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Instant Runoff Voting

Do we really want fringe candidates to get a boost? Do you really want Michael Badnarik showing up as second in the presidential election?
 
corplinx said:
Do we really want fringe candidates to get a boost? Do you really want Michael Badnarik showing up as second in the presidential election?
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If this had been in place in '92 we might have elected President Perot... :eek:
 
Upchurch said:
Fringe? Not so much.

Third party alternatives? I think I wouldn't mind that in the least.
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THey often end up being quite important down here in deciding contentious votes in the senate, so here at least the third parties are far from fringe, though of course there are fringe parties here, like the fishing party (Slogan: I fish, I vote)
 
corplinx said:
Do we really want fringe candidates to get a boost? Do you really want Michael Badnarik showing up as second in the presidential election?
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Given that I cast my first ballot for Badnarik at the LP convention and my second for him in the presidential election, no, I didn't want him showing up second. I wanted him to win the thing.
 
GodMark2 said:
Percentage of Australians educated in Republican-funded big-city school systems: 0%
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That's all right, I think the percentage is similar for the number of Americans who have been educated in Republican-funded big-city school systems. Of course, the number who have attended Republican-funded big-city school systems is substantially higher, but actual "education" would raise costs unacceptably.
 
corplinx said:
Do we really want fringe candidates to get a boost? Do you really want Michael Badnarik showing up as second in the presidential election?
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Why not? As long as he doesn't turn up as first, then it doesn't make any practical difference, and presumably if third parties had more of a real chance, they'd be more careful to not elect people who think that the income tax is unconstitutional.
 
I like this system a lot. Unfortunately, first you would have to get Republicans and Democrats to agree to it, and those are the parties which would be harmed in the process. Or, alternatively if enough voters could be educated and convinced, but that also seems easier said than done.
 
UserGoogol said:
I prefer range voting, personally. Voters rank the candidates on a scale from 1 - 10 (or whatever numbers) and whoever gets the highest average vote wins. It's both simpler to implement (scoring people on a scale from 1-10 is a lot easier to understand than giving them relative ranks) and it avoids most of the subtle flaws of IRV. Although range voting can't really do proportional representation, so IRV might be a good way of doing that.

But yeah, I do agree with the general idea that first past the post screws over third parties disproportionately. Although I imagine there might be more to it than just the voting system, since Canada and the United Kingdom have first past the post yet they have comparatively strong third parties. (I have heard part of it is that the presidential system also encourages a two party system.)
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Your system is quite bad actually. It works fine if the voters vote honestly, but only stupid or very honest (see stupid) voters will do that because the system discourages honesty. If there are only two condidas that can realistically win you should always give you prefered one a 10 and the less prefered one a 1, whatever your true prefrences are. Otherwise you devalue your vote. Similar dynamics are true if there are more than two realistic candidates, but that was the simplest example.

Also what are those subtle flaws you think IRV has? IRV unlike your sugestion encourages the voter to vote honestly in (almost) all cases.
 
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corplinx said:
Do we really want fringe candidates to get a boost? Do you really want Michael Badnarik showing up as second in the presidential election?
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WHat on Earth posseses you to think that he would end up seconds. Also the reason 3rd party candidates tend to be loonie toons, is that voting for them is a waste. That means very few people anywhere near the mainstream will vote for them, even if they are sane. with IRV you might get sane third parties.
 
I have long supported instant-runoff voting. In fact, I managed to have it used by a community organization I belonged to.

Several years ago, the college/community radio station where I volunteered wanted to develop a new slogan. A few of us brainstormed a couple dozen ideas, took other ideas from the staff, and chose ten final options.

The entire staff (who can vote on such things) used an IRV process to settle on the final choice. The choice that won started out in the lead, but only with (IIRC) 30 or 40 percent support among a hundred voting members. But it eventually took a solid majority.

I believe that allowing a majority to develop around this new slogan provided "buy-in". No one could say that our new slogan won with only minority support. And I didn't hear any serious kvetching from people whose favorite choice didn't win.

In order for IRV/STV to gain more acceptance, I think it's important for people to actually use it in their community organizations. If people use it, they'll like it. And if they like it, they'll promote it in other organizations, such as government.
 
Kerberos said:
Your system is quite bad actually. It works fine if the voters vote honestly, but only stupid or very honest (see stupid) voters will do that because the system discourages honesty. If there are only two condidas that can realistically win you should always give you prefered one a 10 and the less prefered one a 1, whatever your true prefrences are. Otherwise you devalue your vote. Similar dynamics are true if there are more than two realistic candidates, but that was the simplest example.
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I don't think that's that much of a flaw. Having people scale their "true preferences" such that their least favorite candidate becomes a 1 and their most liked candidate becomes a 10 doesn't seem to make a big difference, in my opinion. Even if the scaling was automatic, it would still allow voters to rank their candidates in a way which is both monotonic and independent of irrelevant alternatives.

