
To Build a Better Ballot - bpierre
http://ncase.me./ballot/
======
comex
I suspect Gary Johnson getting chosen by a Borda count isn't as
weird/surprising as the number of question marks implies. Caveat: I didn't see
a raw distribution of preference orders on the Vox survey; if it's linked
somewhere, I missed it. But I think Johnson is effectively acting as a
compromise candidate: a lot of Clinton voters _really hate_ Trump and a lot of
Trump voters _really hate_ Clinton, enough that they'd both prefer Johnson
over the other candidate, even if they don't actually know much about him, or
even mildly dislike him. Borda count tends to choose compromise candidates, so
that's what you end up with. Now, Johnson's policies are fairly fringe and
weird, and so are the other third party candidate's (Stein), but that's
because serious candidates don't run on third party tickets that have no
chance of winning. If the election was actually conducted using a Borda count,
you'd probably see a number of relatively boring centrists running, and one of
them would win instead of Johnson - which is a perfectly reasonable result.
Well, except that that would also fundamentally change the coverage of the
race, so there's no reason to expect the election would go anywhere near the
same way overall (it would probably be less polarized), but the point is that
to the limited extent the survey results reflect this hypothetical world, they
don't cast it in a bad light.

Edit: Also, I like Clinton, but her being the Concordet winner doesn't mean
much in terms of that world either. When almost all of the ballots give the
top rank to one of two candidates, whichever of the two gets more votes is the
Concordet winner. But that's only the case because of first-past-the-post,
both because there aren't any good third-party candidates (neither centrist
nor extremist), and because the structure of the race strongly encourages
voters to sign up for one bandwagon or the other .

~~~
basseq

      But I think Johnson is effectively acting as a compromise 
      candidate: a lot of Clinton voters really hate Trump and a 
      lot of Trump voters really hate Clinton, enough that they'd 
      both prefer Johnson over the other candidate, even if they 
      don't actually know much about him, or even mildly dislike 
      him.
    

That, and a lot of people were voting less for the man and more for an
independent _ticket_. And not even with the expectation that it would pay off
in _this_ election, but that it would encourage more (and more mainstream)
third-party candidates to run in the future.

~~~
wallace_f
I may be reading into this too much, but I'm picking up a little bit of mild
dislike for Johnson. I voted for him, and while that was easy when I looked at
the other choices of Trump and Clinton (I don't dislike Stein, and I would
have voted for Bernie had Clinton's team had not rigged the DNC and allowed
him through), I also do strongly support him.

I realize I'm a bit biased because I like the libertarian principles:
prioritizing individual civil liberties, stopping human rights abuses and
unnecessary wars, and streamlining government.

I'm curious though because outside of disagreement with those, there's only
one thing that I understand people disagree with: TPP (Johnson claims it isn't
a crony capitalist deal and it does foster free trade).

I guess I don't really understand why people have a mild dislike for him,
especially when I see how some people adore Clinton or Trump -- it doesn't
make sense to me.

He doesn't come with the plutocratic baggage of Trump and Clinton
([https://theintercept.com/2016/12/09/trump-makes-america-
gold...](https://theintercept.com/2016/12/09/trump-makes-america-goldmans-
again-maga/)), which in itself is a great thing to like about him.

~~~
dylandrop
> I realize I'm a bit biased because I like the libertarian principles:
> prioritizing individual civil liberties, stopping human rights abuses and
> unnecessary wars, and streamlining government.

I think those are completely reasonable things to like in his policies. And as
a caveat, I don't personally dislike Gary Johnson (the man) himself. I just
haven't heard a compelling argument for what he'd do to address corporate
overreach, which I (personally) find the biggest problem average Americans
face today, whether it is O&G companies destroying our environment or
financial institutions causing global financial crises. I'm not saying (by any
means!) Trump or Clinton would do any better, but I don't see how rolling back
oversight on the private sector really solves the problem. I wish solving our
problems was as simple as dismantling our governments but I don't see how that
would help us, as it's our only (very flawed) leverage. I think doing so would
decrease the little leverage we have. So to answer your concern, I think the
reason people don't like Johnson is because he was running for a political
office where they believe he would act against their own best interest.

~~~
wallace_f
> I wish solving our problems was as simple as dismantling our governments

I can understand that. It's certainly a topic for debate, not one where one
side has proven to be right or wrong.

Johnson wasn't really in favor of dismantling government oversight on
everything. He has stated he's in favor of agencies which protect environment,
health, water, etc. He wants market-based solutions like a carbon tax where
they will work better than heavy handed regulation.

~~~
dylandrop
> He has stated he's in favor of agencies which protect environment, health,
> water, etc. He wants market-based solutions like a carbon tax where they
> will work better than heavy handed regulation.

I could theoretically get behind some of that. However it doesn't look like
Gary Johnson actually supports a carbon tax:

[http://reason.com/blog/2016/08/26/gary-johnson-no-to-
carbon-...](http://reason.com/blog/2016/08/26/gary-johnson-no-to-carbon-taxes-
and-mand)

Perhaps the hard political position libertarians put themselves in is between
the "no taxes, no regulation, ever!" conservatives and people who aspire to
only have regulatory institutions where it makes sense (perhaps such as
yourself). Moreover, at a certain point, it seems like market-based solutions
and heavy handed regulations become essentially the same. Imagining an extreme
scenario: what if you had a carbon tax of $1M per cubic meter of CO2 burned?
It would certainly seem a lot like a regulation at that point.

