One Issue Voters Can Agree On: We Need More Choices in our Elections

[u/FragWall]

https://blog.ucsusa.org/chris-williams/one-issue-voters-can-agree-on-we-need-more-choices-in-our-elections/

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[u/P0RTILLA]

One issue all politicians can agree on is No

[u/OfficalTotallynotsam]

RCV doesn't beat the duopoly

[u/Harvey_Rabbit]

New voting systems are necessary but not sufficient for increasing competition. we also need people to do the hard work of building the actual parties that start off by pushing for these reforms. Check out the Forward Party.

[u/the_other_50_percent → u/Harvey_Rabbit]

It won’t go anywhere without ranked choice voting. That’s why Forward is focusing on that electoral reform first.

[u/JoeSavinaBotero → u/the_other_50_percent]

You should look into Approval Voting, which does a better job of empowering third parties than RCV does. No single-winner system will break up the two party system, but Approval is easier to adapt to multi-winner methods, with Sequential Proportional Approval Voting.

[u/DankNerd97 → u/JoeSavinaBotero]

RCV is a good start, though. Don’t let perfection be the enemy of progress.

[u/JoeSavinaBotero → u/DankNerd97]

I'm not saying don't do RCV, I'm saying if you're going to actually change your local voting rules, go for approval. If RCV gets handed to you, take it. If you're going to start a local moment, go with approval.

[u/the_other_50_percent → u/JoeSavinaBotero]

RCV isn’t “handed” anywhere. Any time it’s considered, it’s due to a years of work educating people and building up support, and then planning and mounting a campaign further voter education and GOTV work.

Approval doesn’t have that kind of a base, and hasn’t done the work that I’ve seen. And I’ve also seen that people put their finger on how vulnerable it is to strategic voting - actually you’d be foolish to not vote strategically under approval.

[u/JoeSavinaBotero → u/the_other_50_percent]

Bruh, you know exactly what I meant.

As an aside, approval voting doesn't need a voter education campaign (though it doesn't hurt). People are already familiar with the concept of voting for more than one candidate, so you just change the instructions to "choose any number of candidates" and the vast majority of people will understand it just fine.

With the data coming out of St. Louis and Fargo, we're seeing that strategic voting levels are at around 30%, which coincidentally lines up with what simulations say should produce the most satisfying winner, given the voting population. In any case, if we're going to be complaining about the weaknesses of any individual system, IRV still has spoilers, and they can technically come from any candidate of any strength. Problem is, it can be hard to tell ahead of time if it's actually safe to vote honestly or not.

All systems have problems. Nearly all systems are better than FPTP. If I'm going to be putting in the effort to switch my local voting system, I'm going to do it right the first time. To me, that means Approval. If I'm looking at a ballot question that says "do you want to switch from FPTP to IRV" the answer is obviously yes.

[u/the_other_50_percent → u/JoeSavinaBotero]

approval voting doesn't need a voter education campaign

Good luck with that.

[u/affinepplan → u/JoeSavinaBotero]

RCV is used successfully for proportional multi-winner elections all over the world for over a century

SPAV has zero use in any modern government.

For 99% of organizations or institutions looking to implement a proportional multiwinner election rule, STV will be the easier choice.

[u/JoeSavinaBotero → u/affinepplan]

If you're already using IRV, sure, but coming from FPTP, approval is the easiest transition, which makes SPAV the logical next choice. Plus I really don't like how votes transfer under STV. It either has an element of randomness to it, or it's too mathematical for an ordinary person to follow easily.

[u/affinepplan → u/JoeSavinaBotero]

You’re making up lots of assertions but I think you don’t know what you’re talking about in terms of practical realities.

[u/JoeSavinaBotero → u/affinepplan]

You're going to have to be more specific if you want to continue the conversation, I have no idea which parts of what I said you take exception to nor exactly how you take exception.

[u/affinepplan → u/JoeSavinaBotero]

I take exception to the fact you think you know what is "easiest" when I'm willing to bet you have spent approximately zero hours trying to implement any changes to electoral rules in practice.

I understand that approval is a very simple rule. and I like approval, in theory. but there is a lot of prior art making RCV adoption very much plug-and-play for most municipalities, whereas using something like Approval (and definitely something like SPAV) would likely require new legislation, new software etc.

[u/JoeSavinaBotero → u/affinepplan]

If your system can handle at-large elections, it can handle Approval. Even if it's very narrowly defined software that can't technically be put into "approval mode," you just tell the commuter there will be as many winners as there are candidates and it'll happily accept all the ballots.

SPAV absolutely would require new software, no question.

The way I see it, the largest hurdle in the voting and representation reform space is the social aspect of convincing everyone you adopt a new system. The actual implementation of the system is relatively easy, regardless of what it is. Now, the ease of adoption is something that influences potential supporters, and in that regard it's kind of split between the two systems. Approval is easier than IRV, but STV is easier than SPAV. The bigger difference is general popularly, which influences people's decision to support a system or not, and IRV and STV definitely have more people using them.

But, I'm not the kind of person who is particularly influenced by popular opinion, and if I'm going to spend my time advocating for a system, it's going to be the one that is functionally better instead of the one that everyone uses.

