Ranked Choice has some fundamental flaws that make it a very poor replacement for the broken system that is First Past the Post.
I’ll list the flaws in no particular order, but each one is enough of an issue that RCV should never be used in a real election.
First is election security. All ballots cast in an RCV election must be tabulated in a central location. This means that a malicious actor could introduce extra ballots, and those ballots would likely be counted.
Then there was Burlington in 2009. The Condorcet winner was eliminated in the second round. For anyone who doesn’t know, the Condorcet winner is also called the Pairwise Winner, in that if you were to take all candidates and pair them off, the Condorcet winner should win every matchup.
This leads to a discussion of Monotonicity. RCV is one of the only voting systems ever designed that fails monotonicity.
An election method is monotonic if it is neither possible to prevent the election of a candidate by ranking them higher on some of the ballots, nor possible to elect an otherwise unelected candidate by ranking them lower on some of the ballots (while nothing else is altered on any ballot).
I’ll spell this out a bit because it’s fucking amazing, in RCV it’s possible to make a candidate lose by ranking them higher on a ballot.
The next issue is Ballot exhaustion. Say you only get 5 choices on a ballot that has 6 or 7 candidates. You rank your 5 and the first round sees your second choice eliminated. Then your third, then your fourth, then your fifth, and finally your first.
Your ballot is thrown out and is not counted at all. Now, RCV rules say that the winner must have 50% of the vote, but that’s 50% of the final vote. Your ballot doesn’t count anymore.
There are studies that say that ballot exhaustion rates can be up to 18% of the initial votes cast. So the final winner can be liked by just 41.1% of the initial voters.
There’s also the issue of those eliminated candidates. Say your first choice was eliminated early. Then your second might have had that extra vote to stay in, and eventually win. But no, your ballot was gutted down the middle before being thrown out.
There are still more issues with RCV, but this is already an essay, so I’ll leave it at that.
There is a better option. A few actually, but the one I currently prefer is called STAR. It’s simple and it’s actually good at all the things RCV claims to be good at.
I don’t doubt that RCV has flaws. But we know that FPTP has flaws. So the question then becomes, Is RCV or FPTP the better voting system? If RCV is a better voting system than it should be pushed for and supported because of that fact.
For example, If someone is so obsessed with making sure your comment is completely accurate and factual that they end up deleting and never posting the comment, then that comment will not help anyone. Or for another example, I shouldn’t wear a mask because it won’t fully protect me or others from coronavirus. Doing something even is if it is an imperfect improvement is better than doing nothing.
I believe an RCV system is better than FPTP and therefore support it. I also would support STAR for the same reason.
Why not say you would support IRV or better, especially multi member districts and proportional results? Why put so much effort in trying to push against the facts about IRV? Frankly if IRV gets put in place and people are not aware of its strange chaotic behavior it will get repealed, which isn’t my conjecture its reality.
Why not say you would support IRV or better, especially multi member districts and proportional results?
I do and I did. See my last paragraph. Sure, I used different words than you did but I was trying to imply the same thing.
Why put so much effort in trying to push against the facts about IRV?
I did no such thing. Don’t strawman me by putting works in my mouth.
Frankly if IRV gets put in place and people are not aware of its strange chaotic behavior it will get repealed, which isn’t my conjecture its reality.
That is your conjecture, unless you give an example of that happening. I will grant you that it is conceivable that such a circumstance happen, but that doesn’t make it not a conjecture.
I guess my point is that it isn’t really helpful for us to argue about different voting systems when we largely agree that we need to move away from a FPTP system. It just serves to promote division. Unless we are actually doing the groundwork of pushing for different voting systems, arguing about the details of the different systems is just not needed.
Both Canada and the US had and repealed irv in multiple jurisdictions.
Your whole post is to tell everyone to chill on the criticism of IRV, its not a strawman its your actions.
I guess my point is that it isn’t really helpful for us to argue about different voting systems when we largely agree that we need to move away from a FPTP system. It just serves to promote division. Unless we are actually doing the groundwork of pushing for different voting systems, arguing about the details of the different systems is just not needed.
Right there, you just did it.
IRV is not a good enough solution to promote, imo. I don’t agree with you and you are actively hurting the adoption of a proportional system, the only election system that results in a meaningful number of parties. STV is fine, IRV is not.
You had me until STAR. STAR is just approval voting with extra steps, since min/maxing your ballot is the easiest way to game it, and, perhaps I’m missing something, but I have no idea how a runoff is actually supposed to stop it. Seems like a waste to give a middling score to someone I’d want in the 2nd place spot. I’m open to alternatives to RCV, but I don’t see STAR as an improvement.
I actually think a major part of the problem in US politics is that the balance of power is effectively upside down compared to most modern democracies.
Here in Ireland for example, we have three levels just like you: the Dáil is like the House of Representatives, the Seanad is the senate, and we both have presidents. However the head of government here is the leader of the largest party in the Dáil, and the other two are really figureheads. It means that other parties are way more involved in government and lessens the tendencies for a single figurehead to run rampant, changing stuff to suit himself every 4-8 years.
Ireland also uses PR, but we’ve actually gotten quite good at the vote counts, and we probably don’t have the same threat of bad actors in some other countries.
It’s the same in the UK - parliament is the actual government, while the House of Lords and the king are at this stage vestigial. But they use fptp, which is making it difficult to remove a minority government for the last dozen years or so.
Ranked Choice has some fundamental flaws that make it a very poor replacement for the broken system that is First Past the Post.