~~~
wallace_f
> However it doesn't look like Gary Johnson actually supports a carbon tax:

> what if you had a carbon tax of $1M per cubic meter of CO2 burned? It would
> certainly seem a lot like a regulation at that point.

Wow, good point. I swear I heard him say he was in favor of it, and so I
looked at the article and it mentioned he had said he was, but he changed his
mind. Hmm. I remember him talking a lot about market-based solutions to
environmental problems, but I guess he wasn't as committed to that idea as I
thought it sounded like.

So 1 million per cubic meter of C02 = a regulation? You mean, because it would
be of great burden to business with a high tax?

The thing about a tax is that it is extraordinarily more efficient than heavy-
handed regulation. In-between concepts like cap-and-trade actually have
actually rewarded polluters by subsidizing them, which also isn't right.

People should be rewarded for doing good things, and given disincentives for
doing bad things. That's a powerful concept and I think the world would be a
better place if people would get behind it in politics.

~~~
dylandrop
> So 1 million per cubic meter of C02 = a regulation? You mean, because it
> would be of great burden to business with a high tax?

I guess what I'm saying is that a tax becomes a regulation at the point where
you can't afford it anymore. Also you have to realize that a carbon tax is
usually on everyone -- not just corporations. In most cases that affects the
lowest people on the totem pole more than the higher ups. You have to realize
that for certain people, what you say is "disincentivising" is actually
materially affecting their ability to live. If you were to try to distribute
that disincentivizing evenly across the totem pole, I'd be on board with it.

~~~
wallace_f
Ya for that reason most pro-carbon tax economists already are saying it should
come with a rebate to lower income groups. That solves that problem (it is
well-known).

------
cthor
When talking about the effect of voting systems on elections, something I
think is overlooked is the game-theoretic implications on the candidates.

Take the second diagram in the article and move the candidates around. What's
the optimal strategy? To move as close to your opponent as possible, while
staying closer to the centre.

Now take the diagram with three candidates, and move them around. What's the
optimal strategy? To move as far away from _both_ opponents.

This works even if you consider an n-dimensional space for every conceivable
issue. Two-party system encourages both parties to move towards the centre.
Three- (or more) party system encourages them to spread out.

~~~
tristor
> Two-party system encourages both parties to move towards the centre.

Either the center has shifted on the total spectrum, or this statement isn't
backed by reality. At least in the US, both major parties are moving towards
the right and moving towards authoritarian positions.

~~~
kr7
> both major parties are moving towards the right

Not on social issues. Trump is a moderate on abortion and gay marriage. Bill
Clinton passed DADT, DOMA, welfare work requirements, and his crime bill, and
called for a crackdown on illegal immigration. He wouldn't be able to win the
Democratic nomination nowadays.

> moving towards authoritarian positions

Unfortunately.

~~~
tomjakubowski
Trump's positions on abortion don't seem particular thought-through, but he
did say that he would nominate SCOTUS justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade.
I don't think that's a moderate position at all.

And while Trump might be less of an extremist on these issues than his fellow
Republicans, the party's elected officials (including his running mate)
haven't moved an inch towards the center on abortion rights. Mike Pence
governed Indiana, a state with some of the tightest (and most ridiculous,
honestly) restrictions on abortion in the country.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_Donald_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_Donald_Trump#Abortion)

~~~
zeveb
> Trump's positions on abortion don't seem particular thought-through, but he
> did say that he would nominate SCOTUS justices who would overturn Roe v.
> Wade. I don't think that's a moderate position at all.

'Allowing the states to determine what is allowed' seems more moderate than
'no state may meaningfully restrict something,' no?

------
Yen
So, the biggest complaint about Instant-runoff voting seems to be that it can
lead to a counter-intuitive scenario, where a candidate becomes more popular,
but loses the election.

From what I've seen of constructed scenarios that have this situation, they
have 'left', 'compromise', and 'right' candidates, with the majority of voters
tending to prefer left>compromise>right, or right>compromise>left.

If 'compromise' is the weakest candidate, either left or right ends up
winning. But if left or right become popular enough, and make left/right the
weakest candidate, than compromise wins out over both extremes.

Frankly, this actually doesn't seem like that much of a problem to me. If we
end up with everyone's second-favorite choice, everyone is at least second-
most happy.

For example, in the USA - Without commenting on Gary Johnson's politics or
experience, I think the USA would have been happier had he been chosen. Half
the population is pulling their hair out over Trump. Had Clinton won, the
other half would likely feel the same way. Most of the population would be
less-excited to see Johnson in office than their preferred candidate, but
relieved that at least opposing candidate didn't get in.

~~~
bigger_cheese
>So, the biggest complaint about Instant-runoff voting seems to be that it can
lead to a counter-intuitive scenario, where a candidate becomes more popular,
but loses the election.

This sentence doesn't make sense the original article failed to mention if you
poll 50% of the first preference vote you get elected. So if you are at least
50% "popular" you can't lose.

If you poll below 50% it comes down to preferences as it rightly should in my
opinion. there is nothing counter intuitive about this. It happens here (in
Australia) quite often.

[http://www.abc.net.au/news/federal-
election-2016/guide/mpor/](http://www.abc.net.au/news/federal-
election-2016/guide/mpor/)

Here the Right (Liberal party) candidate polled 40% and lost because the two
Left parties (Labor + Greens) also polled about 40% combined.

