If you live in New Hampshire, I suggest you call your state legislators to support this bill. Approval Voting is a very small change that goes a long way! If you don’t live in New Hampshire, send this to someone who does!
This is not a good choice. It’s not like we haven’t known about approval voting. (Vote for as many candidates as you want, largest number wins.) It’s that it’s just our current system with extra steps for the same outcome. Ranked Choice Voting solves the psychological dilemma of making sure the bad guy doesn’t get elected while actually holding the reserve choice in reserve.
I also find the assertion that RCV is difficult to understand a bit condescending. You get X number of choices, (we’ll say 3) and your number 1 stays in until they’re knocked out by having the least number of votes. Then your ballot switches to your number 2 and so on. So you could safely vote Bernie and Biden knowing Biden can’t just win by being the safety candidate anymore.
What the nice looking page doesn’t tell you is that in approval voting that’s been done in the US voters largely still voted for a single candidate. And RCV is well understood and liked in the jurisdictions that already use it. Over all approval voting favors the current major parties and RCV does not.
Edit - just adding to this to say that the site linked, the center for election science is riddled with GOP propaganda once you get far enough down the rabbit hole. Please don’t let them sucker you.
RCV fails the Sincere Favorite Criterion. People claim that it’s safe to vote honestly under RCV, but that’s actually not true. Sometimes you’re better-off by demoting your favorite or even not voting at all This stems from RCV’s non-monotonicity problem, where increasing support for a candidate can cause them to do worse (or vice versa). This is an unacceptable failure.
If you want to see some of the whacky results RCV can produce, play around with this spacial election simulation tool. I’m not kidding when I say this is the first result I got, which I set up in literally five seconds while blind to the RCV calculation. The green candidate has three completely separate win regions and they’re not even inside any of them. When green is obviously the most popular candidate, they lose. That’s completely unacceptable.
I’m not sure what you’re on about with approval voting having extra steps compared to choose one. If anything, RCV is the one with extra steps. Even in the previous link, RCV is noticably slower to calculate.
Approval is used in both Fargo and St. Louis. The number of votes people tend to cast depends on how many candidates are running. The 2021 St. Louis primary had 4 candidates and voters averaged 1.56 votes cast. Since it would be moronic to vote for all 4 candidates, a likely vote distribution would have been something like 50% 1 vote, 40% 2 votes, 10% 3 votes. The 2022 Fargo election had similar results, with elections averaging 1.6 and 3 votes per ballot. In large fields, you can get some very high number of votes.
It’s popular, it’s accurate, it’s simple as hell.
I think that single seat constituencies are an obsolete paradigm altogether
Hard agree! Those are rookie numbers. We gotta pump those numbers up! It’s my understanding that 5 member districts is the smallest you can go and still be functionally impossible to gerrymander.
2 places with most people still voting for one person is not the good news you want it to be.
Also I went to your site to play with the colors and it’s possible to fuck up any of the types in just a few seconds. It’s literally click and drag. And yes we all know RCV results aren’t done as fast because you have to do the rounds. That’s not an actual problem, only a GOP propaganda complaint.
Also, I might look at some more of what you source if it wasn’t the same site so often. Slick sites like these are trying to sell you on something. They may believe it’s for the best but it’s still a sales pitch.
Speaking of which I just watched the Center for Election Science video you gave me because I hate myself. And sure enough it’s the GOP propaganda that tries to treat Palin and Begich as a coalition. However if that was true, Palin would have won. In reality enough of Begich’s voters ranked Peltola as number 2 to give her the win. They also assume Palin’s lost voters (to give Begich the first round pass) would have voted Begich or stayed home. These are wild assumptions, and were thoroughly debunked at the time.
That’s the system working as designed. And I’m pretty comfortable in stating that this site is not acting in good faith.
If 50% of voters picking 1 person out of 4 is “most,” then “most” people also voted for 2 or 3 out of 4. I shouldn’t have to point out that you can’t really have two exclusive groups both claiming “most.”
I’m using CES so heavily because they’re the ones with good data and write-ups, but I can dump more data from other sources if you’re interested.
A different interactive simulation where RCV usually agrees with the minority. Notice that it also fails to even be resolvable with certain opinions and so doesn’t get calculated at all.
