The superior voting system is This poll is closed. |
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First-past-the-post voting | 1 | 1.47% | |
Preferential voting (IRV) | 67 | 98.53% | |
Total: | 68 votes |
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https://www.npr.org/2018/06/10/617965150/maine-voters-to-decide-on-whether-theyll-rank-candidates-in-future-electionsNPR posted:In just a few days, Maine primary voters will participate in a ranked-choice voting experiment so unprecedented that the state's top election official sometimes compares what's about to happen to a dangerous and high-stakes mission in space. In the few times I've angrily mashed the Reply button to comment on US politics, it's often been to say how much of a raging dumpster fire your electoral system is -- not necessarily because of that Electoral College, but because you use first-past-the-post voting for everything. I'm Australian and I grew up with preferential voting/IRV/ranked-choice voting and think that it, along with compulsory voting, is what makes our electoral system far superior to yours. (And, to be fair, to many other countries'.) We might still elect bogans and racists to parliament but at least you can be drat sure that the entire population wants those bogans and racists representing them. Wikipedia has a good rundown of how it works and its benefits compared to other systems so I won't go into detail here except to shout about the biggest benefits it offers over FPTP: 1. In preferential voting, the winner of the election is preferred over the other candidates by a majority of the electorate. For example, in a FPTP system with four candidates, imagine a result like follows: Joe Blow: 31% Bill Buckle: 26% Bob Knob: 24% Fred Fringe: 19% Joe Blow wins the election because he "came first" with 31 percent of the vote -- even though this means that 69% of the electorate preferred someone other than him. Will of the people, my left nut. Preferential voting, through its progressive elimination of the lowest-ranked candidate until one candidate has 50% + 1 vote, delivers a result where the winning candidate is preferred over the other candidates by a majority of the population. In the above example, it might end up with Bill Buckle or even Bob Knob winning, depending on whom the people who voted for Fred Fringe ranked second. (This is called "winning on preferences".) It still often ends up in a two-party race, as almost every race in Australia until a few years ago when the Greens started to seriously challenge some seats, but that's not such a problem because ... 2. You don't have to vote for the lovely [Democrat/Republican] just because you don't want the even-more-lovely [Republican/Democrat] to win. Vote 1 for your favourite candidate! Vote 2 for the person you'd like to see get in if your first choice is eliminated! And so on. The seats I was registered to vote in back in the day never went Green but I could always vote 1 Green, 2 Labor so that if the Greens unexpectedly won the seat, great!, and if they didn't, at least I could support a somewhat social-democratic party instead of the loving Liberals. "What's the point of voting for a party that never gets more than 15% of the vote?" I hear you ask. I'll let Dennis the Election Koala explain that (see the firstly/secondly/thirdly/ boxes near the bottom of the comic). Anyway, I think it's clear that I'm massively biased in favour of preferential voting being used anywhere and everywhere, so I'd like to hear from people who have not yet seen the light or who think that this satanic commie system has no place in Are Country. (You'll notice that the forum polls don't allow preferential voting. THANKS LOWTAX! ) Weatherman fucked around with this message at 05:55 on Jun 11, 2018 |
# ? Jun 11, 2018 02:04 |
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# ? May 10, 2024 00:06 |
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In before Americans so I can explain that the "loving Liberals" are different than the US idea of a liberal. Here it refers to our deeply corrupt right-wing conservative party.