~~~
anonymoushn
Is it good that sometimes voting A > B > C would cause A to lose, while voting
C > B > A would cause A to win?

~~~
im3w1l
Does this actually happen in practice? What would it take to trigger this
behavior?

~~~
anonymoushn
Yes, here's an account of a real election
[http://www.rangevoting.org/Burlington.html](http://www.rangevoting.org/Burlington.html).
The relevant bit:

> If 753 of the W-voters (specifically, all 495 of the W>K>M voters plus 258
> of the 1289 W-only voters) had instead decided to vote for K, then W would
> have been eliminated (not M) and then M would have beaten K in the final IRV
> round by 4067 to 3755. In other words, Kiss won, but if 753 Wright-voters
> had switched their vote to Kiss, that would have made Kiss lose!

------
erentz
Why do these voting comparisons always only discuss electing single winner? A
big part of the change needed is to introduce more proportional
representation. Asides from moving strictly to an MMP style system, one way is
to enlarge the districts so that each district elects (e.g.) five
representatives using STV. Don't get me wrong, IRV is 10x better than what we
have today, but only makes sense for the president or senate where there can
be only one winner each election.

~~~
codys
In this context, it's interesting to note that the US Vice President was
originally not a running mate to the President, but the runner-up (2nd most
electoral college votes).

This theoretically allows more proportional representation by, essentially,
preventing 1 group from electing their representatives of choice to (in this
case) 2 positions (ignoring an overwhelming majority & certainty of it)

I'd be interested to see how effective a "runner-up-selection" methodology
would be if applied in a more general case.

~~~
chumich1
Look at what is happening in Brazil right now. They use this system. The
minority party was able to impeach Dilma Rousseff and take over the
presidency. I would expect lots of these attempts if the US used this system
as well

------
tomohawk
Turkey ballot. Always add a 'none of the above' choice. This is the turkey.

This also makes the ballot less ambiguous.

In the election, if a candidate gets 50% + 1 vote, they win. If not, anyone
getting less than the turkey is tossed and cannot run in the runoff. No
candidates win? Enroll a new slate.

~~~
actuallyalys
I guess you can think of 'none of the above' as a placebo candidate.

To make that work, I think you'd also have to make the initial campaign
shorter to account for runoffs and the possibility of having to start over
with a new slate.

~~~
gohrt
And here you see the problem in the US having a fixed inauguration date.

In parliamentary countries, where the government can vote to dissolve itself,
they tend to call for elections whenever the governing coalition is unstable,
and elections can take as long as needed, and be re-held as needed.

~~~
actuallyalys
True, although my main concern is that making elections take even longer will
cause fewer people to pay attention and ultimately vote.

------
niftich
In addition to the great overview of voting systems and the policy commentary,
the interactive parts -- which they call 'Explorable Explanations [1]' \-- are
fantastic! The code for this one is on Github [2].

[1] [http://explorableexplanations.com/](http://explorableexplanations.com/)
[2] [https://github.com/ncase/ballot](https://github.com/ncase/ballot)

~~~
YPCrumble
Could someone explain what `index.js`[1] is doing? It looks like code to
figure out whether someone is actually reading the article or not but I'm
curious why the various timeouts and scroll listeners, and what they're doing
exactly.

[1] [https://github.com/ncase/ballot/blob/gh-
pages/js/index.js](https://github.com/ncase/ballot/blob/gh-pages/js/index.js)

~~~
niftich
That's exactly what it's doing -- it's trying to figure out if your viewport
is looking at the content 'above the fold', so that it can show the "splash
iframe" [1] while you're looking at it, and stop JS-animating it when you're
not.

[1]
[http://ncase.me/ballot/splash/splash.html](http://ncase.me/ballot/splash/splash.html)

------
winstonewert
I think the discussion is severely lacking a proper consideration of how
strategic voting affects the systems it likes best. For example, score voting
encourages people to exaggerate their preferences, and approval voting makes
it non-trivial to figure out who you should approve.

~~~
abecedarius
That does deserve deeper consideration, but the page is already long for an
intro for a mass audience, who need to hear about this if it's to make a
difference. Also it seems very unlikely for strategic voting to become a
_worse_ problem for approval voting or score voting than it is for the systems
we're stuck with right now. Perhaps they'd end up making no difference, though
I doubt it. If you feel like writing up your thoughts on this, or pointing to
a good writeup, I'd be interested.

------
lifeformed
This format of interactive article is really excellent. It's a good example of
taking advantage of the medium of the web.

------
KingMob
Kudos to the interactive diagrams, but this seems misinformed about spoiler
history.

