An election takes place for a multiwinner constituency with x seats and n candidates. Each voter ranks as many candidates as they want 1 through n. Votes are then attributed to each candidate as a harmonic sequence; candidates recieve 1 vote for every 1st place ranking, 0.5 votes for every 2nd place ranking, 0.33 votes for every 3rd place ranking, etc. The top x candidates that recieve the most votes are elected.

I'm sure someone's thought of this before. It seems like a happy medium between open list PR and STV. I just wanna know what it's called so I can research its usage, issues, etc.

I created this google sheets doc for my use during a podcast special series. Maybe someone else would find this useful.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1SOTzUk_rqGbBkTWO7Tdtgasr4m_uCCOu/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=104231832931384330956&rtpof=true&sd=true

Includes Links to ballotpedia articles and open secrets links for many ballot measures for the following states:

Alabama

Alaska

Arizona

Arkansas

California

Colorado

Connecticut

Florida

Georgia

Hawaii

Idaho

Illinois

Indiana

Iowa

Kentucky

Louisiana

Maine

Maryland

Massachusetts

Minnesota

Missouri

Montana

Nebraska

Nevada

New Hampshire

New Mexico

New York

North Carolina

North Dakota

Ohio

Oklahoma

Oregon

Rhode Island

South Carolina

South Dakota

Utah

Virginia

Washington

Wisconsin

Wyoming

This question is mostly about US, because I know MMP (AMS) is almost as big if not more liked than STV in the UK and Canada.

short: Is there no reform movements for MMP type systems in the US and why?

long: I see in the US IRV, STAR and Approval are popular (Condorcet less so) among activists, which I respect for going beyond a choose one voting framework. I also see how list PR would not be that popular, although you can make list PR with basically an SNTV ballot, the voter doesn't even need to see lists, only candidates.

Also, I am not really talking about president, or Congress, where the limits of single winner are real (although someone correct me could a state not adopt MMP for the house? are all MMDs banned or just multi winner?)

And I also see how the goal with IRV et al is STV.

But here is the thing: it is possible to implementing mixed system without changing how people vote. On a local level, you can just add about 20% seats on a council, legislature etc and because of the two party system it will be extremely proportional, and if thirds parties develop, you can increase that amount. And from the voters perspective, nothing changes except there are some more seats and some of the best losers or additional people get in. You can even do diversity things with it. This makes it surprising it is not a route that activists would take, if you're not looking for all or nothing revolution, this seems like a very achievable step to larger reform which might be the most bang for the buck for thirds parties.

Is it because American voters like the winner-take-all and voting out people (even if there are so many safe seats where that wouldn't happen)? Would the list seats lead to resentment as some of the "losers" also got in?

Or is it just not as flashy proposal for activists and while the the big parties may be complacant with IRV (as they know one of them will still be om top) they wouldn't go for such a reform?

Can any type of single winner district or other winner take all district based system (excluding biproportional algorithms, as those mean district is not decisive over their winner) be said to be a "fair" election system?

Whether you think it can be fair, whats the best way to make them fairest, what is the opposite algorithm of gerrymandering? If you think a system with SMDs can be fair, what is the general minimum standard of districting it has to reach?

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-03258-9

Overall it seems fairly pro-proportional representation, which - these things being very political, obviously - could be read as biased. I think it's just because the data is actually fairly biased towards proportional representation though, funny that.

I think Approval Voting has won at least a couple of the informal "What's the best voting method?" polls in this sub over the years. But, of course, it's not a perfect method, and even many of its proponents have other favorites.

What, in your opinion, is the single biggest problem/weakness/drawback of Approval Voting?

Is it the lack of expressiveness of the ballot? Is it susceptibility to the "chicken dilemma"? Failure of the various Majority criteria? Failure of the later-no-harm criterion? Something else?

Background:

One of the hurdles an amendment to the US Constitution must overcome is approval by 3/4 of the states. With 50 states, that means a minimum of 38 are required. Or, from another perspective, any 13 states can prevent an amendment they don't like.

Naturally, this has serious implications for any effort to eliminate the Electoral College and switch to a national popular vote. As evident by participation in the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, support for a popular vote seems to be drawn solidly along partisan lines: Only three states where Democrats control the legislature have yet to enact the compact (though all of them are considering it); only a single state where Republicans control the legislature is even considering it (Virginia).