(This website in particular tries to consider a utilitarianism-based metric for defining the goodness of voting systems, and according to their simulation range voting wins out even when people vote tactically. Of course, one could argue that such a metric is inherently skewed towards range voting because range voting is essentially utilitarianism put directly into vote form, but I like utilitarianism, so whatever.)

Also what are those subtle flaws you think IRV has? IRV unlike your sugestion encourages the voter to vote honestly in (almost) all cases.
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Well, being a preference-based voting system, Arrow's Impossibility Theorem bites it in the ass. (That website also gives some examples of how it does.) Also, although this isn't really that subtle, range voting is just easier to implement than IRV, since ranking candidates on a scale from 1-10 is easier than ordering candidates.

(Although I'm linking rangevoting.org a bit, I don't think I'm as die-hard for range voting as he is. IRV would be nice too, it just seems that range voting is slightly nicer.)
 
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UserGoogol said:
I don't think that's that much of a flaw. Having people scale their "true preferences" such that their least favorite candidate becomes a 1 and their most liked candidate becomes a 10 doesn't seem to make a big difference, in my opinion. Even if the scaling was automatic, it would still allow voters to rank their candidates in a way which is both monotonic and independent of irrelevant alternatives.

(This website in particular tries to consider a utilitarianism-based metric for defining the goodness of voting systems, and according to their simulation range voting wins out even when people vote tactically. Of course, one could argue that such a metric is inherently skewed towards range voting because range voting is essentially utilitarianism put directly into vote form, but I like utilitarianism, so whatever.)
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That's interesting, though I must admit I didn't go deep into the math. Also I wonder what it would do to the calculation if we assumed that some people voted strategically while others didn't. Of cause you could lessen that problem, by simply going straight to approval voting. That has the advantage that it's simpler than range voting too.


UserGoogol said:
Well, being a preference-based voting system, Arrow's Impossibility Theorem bites it in the ass. (That website also gives some examples of how it does.) Also, although this isn't really that subtle, range voting is just easier to implement than IRV, since ranking candidates on a scale from 1-10 is easier than ordering candidates.

(Although I'm linking rangevoting.org a bit, I don't think I'm as die-hard for range voting as he is. IRV would be nice too, it just seems that range voting is slightly nicer.)
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Thanks, that was interesting, I might have to re-evaluate my support for IRV in favour of range or approval voting. Not that it matters since I'm not American, and as you said range voting doesn't work for proportional systems like the Danish one.
 
This type of voting puts to bed that perennial cry from people who like to point out the flaws of the eventual winner: "I didn't vote for him!". In this case, it's likely that they did.

The point is that winner needs to get 50% of the vote to win, which is the same as first-past-the-post. The difference is this can be regardless of if they get the primary votes or not. That is, as a voter, your second (and third, and fourth...) preferences may count.

For example, I may really like the policies of a certain party but they are a minority party. Whereas a major party has similar policies that I am OK with...sorta. I can vote them 1 and 2 in that order, knowing that if I don't get one, my vote counts towards the other.

It also means that if another party whose policies I abhor are standing, I can put them at the end of the list, forcing my preferences for other candidates ahead of them.

Problems with it: Of course, there's the "donkey vote". Because we have compulsory state and federal elections, many people do not give a rats about the candidates or policies but have to vote anyway. So they simply number all the candidates down the ballot paper - dumb-as-a-donkey vote. Which means the order of candidates on the ballot IS important, and much hoo-hah and ranting attends this when the order-of-listing is drawn up.

Then there is the issue of spoiled votes due to being unable to write numbers in boxes in order. *cough* Can I suggest that anyone who is incapable of write a series of simple numbers in boxes in order should not be qualified to vote anyway? Experience here tells us this is really not a major problem!
 
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Wow. I had never heard of this idea before but I love it. I've always wanted there to be more support for third party candidates and this would acomplish that very well.
 
Zep said:
Problems with it: Of course, there's the "donkey vote". Because we have compulsory state and federal elections, many people do not give a rats about the candidates or policies but have to vote anyway. So they simply number all the candidates down the ballot paper - dumb-as-a-donkey vote. Which means the order of candidates on the ballot IS important, and much hoo-hah and ranting attends this when the order-of-listing is drawn up.
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I never understood compulsory voting. All you get is more uninformed voters.
 
Can someone here show me an example how this would work in the next election? If we voted from 1-5...

IOW let's say:

Giuliani gets 34% of the vote.
Hilary gets 32%.
Obama gets 15%.
McCane gets 12%.
Lieberman runs as an independent and gets the remaining 7%.

Eventually the run-off election would still be between Rudy and Hilary, right?
Lieberman has the same tiny chance as in the current system.

Or would the IRV or Australian system nurture alternative candidates when people start campaigning, and therefore we'd have more variety of higher quality candidates by the time the campaign is over?:confused:
 
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