The most famous "spoiler" was Perot, not Nader. Bush v. Gore was an extremely
tight election, but there were third parties that drew more votes from Bush
than Gore, and wer within the margin of error, possibly counterbalancing
Nader's effect. Whereas with Perot, he received 19% of the popular vote, most
of which were clearly drawn from George Bush, ensuring a Clinton win.

~~~
mtgx
Yes, the Nader thing was just Democratic propaganda to ensure future left-wing
parties are discredited by people and the media right from the start, just
like they tried and failed to do this time with Jill Stein. Call it "fake
news" if you will, not that Google or Facebook would ever ban a media entity
like MSNBC [1] over it...

How can you blame Stein for a few thousand lost votes when _millions_ of other
voters who voted Democratic in the last election stayed home because they
didn't like your candidate? Do you really think those thousands of people that
didn't stay home because they didn't like your candidate, but went to vote,
and voted for _Stein_ , would've voted your candidate instead? No, best case
scenario, they would've stayed home just like the others, otherwise.

Also, in some states tens of thousands (more than those that voted for Stein)
actually did go to vote, voted on local elections, and _didn 't vote for
president_. Either way, blaming Stein is just laughable.

[1] -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xK5NaH0oy4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xK5NaH0oy4)

~~~
tunesmith
That's a little overstated. If you go by national exit polls, both Stein
voters and Johnson voters "would have voted" for Clinton over Trump (in a two-
person election) about 25-15. The rest wouldn't have.

If that margin is applied to each state (which isn't quite right but
whatever), that's roughly enough to flip Michigan but probably not any other
states.

So, true that you can't pin the blame on Stein, but she did have an effect,
partly measured by the vote, and partly unmeasurable in terms of enthusiasm
dampening, etc.

Same sort of thing with Nader - you can't quite draw a mathematical line that
he flipped Florida, but all his Gush/Bore stuff - who knows what affect that
had in terms of people not voting.

------
bluecaribou
Recounting my comment from a previous article[1], comparing all these voting
systems is not really the right way to think about it. First, you need to
separate the mechanism used to express voter preference (i.e the ballot
design), from the method used to choose the winner. Those are separate things
that, in theory, can be mixed-and-matched to produce various voting systems.

In terms of ballot designs, they are basically all just restricted subsets of
the "score" voting ballot. That is, any voter preference that can be expressed
in an "approval", "ranked choice", "ranked choice with ties", or traditional
"single choice" ballot, can also be expressed with a "score" ballot.

That means every voting system is a "score ballot" system with some
restrictions applied to the ballot. This means that, for example, you could
have an election where you allow the voter to choose whichever ballot they are
most comfortable with. Then you just interpret the ballot as a score ballot.

There are multiple ways to choose a winner from a set of score ballots. But
debating between them is counterproductive to getting better voting systems
adopted. Just start off with one that's easy to understand (i.e. "sum of
ratings", or "only the first choice counts"), and worry about improving it
later.

The important thing is to give the voter the option to use a more expressive
ballot. Whichever one they feel most comfortable with. You could even make it
so that initially, all ballots are converted to traditional "single choice"
ballots for tallying, but let voters know how the vote would have turned out
under other evaluation methods (like "sum of ratings" and Schulze). I think
voters would quickly realize the value of counting all of their expressed
preferences.

...

But that is a very cool site. Probably the kind of site the web was intended
for, don't you think?

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12950566#score_12952384](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12950566#score_12952384)

~~~
rtkwe
The issue with that is any change, especially how a winner is chosen from a
ballot, is a long and politically fraught process so whatever is changed to
shouldn't just be 'eh it's not great but we'll change it in a few years'
because that's really unlikely to actually happen.

~~~
bluecaribou
So first of all, I think that only three evaluation methods should be
considered - ballot conversion/reduction to traditional "single choice", "sum
of ratings", and Schulze. You might need to start off with conversion to
traditional "single choice", because it's hard to argue against adopting it.
That is, you're not actually changing the election system at all. You're just
allowing people to optionally express extra information about their
preferences in a way that does not affect the election. But it will give each
voter a chance to, if they want, try out more expressive ballots (which will
presumably be appealing to most people once they get the hang of it), and the
public will be told how the election would have resulted under the other two
evaluation systems. Presumably, a more "centrist" candidate would generally
have won. And after a few election cycles, people will be able to form an
opinion on which evaluation system they think produces the best results.

I think the reason why electoral system change has so often been met with
public resistance is that most people don't have a feel for how the results
would change, and nobody is offering them a chance to get familiar with a
different election system without an up-front commitment to the change.

If you can get people to accept the "sum of ratings" evaluation method, then I
say be happy with that. The fact that "sum of ratings" is arguably not as good
as Schulze is a very high class problem to have. (Btw I'm using Schulze as a
stand-in for any "good but complex" evaluation system.) Anyway, I'm not sure
the improvement in evaluation is worth having an evaluation system that most
people wouldn't understand.

So just to sum up, I think what I'm proposing is different and more acceptable
in that:

i) It allows people to use whichever ballot they feel most comfortable with,
knowing that no matter which ballot they choose, their vote will count as much
as any other voter.

ii) It allows voters, if they so choose, to get familiar with the more
expressive ballots and different evaluation methods without committing to any
change in the election system.

