transmit them
> to a central location for machine counting? Couldn't that make non-summable
> Condorcet systems work?

Sure, they can function in the ideal case; it's harder to audit the results
and because the relation between any kind of subset counts or other signals
and the ultimate results is somewhat opaque, it's harder to even establish
rules as to when you need to do a partial or full independent confirmation.
This becomes a concern if you have worries about either internal corruption or
external attacks on election integrity. Ballots that can be manually canvassed
in public and simply aggregated leave less room to hide shenanigans.

------
bbanyc
No other New Yorkers here to comment?

If this were in place in 2013, it may have flipped the mayoral primary to
Thompson, since he and Quinn combined had more votes than de Blasio, and both
were more aligned with the centrist "machine" faction than de Blasio was.

There was also some form of proportional voting in place in the '30s and '40s
when LaGuardia was mayor. It greatly weakened the Tammany Hall machine and
brought independent voices into the city council for the first time. Then the
Communist Party won a couple of council seats. Aghast, the majority quickly
amended the charter to go back to FPTP in single member districts...and
Tammany sprang back into dominance.

Many American cities had similar experiments with PR around the same time, and
most of them "failed" for similar reasons, so for a time the only place in
America with proportional representation was Cambridge, Mass., where of course
the Communists would win a majority on the council regardless of what voting
system they used. :P

~~~
lambertsimnel
I'm not a New Yorker, but I am interested in learning more about the history
of proportional voting there. This FairVote page answered some of my
questions, but I have more:
[https://www.fairvote.org/a_brief_history_of_proportional_rep...](https://www.fairvote.org/a_brief_history_of_proportional_representation_in_the_united_states)

Was PR only used at city council level? Was the only PR system used STV, or
were others also tried? Were other forms of ranked choice voting used?

You mentioned Mayor LaGuardia. What system was he elected under as mayor? I
found this 1941 mayoral election results page, which mysteriously mentions
"Fusion Votes":
[https://www.ourcampaigns.com/RaceDetail.html?RaceID=79425](https://www.ourcampaigns.com/RaceDetail.html?RaceID=79425)

~~~
bbanyc
I think it was just for the council, and mayoral races were always FPTP.

Fusion voting is the odd practice in New York State of allowing one party to
endorse another party's candidate. For instance, in last year's election for
governor, Cuomo ran on the Democratic, Working Families, Independence, and
Women's Equality Party lines, while Molinaro was the Republican, Conservative,
and Reform Party candidate.
[https://www.elections.ny.gov/NYSBOE/elections/2018/general/2...](https://www.elections.ny.gov/NYSBOE/elections/2018/general/2018Governor.pdf)

------
classicsnoot
I posted this earlier but few read it.

[https://americanmind.org/essays/as-the-electoral-college-
goe...](https://americanmind.org/essays/as-the-electoral-college-goes-so-goes-
the-constitution/)

------
jsnider3
Good luck.

------
blisterpeanuts
Can someone walk me through this system? I'm thinking of the Presidential
election of 1992, in which the plurality winner of popular votes (not majority
winner), Bill Clinton, beat Bush & Perot. The final numbers were:

Clinton: 43%

Bush: 37%

Perot: 19%

I've always felt that the will of the people was that a _conservative_ should
be elected, whereas a _minority_ of the population actually voted for Clinton.
Under our system, of course, Clinton was the clear winner with 370 Electoral
votes, but given the controversy surrounding the 2016 results, it bears
reexamination.

With ranked voting, it stands to reason that most people would vote along
ideological lines; most conservatives would rank Bush #1 and Perot as #2 or
vice versa, while liberals would rank Clinton as #1. In this scenario, would
Clinton still have won? Or would the ranked approach have awarded the
Presidency to one of the conservative candidates? If the will of the people
was that a conservative be President, then a parliamentary system would
reflect that more accurately than our winner-takes-all approach.

~~~
lambertsimnel
In the scenario you describe, with 37% voting Bush 1 and Perot 2, and 19%
voting Perot 1 and Bush 2, Perot would be eliminated and Bush would win in the
final round of counting with 56%. (Other candidates receiving 1% of first
prerefences between them would be eliminated before Perot.)

~~~
blisterpeanuts
So Bush would get Perot's votes? Interesting.

Then again, I suppose that not everyone voting for Perot would have had Bush
as their #2 choice. Plus, a number of Bush supporters didn't like/trust Perot,
especially after he backed out, then reversed himself and restarted his
spoiler campaign.

~~~
lambertsimnel
Yes. In reality it might have been more complicated than I suggested. And
maybe I read more into your comment than I should have. I do think IRV would
have been an improvement over FPTP in the elections featuring Perot and Nader,
though.

------
pastor_elm
Only for primaries. The Democrat establish cannot be challenged.

~~~
xrd
But, doesn't this permit a situation where a Democrat that wants to maintain
the estabishment will go through the Democratic party, and someone that does
not (who might identity mostly as a Democrat) can go outside and still
participate in the primary?

There is still the problem with money and power corrupting the message (and
the two party system wants to keep that power in place).

But, at least it provides options for alternative candidates if they are feel
their integrity is worth more than party loyalty?

------
busterarm
New Yorker here. Instant Run-Off Voting is terrible and I will happily be
voting against this when it comes to ballot.

Also, the NYT Editorial Board can't seem to keep a consistent line on this
issue:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/07/us/a-critical-
spotlight-s...](https://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/07/us/a-critical-spotlight-
shines-on-ranked-choice-voting.html)
[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/09/opinion/ranked-choice-
vot...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/09/opinion/ranked-choice-voting-maine-
san-francisco.html)

~~~
cgrealy
Do you want to make an argument as to _why_ IRV is worse than FPP?

FPP is widely acknowledged to be the single worst way of holding an election.

~~~
busterarm
and IRV is widely acknowledged to be the next worst. There are known-better
systems out there.

~~~
cgrealy
100% agree that there are better systems, but don't let perfect be the enemy
of good.

~~~
andrekandre
yes, but maybe we shouldn’t let perfect or better be the enemy of what is
actually needed (to paraphrase alan kay)

iow, what are the actual problems we are trying to solve, and what is the
election system that is actually needed to solve it

the potential problem of choosing something “a little better” is that we could
get stuck in another local minima, where further reform (that is needed)
doesn’t happen because the new current system is “good enough”

------
sillysaurusx
There is a paradox I was hoping someone might resolve:

If first past the post voting is the worst system possible, why is the US the
most powerful country?

It seems like either voting systems don’t matter that much, or the current
voting system is good. Both are controversial.

~~~
shantly
> If first past the post voting is the worst system possible, why is the US
> the most powerful country?

Having a well-functioning system of representative democracy isn't as strongly
correlated with "powerful country" as a bunch of other factors.

> It seems like either voting systems don’t matter that much

For crowning "powerful countries", no, they may not.