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# ? Jun 11, 2018 12:12 |
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Maine goon here. I don't know if you wrote an example like this on purpose, but it's apt:quote:For example, in a FPTP system with four candidates, imagine a result like follows: This is almost exactly what happened eight years ago here. Paul "Trump's First Prophet" LePage won with something like 32% because the liberals split between a weak Dem and a strong independent (about 7% pissed their votes away on fringe indies). So we had something like 32%R/31%I/30%D. I've been active in the Ranked Choice Voting initiative in the state, and it's been a rough couple of years. The governor and the conservatives in the state legislature have done everything they can to kill the thing, and it's been hard to implement because doing so for every candidate in every election would require an amendment to the state constitution. The state superior court gave it the go ahead for use in primaries and in certain races in the general election. But the timeline has been a frustrating summary of the state of representative government in the US: 1) RCV passes by a Citizen's Initiative, 53/47 back in 2016 2) Maine Republicans sue to block the implementation of the Citizen's Initiative, but fail to do anything besides delay the implementation 3) Judges rule that a constitutional amendment would be necessary to apply RCV to all races, but that a version could be lawful if it excluded those races (Republicans appeal, naturally, and lose) 4) Legislative Republicans are compelled by the initiative to write a law, but attempt to stall and sabotage it in committee 5) Dems and moderate R's get a bill done despite that 6) Gov. LePage vetoes the bill 7) RCV organizers start yet another initiative, this time a Citizen's Veto of the Governor's action (that is Tuesday's vote, so a "yes" on Tuesday's question one will approve the veto of LePage's blocking of RCV, thereby making it law) JUST DO THE THING WE ALREADY LEGALLY COMPELLED YOU TO DO, FUCKWITS Of note: Maine has "Citizen's Initiatives" and "Citizen's Vetoes," which are legally compelling actions. Citizen's Initiatives either put a law into the hands of the governor to sign, or compel the legislature to write a law along certain parameters (RCV was the latter). Not all states have them, and conservatives here like to bitch that they "get in the way of good governance," which would be well and good if LePage and his allies hadn't literally shut the government down because they can't get out of their own loving way. It's been incredibly frustrating, but it's almost over. Question one's passage isn't a certainty, but it is slightly favored. The Republicans are fighting it with the sterling argument, "you're only mad because Paul LePage won." (Yes. Yes we are. 68% of us still are.) There is no organized opposition to the Citizen's Veto besides Republican candidates passively grumbling about it, which most of them are not keen to do. The smarter ones know a slight majority favors RCV, so they don't want to look like douchebags come November. ?So there's a lot of active support for it, and not a lot of opposition besides "it's a scam!" with no explanation as to why they think that. The bizarre thing is that we are using RCV for the first time on the primary candidates at the same time we are voting to keep it or not. The Secretary of State has held dry runs of it, and people's reaction to using it has been pretty dang positive, so I'm hopeful for Tuesday.
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# ? Jun 11, 2018 12:27 |
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Thank you for the effortpost—it's great to hear from someone on the ground who can tell us what's actually going down. I've never seen political obstructionism developed to such an art form as your country has, either Do you know or are you talking to anyone personally who is against preferential voting? I'd really be interested to hear what their objections are and how they respond when the way the system actually works and helps them is explained to them.
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# ? Jun 11, 2018 12:41 |
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In preferential systems, does anyone ever try something like "We're marking the opposition candidate as #2, vote for our guy as #1 or else!" ie, suppose we have candidate B, a radical; candidate D, a fascist, and candidates H and J, centrists.What happens if the people for candidate B start saying they're going to vote for D as their second choice in order to strong-arm the H and J people? Is that something that anyone's tried in places where this has been adopted? fantastic in plastic fucked around with this message at 13:23 on Jun 11, 2018 |
# ? Jun 11, 2018 13:15 |
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fantastic in plastic posted:In preferential systems, does anyone ever try something like "We're marking the opposition candidate as #2, vote for our guy as #1 or else!" Well, let's think about this. In order for this to work, you need to know that Billy Bourgeoishater is going to get enough loyal "Billy #1, David Duke #2" ballots for this to be a meaningful threat, but at the same time he also needs to finish low enough on first preferences that his votes are actually going to get redistributed (or it needs to be a big enough threat that he wins 50% in the first round, which is unlikely). Let's say that their natural levels of support are roughly like this: Harry Harmless and Julie Jellyspine 35%, Billy Bourgeoishater 10%, David Duke 15%. Let's now say that Harry and Julie both lose 10% to Billy, because their voters get spooked by this. First round result: David 15%, Harry & Julie 25%, Billy 30%. It's David's 15% that gets re-allocated first. If it splits equally three ways, Harry and Julie go to 30% and Billy to 35%. Now Harry's 30% gets redistributed and splits 20/10 in favour of Julie. Julie wins 50-45. On the other hand, if the vote goes according to natural levels of support, Billy gets knocked out first and his votes are redistributed, but he only got 10% in the first place and that's not enough to push David Duke over the line; one of the very many moving parts Billy needs is a very popular fascist to leverage.
