Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) did not mince words about the state of the House Republican conference on Friday, saying it's in a tough spot at the moment.
Ranked is definitely superior to our current system. But it still has its flaws, which is why I didn’t mention it.
The biggest flaw is with counting. Ranked isn’t a purely additive process like STAR or approval, so you only ever get the results once they’re complete rather than as you count. And that goes a long way towards trust in the system and auditing.
Ranked is also basically just FPTP, but with several layers. So the same flaws in FPTP are present within Ranked, just a bit muted.
But like I said, even ranked is better than the shit show we currently have.
Not sure I follow the “FPTP with layers” argument. After each layer, the votes go to the next choice rather than being wasted. Vote splitting gone. That’s the bad part of FPTP taken care of.
There’s still one winner, but proportional voting is orthogonal to ballot type
And you only get final results when all counting is complete, but ballot counts could definitely be published as they come in (N ballots with order ABCD, M ballots with order DBA, etc)
Not sure I follow the “FPTP with layers” argument. After each layer, the votes go to the next choice rather than being wasted.
Round one is a check for a +50% majority. If there is no majority, then it eliminates the lowest voted candidate and moves on.
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This first half is identical in function to FPTP voting. So ranked choice is basically FPTP but repeated a couple times with eliminations. Like I said, it is still definitely better than FPTP, but it has the possibility of vote splitting, albeit to a much smaller degree. A strategic voter wouldn’t vote for their first pick first, but would instead vote for the closest candidate to them that has a high chance of winning. And that’s the hole we are currently stuck in as is.
but ballot counts could definitely be published as they come in (N ballots with order ABCD, M ballots with order DBA, etc)
If there are 5 candidates in a given race, something that is rather common, then there would be 120 different orders. That’s not data that is easily digestible or auditable. And that number gets exponentially worse the more candidates there are, and ideally we should have a good number of candidates to choose from to make sure we get the best one.
Ranked is definitely superior to our current system. But it still has its flaws, which is why I didn’t mention it.
The biggest flaw is with counting. Ranked isn’t a purely additive process like STAR or approval, so you only ever get the results once they’re complete rather than as you count. And that goes a long way towards trust in the system and auditing.
Ranked is also basically just FPTP, but with several layers. So the same flaws in FPTP are present within Ranked, just a bit muted.
But like I said, even ranked is better than the shit show we currently have.
Not sure I follow the “FPTP with layers” argument. After each layer, the votes go to the next choice rather than being wasted. Vote splitting gone. That’s the bad part of FPTP taken care of. There’s still one winner, but proportional voting is orthogonal to ballot type
And you only get final results when all counting is complete, but ballot counts could definitely be published as they come in (N ballots with order ABCD, M ballots with order DBA, etc)
Round one is a check for a +50% majority. If there is no majority, then it eliminates the lowest voted candidate and moves on.
/\
|
This first half is identical in function to FPTP voting. So ranked choice is basically FPTP but repeated a couple times with eliminations. Like I said, it is still definitely better than FPTP, but it has the possibility of vote splitting, albeit to a much smaller degree. A strategic voter wouldn’t vote for their first pick first, but would instead vote for the closest candidate to them that has a high chance of winning. And that’s the hole we are currently stuck in as is.
If there are 5 candidates in a given race, something that is rather common, then there would be 120 different orders. That’s not data that is easily digestible or auditable. And that number gets exponentially worse the more candidates there are, and ideally we should have a good number of candidates to choose from to make sure we get the best one.