Here’s a demo of San Francisco’s implementation of Ranked Choice Voting — permitting people to vote for their first choice in an election, but then allowing their preferences to count if the first choice loses. As many have observed, this would make it easier for people to vote for their first choice (e.g., a 3d party candidate certain to lose), without having that vote increase the likelihood that their third (or 100th) choice wins.
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Meta
This seems vaguely… parimutuel.
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We have this system in Australia. Particularly in the Senate it gives minor parties (such as the Democrats or the Greens) the potential to hold the balance of power. This was the aim of the founder of the Democrat party, Don Chipp, whose campaign slogan was to ‘keep the bastards honest’.
I’ve always been surprised that this isn’t used in the US Presidential elections.
But RCV leads to essentially the same thing we have today: two main parties that are “close” to the center. To have any change you’d also need proportional representation.
Hmmm – if it neuters Nader would it also have marginalized Perot and thus left Bush41 in power instead of letting Clinton replace him? I just don’t see the utility in it when we select a voting system to correct one election.
But actually I think it would aid the Libertarians and other small parties because people could vote their ideology first and place their “practial” choice second – we might just find that netiher of the two current major parties really represent the voices of the people and some of the lesser candidates would get elected.
I wonder why they didn’t just call it Instant Runoff Voting like all the voting theorists.
Anyway, IRV isn’t the absolute best voting system, although it’s better than plurality. See http://electionmethods.org/ and http://accuratedemocracy.com/ for reasonable explanations of the various choices for voting systems.
i’ve never understood this concern about voting 3rd party helping someone else win. “W” can only win a state’s EC votes if the most people vote for him in that state. if you and i vote for Nadar, how are we helping “W” win? we didn’t add any votes to his total!
this “problem” of third party voting is only a “problem” to people who believe in one of the two major parties and only do their mathematics in terms of two parties. their logic goes like this:
“if you vote for Nadar, you’re probably pretty Liberal. if Nadar wasn’t an option, you’d probably vote for Kerry. so, a vote for Nadar is one less vote Kerry is getting that he needs to beat ‘W’ and avoid the end of the world”.
but that logic is based on flawed assumptions. i’m not a democrat, even if i’m fairly Liberal. if i thought Kerry was the guy for the job, i’d vote for him. a vote for Nadar isn’t a vote Kerry is loosing any more than my downloading the latest single from Jay Z off of the internet is a lost album sale for the RIAA. its an album i would never buy whether i had the option to download it or not, just like i would never vote for Kerry whether i had other options or not.
i loose whether Kerry wins or “W” wins. why should i be hassled into voting for a man i don’t respect simply because his supporters believe that 4 more years of “W” are likely to bring about the end of the world?
i have a better idea. why doesn’t everyone vote their conscience. if a significant percentage of the electorate actually voted 3rd party instead of allowing peer (political) pressure to corral them into voting for the majors, we might actually get to send a message to these people that an ever increasing number of people no longer believe these two parties represent the will of the people. Nadar’s 4% in 2000 was enough to convince democrats that he “cost them the white house” but it wasn’t enough of a percentage to convince them to change their party platform to win that 4% into their camp to vote for them in 2004. if 4% and a lost election isn’t enough, why should we give up, and give them what they want, when those of us who believe most strongly in 3rd party views will -never- win until we convince the majors to change?
In my view, proportional representation is prefferable to non-proportional systems, as it tends to temper the power to the number of votes, instead of giving one single choice per district.
why stop there, why not have a fully distributed vote eg x% for Kerry y% for Bush and 100-(x+y) for Nader :>
i can’t quote a reference but i’ve seen work done on the mathematical analysis of different voting schemes. IIRC it’s possible to prove that single party systems give more weight to the individual vote than multi party ones.
Hmf. Maybe they can use this voting system to pick a decent vote-counting system, like Condorcet.
So who’s responsible for this silliness?
jhimm:
I find it hard to believe that most supporters of nader, if given a choice between bush or kerry, really don’t care which wins the election. Are naderites as likely to be disillusioned conservatives as they are disillusioned liberals?
If you really don’t care then I think you are blinded by a purism of vision that will ensure the worst of the possible outcomes.
My understanding, for example, of the period between the two world wars is that squabbling among the left and refusal to compromise allowed the fascists to slip into power. Sometimes insistence on voting ones conscience and refusal to compromise leads to appalling consequences.
