Psephomancy

This is a myth, unfortunately. The form of RCV used in the US does not make it safe to vote for the candidates you actually like; you still need to take electability into account and vote strategically to avoid wasting your vote. Other ranked voting systems *do* actually fix these problems.

Adopting ranked ballots is not enough. Good voting systems need to use all the information in those ballots to find the most representative candidates.

#RCV doesn't ensure that the winner is supported by a true majority, either. It just eliminates candidates based on an incomplete count of voter preferences until it has created the illusion of majority support.

Voters can choose their first choice, second choice, third, and so on, and express those on their ballots, but then the #RankedChoiceVoting system doesn't actually count all of those rankings, and eliminates candidates based on incomplete information, resulting in undemocratic outcomes.

#RankedChoiceVoting can elect candidates who are not supported by the majority, too, since it eliminates candidates based on incomplete information about voter preferences.

#RankedChoiceVoting is incapable of finding the true majority winner because it doesn't actually count all of the rankings that voters express on their ballots.

#RankedChoiceVoting doesn't prevent spoiler candidates, and is incapable of finding which leaders are supported by the majority, since it doesn't count all of the voters' preferences. A candidate can be preferred by supermajorities over all others and still be eliminated under RCV.

#RankedChoiceVoting doesn't actually fix the spoiler effect, though. It eliminates candidates using the same 1st-choice ranking tally that we have now.

RCV doesn't fix the two-party problem, though. It eliminates candidates based on the same tallies as our current system, which suffers from vote-splitting and the spoiler effect, so popular third parties get eliminated early for not having enough 1st-choice rankings.

This is very sad. I'm sorry for your loss. He did a lot of good work on modeling voting systems, and made the world a better place.

Doesn't Plurality meet both Later No Harm and Monotonicity?

The problem with IRV is that voting honestly hurts the chances of your second favorite, so you are incentivized to dishonestly vote for the Lesser Evil as your #1, so it perpetuates the same problems as Plurality Voting.

Bracket Voting Elections Should Be Structured Like Familiar Sports Tournaments

The good thing about the more democratic systems is that they're more understandable, too. Here is one example: edwardbfoley.substack.com/p/bracket-vo...

What do you mean? 🤨

"many argue that the ranked choice voting system guarantees that even in races with many candidates, winners have the support of majority of voters"

Also incorrect, unfortunately. The majority of voters can support candidate A over B, and RCV can still eliminate A and elect B.

"They don't feel as though they are splitting or throwing away their votes."

A misconception, unfortunately. The form of RCV use in the US still suffers from vote-splitting, so you still need to rank the Lesser Evil 1st to avoid throwing your vote away.

Unfortunately, the type of RCV promoted in the US is flawed in the same ways as the system it's replacing, which means it only perpetuates a polarized two-party system. We need to educate people about better reforms like Total Vote Runoff, STAR Voting, and Approval Voting that actually work.

In an ideal world, we'd use good voting systems that allow >2 candidates to run, and closed party primaries would just be an endorsement that the candidate represents that party well, and candidates that don't get that endorsement could still run in the general without splitting the vote.

My 2¢: Closed party primaries aren't the problem; vote-splitting and the two-party system is the problem, and open primaries are a clumsy workaround for that problem. If held using FPTP, they have bad vote-splitting, too. (Unified Primary is good, but is essentially its own system.)

Welcome to … whatever we former RCV enthusiasts are called!

Opinion | Alaska’s ranked-choice voting is flawed. But there’s an easy fix. The way Alaska uses ranked-choice voting caused the defeat of a Republican whom most Alaska voters preferred to the Democrat who ended up winning.

It doesn't implicitly favor one party over another, but it does suffer from vote-splitting, so it is biased toward whichever party runs fewer candidates.

Here's another Washington Post article that explains the problem and proposes a better system: www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

Open primaries are an independent issue from the voting system, though. With a good voting system that allowed for more than two strong candidates, party primaries wouldn't matter.

Ranked Robin Learn about Ranked Robin!

Actually, the form of RCV used in Alaska only counts first-choice rankings in each round, so it suffers from the "center-squeeze effect" and has a built-in bias against moderate candidates.

If you want to elect the most representative candidates, you need a consensus voting method like Ranked Robin

Ranked Robin Learn about Ranked Robin!

If you want to use ranked ballots and break the two-party system, you need to count *all* the rankings that voters express on their ballots, which means adopting systems like Ranked Robin, Total Vote Runoff, Ranked Pairs, etc. www.equal.vote/ranked_robin electionlawblog.org?p=132792

This isn't true, unfortunately. The form of RCV used in the US counts only first-choice rankings in each round, just like Plurality Voting, so it tends to suffer from the same vote-spitting and spoiler effect problems as Plurality.

How Ranked-Choice Voting elects extremists Instant-Runoff Voting is a voting method where voters rank candidates, who are then eliminated in a series of simulated runoff elections. It’s also known as “Ranked-Choice Voting” in the US, “Prefe…

Wordpress version of "How Ranked-Choice Voting (Can) Elect Extremists"

(How do hashtags work? #VotingReform #RankedChoiceVoting #IRV #Elections #VotingMethods #ElectionReform #STARVoting #Democracy #Condorcet)

How Ranked-Choice Voting elects extremists Ranked-Choice Voting (Instant-Runoff Voting) does not solve vote-splitting.

I guess I can post my own stuff on here? (I have the same articles on Medium and Wordpress because Medium has a paywall sometimes, so I guess I'll post both and see what happens. Just want search engines to pick this stuff up and show it when people are trying to learn about voting systems.)

"Solution: Popular vote"

Agreed, though it won't make much difference if we still use Plurality voting. It will still be a polarized two-party system, just slightly more representative.

If you want to fix vote-splitting and use ranked ballots, you need to count *all* the preferences expressed on them, not just the first-choice rankings. There are many systems that do this, including Ranked Robin, Total Vote Runoff, Ranked Pairs, bracket tournaments, etc.

"voters are not worried about wasting their votes"

It doesn't actually fix this problem, though. Ranking your third-party favorite as #1 can still backfire and help elect the greater evil, just like under Plurality, because RCV can prematurely eliminate your lower rankings due to vote-splitting.