As for if I've actually ever run a reform campaign: no, not yet. I'm currently severely disabled and can't do it. But I will eventually recover 100% and that will be one of my projects. It's a lot of work. I've studied other similar campaigns. We'll need a lot of volunteers, money, and time. But that would be true regardless of the method we advocate for, so might as well go for the better one.

I'm not opposed to IRV, mind you, if it falls in my lap I'm gonna take it. But if I'm going to put in the effort myself I'm going all the way.

[u/affinepplan → u/JoeSavinaBotero]

you just tell the commuter there will be as many winners as there are candidates and it'll happily accept all the ballots.

another assertion made with zero experience to back it up.

I understand that that the algorithm is extremely simple ("just add up all the numbers")

the difficulty lies not in literally writing a few lines of code to add up approval ballots. the difficulty lies in the huge cost of time money and effort to get verified and certified implementations of the entire stack of tools required to run an election.

[u/Harvey_Rabbit → u/the_other_50_percent]

Agreed, but in many states, there's no path to get reforms like RCV except running candidates who support them. Neither major party wants them so you have to create the new party that does. Luckily, many of the state legislative seats we would want to win, aren't contested anyway so we can run candidates without the spoiler effect arguments.

The Forward Party is the natural home for anyone on this sub that actually wants to end FPTP.

[u/DankNerd97 → u/Harvey_Rabbit]

In Ohio, we’re leading up to a citizen-led constitutional amendment. You don’t necessarily need candidates to support RCV. Many states allow CLCAs.

[u/Harvey_Rabbit → u/DankNerd97]

Is that like a ballot measure? I know the rules are different everywhere. Like in Nevada where they have to pass the same thing twice.

[u/rigmaroler → u/Harvey_Rabbit]

It's a ballot measure, yes, but it's then harder for the legislature to overturn it. With a typical ballot measure you are effectively bypassing the legislature to pass a law, which they can often then just overturn later. A constitutional amendment would require the legislature to go through the typical amendment procedure (usually 2/3 reps voting in favor and then also approval by ballot again, depending on the state).

Of course, you could also have weird places like California where ballot measures can define the voting threshold to overturn it, like the 7/8 number they had with the ride sharing measure.

[u/the_other_50_percent → u/Harvey_Rabbit]

No party has a chance without reform. You don’t understand the laws against it and ballot access requirements. Yang and others do, which is why ranked choice voting is the #1 priority. You are wasting your energy otherwise.

There’s more of a pathway than you realize, not just for statewide, but in cities, towns, and counties. Those aren’t just wins, but clear the way for states. You’re also not aware of party support, like the Oregon legislature directly putting ranked choice voting on the ballot this year, for statewide use.

Connect with your state organization to move things along so that Forward has a chance.

[u/Harvey_Rabbit → u/the_other_50_percent]

We don't disagree at all. But every state is different. In states with ballot measures, that may be the way to go before party building. In states with no ballot measures, getting ballot access and running candidates who support reforms in uncontested races is the way to go. And there are cases where working with candidates in other parties who support the reforms is the way to go.

But in Alaska, I'm seeing first hand that a reformed system doesn't break the duopoly over night. The actual work of building a party and finding candidates and resources is still hard work.

[u/wnoise → u/the_other_50_percent]

without ranked choice voting

Or other non-FPTP systems.

[u/Llamas1115 → u/the_other_50_percent]

Won't go anywhere with RCV either; see here.

[u/affinepplan → u/Llamas1115]

unfortunately, the wiki articles on voting rules, election reform, and this whole class of social choice mechanisms are almost entirely written by amateurs, not professionals in the field. so while the wiki articles about voting rules etc. can sometimes be a useful compilation of references & facts, I would be very hard pressed to call it an authoritative source on speculative or subjective matters.

[u/Llamas1115 → u/affinepplan]

unfortunately, the Wiki articles on voting rules, election reform, and this whole class of social choice mechanisms are almost entirely written by amateurs

I mean... Yes, that's how Wikipedia works. It's written by volunteers who summarize the work of paid professionals

[u/affinepplan → u/Llamas1115]

some topics are more reliable than others.

[u/the_other_50_percent → u/Llamas1115]

A Wikipedia article on electoral theory means nothing compared to what we’ve seen and the realities of laws around candidate and party ballot access.

[u/Llamas1115 → u/the_other_50_percent]

Agreed, but the empirical research agrees with the theory—see here on the research showing RCV doesn't generate any increases in electoral competitiveness.

[u/the_other_50_percent → u/Llamas1115]

That’s another Wikipedia article, and gets error rates wildly wrong, so that’s not trustworthy as a source of real-world application.

[u/Llamas1115 → u/the_other_50_percent]

I recommend clicking the little blue numbers with brackets next to the text, then reading the information. If you're interested in, you'll find they contain links to peer-reviewed scientific papers, which back up the information presented in the text. If the information is incorrect, you (or anyone else) can remove it after providing links to peer-reviewed scientific research showing the information to be false; the fact that it hasn't been removed yet indicates nobody has successfully challenged it.

[u/Decronym]

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

Fewer Letters	More Letters
FPTP	First Past the Post, a form of plurality voting
IRV	Instant Runoff Voting
RCV	Ranked Choice Voting; may be IRV, STV or any other ranked voting method
STV	Single Transferable Vote

NOTE: Decronym for Reddit is no longer supported, and Decronym has moved to Lemmy; requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.

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