RCV can hide second choices when first choices win or make it to the finals. Arguing that’s the correct result under RCV is circular reasoning, and the results fail to show the true support of the other candidates, which is important for future elections, where people judge who to vote for based on past results.
2023 Chicago Mayor election, multiple voting method polling data. Yes, the sampling method produced bias in the responses. The takeaway is not found in absolute, but comparative results.
Higher dimensional election modeling.
The spoiler rate under RCV is not insignificant, and at the very least, difficult to understand. Your voting method should not be difficult to understand. Do you want even more claims of a stolen election? That’s how you get even more claims of a stolen election.
The incentive to vote for one person also incentivizes you to cast a safety vote. You can’t have it both ways. Either the system will encourage people to vote for a candidate they don’t like, or it will encourage people to only vote their favorite. It can’t do both.
Also, can you show me those nonsensical spacial models under approval? I tried to create one and failed. If you create one, can you show the results for all four methods with that same candidate set?
Anyway, I don’t think we’re going to be having a productive conversation beyond this. I sincerely hope that RCV continues succeeding, despite its flawed nature, I think we can both degree it’s better than our current system. I hope both approval and RCV take over the country and are forced into an ultimate showdown.
Cheers!
You’re right most isn’t the right word, but let’s not stand on semantics. If fully half of voters aren’t conforming to expected behavior then you cannot expect the thought experiment about the effects to stand.
You gave me an empty simulation. I’m not doing your work for you, proving a negative is impossible. And a no majority result (Or in the US nobody reaches 270 votes in the electoral college), means Congress votes by state. We have constitutional back ups.
You are using exit polling. We have actual data about how people vote under approval voting. With things not accounted for in any of your math models, simulations, or polls; such as politicians using a one vote message during their campaign. Which is tactical voting. Ironically your next source identifies approval voting as the most susceptible to tactical voting, even above our current model.
The higher dimension election modelling source isn’t bad. But I can see why you just dropped it in there without saying anything. You didn’t read it and you just hoped the wall of text would add authority to what you were saying. Unfortunately for you he actually shows how weak approval voting is once actual human behavior is even attempted to be modeled.
The spoiler rate is not relevant. which is probably why you quickly switch to the stupid voter myth. However RCV is in use in 62 jurisdictions right now and that’s not actually a problem, except with bad actors who are going to go after any system we use. About spoilers, every election, poll, referendum, or ballot is subject to changing the measurement based on what is being measured. Put simply the choices available will always change how people vote. Imagine a world in which Trump was caught red-handed giving nuclear secrets to Putin in Mar-a-lago and he’s locked up for life with everyone agreeing he shouldn’t be on the ballot. How does that change Biden’s chances? Imagine actual Jesus is on the Ballot, how does that change Trump’s chances? These are extreme theoreticals used to prove a point but let’s go back to sophomore year poli-sci classes.
One of the things you learn around that time is how this works. Usually they two examples, and hypothetical bad faith one and a real good faith one. In the first, a city council has an empty lot and they want commercial development on it. But they need voter approval for what to do with it. So the first thing they do is a private poll to see what people want. It comes back 20 percent commercial; 20 percent homeless shelter; and 60 percent kid’s park. So on the referendum they put a choice of commercial development and a homeless shelter. They then sit back and let NIMBYism do it’s thing. In the real life good faith example they turn the page back to 1992 and Ross Perot.
So yeah, complaining about spoilers is just making noise and hoping people don’t actually figure it out. It’s really only a problem in bad faith scenarios like the GOP running people with nearly the exact same last name as the Democrat in the race.
The French study you linked does not prove you have to vote only for your preferred candidate or your safety candidate. That’s also an either/or fallacy, especially when discussing systems expressly meant to handle multiple choices. It is also, yet again, an exit poll. What have we observed about non binding polls? Lets ask the musician you so kindly linked. Oh yeah they’re likely to involve people who are more political, more conversant with the systems being tested, and less likely to vote tactically because there’s no pressure to win in an experiment.
I can see why you think we won’t be having a productive conversation after this. Several of your sources don’t claim what you say they do, in fact they pretty clearly tell you not to use their data in the way you are using it. Source bombing a conversation is a troll tactic.