A ranked voting system allows one to vote ones conscience without making voting into a complicated tactical decision. You get to say ” I want nader as president, but if nader will not be president I would rather have kerry than bush.”, whereas presently, if you are a serious voter, you have to consider the practical consequences of voting your conscience for a candidate you know has no hope of winning the white house.
As discussed here: (http://electionmethods.org/IRVproblems.htm), ranked voting only lets you vote your conscience as long as your conscience candidate has NO chance of winning. Once that candidate gains enough votes to be competetive, this system develops the same “spoiler” problems that our current system has. Not really much of an improvement…
The correct cure to our voting ills is “approval voting,” where you are allowed to vote yes or no to each candidate on the ballot. The candidate who wins is the candidate whom most people think would be a good office-holder.
Without delving into great depth, this allows people to vote for Nader AND Kerry, or Buchanan AND W, without feeling that they are throwing their votes away. It provides a counterbalance to negative campaigning, because while impugning another candidate’s credibility, you could lose votes yourself. It encourages voters to find out about all candidates, since they won’t (necessarily) only be voting for one of the few viable candidates. It counteracts advantages of incumbency (since many will vote for the only person they’ve heard of — but others can vote for “anyone but the incumbent”).
It’s simple, easy to understand, and (to my mind) makes much more sense than most of the voting proposals out there. Not to imply that the people holding office now would vote out the system that got them into power.
What is essentially being discussed here is the ability of a voter to express their political opinion accurately through their vote. The problem of “Naderitus” is just one example of the problems that can occur by limiting the way that voters can express their opinion.
Of course, the real question, as others have said, is how willing today’s politicians will be to replace the electoral system which got them into power.
The move to electronic voting systems has been too hasty. We rushed to get it in within 4 years but the problem will not likely manefest itself for another hundred. Experts on these systems haven’t even been able to agree whether having a paper-trail backup was a good thing or a liability. This has cost millions, or is it billions, all because Al Gore was a sore loser. That, and endless discusions about how the system we have used for so long is fatally flawed.
I am SOOO glad that Al Gore isn’t our president. I don’t know WHAT is wrong with him, but his appearance, statements, and off camera behavior for the past year or two speak of someone who has serious problems.
Keep in mind that Perot probably cost Bush (I) the election too. Funny we didn’t have to turn our system upside down to fix that. If you think that ONLY the Democratic party has the answers to the country’s problems then try convincing more Americans that their IDEAS are on target and stop obsessing about “fixing” the process we use to elect a President.
beachguy, the real beneficiaries of proportional representation are those that aren’t completely satisfied with either of the main party’s policies, which I suspect would include just about every voter in the United States regardless of political perspective. It isn’t a right versus left issue, it is a voter versus politician issue.
I think it’s great that we’re finally getting some mainstream attention to the failures of the plurality system.
For the .hack/jhimm poster that didn’t seem to understand what the problem was, consider that we typically don’t elect people based on a *majority*, which you might be thinking, only a plurality (the candidate with the most votes). If you have a two-party system, and candidate A earns 40% of the votes, candidate B wins with 60%. But if you have a third candidate C very similar to B, that 60% gets divided between them. So A may still have 40% of the votes (most of the population prefers someone other than A), but B and C now have 30% each. A wins, to the disappointment of the *majority* of the voters. The solution is for potential B/C voters to determine which is “more likely” to get the most votes, and give that candidate their vote, even if they slightly prefer the other. Since we’re so focused on the two major parties, it’s a given that the candidate “most likely” to get the votes is going to be one of those two party candidates.
Check out some of the links provided by other posters to learn the merits and problems with some of the other more popular voting methods.
I personally cannot *stand* a system of voting that essentially requires a significant percentage of voters to vote strategically. It’s very wrong when I cannot vote for the candidate I want for fear that the candidate I *least* want will benefit.
steven,
of course i consider the consequences of my vote. that’s why i refuse to back the major parties. while it may be possible to say that from certain perspectives, i would rather see Kerry win than Bush, there are still a truckload of negative consequences for me if Kerry wins. so, its not really an issue for me of saying “i have to vote for Kerry just to help ensure Bush doesn’t win” because i’m really not going to be all that much better off with Kerry than i am with Bush. afterall its only 4 years. and in 2008 we have to make the same decision all over again. if at some point people aren’t willing to “risk” 4 years of the “wrong” guy so that an ever increasing percentage can vote in protest of our two party system, we will never be free of the two party system.