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# ? Jun 11, 2018 13:45 |
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fantastic in plastic posted:In preferential systems, does anyone ever try something like "We're marking the opposition candidate as #2, vote for our guy as #1 or else!" That would be pretty difficult to pull off in any significant quantity of votes. At a glance it would require way more engagement and electoral awareness from most voters than typically exists. The main argument against ranked voting I've heard (beyond 'it's sooooooo complicated and confusing!!') is that it lets some people's votes count more than once after their candidate is eliminated and thus violates 'one person one vote'. It's patently absurd, since you re-tally ALL the votes each round, but is this something you've encountered, and if so, how do you push back on it? Good luck, Maine. This isn't a panacea for the US, but it sure as hell would solve some of the problems.
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# ? Jun 11, 2018 13:53 |
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Trin Tragula posted:Well, let's think about this. In order for this to work, you need to know that Billy Bourgeoishater is going to get enough loyal "Billy #1, David Duke #2" ballots for this to be a meaningful threat, but at the same time he also needs to finish low enough on first preferences that his votes are actually going to get redistributed (or it needs to be a big enough threat that he wins 50% in the first round, which is unlikely). That's a good point, and the threatening people would need to have a candidate popular enough AFTER you try to blackmail everyone as well - threatening to throw the election to a fascist if your guy doesn't win is probably going to cost more votes than it picks up.
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# ? Jun 11, 2018 14:10 |
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Ireland uses preferential voting but not IRV, STV is used instead where are multiple seats available in each constituency that are awarded to candidates who cross a quota ((votes/(available seats + 1)+1)) with the candidates with the lowest number of votes gradually eliminated in steps and their votes redistributed based on preference (and surplus votes for a given candidate who surpasses the quota also being redistributed down ticket). It's only v superficially related to IRV and yields drastically different results edit: IRV is used for presidential elections I guess but those are relatively unimportant compared to the lower house elections kustomkarkommando fucked around with this message at 14:37 on Jun 11, 2018 |
# ? Jun 11, 2018 14:26 |
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I've always wondered how the preferential vote tally works. Hopefully it catches on in more than just Maine, because that would go a long way towards unfucking the American political system.AgentF posted:In before Americans so I can explain that the "loving Liberals" are different than the US idea of a liberal. Here it refers to our deeply corrupt right-wing conservative party. It's the same here tbh
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# ? Jun 11, 2018 14:42 |
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It’s a bad system and the people pushing it seem to be Democratic centrists anxious about the leftward movement of the party. This is intended as a way to prevent a scenario where left wing candidates get the Dem nomination and centrists are forced to vote for them. This way a centrist candidate can win by dint of secondary preferences of the upper-middle class suburban Republican constituency that Dem operatives are so so desperate to court for whatever loving reason What they should actually do is proprtional voting, but I’m of the opinion that the strong presidency is the real problem and that changing the electoral system for Congress won’t do much In any case Austalia and Ireland aren’t exactly model polities. Ireland was a weird corrupt one-party Catholic theocracy for decades, Australia is as racist and right wing as we are. Some of the ranked-choice proposals also include multimember districts, and the premiere example of that system was pre-90s Japan, which I should have to say no more about icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 18:53 on Jun 11, 2018 |
# ? Jun 11, 2018 18:45 |
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icantfindaname posted:
This is a weird criticism - the ruling party in Ireland you are referring to tried multiple times to abolish preferential voting and return to FPTP as even though they routinely captured between 45-50% of the vote to maintain power on several occasions they had to make deals with floating independents. And it's not like MMP doesn't have multimember districts.
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# ? Jun 11, 2018 19:34 |
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kustomkarkommando posted:This is a weird criticism - the ruling party in Ireland you are referring to tried multiple times to abolish preferential voting and return to FPTP as even though they routinely captured between 45-50% of the vote to maintain power on several occasions they had to make deals with floating independents. Where are you looking at for an MMP chamber with multi-member districts? All the implementations I'm familiar with use single-member districts. (Not that it couldn't be done easily enough...)
