Ranked-choice means nothing if you have single-member districts, other than maybe allowing some third parties to get in. You can still gerrymander and stuff.
What you really want is multi-member districts or just nationwide PR, but that is anything but simple…
Yeah, 96% of RCV elections in the US elect the first round winner anyway. In part because proportional representation is the ultimate goal, I think Approval Voting is a better first step towards fixing our elections. You can very easily adapt it to proportional methods in ways that the voter can actually understand. Fargo and St. Louis use it for their normal elections and it’s caused majority winners to go way up. It elected the first black woman to mayor for St. Louis, so that’s pretty neat.
Interesting, do you have any resources on adapting Approval to proportionality (i.e. for parliamentary elections)? I don’t see how you could allocate based on total vote share without party lists (if only a few candidates get a vast, vast majority, you have a bunch of seats to fill). Does allocation to the top n winners approach proportionality?
As far as parliamentary elections go I think STV is good if you don’t have parties and (MM/OL/CL)PR if you do.
There’s two main ways you can do it, which you pick depends on the things you care about. The first is to just say that a voter can cast as many votes as they like, but that the weight of their ballot is divided by the number of votes they cast. So if a voter selects N candidates, then each candidate gets 1/N votes towards their total. Top vote-getters win. This method is very simple and easy to understand, but it does encourage voters to strongly limit their support, since each vote they cast dilutes the power of the rest of their votes. In fact, going from 1 choice to 2 is the biggest drop off in terms of support for your candidates.
So you say to yourself “I’d rather not punish people for voting for as many candidates as they like, but I don’t want one party to win all the seats if they have a slight majority support.” Well okay, let’s assign seats sequentially then using Sequential Proportional Approval Voting. Voters pick any number of candidates and the votes are added up. Top candidate gets the first seat. Then, for every ballot with W winners on it, its value is assigned to 1/(W+1). For the first round no ballot can have any winners, so all ballots count the same. For the second round, some have weight 1 and others weight 1/2. In the third round 1, 1/2, and 1/3. Then 1, 1/2, 1/3, and 1/4. You get the idea. The aim here is to allow voters to support c andidates that are unlikely to win, since the number of votes they cast doesn’t impact their vote weight. But, as a voter gains more and more representatives in office, their ballot is weighed less and less, since they should be more and more satisfied with their representation.
As a simple example, if there were three parties with R=45%, G=43%, and B=12% support, and all voters voted for only their party, the seats would be awarded as follows:
R (R=100% G=0% B=0%)
G (R=50% G=50% B=0%)
R (R=67% G=33% B=0%)
G (R=50% G=50% B=0%)
B (R=40% G=40% B=20%)
R (R=50% G=33% B=17%)
B (R=43% G=43% B=014%)
And so on and so forth
As with any proportional method the more seats you award the more true to the correct proportion the awarded seats become. This method makes it much more reasonable to vote for everyone you like, but it also discourages insincere votes because if that candidate gets awarded a seat all the rest of your votes just became worth less in all the following rounds.
Honestly any reasonable proportional method with a big enough seat pool is just about as good as any other. I like using the approval method since the voter is presented with a ridiculously simple ballot (you literally can’t fill in the bubbles wrong) and they can functionally ignore the counting method knowing that whatever the election is, voting for everyone they like is a pretty reasonable strategy. Slightly more optimal strategies exist if you know the polling data and what kind of election you’re voting in, but “everyone you like” is still a very good one.
RCV is completed enough that it’s causing disenfranchisement problems with poor and low education voters. Better to go with approval voting, which gets the same results while making invalid ballots impossible.
The way we make that happen is by starting with local referendums and working our way up. It’s a lot of work, but it’s the main way good stuff happens in our democracy.
That abstract describes disenfranchisement due to overvote, which is choosing more candidates than allowed. If these fucking morons cannot follow directions, they likely are too stupid to be trusted to vote. I’d rather that type of self culling than the current methods.
Majority voting system is the main problem. Electoral college is the version for presidential elections, but it needs to be changed to a proportionate voting system for congress as well.
As the US is very state-based, you could do a version like Germany where you vote for a local candidate as well but the proportion of the congress equals the whole proportion of votes.
The electoral college has nothing to do with electing legislators (it is only used for the presidency), and alternative voting methods to go to are great but don’t do shit if the candidate is running unopposed (and a lot of these chucklefucks are).
Simple solutions. Term limits, ranked choice voting, delete the electoral college.
The problem is that while people disapprove of Congress as a whole they tend to like their own representatives.
Gerrymandering is a bigger problem in Congress.
