Mastodawn

What is your favorite alternative voting system? (Poll #2)

[Notes: • If you vote in one poll in this thread please vote in all of them • For a real world example of what I mean by "Multiround runoff" consider the French system]

Condorcet

21.1%

Instant Runoff

39.2%

Approval

20.6%

Multiround runoff

19.1%

Poll ended at Jul 12, 2024 at 8:58pm.

What is your favorite alternative voting system? (Poll #3)

("Instant Runoff Voting" is when you rank your choices and a multiround runoff is simulated by bumping off candidates one by one and redistributing their votes. "Approval voting" is when you get checkboxes by each candidate and can select more than one; whoever gets the most "approvals" wins.)

Instant Runoff

73.3%

Approval

26.7%

Poll ended at Jul 13, 2024 at 9:20pm.

Neia masks Jul 12, 2024

@mcc I'm just hoping we get to implement Dodgson's Method some day.

@neia Do you know how this differs from the "Cloneproof Schwartz" method?

Neia masks Jul 13, 2024

@mcc Do you mean Schulze? It's been a hot minute since I looked into it in detail, but IIRC Schulze is basically looking at how much Candidate A could beat someone who could beat Candidate C and vice versa, and it uses that to resolve cycles where A beats B beats C beats A.

Dodgson's Method alters individual ballots, switching the minimum number of individual preferences to produce a Condorcet winner.

In terms of how well they perform, performance is the biggest one. Schulze is O(n³) in the number of candidates. Dodgson is exponential in the number of ballots. Worse, Dodgson is not in NP. So if a large country like Liechtenstein decided to use Dodgson, they might have to wait a few centuries to get the result of a national election. And if you need independent verification, it will take centuries longer.

For pretty much all other standard voting criteria, Dodgson fails. Like, it fails the anti-Condorcet criterion: if you held a bunch of 1v1 elections and one person lost against every other candidate, Dodgson sometimes elects that one person.

Conor Nash Jul 12, 2024

@mcc brb implementing PR-STV as an ActivityPub voting mechanism

@Conornash I was thinking about making an app you log into with oauth, but that sounds sick too

James Widman Jul 12, 2024

@mcc which one is better at expressing my desire to see one of the candidates eliminated?

i.e. if we have an election where there are 3 candidates, X, Y, and Z, and to me, the most important thing is to keep candidate X out of office, which voting system does a better job of supporting that priority? (If i *also* get to express my preference for Y vs Z, that's an added bonus.)

@JamesWidman This is an excellent question. In my opinion it is IRV. Condorcet advocates insist that Condorcet does eliminate the need for strategic voting, which to me would imply the property you ask for, but when I do the math that's not what I see. I do not know if this means the Condorcet advocates have missed something, or if it means I did the math wrong. I'm kinda inclined to the second theory, but my point is I'm not sure.

jmelesky Jul 12, 2024

@mcc @JamesWidman I think they’re largely equivalent from an expression perspective, right? I thought the difference between IRV and Condorcet was in the counting, not the ballots, but I’ll admit it’s been a while since I was evaluating them closely.

@jmelesky @JamesWidman Yes, I previously ran a ranked voting poll (a yearly poll about the best video game that year) and I was able to produce borda, condorcet and IRV results from the same ballots. Actually, the IRV and condorcet results only rarely differed. (I was never able to find a situation where borda and condorcet differed at all. Did I implement it wrong? Still not sure.)

jmelesky Jul 12, 2024

@mcc @JamesWidman Thanks for verifying. I had completely forgotten about Borda, but now that you mention it, it always seemed like a strange amalgam of IRV and approval. It may well be mathematically equivalent to Condorcet.

@jmelesky @JamesWidman Yeah, I actually didn't know about Borda when I started implementing the script. I actually implemented Borda *by accident* while trying to implement Condorcet. Then later someone who looked at my method said "that's not Condorcet, that's Borda". So I wrote a much more complicated script implementing Condorcet proper, and it worked worse (didn't provide "scores") and seemed to give the same results. Like I said, I'm still a bit confused what happened there.

jmelesky Jul 13, 2024

@mcc I suspect it would require a very niche scenario for Borda and Condorcet to differ (if it’s possible at all). On the day that actually happens, I’ll happily tolerate the very few people in the two camps loudly yelling “I told you so!” because either one is such an improvement over what we have now that I will be calm and serene in my dealings with the world.

Berkubernetus Jul 14, 2024

@mcc @JamesWidman have you published anything with that math? As someone who works on voting systems, I'd be very interested

mcc Jul 14, 2024

@fuzzychef @JamesWidman Uhh, that'll be here https://msm.runhello.com/p/category/video-games/goty You'll notice each post in this category, over time, got less and less certain about the accuracy of the Condorcet.