the point is not whether or not i care, or whether or not any supporter of a 3rd party candidate cares, which of the two majors wins. the point is, if people who do not agree with the two major parties continue to be bullied into voting for them, nothing will ever change. we will forever be a country with two pro-government parties.
a ranked voting system will only further ensure that all 3rd party candidates are forever marginalized because rather than my 1 vote not helping either party, my partical (ranked) votes will aid them -a little bit-. my 1 full vote against them means even less if its counter-balanced by a partial vote in their favor.
to me, those are the worst possible consequences. for the record, i don’t vote for Nadar either. i’m simply using him as the example since he’s the one in the spotlight at the moment.
I am dubious on any sort of runoff voting, as it has a long history in the US of being used to vote down minority, and minority friendly candidates, among other things.
And PLEASE, let’s not discuss proportional voting. It has some problems:
* If you need the Sandra Berhnart Hair party to maintain your coalition, you get fscked up legislation.
* It eliminates party mavericks. If you make waves, you move down the list, and you don’t get elected.
* No constituent access to elected representatives, which means less accountability.
Of course, the biggest problem with IRV, at least as regards the Greens, is that it is entirely self referential.
Look at the parties big ideas, with tongue planted somewhat in cheek (let’s ignore the Republicans and Democrats for a moment):
* Libertarian: Very little government except for the death penalty for use of Kaaza.
* Constitution Party: Establish an evangelical Christian theocracy with easy access to guns.
* Greens: Instant Runoff Voting.
The Libertarians and the Constitution Party have a vision for society. The Green’s issue is, “Help me get elected.”
Parties need to demonstrate a modicum of ability to serve their constituency before they start making sanctimonious noises about changing the process the benefit themselves.
I read an article about the variety of voting methods on a recent flight. The article can be read here: http://www.attachemag.com/archives/07-04/features/story2.htm
If you have the time, it’s an interesting read.
I hate trying to engineer my vote to keep my least favorite choice from winning. I’d love to see something else implemented that more accurately reflects the populations desire for a leader.
-Greg
I’ve written about Condercet voting method on a weblog on the mathematics of voting. Some simple computational power can be helpful under certain circumstances when the number of candidates are large and cyclic (defeat) ambiguities remain in the election results.
. . . and I’ve just also written a bit about a possible project to enable children to vote in elections using a ranked-choice (Condercet) voting model. It’s not too hard to implement and host such a system, and it would be a great educational tool, and usable in general.
beachguy= full of crap mentally limited right wing punk.
Mr. Yaskin: SF’s voting method was originally called Instant Runoff Voting, but the elections department renamed it because they didn’t want the time pressure to do the count that is implied by “instant”. Various things make it non-instant, such as gathering all the absentee ballots.
You can try voting in the SF election in this web poll.
Proportional Representation promoters: San Francisco considered a PR method in 1996, but voters were spooked by its novelty and adopted single-member districts with runoffs instead. This time the city is taking a smaller step in that direction that will result in a stronger mandate for the winner, but if SF or any city wants to take the bold step of nearly guaranteeing satisfactory representation, rather than just the right to vote, PR is the way to go.
Mr. Saroff, legislators will always have to cut deals with minor constituencies, be they at the fringe or the center, regardless of their election method. And do you think that the best solution is to systematically deny people representation in order to achieve consensus? You don’t need to lower the bar to the point that the Hair Party wins seats in order to give people satisfactory representation. PR is used by most modern democracies and it works well. The “party maverick” argument applies to only a specific PR method; there are many alternatives.
Mr. Yanco, approval voting is not a cure; it thwarts majority rule because it ignores preferences among candidates you support. If 99% of voters strongly prefer A over B, but indicate support for both, but 1% supports only B, then that 1% would overrule the preference of all other voters.
The Condorcet methods suffer from similar problems, as outlined here. Same is true for the weighted vote method suggested by “onymous”.
If I understand the RCV system that San Francisco is planning to implement, I think they got it wrong. Under their plan a candidate who is no one’s first choice cannot win. What if 40 percent like Kerry and 40 percent like Bush and 20 percent like Nader but everyone is willing to settle for McCain? Wouldn’t that make McCain the best choice? Let the voters rank the candidates for an office, then average each candidate’s score. The person with the lowest score wins. Candidates not voted for at all are automatically scored at a value equal to the number of candidates running for that office plus 1.