------
ryandvm
I love the topic of voting systems, but... we can't even get rid of the
fucking penny over here. The odds of the U.S. changing its voting methodology
are so infinitesimal, I'm having trouble conceptualizing it.

~~~
noobermin
Not to mention, the current people in power benefit greatly from the current
system, so our odds are even worsened.

~~~
grzm
Any suggestions? Based on your comment should I throw up my hands and accept
it? Call my representatives? Donate to or volunteer for verifiedvoting.org?
Are the odds so bad that we should consider emigration? Revolution?

~~~
noobermin
I upvoted you because you're right, now if ever is the time to stand up and
fight for the cause you believe in. If anything, realizing what you are up
against forces you to put up a much strong stance given you are aware of the
forces you must fight against.

~~~
grzm
I hope you do, too! Other than the last two. I don't think it's come to the
point where we need the last, and we need people who are passionate and want
to change to stick around :)

------
sandGorgon
I'm actually very interested in the mathematical implication of score voting.
Because in Indian elections - the world's largest elections - IRV is fairly
impractical. We have constituencies with more than 10-15 candidates and the
"recalculations" will kill the system. We also have very frequent recounts.

I'm still thinking of how to explain score voting to an illiterate voter. It
requires a level of sophistication that is orders of magnitude more involved
than a simple checkbox next to a candidate.

~~~
grzm
_I 'm still thinking of how to explain score voting to an illiterate voter. It
requires a level of sophistication that is orders of magnitude more involved
than a simple checkbox next to a candidate._

You've made a very important point. In tech we often talk about UX with apps
and sometimes with consumer products, but not enough in my opinion in areas
such as voting and paperwork.

~~~
lotu
I think explaining score voting is pretty easy you just have only 3 categories
labeled ️(1) (2) (3) for each candidate and they put a mark on what they think
for each one. As an aside I susspect that having more than 3 or 4 catagoreis
isn't a good idea and creates false precision that complicates things.

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

------
quadrangle
__Needs to add the new best-compromise best-of-both-worlds proposal: SCORE
RUNOFF per[http://www.equal.vote/](http://www.equal.vote/) __

That 's most of the benefits of score voting (which is acknowledged as
superior in the study here) with a runoff stage to address strategic voting.

~~~
dragonwriter
"Score voting" is very bad for public elections in a way most analyses ignore;
and that is that u like some ordered ranking, numerical scores have no clearly
articulable, unambiguous meaning and their assignment is demonstrably variable
even with similar actual preferences (notably, it has a strong cultural
component.)

Approval has a somewhat similar problem.

Both are, for related reasons, problematic for simulations like this, as well:
while these simulations already tend to assume all axes have equal weighting
for all voters (though it's easy enough to vary that, but graphical depictions
get harder) which is something of a distorting simplification, you have to
also assume a mapping function from preference distance to score to make score
voting work in a simulation (or a distance cutoff for approval), either of
which is a much bigger distortion of how those things work in the real world.

~~~
quadrangle
The meaning of a score is relative to the candidate pool in actual practice.
This is not an issue in score runoff at all.

0 means "as bad as any candidate in this pool gets" and 9 means "as great as
any candidate in the pool gets".

There's NO need AT ALL for there to be some broader meaning.

------
dane-pgp
There is actually "One Weird Trick" to fix democracy, and it's the voting
system not mentioned in the article: Direct and Party Representative (DPR)
voting.

At least for parliamentary / congressional elections it is both more
proportional than FPTP and simpler to count than all the alternatives
mentioned. You simply provide the voters with two ballot papers: one to select
a local representative (counted and decided in the same way as a traditional
FPTP election), and a second ballot paper where the voter can choose which
party they want to have more power at the parliamentary / congressional level.

The trick is that these second votes are totalled across the whole nation and
used to calculate the ratio of support for each party nationally, then those
ratios are used to normalise the voting power of the representatives in the
legislature. So if 10% of MPs elected are from the Triangle Party, with 20% of
the national vote, then each MP gets effectively a double vote on bills,
relative to a nominal MP with a proportionally correct amount of national
support.

~~~
pluma
This still sounds like it's based on a polarized two party system. In practice
(outside the US) few people fully agree with one political party. In Germany I
find most people I talk to don't fully support any party but partly agree with
one or more parties on various issues.

A scoring or approval system makes more sense in this situation because it
would allow voters to express their tendencies towards each party individually
rather than having to pick one compromise directly. It's also one of the few
systems that allows voters to accurately represent ambivalence or apathy.

DPR still sounds like it suffers from all the problems of FPTP with regard to
strategic voting and spoilers.

~~~
dane-pgp
I don't see why DPR would require or support a polarized two party system. The
idea is that the secondary (party) ballot allows you to be completely honest
and vote for the party you really prefer, even if that party would be
considered a "spoiler" under FPTP. Because the secondary ballots are totalled
nationally, there is no danger that your support of a smaller party ends up as
a wasted vote.

Of course, there are a few extra details to deal with, such as how to include
independent candidates (with no party behind them) and whether to introduce a
minimum threshold of support for a party to appear on the secondary ballot.
These are relatively straightforward questions, though, and are covered by
this website about the voting system:

[http://www.dprvoting.org/](http://www.dprvoting.org/)

------
stretchwithme
What we need is a system that let's everybody have representation, both in the
legislative and executive branches. Proportional representation is much better
at this then winner-take-all elections.