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# ? Jun 11, 2018 19:48 |
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icantfindaname posted:It’s a bad system and the people pushing it seem to be Democratic centrists anxious about the leftward movement of the party. This is intended as a way to prevent a scenario where left wing candidates get the Dem nomination and centrists are forced to vote for them. This way a centrist candidate can win by dint of secondary preferences of the upper-middle class suburban Republican constituency that Dem operatives are so so desperate to court for whatever loving reason what about usually-Republican proletariat putting leftists as their second choice because they're offering real, productive solutions have you thought about that
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# ? Jun 11, 2018 20:01 |
cool voted 1-5 op
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# ? Jun 11, 2018 20:03 |
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Trin Tragula posted:Where are you looking at for an MMP chamber with multi-member districts? All the implementations I'm familiar with use single-member districts. (Not that it couldn't be done easily enough...) Well any implementation that use regionally restricted areas to control the allocation of the top up seats - Wales for example or Germany to a degree since they locked the number of seats assignrf to each Lander pre-vote. Depends what you classify as a district I guess
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# ? Jun 11, 2018 20:11 |
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kustomkarkommando posted:Well any implementation that use regionally restricted areas to control the allocation of the top up seats - Wales for example or Germany to a degree since they locked the number of seats assignrf to each Lander pre-vote. The German/Welsh regions absolutely aren't multi-member districts in the same way that Irish STV has multi-member constituencies, because in STV you vote for individuals, but the regional votes are for closed party lists and you can't vote for an individual like you can with STV or an open list.
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# ? Jun 11, 2018 20:25 |
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Trin Tragula posted:Where are you looking at for an MMP chamber with multi-member districts? All the implementations I'm familiar with use single-member districts. (Not that it couldn't be done easily enough...) Multiple of the proposals I've seen have included multimember districts. Seems that FairVote, one of the biggest groups pushing ranked choice, wants it They mention it at the end of this NYT article https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/09/opinion/ranked-choice-voting-maine-san-francisco.html quote:Ranked-choice voting can’t single-handedly fix America’s broken elections, but it’s a worthwhile experiment, and it’s already proved to make for a better process, particularly in candidate-heavy primaries. If it’s combined with other electoral reforms, like multimember districts that can more accurately reflect the political makeup of a region, it could do even more to help voters feel that their voices are being heard, even if they’re in the minority. And that could help drive up turnout, which is notoriously bad in midterm elections. This Vox article about FairVote endorses it https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/4/26/15425492/proportional-voting-polarization-urban-rural-third-parties quote:Picture how FairVote’s Fair Representation plan would play out in, for example, New York City. (The group has graphic representations on its website of how its plan could work in every state.) Instead of a dozen congressional districts covering varying parts of New York City and Long Island, FairVote’s plan would yield three larger districts.
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# ? Jun 11, 2018 20:44 |
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GreyjoyBastard posted:what about usually-Republican proletariat putting leftists as their second choice because they're offering real, productive solutions Maybe. You'd have to look at the composition of the districts. My guess though is that the places where that might work are a lot fewer than places where the thing I talked about will happen, which are solid-blue areas (except California because of their jungle primary). This really does seem like at least part of the rationale is to prevent solid-blue places like the Pacific Northwest from being captured by left-wing Democratic House delegations kustomkarkommando posted:This is a weird criticism - the ruling party in Ireland you are referring to tried multiple times to abolish preferential voting and return to FPTP as even though they routinely captured between 45-50% of the vote to maintain power on several occasions they had to make deals with floating independents. The multimember system allowed Fianna Fail to stay in office forever by hugging the center. Conservatives in the party wanted FPTP so they could have a true conservative party in a two-party system. Same with Japan except in Japan they succeeded. The right wing of the LDP had wanted FPTP for decades but it didn't happen until 1994. Likewise, centrist Dems want this because it will help them electorally icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 20:57 on Jun 11, 2018 |
# ? Jun 11, 2018 20:49 |
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Trin Tragula posted:The German/Welsh regions absolutely aren't multi-member districts in the same way that Irish STV has multi-member constituencies, because in STV you vote for individuals, but the regional votes are for closed party lists and you can't vote for an individual like you can with STV or an open list. Oh no they are absolutely different - but this was an attack on the idea of multimember districts in the abstract (Japan using SNTV which I dont think anyone is particularly keen on) without any conditions for the particulars of the process. And the Bavarian state level implementation uses open lists and electoral areas (7 in total).