Ranked-choice means nothing if you have single-member districts, other than maybe allowing some third parties to get in. You can still gerrymander and stuff.
What you really want is multi-member districts or just nationwide PR, but that is anything but simple…
Yeah, 96% of RCV elections in the US elect the first round winner anyway. In part because proportional representation is the ultimate goal, I think Approval Voting is a better first step towards fixing our elections. You can very easily adapt it to proportional methods in ways that the voter can actually understand. Fargo and St. Louis use it for their normal elections and it’s caused majority winners to go way up. It elected the first black woman to mayor for St. Louis, so that’s pretty neat.
Interesting, do you have any resources on adapting Approval to proportionality (i.e. for parliamentary elections)? I don’t see how you could allocate based on total vote share without party lists (if only a few candidates get a vast, vast majority, you have a bunch of seats to fill). Does allocation to the top n winners approach proportionality?
As far as parliamentary elections go I think STV is good if you don’t have parties and (MM/OL/CL)PR if you do.
There’s two main ways you can do it, which you pick depends on the things you care about. The first is to just say that a voter can cast as many votes as they like, but that the weight of their ballot is divided by the number of votes they cast. So if a voter selects N candidates, then each candidate gets 1/N votes towards their total. Top vote-getters win. This method is very simple and easy to understand, but it does encourage voters to strongly limit their support, since each vote they cast dilutes the power of the rest of their votes. In fact, going from 1 choice to 2 is the biggest drop off in terms of support for your candidates.
So you say to yourself “I’d rather not punish people for voting for as many candidates as they like, but I don’t want one party to win all the seats if they have a slight majority support.” Well okay, let’s assign seats sequentially then using Sequential Proportional Approval Voting. Voters pick any number of candidates and the votes are added up. Top candidate gets the first seat. Then, for every ballot with W winners on it, its value is assigned to 1/(W+1). For the first round no ballot can have any winners, so all ballots count the same. For the second round, some have weight 1 and others weight 1/2. In the third round 1, 1/2, and 1/3. Then 1, 1/2, 1/3, and 1/4. You get the idea. The aim here is to allow voters to support c andidates that are unlikely to win, since the number of votes they cast doesn’t impact their vote weight. But, as a voter gains more and more representatives in office, their ballot is weighed less and less, since they should be more and more satisfied with their representation.
As a simple example, if there were three parties with R=45%, G=43%, and B=12% support, and all voters voted for only their party, the seats would be awarded as follows:
As with any proportional method the more seats you award the more true to the correct proportion the awarded seats become. This method makes it much more reasonable to vote for everyone you like, but it also discourages insincere votes because if that candidate gets awarded a seat all the rest of your votes just became worth less in all the following rounds.
Honestly any reasonable proportional method with a big enough seat pool is just about as good as any other. I like using the approval method since the voter is presented with a ridiculously simple ballot (you literally can’t fill in the bubbles wrong) and they can functionally ignore the counting method knowing that whatever the election is, voting for everyone they like is a pretty reasonable strategy. Slightly more optimal strategies exist if you know the polling data and what kind of election you’re voting in, but “everyone you like” is still a very good one.
“simple”
Yes, simple. Easy to explain to the average person, easy to implement. Now, as for our overlords with all the money allowing it? Complicated.
RCV is completed enough that it’s causing disenfranchisement problems with poor and low education voters. Better to go with approval voting, which gets the same results while making invalid ballots impossible.
The way we make that happen is by starting with local referendums and working our way up. It’s a lot of work, but it’s the main way good stuff happens in our democracy.
That abstract describes disenfranchisement due to overvote, which is choosing more candidates than allowed. If these fucking morons cannot follow directions, they likely are too stupid to be trusted to vote. I’d rather that type of self culling than the current methods.
Now, try saying that about Florida in 2000. You know, “butterfly ballots” and all.
It is near impossible. The super majority required is insanely difficult to get.
It’s the kind of change you don’t ask for permission to change. I don’t think the system is capable of reforming itself.
Majority voting system is the main problem. Electoral college is the version for presidential elections, but it needs to be changed to a proportionate voting system for congress as well.
As the US is very state-based, you could do a version like Germany where you vote for a local candidate as well but the proportion of the congress equals the whole proportion of votes.
While I agree with these, removing the electoral college wouldn’t have a direct impact on congress, right?
It would have an indirect impact by not allowing an orange fuck by winning without the popular vote.
It could change the VP (tie breaking vote in Senate)
The electoral college has nothing to do with electing legislators (it is only used for the presidency), and alternative voting methods to go to are great but don’t do shit if the candidate is running unopposed (and a lot of these chucklefucks are).