Why do we need to place all this power in the hands of a single person anyway?
Switzerland has an executive branch with 7 members from 5 different parties
and a presidency that rotates annually.

PR also makes it much harder for lobbyists to influence lawmakers. Candidates
don't need to convince everybody in order to represent those who identify with
their party. And a candidate that represents one of many parties has to do a
good job representing that party in order to keep that job.

We could move the House of Representatives to PR and keep the Senate as is.

~~~
Taek
Switzerland style rule is nice because it allows for some rogue candidates to
be elected safely. Trump wouldn't be so scary if he had 6 other people holding
a leash. But the probe would still get to signal dissatisfaction and the other
parties would have a better warning that they aren't in a great position and
need to update their stances on the issues.

------
whytheam
This article leaves out proportional representation and single transferable
vote. PR is widely used in many democracies and should be considered for the
U.S. Senate. Specifically, mixed member proportional which allows each
district (in our case State) to elect one member to the legislature and then
the rest of the 50 seats would be filled to create the closet proportion to
popular support each party has. Single transferable vote, which is actually
used in some democracies, would fit the House of Representatives quite well.

Duverger's law tells us that we will not see electoral diversity in the U.S.
until we change the way we vote.

~~~
dragonwriter
STV is a PR system, just one that retains candidate-focussed preference
ballots and doesn't resort to party lists for who gets elected (MMP uses
candidate-centered ballots, but also uses party lists to fill the additional
seats.)

------
vacri
The IRV 'fault' is _not a fault_ , but a feature. When the loser drops out,
the people who put them at #1 _still get a say in the remaining candidates_.
That's why more voters _prefer_ candidate Hexagon in the example - it's
actually a truer result of _all_ the electorate, not [all electorate minus
Square voters].

Just because your #1 candidate is knocked out doesn't mean you should lose
your say in how you're governed. Similarly, the example paints Triangle as
getting more popular, but ignores that Hexagon is _also_ getting more popular.

The 'fault' also requires that none of the candidates are particularly
representative - look at the example, look at where the locus of voters are,
and look at where the candidates are. In order for Triangle to not win any
more, all three candidates have to be pretty bad representatives; it's less of
a disaster if "not the right candidate" won in this situation (even though
that's not what's happening).

------
rrradical
These sorts of explanations are very neat and educational, I think, but to me
they aren't that effective in actually bringing us closer to using a new
voting system. All the discussion here is an example of what tends to happen,
which is people arguing over what the very best voting system is. But it's so
easy to construct argument for or against any particular system.

I think a better tactic to actually use a new system is to share a vision to
the general population of what voting under a new system would actually be
like. Once the public at large is in favor of the general idea of moving to a
new system, actually picking the best system should be more of an
implementation detail.

In other words, walk the voter through a simulated ballot casting and show
them what the results of the election might be under such a system.

I gave an effort to do this here:
[http://asivitz.com/voting/](http://asivitz.com/voting/) I'm not sure how well
I succeeded though.

------
bikamonki
Voting system isn't broken, Democracy is.

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

To aggravate: many elections lately are win by tiny margins and with not all
citizens casting a vote. Hence, the majority per se is not really setting the
course of nations.

On a side note, I wonder why close results happen. I do not think it is an
accident (some that I can remember now that are almost split in half: the
popular vote in 2016 US elections, the yes/no vote for the Peace Treaty with
FARC in Colombia, the 2016 presidential elections in Peru). Maybe there is no
pattern either, but it seems odd that when facing an important decision,
voters split in half. (my own conspiracy theory is that given the lack of grey
area options - a raking effect as proposed by the OP - voters MUST pick a side
and they are manipulated to veer in one direction by smart and sophisticated
communications)

~~~
rtkwe
There's a lot of mechanisms that lead to close races/results. In particular in
the US the 2 party defacto system kind of guarantees a close-ish result
because our parties (at least in the past hard to tell where things are
heading now) can't really be extremely ideologically left or right of center
because (baring this bizarre recent result) because if they did they'd likely
lose a lot of ground to an opposition willing to be more flexible. So you get
2 parties that are roughly vying for a base + enough of the centrists to get
elected.

~~~
Taek
Which still results in a system where a massive percentage of the people end
up unhappy.