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# ? Jun 11, 2018 20:49 |
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icantfindaname posted:The multimember system allowed Fianna Fail to stay in office forever by hugging the center. Conservatives in the party wanted FPTP so they could have a true conservative party in a two-party system. Same with Japan except in Japan they succeeded. The right wing of the LDP had wanted FPTP for decades but it didn't happen until 1994. Likewise, centrist Dems want this because it will help them electorally This assume the centrism of Fianna Fail was a result of the electoral system which seems overly reductive and slightly tineared to the parties central desire to remain a catch all big tent party and general hostility to defining itself along conventional ideological lines (they refused to publish manifestos for the majority of the 20th century as this was deemed overly ideological) - they always sought to position themselves as being between the FG, proclaimed psuedo-nationalist middle class penny-pinchers, and Labour, too contaminated by this foreign socialist nonsense to really represent the interests of Labour. The second fptp referendum was brought by Lynch, generally remembered as one of the most centrist and thoroughly unideological leaders in FF's history who stuck to a rigid line of moderation.
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# ? Jun 11, 2018 21:23 |
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icantfindaname posted:Multiple of the proposals I've seen have included multimember districts. Seems that FairVote, one of the biggest groups pushing ranked choice, wants it None of those things are MMP, chief. All Maine wants to do is add instant-runoff to its races to force the winners to get 50% of the vote; if you just bolt an instant runoff onto a FPTP system, you still end up with disproportionate results. Vox is advocating specifically for an Irish-style Single Transferable Vote system, which often brings more proportional results than first-past-the-post, but there are also other options out there which produce more proportional results. "Proportional representation" can be achieved either with or without ranked-choice voting and either with or without multi-member electoral districts. By definition you can't have proportional representation when you're electing someone to a single office, it only applies when you're electing representative bodies. A Multi-Member Proportional (or Additional Member) system is one in which you elect a number of members to represent geographic districts, and then balance out the inherent disproportionality of that result by adding extra representatives so that the final makeup of the chamber is proportional to the actual share of the vote. A MMP system doesn't require ranked-choice voting; in Germany you vote first-past-the-post for your constituency representative, and then you vote separately for a party. At the same time, you could also add ranked-choice elements by tweaking the German system so constituency representatives were elected by IRV; or you could swap out the single-member constituencies for multi-member ones. You could also, entirely separately from all of that, add the option to vote for an individual member of a voter's preferred party list. All of those things would be MMP because the end result would be a proportional chamber with both constituency and regional MPs in it. If you want to advocate for PR, great, but you should probably figure out what it is you're arguing for first. kustomkarkommando posted:Oh no they are absolutely different - but this was an attack on the idea of multimember districts in the abstract (Japan using SNTV which I dont think anyone is particularly keen on) without any conditions for the particulars of the process. What I'd like to know is, is it possible to do STV without it inevitably going the same way as Ireland? Ireland's a small country, so even with relatively big multi-member constituencies, the electorates are relatively very small. Even though you're making the constituencies bigger, their elections are ridiculously hyper-local. Everyone campaigns individually on "I got a new leisure centre built" and "I made sure all the potholes on the Drumcondra Road got filled in", and then goes to the Dail with that mindset, so it can be hard to achieve any kind of structural reform because everyone's spending all their time on repairing drainpipes and defending bus routes. It's hard to say whether this is inherent to STV or inherent to Ireland (or both, or neither), because they're the only place using STV at that kind of level. It's an interesting idea, but between that and the way you can still in Ireland get results that are still noticeably disproportional, there's no reason to assume that just bellowing "MULTI-MEMBER DISTRICTS" is going to end in anything other than a different set of oddities and quirks to FPTP.