Yeah I mean, voting data is messy. You’re trying very hard to interpret the data in only the way you want to. You’re the one who claims 50% picking 1 out of 4 doesn’t conform to expectations. I think that’s perfectly acceptable. If you look at the Democratic Primary Polling Data again, you’ll find that, in practice, RCV, Approval, and Score generally agree on the overall results. You seem to think that voters choosing only some candidates is somehow a failure of the system. How many do you want them to pick before it’s an acceptable number?
I made sure not to make claims about the sources unless they were true. It would be ridiculous to do otherwise. You’re taking claims I made elsewhere and applying them to things I didn’t point to. I have read and understood the entirety of every link I shared. I’m not going to be posting things I can’t explain. Different sources have different purposes, to dive into to details if each (which do not always agree with each other) would be further complicating an already nitpicky argument. You asked for more variation in sources, I provided more variation in sources. What would have been an acceptable but not excessive number?
You claimed you easily created nonsensical models, but have failed to produce your examples. You’re the one who has to provide proof of your claims, because just like you said, I can’t prove a negative. I already provided a graphical example of RCV misbehaving. Can you provide an example of the others?
You keep claiming we have plenty of data on RCV but then don’t reference any of it. Typically election officials don’t release the ballots, so it’s impossible to actually say what kind of election happened under RCV. The spoiler rate estimates for RCV elections are all over the place.
You’ve got the definition of a spoiler wrong. Spoiler candidates are a losing candidate that changes the winner of the race without a change in voter preferences. If you let voter opinions change, anything you try to say about the voting system is virtually meaningless.
Anyway dude, you’re clearly not interested in having a productive conversation. The only reason I’m replying is to make sure at least some of your assumptions and wrong claims are publicly countered, but at this point I really am going to say goodbye. I get the feeling that you’d somehow argue I didn’t address half your points but also gave a wall of text.
Say what you want, I’m done. I again wish you and the RCV crowd well (it’s not a terrible system) and hope we have some epic national stage showdown in the future.
Lmao. Actual data is messy, let’s use simplified data instead. No dude. That’s not how science works. Actual data from actual observations is better than experimental conditions. Specifically because of the human factor.
And you can’t make claims like “approval voting means you can vote for several candidates safely!” And then call single candidate ballots a success. They voted tactically. The politicians told them to vote tactically.
And elections offices won’t release the ballots but they absolutely release the anonymized data about what votes went where. Which is why I’m astounded you just claimed we don’t have data on RCV voting. There’s 62 jurisdictions in the US using it. It’s been used internationally as far back as 1893. Australia has been using it heavily for 80+ years. Your data is out there. Go find it. I’m not going to attempt to prove a negative because that’s impossible. And continuing to ask me to do so is incredibly bad faith.
And if a spoiler causes a change in the winner, then obviously people preferred that candidate over the runner up candidate. You know what would solve that? RCV.
Edit - lol I totally forgot to talk about your source work. I’ll leave it with a hearty lol though. You can say you read it all and it was super meticulous if you want but it obviously wasn’t.
You’re putting words in my mouth both by extending things I said into areas I didn’t go, and straight-up misremembering a claim I did make to the point where your quote isn’t even a factual statement independent of the fact that I didn’t say it. Furthermore, it is clear you don’t fully understand how RCV actually works, which is messing with quite a bit of your logic and messing with your interpretations of statements I’ve made.
Cheers mate, I wish you didn’t see me as an adversary.
Ranked Choice is objectively worse because it breaks down when there’s a popular third party, meaning it doesn’t really solve the spoiler effect. Basically, your secondary vote won’t count until your primary is knocked out, and your #2 could very well be the most popular candidate (i.e. maybe a ton of people have the same #2, but their #1 outlives the #2, so the #2 drops out first).
Approval voting is great because there cannot be a spoiler effect (candidate with the most votes wins). However, the third party candidate probably won’t win unless they draw heavily from both sides. What you’ll likely end up with is a lot of moderate winners, which isn’t the worst thing in the world imo.
STAR voting is even better because it takes preference into account, just like RCV, but without missing votes. So every candidate you vote for will get that vote counted, regardless of what position you put them in. This means popular third parties will have a much better chance because they don’t need to outlast the major party candidates to get counted, they just need a lot of votes.