I think you can do a lot better by giving more power to smaller parts of the
government. For example, let's assume that 50% of the most controversial laws
were turned over to the states. Suddenly California can be more "blue" in
practice and not feel nearly so upset when "red" wins both houses and the
presidency.

~~~
rtkwe
A lot of controversial laws only really work below a national level. You can't
turn things like the EPA over to the states because of how closely related
many state resources are, an environmentally friendly state down river from a
lax state can't do much. Federal taxes and how to spend them is fundamentally
a federal issue.

There's also the larger question of what kind of nation we'd wind up with, for
example take that same approach at any point in history and you wind up with a
country that's much less inclusive to any sort of minorities.

Finally there's the problem that it's kind of hard for people to move between
states below a certain income and education level so you get people stuck in a
state that may not be interested in protecting or listening to them at all
because they're not required for the political majority.

edit: On the issue of federal taxes it actually extends a lot deeper into the
fundamental role of the (federal) government. In a totally hand wavey glossing
over many different factions into 2 categories: Democrats see it as including
a social safety net that redistributes the gains of the better off to ensure a
base level of support for everyone. (I'm probably being very unfair to their
internal view of things as an outsider but...) Republicans see that a unfair
to those who've worked hard to get what they have and that if business were
just left alone to use as the market demands things will balance out and
everyone will wind up well off. If that decision were left to the states
poorer states like South Carolina would have a fundamentally worse safety net
(if any at all) further disadvantaging the poor there, so the only moral thing
to do is have the federal government step in and redistribute things between
the states.

------
ypeterholmes
Good piece but seems remiss to have this discussion without also acknowledging
the ways in which our electoral system + a complete lack of transparency are
also undermining confidence in the system. It's 2017 yet somehow people are
waiting 10 hours in line to vote? And then there's no way to verify that your
vote counted?

------
EGreg
Actually one method is not really debunked: Approval Voting

Can anyone say anything negative about it that FPTP doesn't already have?

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

~~~
winstonewert
How do you know which candidates to approve? Given a candidate I like, a
candidate I really don't like, and a candidate I can tolerate, which ones do I
approve?

~~~
EGreg
The ones you like and tolerate - obviously!

~~~
winstonewert
So, given Trump and Clinton who I both despise, I should not approve either
and thus forfeit any say on which is better?

~~~
EGreg
First of all it is strictly better than having the option to vote for only
one. So you can'5 indicate your preference among the rest either.

And secondly if you start ranking then how do you combine the rankings? Do you
have instant runoff? Then you have spoiler effects which THIS SYSTEM DOESNT
HAVE

~~~
winstonewert
My point is that voting is harder under approval voting. Plurality voting is
broken, but people easily understand the strategy of voting for the lesser of
two evils. Under approval voting, there is no obvious strategy for deciding
who should approve.

~~~
ClayShentrup
Vote for the person you would with Plurality, plus everyone you like better.
That's an easy approximation.

A formal statement is here.

[https://sites.google.com/a/electology.org/www/threshold](https://sites.google.com/a/electology.org/www/threshold)

~~~
winstonewert
Using that strategy, it is clearly harder to vote in approval voting then in
plurality. You first have to figure out how you'd vote in plurality and then
do something more.

The question I was answering was: is there any way in which plurality is
better then approval? Yes, it is easier to vote in plurality.

------
serge2k
> Justin Trudeau, Canada's Cutie-In-Chief, ...

sigh.

> ...will be moving his nation towards a better voting system in 2017.

well, you know, maybe. If the people want it in their fancy questionnaire.
They might not though, since clearly FPTP is the most effective now that it
resulting in a liberal majority.

~~~
jdjb
Yeah, that survey was incredibly lackluster. Also felt some of the questions
were pretty leading.

Questions like implying online voting would lead to higher electoral costs or
that a more mixed representation in the house would immediately slow down
government. While some of those effects may occur, it seems disingenuous to
pick out one random negative effect to single out in a questionnaire like
that.

------
tantalor
See also: Median voter theorem
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_voter_theorem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_voter_theorem)

------
zeveb
> The most famous real-world example of this was in 2000, when Ralph Nader
> "stole" votes from Al Gore, letting George Bush win.

Is Nader's 'theft' really more famous than Perot's? I think that Perot really
made a much bigger difference than did Nader: in 1992 there were a _lot_ of
Perot supporters who would have voted for Bush over Clinton, but for some
reason they really did think that their candidate had a chance.

------
tunesmith
Are n-dimensional spectrum positions really the right way to model voting? I'm
not sure 2016's voter behavior can even be modeled dimensionally.

A skilled persuader can convince a voter that he/she (persuader) is "close" to
their "positions" even when they're not. (Or that the opponent is not a
voter's ally even if they are.)

------
donatj
The cutsie graphs make the incorrect presumption that people's political views
are evenly distributed around the political spectrum.

~~~
cletusw
Sandbox mode has support for two or three "centers" of political views. And
yes, this is just a model. Better to make a decision based on a model than a
"gut feeling".

This is also why the author recommends experimentation at the local level and
not sweeping national changes.

------
asdf1234321
Another approach: an ordered subset specifying fall-through candidates you
would want your vote to go to if the current one has not path to victory.
[https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1E-bZdxnzc_eTJvLWtsSGE3Y3c...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1E-bZdxnzc_eTJvLWtsSGE3Y3c/view)

~~~
mjevans
You've more or less described IRV.

------
btbuildem
How about we just have two presidents? It seems absurd that moving the vote
result by 0.00001% changes the outcome drastically.

Let there be two heads of state, and let them work it out.

~~~
dragonwriter
> How about we just have two presidents?

What, like Roman consuls?

Really, if you want to lower the stakes of small changes in the electorate,
get a parliamentary system with basically proportional representation (STV in
small multimember districts works, you don't need party list methods), and
dial back the policy powers of the head of state (who can continue to.be
separately elected.)

------
kilotaras
>As you could see, every voting system except First Past The Post is immune to
the spoiler effect.