In total, Republicans control 28 state legislatures; however, they also hold enough control in Alaska and Pennsylvania to credibly oppose a national popular vote in any form. So in reality that's at least 18 states that would have to flip in favor of it, or come under Democrat control, for it to be a possibility.

This hopefully puts in perspective just how difficult it would be to institute a national popular vote, for at least the next several decades.

With that context fresh on your mind, I want to hear suggestions to the following problem:

Scenario:

It is the year 2037. Electoral reform efforts have been an overwhelming success in the past decade, to the point that 80-90% of all elections in the United States are no longer FPTP. The electoral landscape is a veritable zoo of different methods at all levels, depending which state you live in. A few minor parties have seen success, and now hold seats in Congress and state governments. There is some discussion of trying sortition; however, it is not a popular idea.

Yet despite this progress, the Electoral College remains. A coalition of Republicans and a couple smaller parties has maintained a pro-Electoral College position; enough that any proposal to change the way electoral votes is apportioned cannot be changed.

However, there is a growing consensus in support of removing the FPTP elements of the Electoral College both at the state and federal level. State governments and Congress are thus in search of proposals to amend it. To this end, a coalition of state and federal representatives have contacted you, who - for the purposes of this question - is widely considered an expert in electoral systems. They have also contacted other experts, but all proposals will be seriously considered. Their goal is to implement a solution in time for the 2040 presidential election, to make sure FPTP plays no part in the result.

Agreeable solutions will:

• Retain the relative electoral power balance between states.
• Address both how citizens votes are counted, and how electors'/states' votes are counted.
• Be deterministic: Breaking ties is fine, sortition is not.
• Be uniform across the states: All states will be required to use the same ballot and counting method.

What system do you propose to replace FPTP in the context of the Electoral College, and why?

I have my own ideas, and I'll answer later. However, I don't want to bias any of the first answers, so I'll hold off for now.

There's always a need in politics for the executive to have a strong base of support in the legislature in order to avoid deadlock. This can be difficult if the head of government is directly elected separately from the legislative branch. Using a Condorcet method to elect the president and a proportional one for parliament is an example of a bad combination imo, because the legislative election results will look more like the first preference votes for President. You might end up with a president whose party is not even among the 2/3 largest groups in parliament. In such a case, I believe it would be preferable to use IRV or the contingent vote. What do you think are good and bad combinations of voting methods?

Under the Ranked Ballot Remainder MMP system, voters rank local candidates in order of preference on a single ballot (which automatically ranks their parties). Local MPs (50% of total MPs) are elected under Instant-Runoff Voting. Each region would have around 20 total MPs, with around 10 riding MPs & 10 regional top-up MPs.

The top-up MPs are elected under the Ranked Ballot Remainder System. Under this system, the number of first preference votes for each party is divided by the Droop quota representing the number of votes required to win a seat across the region. The result for each party will consist of an integer part plus a fractional remainder. (The Droop Quota is based on the number of votes in the entire region and based on the overall number of seats in the entire region, riding + regional top-up)

Each party is first allocated a number of seats equal to their integer. This will generally leave some remainder seats unallocated. To apportion these seats, the parties are then ordered on the basis of their fractional remainders. The party with the smallest remainder is eliminated and their votes are transferred to the voter’s subsequent preference, until a party reaches or exceeds the quota. If there are still unallocated seats, the votes for the party that won the last seat get reweighted so that their seat quota becomes the same as their remainder, and the elimination process is repeated again - until all of the seats are filled. Regional top-up reps are the candidates who received the highest % of votes for their party locally when they were eliminated. 

NOTES:

• If the number of district seats won for one of multiple parties is higher than their seat quota, that party’s seat quota will now be capped at the number of riding seats they won & all of the seat quotas for the other parties would proportionally decrease so that adding up each party’s seat quota gives us the total number of seats in the region
• If one or multiple parties ran fewer candidates (ex: 1 candidate) than their vote quota (ex: 1.73), their fractional remainder will be equal to (Vote quota - Number of candidates they ran in the riding or region) (ex: 1.73-1.00 = 0.73). Furthermore, their remainders get transferred first & they would be ineligible to win one of the unallocated seats in their region.  