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# ? Jun 11, 2018 21:27 |
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I hope its ok to talk about different voting methods in general because I have a few questions and ideas ahout them. Other than different levels of party control have the different levels of open list (which range from a person needing enough votes to win a seat outright to the party list being only for tiebreakers) been found to be better at different things or at different election levels? Are there any examples of 'anti-vote' options where you actively reject one or all of the candidates, other than 'none of the above' in Nevada, iirc? I'm especially interested if theres been any done in STV or similar voting methods.
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# ? Jun 11, 2018 21:35 |
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Communist Zombie posted:Are there any examples of 'anti-vote' options where you actively reject one or all of the candidates, other than 'none of the above' in Nevada, iirc? I'm especially interested if theres been any done in STV or similar voting methods. This may not be quite what you meant, but that's how voting works in some single-party states like Cuba. You either vote for the person the communist party has selected for whatever post, or you vote against them and in theory, when a candidate is rejected by a majority of voters, the communist party selects someone else.
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# ? Jun 11, 2018 21:47 |
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icantfindaname posted:It’s a bad system Oh good, I like to hear about the downsides of IRV. Let's hear them: icantfindaname posted:I don't like the people that are likely to gain from it Come on, dude. That was in no way an explanation of "IRV is a bad system". It was "I like the current system because it benefits the people I like". - Can you explain how IRV is worse than FPTP in terms of expressing the will of the electorate more accurately? - Can you explain how it inherently benefits <party currently out of power> over <party currently in power> given that those two parties could switch positions after any election? - Can you phrase your argument in terms of "IRV is bad because of <reason IRV is incapable of fulfilling certain election criteria>" instead of raising example that have nothing to do with the voting system? Fun fact: IRV was introduced in Australia by a ruling, conservative party to avoid their own vote being split by a social-democratic party. Republicans can benefit from it too!
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# ? Jun 11, 2018 21:50 |
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IRV isn't necessarily worse than pure FPTP but it does very little to correct the problems. It inherently favours candidates with a wide appeal, meaning it will always benefit centrists more than extremes on either side. You can argue that's a beneficial quality, but I don't think it necessarily reflects the will of the voter much more than FPTP.
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# ? Jun 11, 2018 21:52 |
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PT6A posted:IRV isn't necessarily worse than pure FPTP but it does very little to correct the problems. It inherently favours candidates with a wide appeal, meaning it will always benefit centrists more than extremes on either side. I don't see how what you're suggesting is a downside. It favours candidates that appeal to the majority of the electorate? It doesn't favour candidates that are on the fringe? The candidate who wins is supported by a majority of the electorate rather than a smaller proportion? How are these not reflecting the will of the voter?
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# ? Jun 11, 2018 21:59 |
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Weatherman posted:I don't see how what you're suggesting is a downside. It favours candidates that appeal to the majority of the electorate? It doesn't favour candidates that are on the fringe? The candidate who wins is supported by a majority of the electorate rather than a smaller proportion? How are these not reflecting the will of the voter? The only states this would have any chance of being enacted in are already blue, so it would serve to retrench centrist power there while doing nothing to the increasingly gerymandered and right-wing delegations from red states. That seems bad on net to me It seems like a system that could be decent if imposed nationally all at once, but doing it piecemeal state by state would be a disaster IMO. PR on the other hand could be introduced piecemeal state by state and would slowly have the effect of making the Democratic Party more and more of a centralized, ‘normal’ Westminster party as state parties became PR parties over time The basic problem with American politics is that a large part of the white voting public are essentially Nazis. I see a regime in which everyone else is consolidated under a political coalition dominated by a left which is ruthless and cynical about the exercise of power despite it not having majority support nationally as superior to one dominated by centrists who are constantly trying to reach out to upper middle class suburban Republicans and fighting people to the left of them icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 22:42 on Jun 11, 2018 |