That's not correct. IRV is also susceptible to spoilers. Lets start with two
candidates A (slighty left) and B (farther right)

|-------A---B----|

1\. A gets 61 vote, B gets 39. 2\. A wins.

Now lets introduce a farther left candidate C, that is really close to A.

|-----C-A---B----|

Voting goes as follow.

1\. C gets 31 vote, A gets 30, B gets 39. 2\. A gets eliminated, his/her votes
split between B and C. 3\. Because C and B are close, most of the votes for B
go to A who now wins the election.

~~~
vacri
... how does A win the election in step 3 if A was knocked out in step 2?

I'm also not following how you meant to write that (apparently a typo) - why
would B get more votes than C when A is eliminated? Why would A's voters split
evenly down the middle if C is closer to them?

~~~
kilotaras
I've messed A and B at some point.

Should be: A gets split, B wins. Introduction of another left candidate caused
right one to win.

------
a_imho
Sortition, closely followed by direct democracy.

1) is also proven for selecting juries?

------
obilgic
Why use a 2d map instead of 1 dimensional, seems more practical.

~~~
optimuspaul
Because the political spectrum really is a 2d (if not 3d or 4d) field.
Progressive <-> Conservative and Liberal <-> Authoritarian. If it were really
just two candidates then perhaps there would be just once metric to track.

~~~
baddox
It's not just the political spectrum. You need at least 2 spatial dimensions
to demonstrate the possibility of non-transitive group preferences (i.e. the
community prefers candidate A > B > C > A), which is one fundamental reason
Arrow's impossibility theorem is true. If candidates are just on a number
line, then the group's preferences would always be transitive and there would
always be a Condorcet winner (or a tie).

------
nolepointer
But we aren't a democracy.

------
Finbarr
Small point of feedback: the header of this site is extremely distracting.

------
virtuexru
-redacted-

~~~
eli_gottlieb
Saying "it can't be done" and "nothing will change" for decades is why we've
built up a massive backlog of absolutely necessary changes.

~~~
alkonaut
I don't understand who's actually against all the common sense changes? Are
people really that conservative? Is congress and state legislators more
conservative than the electorate?

Surely the average US voter has to see the obvious benefits of a ranked/runoff
system over the current one? If they do - how can the laws not be passed (even
constitutional changes should be within reach).

~~~
gizmo686
I don't think "conservative" is the correct word in this case. Our current
legislators, by definition, got into power under the current system, so for
(almost) all of them the current is preferable to an alternative system where
their victory is less certain.

Additionally, they are almost all part of one of the two major political
parties; both of which benefit greatly from our current system.

Ultimately, the problem is that it is very difficult to change the rules of
the game when the winners are in charge of making the rules.

~~~
alkonaut
> so for (almost) all of them the current is preferable to an alternative
> system where their victory is less certain.

But publicly holding a position in office that a majority of your constituents
disagree with, in a high profile question should be a much _worse_
disadvantage than voting to change the system?

> Additionally, they are almost all part of one of the two major political
> parties; both of which benefit greatly from our current system.

At least for primaries, it would be beneficial for the parties themselves (if
perhaps not for the candidates) to have both runoff votes and some kind of
approval.

> Ultimately, the problem is that it is very difficult to change the rules of
> the game when the winners are in charge of making the rules.

This is what I don't understand though as a non american. I don't consider
politicians to have much different goals and opinions to my own. If they did,
they'd be replaced.

~~~
adrienne
Nah. Here in the US they just pass laws to suppress voters and rejigger
districts until they're guaranteed wins. Much less work for them.

------
hash-set
" In 2011, almost a full quarter of young Americans said democracy was a "bad"
or "very bad" way to run a country. And today, one in six Americans say it'd
be "good" or "very good" to be under actual military rule."

Really, our problem here seems to be one of education, then. People who prefer
a military dictatorship have ZERO experience with military dictatorships!

------
belovedeagle
I find it _truly inspiring_ how many people suddenly care about democracy,
even though "this isn't about the 2016 election". /s

Some might say that any support for a better system is good, despite the
motivations, but I disagree. All this support will vanish as soon as our
current system chooses the "right" (well, the left) candidate.

~~~
lordCarbonFiber
I think the fact that twice now in a generation we've watched the current
system pick a candidate who's lost the popular vote while at the same time
having to live through an increasingly polarized political climate shouldn't
be overlooked. Considering people have been interested in alternative voting
schemes for decades, I think your conclusion is likely off the mark.

~~~
lotharbot
> _" twice ... pick a candidate who's lost the popular vote"_

interestingly, those two elections were massively different. Gore won the
popular vote and lost the electoral vote both by tiny margins. The election
was statistically speaking basically a tie, and settled by something only
slightly stronger than a coin flip. The largest margin in terms of raw votes
in any single state was 1.7 million (Gore, NY). Two states were closer than
0.1% (NM and Florida).

Clinton won the popular vote by a much bigger margin, and lost the electoral
vote by a much bigger margin. She won California by over 4.2 million votes
(blowing Obama's 3.2 million vote edge out of the water; he won that election
by a total of 10 million votes.) She had stronger-than-expected showings in
areas where she was already strong, and weaker-than-expected showings in areas
where she was weak. It was a much more polarized election, with fewer close
results (no states under 0.1% margin) and more blowouts.

