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The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Maine is considering introducing preferential voting
The superior voting system is
This poll is closed.
First-past-the-post voting 1 1.47%
Preferential voting (IRV) 67 98.53%
Total: 68 votes
[Edit Poll (moderators only)]

 
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Corsair Pool Boy
Dec 17, 2004
College Slice

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!"

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?

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.

* # ¿ Jun 11, 2018 13:53
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# ¿ May 10, 2024 03:32
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Corsair Pool Boy
Dec 17, 2004
College Slice

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).

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.

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.

* # ¿ Jun 11, 2018 14:10
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The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Maine is considering introducing preferential voting