# ? Jun 11, 2018 22:28 |
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Communist Zombie posted:Are there any examples of 'anti-vote' options where you actively reject one or all of the candidates, other than 'none of the above' in Nevada, iirc? I'm especially interested if theres been any done in STV or similar voting methods. Well the Irish implementation of STV does not mandate voters to preference all available candidates, unlike Australian IRV, and requires only a minimum of one preference for a vote to be valid - voters can an do refuse to preference candidates they oppose and can design their ballots to preference all candidates in opposition to a single one (then you start getting into STV tactics which some people find a con of system, where you can front load your ballot with high preferences for candidates who will finish low on first count to maximize their chances of inching ahead of fringe candidates you dislike to ensure they are eliminated early - say the second candidate of a given party being eliminated before the first party candidate is elected and a life saving surplus transferred down ticket from loyal voters). It's not quite disagreement voting but candidates becoming "transfer toxic" and failing to secure tranches ahead of others is something that comes up on the reg
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# ? Jun 11, 2018 23:15 |
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Weatherman posted:Oh good, I like to hear about the downsides of IRV. Let's hear them: Alameda County ran headlong into a DOJ/Office of Civil Rights consent decree during their implementation of IRV, and it highlights one of the challenges of the system. If there's a segment of the voter base that isn't proficient in the dominant language, it's a disruptive change in process they're unlikely to hear about until election day, absent significant intervention. In other, more traditional, reforms this is less of an issue as voting in the old manner doesn't carry much risk of spoiling the ballot while the potential for suboptimal strategy is also reduced as voters will vote for the candidate they like best. Both of these are heightened in IRV. I still like it, especially over FPTP in most spaces, but the added complexity and unfamiliarity is a larger burden on communities with low rates of English speaking, who are typically underrepresented in our politics anyway. icantfindaname posted:The only states this would have any chance of being enacted in are already blue, so it would serve to retrench centrist power there while doing nothing to the increasingly gerymandered and right-wing delegations from red states. That seems bad on net to me Your hypothetical electorate where the majority of primary voters support a Left candidate (who has enough approval from the centrist wing they they'll go D in the general despite their choice losing the primary) but are cheated out of representation by an alliance of the centrist hordes and nevertrumpers seems... disconnected from reality. Especially in light of the primary results in Cali. I'll agree that the great progressive takeover is most likely to occur when you only need 50%+1 of the Dem primary voters in a blue state to make it happen, but there have been few indications that we're approaching that threshold in many (any?) places. Meanwhile (if the electorate is actually there but being stymied by the establishment and/or lesser of two evils) IRV can help increase progressive representation in blue areas by weakening the power of traditional gatekeepers.
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# ? Jun 11, 2018 23:32 |
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Consider this goonmade cartoon on the subject: http://www.chickennation.com/2013/08/18/you-cant-waste-your-vote/
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# ? Jun 11, 2018 23:32 |
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I'm confused as to how IRV is supposed to entrench centrist Democrats, unless you believe that centrists appeal to more people than leftwingers which wouldn't really speak well of your belief in your own ideology. I can see how the top-two system in California does this (the state party pressures left wing Democrats to drop out to avoid a lockout). In an IRV system, especially one that has primaries, the party might still want left wing candidates to drop out (because it's full of neolib centrist scum or something) but it would have no argument to voters as to why they should put Centrist Dem as their first preference instead of Left Dem 1 > Centrist Dem 2. If the party organization is full of centrists, the voting system will not stop them from wanting centrist candidates. Is your view that left wing Dems can only be elected if they win their primary in a fluke and centrists are forced to vote for them in the general?
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# ? Jun 12, 2018 00:06 |
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Paracaidas posted:Alameda County ran headlong into a DOJ/Office of Civil Rights consent decree during their implementation of IRV, and it highlights one of the challenges of the system. If there's a segment of the voter base that isn't proficient in the dominant language, it's a disruptive change in process they're unlikely to hear about until election day, absent significant intervention. In other, more traditional, reforms this is less of an issue as voting in the old manner doesn't carry much risk of spoiling the ballot while the potential for suboptimal strategy is also reduced as voters will vote for the candidate they like best. Both of these are heightened in IRV. It's not that difficult that someone proficient in the relevant language couldn't write up a primer along the lines of Ken the Voting Dingo. I would agree that having that primer printed out and distributed to the right people in the US would be a task akin to cleaning up Chernobyl while everyone has ebola and North Korea is invading, though, since you guys (not you specifically Para, the American public) has such a hate-boner for anything that might help the wrong people vote. The arguments that icandfindaname is making are more along the lines of "The US sucks and it sucks exceptionally® and that's why we can't do anything at all that will objectively help since there other unconnected-but-admittedly-tenuously-related problems remain". I'd like this topic to focus more on how IRV is objectively better than FPTP and less on how "well Democrats suck and the centre sucks and gerrymandering means that " if we can.