I highly recommend looking at a few comparisons online. I’ve found a few great YouTube videos, but I don’t want to accidentally bias things by pointing to a biased source, so go look for yourself. My personal preference is:
- STAR voting
- Approval voting - very close second
- RCV
But all of them are better than FPTP, so I’ll vote for whichever gets on the ballot.
That’s not true. I literally just described how the spoiler effect occurs in approval voting. And if the votes for number two remain locked behind number one in RCV then number 2 wasn’t the most popular candidate. Number 1 was. Number 2 is ranked lower for a reason. That’s the entire point of RCV.
Star is just approval voting with an extra round. RCV works, is in use, and is popular where it’s in use.
No, and here’s a clear example:
- A - 4 votes for #1, all #2 votes go to C
- B - 4 votes for #1, all #2 votes go to C
- C - 2 votes for #1, all #2 votes go to B
- D - 3 votes for #1, all #2 votes go to A
In this matchup, C is eliminated in the first round and A ends up winning after D is eliminated. However, C got 10 votes to A’s 7, so C should’ve won.
This is obviously contrived (I spent like 10 seconds thinking of it), but hopefully it illustrates the point. A popular third option that could win with Approval voting could lose with RCV. And C would win under STAR voting as well.
Nope. The entire point is that C was not popular enough to rank higher on ballots. The A votes were never going to C because A won. The most C was going to get was 6. The A voters preferred that candidate over C.
The way you want to look at RCV requires counting some people twice.
No, what’s going on is that more people preferred C than any other candidate, they just didn’t mark them first. A and B had equivalent first round votes, and B only wins because of second round votes. If we looked at an second round votes in the second round votes when the first round didn’t pick a winner, C would’ve won.
B only wins because strategic voting messed things up.
There are plenty of other ways I could twist the votes to the point where it’s really not clear if RCV actually represents the will of the people in a contested election.
Approval is clear: most votes wins. STAR is nice in that every vote counts, not just when your front-runner is knocked out. RCV pretends to give you options, but if you pick a poor preferred candidate, you could lose pretty much any say in the election, so it can end up worse than FPTP in the public’s eyes in certain elections.
They didn’t mark them first because they wanted A over C. Which is the entire point. In this scenario Biden could easily be C, the safety pick, and you’d be arguing that he was what everyone actually wanted. Against all polling. That’s the entire point of RCV.
With STAR, Approval, and Single Vote, your still asking people to not vote for a safety candidate in order to give their preferred candidate the best chance. People understand this and the 2 places that used Approval voting saw people voting for one person still because it’s not hard to understand. Approval voting’s theory is dependent on people voting in a specific way that just does not happen.
One thing is for certain, if you pull apart the rounds in RCV you can certainly pretend it’s not clear that the will of the people was served.
You can also have cases where the most preferred candidate won’t win. For example:
- A - 4, #2 - C
- B - 3 - #2 - A
- C - 2 - #2 - B
In this case, B wins, but A has more primary votes, and C would’ve won if A happened to be knocked out. So those who voted for A aren’t getting their voices heard. I think most would agree that either A or C should win here, not B.
I think this video does a good job comparing each of the voting systems.
Is that the same as Rank Choice??
Approval voting is basically just letting you vote for multiple candidates. Rather than saying “I want this one,” you’re saying “I approve of these candidates.”
No, it’s better. There is a comparison in OP’s link. (rank choice is called Instant Runoff Voting)
I’m not sure it is though. In ranked choice voting I can safely hedge my bet as my second or third choice. In approval voting I can’t do that because I risk electing my second or third choice over my first choice.
Theoretically it works better because you only vote for candidates you approved of. But that’s never been how human psychology works. If all of the Democrats tick Biden’s name just to make sure then you’ve essentially brought us back to current method with extra steps. Ranked Choice is the method to go to.
I agree, I’d rather prioritize my support for those I support most instead of applying it equally as if I approve of candidates equally.
That’s not what they did in the 2020 primary. Only a small number of people cast safety votes for Biden when they were given them freedom to vote for as many people as the liked.
We don’t need to look at old exit polling. RCV is in use in 17 states. Furthermore, people are more likely to conform to approval voting’s theoretical framework in a poll because it doesn’t have any weight behind it. In the two elections that have actually used approval voting candidates all ran a single vote message and voters largely refused to vote for more than one person.
The thought experiment falls apart in reality.