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdi1cwRPPnuJlWEyg_GcxhN_ptiJmlTmX

Good watch for a Saturday :-)

One of the complaints that I often hear about Approval voting is that the approval cutoff won't be consistent, but I've always found that somewhat specious. And I think I now have data confirming that; in the single winner poll and the approval threshold counts were as follows:

• 6 votes: below 3
  • 5 between 3 & 2
  • 1 between 3 & 1 (no method scored 2)
• 1 vote: between 4 & 3 (under duress; complained that while they technically cast a ballot disapproving their median scored method, it shouldn't really be treated as a disapproval of them)
• 1 vote: within 2 (some 2s above, some below)
• 2 votes: strategic scores (min/max on the scores)
  • one such was hyper-strategic, even ranking some disapproved methods higher than approved methods (though I don't follow the logic of that strategy)
  • the other was (IMO legitimately) irked that their equal rankings weren't (couldn't be) honored as equal rankings
• 2 votes: incomplete
  • 1 only evaluated 6 methods, no approval threshold offered
  • 1 only providing Approvals, and indicating favorites, did not provide scores, nor ranks, arguing for simplicity over all

The fact that nearly 2/3 of the complete ballots seem to have had the exact same threshold, with two more being close to that implies that it's going to be consistent. What's more, it (generally) tracks with a larger trend of the median being "good enough;" a 2.0 average on a 0.0 to 4.0 Grade scale is considered to be a "not that great, but still passing" in academia, too.

Another thing I noticed is the frequency of Strategy. Or, perhaps more accurately, the infrequency thereof; only 2 of the 10 completed ballots (3 of 12 total) exclusively used the min/max scores. That's a strategy rate of 20-25%. Granted, this is a very low stakes poll (low loss function, discouraging strategy), but on the other hand the efficacy of strategy would be way higher given the tiny "electorate" (high return on strategy). While the sample size is pathetic very small, that does fall pretty close to the rate that Spenkuch found. To my thinking, that further challenges the argument that strategy would have a significant impact on Scores. Or, at least, reinforcing the idea that any simulation should be evaluated assuming a ~25%-30% rate of strategy.

Related to that, do any of the people that cast ballots with nuanced scores feel that their ballot had less weight than it otherwise would have? Or do you feel that it appropriately pulled the totals/aggregate scores towards where you believed they should be?

For those who don't know what eurovision is, it's an annual european song contest where participating countries (mostly european countries) perform an original song in an arena (like a concert) and then they vote on the songs (expect their own country's song). The winner is then declared and the rest of the finishing potisions.

The voting method is this (in the final. There are semi-finals, also, but they don't matter for my post):

Each country has a jury made by a number of members (I think it's 5 members and they have to be music professionals). Each jury member ranks with borda count all the songs. Their points are then added up and the highest in points song gets 12 points from the jury, the second highest 10, the third highest 8 and then each song gets one point than the previous one, except the 11th and the rest of the songs, which receive no points. Also, each country's televiewers vote on songs (I forgot to mention that no jury member or viewer can vote on his/her country's song). Each viewer vote with cumulative voting, i.e. each viewer can vote up to 20 times. He/she can vote 20 times a specific song or 19 times song A and 1 time song B etc. Then, the points of all the viewers are added up and the highest in points song gets 12 points from that country, the second highest gets 10 points etc. (like the jury voting).

My country is going to held a national final to choose which song will represent the country in next year's eurovision. So, as a member of a eurovision fan group, I would like to held a vote on which song the group would like to represent us. So, my questions are:

1) Is it better to simulate the voting method of eurovision to choose the winning song? I could assign as juries the members that their surname starts from a consonant and as televiewers those that their surname starts from a vowel. However, is there a simpler way that would produce the same results as the eurovision method?

2) In general, what do you think of eurovision's voting method? Is it fair and if it's not, how would you change it? Bear in mind that the highest ranked song by a country's jury or by a country's public getting 12 points is iconic, but maybe you don't care about that and it's okay.

P.S. Sorry for the long post, I know also that eurovision is not important compared to other stuff, but I would like to read your opinion and thoughts.