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# ? Jun 12, 2018 00:08 |
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Weatherman posted:It's not that difficult that someone proficient in the relevant language couldn't write up a primer along the lines of Ken the Voting Dingo. I would agree that having that primer printed out and distributed to the right people in the US would be a task akin to cleaning up Chernobyl while everyone has ebola and North Korea is invading, though, since you guys (not you specifically Para, the American public) has such a hate-boner for anything that might help the wrong people vote. I've got a few cycles of experience with IRV and the results graphics are some of my favorite things! I sincerely wish that our caucuses would transfer over to these instead of IRV but without a secret ballot and in real time and with the general aura of adversarial process. Weatherman posted:The arguments that icandfindaname is making are more along the lines of "The US sucks and it sucks exceptionally® and that's why we can't do anything at all that will objectively help since there other unconnected-but-admittedly-tenuously-related problems remain". I'd like this topic to focus more on how IRV is objectively better than FPTP and less on how "well Democrats suck and the centre sucks and gerrymandering means that " if we can.
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# ? Jun 12, 2018 00:28 |
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So it went the way paige didnt want and he says he won't certify the results lol https://twitter.com/ZachBlanchard/status/1006546814693249024?s=19
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# ? Jun 13, 2018 06:02 |
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The most horrific thing in the world, huh. edit: I went looking for news and the first article, https://www.vox.com/2018/6/12/17448450/maine-ranked-choice-voting-paul-lepage-instant-runoff-2018-midterms, seems fairly calm but still manages to do a bang-up job of finding both the shittiest-looking ballot paper I've ever seen—seriously, do your voters not know how to write numbers on a line?—and the shittiest-ever example of an IRV election, the mayoral election in Portland that went 14 rounds before declaring a winner. That last point is a good thing! It means that political support was wildly scattered, but by giving everyone more of a say than just " I LIKE THIS GUY ", the process ended in a winner that the majority was agree was better than all their higher choices given that those higher choices had been knocked out of the race. Weatherman fucked around with this message at 06:13 on Jun 13, 2018 |
# ? Jun 13, 2018 06:08 |
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kustomkarkommando posted:Well the Irish implementation of STV does not mandate voters to preference all available candidates, unlike Australian IRV, and requires only a minimum of one preference for a vote to be valid The Australian system is a bit more complex than that. We use IRV in the federal lower house and in some state lower houses, and STV in the federal upper house and in some state upper and lower houses). The implementation of STV varies across the country but there's been a trend towards removing the need to number all the boxes (as well as other positive changes) at both the state and federal level. Paracaidas posted:I still like it, especially over FPTP in most spaces, but the added complexity and unfamiliarity is a larger burden on communities with low rates of English speaking, who are typically underrepresented in our politics anyway.
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# ? Jun 13, 2018 06:11 |
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drunkill posted:Consider this goonmade cartoon on the subject: The part about having to put numbers for all the candidates for a given position seems bad. Maybe I want to put in my vote for just two candidates, and the two candidates on the other side of the political scale can eat poo poo. Or I want to be ideologically pure and allow my vote to only go to one candidate anyway.
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# ? Jun 13, 2018 06:34 |
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In Maine (where we just voted to keep it), you can rank as few or as many as you want.
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# ? Jun 13, 2018 06:38 |
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# ? May 10, 2024 00:06 |
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Yeah, we actually use both systems in Australia - that one is called Optional Preferential Voting. I don't have anything against it. I only found out from that article, though, that if people stop numbering after they run out of desirable candidates, and the counting procedure goes for several rounds, then it's possible for the winner to have gotten less than 50% of the total number of "1" votes cast, which doesn't gel with my bleating about representing the will of the majority. That's academic though. We could also consider that if voters didn't care who got in after their chosen candidates all got knocked out, it's still a valid representation of the will of the electorate. Acolyte, what about the governor threatening to take his bat and ball and
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# ? Jun 13, 2018 07:23 |