I’ll list the flaws in no particular order, but each one is enough of an issue that RCV should never be used in a real election.
First is election security. All ballots cast in an RCV election must be tabulated in a central location. This means that a malicious actor could introduce extra ballots, and those ballots would likely be counted.
This has happened before. There was no malice in the 2021 NYC Mayoral race, but there were extra ballots that were counted.
The next issue is one of counting procedure. It’s confusing as hell. I know it is because in Alameda County, the wrong candidate was actually sworn in before anyone noticed the issue.
Then there was Burlington in 2009. The Condorcet winner was eliminated in the second round. For anyone who doesn’t know, the Condorcet winner is also called the Pairwise Winner, in that if you were to take all candidates and pair them off, the Condorcet winner should win every matchup.
This leads to a discussion of Monotonicity. RCV is one of the only voting systems ever designed that fails monotonicity.
I’ll spell this out a bit because it’s fucking amazing, in RCV it’s possible to make a candidate lose by ranking them higher on a ballot.
Then there are issues of ballot spoilage (incorrectly filled ballots) at rates about twice that of simple Plurality. These rates tend to be higher in low income or marginalized areas.
The next issue is Ballot exhaustion. Say you only get 5 choices on a ballot that has 6 or 7 candidates. You rank your 5 and the first round sees your second choice eliminated. Then your third, then your fourth, then your fifth, and finally your first.
Your ballot is thrown out and is not counted at all. Now, RCV rules say that the winner must have 50% of the vote, but that’s 50% of the final vote. Your ballot doesn’t count anymore.
There are studies that say that ballot exhaustion rates can be up to 18% of the initial votes cast. So the final winner can be liked by just 41.1% of the initial voters.
There’s also the issue of those eliminated candidates. Say your first choice was eliminated early. Then your second might have had that extra vote to stay in, and eventually win. But no, your ballot was gutted down the middle before being thrown out.
There are still more issues with RCV, but this is already an essay, so I’ll leave it at that.
There is a better option. A few actually, but the one I currently prefer is called STAR. It’s simple and it’s actually good at all the things RCV claims to be good at.
I don’t doubt that RCV has flaws. But we know that FPTP has flaws. So the question then becomes, Is RCV or FPTP the better voting system? If RCV is a better voting system than it should be pushed for and supported because of that fact.
Perfect is the enemy of good. It is relevant in life and in politics.
For example, If someone is so obsessed with making sure your comment is completely accurate and factual that they end up deleting and never posting the comment, then that comment will not help anyone. Or for another example, I shouldn’t wear a mask because it won’t fully protect me or others from coronavirus. Doing something even is if it is an imperfect improvement is better than doing nothing.
I believe an RCV system is better than FPTP and therefore support it. I also would support STAR for the same reason.
Why not say you would support IRV or better, especially multi member districts and proportional results? Why put so much effort in trying to push against the facts about IRV? Frankly if IRV gets put in place and people are not aware of its strange chaotic behavior it will get repealed, which isn’t my conjecture its reality.
I do and I did. See my last paragraph. Sure, I used different words than you did but I was trying to imply the same thing.
I did no such thing. Don’t strawman me by putting works in my mouth.
That is your conjecture, unless you give an example of that happening. I will grant you that it is conceivable that such a circumstance happen, but that doesn’t make it not a conjecture.
I guess my point is that it isn’t really helpful for us to argue about different voting systems when we largely agree that we need to move away from a FPTP system. It just serves to promote division. Unless we are actually doing the groundwork of pushing for different voting systems, arguing about the details of the different systems is just not needed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_and_use_of_instant-runoff_voting?wprov=sfla1
Both Canada and the US had and repealed irv in multiple jurisdictions.
Your whole post is to tell everyone to chill on the criticism of IRV, its not a strawman its your actions.
Right there, you just did it.
IRV is not a good enough solution to promote, imo. I don’t agree with you and you are actively hurting the adoption of a proportional system, the only election system that results in a meaningful number of parties. STV is fine, IRV is not.
Kinda low to attack me and not the argument. That is otherwise known as an ad hominem.
It’s pretty clear your treating this as a pissing match and I have no interest in that.
You had me until STAR. STAR is just approval voting with extra steps, since min/maxing your ballot is the easiest way to game it, and, perhaps I’m missing something, but I have no idea how a runoff is actually supposed to stop it. Seems like a waste to give a middling score to someone I’d want in the 2nd place spot. I’m open to alternatives to RCV, but I don’t see STAR as an improvement.
I actually think a major part of the problem in US politics is that the balance of power is effectively upside down compared to most modern democracies.
Here in Ireland for example, we have three levels just like you: the Dáil is like the House of Representatives, the Seanad is the senate, and we both have presidents. However the head of government here is the leader of the largest party in the Dáil, and the other two are really figureheads. It means that other parties are way more involved in government and lessens the tendencies for a single figurehead to run rampant, changing stuff to suit himself every 4-8 years.
Ireland also uses PR, but we’ve actually gotten quite good at the vote counts, and we probably don’t have the same threat of bad actors in some other countries.
It’s the same in the UK - parliament is the actual government, while the House of Lords and the king are at this stage vestigial. But they use fptp, which is making it difficult to remove a minority government for the last dozen years or so.
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I’ll make it simple. RCV is broken and bad, and in some ways worse than the broken and bad system we already have.
There are better systems that are not broken. My current favorite is STAR.