It looks like I didn't publish the outcome of my "real condorcet" test. I remember it being really slow (my implementation was PHP+SQL and there were over 150 options in the poll)

I might have also published the poll software somewhere, I don't remember. This was a while ago, the poll ran yearly from 2003-2013.

Run Hello » Game of the Year poll

mcc Jul 14, 2024

@fuzzychef @JamesWidman Also hm the 2013 post may be missing from the blog? Whatever.

Berkubernetus Jul 15, 2024

@mcc @JamesWidman I would suggest that if you have a poll with 150 options, Condorcet is not a good voting algo to use. It's really designed for elections with 3-16 options, where a large number of voters might conceivably rank all options.

I wouldn't be surprised at all if a case of 150 options, with 95% of voters ranking only 10 of them each, causes condorcet to produce unpredictable results.

Which gives us the general mantra: choose the vote tally method that suits your poll.

mcc Jul 15, 2024

@fuzzychef @JamesWidman Yeah, that sounds about right to me. As I remember, the point where Condorcet started to seem weird was when it had to produce a relative ranking between two candidates which never appeared ranked on a single ballot simultaneously. Borda, of course, could do this without any conceptual difficulty.

Berkubernetus Jul 15, 2024

@mcc @JamesWidman That's why a lot of Condorcet voting tools mandate ranking all candidates.

mcc Jul 15, 2024

@fuzzychef @JamesWidman 🇦🇺

bswolf Jul 13, 2024

@mcc Approval is the only one I didn't vote for in approval.

anyMouse Jul 13, 2024

@mcc Fondly remembering the time when my Linear Algebra professor made one entire lesson about "Mathematically proving that a fair voting system doesn't exist"

Marco Jul 13, 2024

@anymouse_404 @mcc Physics For Birds just did a video on the mathematical issue with “fair” voting from a topological approach: https://youtu.be/v5ev-RAg7Xs

The Topological Problem with Voting

YouTube

droqen Jul 13, 2024

@mcc ever since i heard of approval voting ive never approved of any other voting system

droqen Jul 13, 2024

@mcc why is approval for approval voting so low across the board?? am i missing something??

bob Jul 11, 2024

@mcc nevada is going to move to instant runoff for state, senate and congress elections if the measure passes again in 2024 which I'm very excited about

0x Jul 11, 2024

@mcc I am of the opinion that we shouldn't vote for people, but policy. I want representatives regularly selected by lottery, with modest term limits and accessible procedures for individual recall and impeachment.

That way we get actual representation, not money pretending to be. It's also much harder to engage in corruption when you can't buy a seat in congress for decades on end.

Jonathan Beverley Jul 11, 2024

@mcc I voted for IRV, because I don't want to have to explain Condorcet to the general public for the marginal benefit it offers, though it is better.

Practically, I prefer Single Transferable Vote.

@sagefault STV always struck me as categorically different, isn't it kind of a version of a proportional voting system for a whole parliament?

Jonathan Beverley Jul 11, 2024

@mcc STV is more of a way to try and give a voice to the political minority in a bunch of electoral districts.

For example, where I live one party has a lock on my electoral district, so about 40% of the population is permanently disenfranchised. STV bundles three districts like mine together so that there's someone to speak for them.

@sagefault that's cool, it requires a vote for multiple offices in multiple districts though right? It can't be used for select for a single unitary office like a President (I'm willing to accept the argument that offices like that shouldn't exist)

Jonathan Beverley Jul 11, 2024

@mcc True. It is entirely for certain types of elections.

However, because the user-facing part of it looks just like IRV/RCV, you can easily combine STV of representatives with IRV of a president without confusing anyone.

@sagefault oh, that is a good point

RAOF Jul 12, 2024

@mcc @sagefault yeah, my understanding is that IRV is the degenerate single-representative case of STV.

Here in Australia, we've got a single-member district (federal) lower-house and a multi-member (12 per state, rolling 6 per election) upper house; the voting works the same in both cases, just that the lower-house quota is 50% and the upper-house quota is 12.5%.

(States do different things; for example, in Tasmania we have a 7-member-per-electorate lower house)

@RAOF @sagefault i have to admit it seems a little odd to me that Australia's doing everything I believe a democracy ought to be doing re: electoral reform yet every Australian I know is so unhappy with their local politics

RAOF Jul 12, 2024

@mcc @sagefault I suspect it is a universal condition to be unhappy with one's local politics.

Our local politics is HOLY SHITBALLS better than US or UK politics.

@RAOF @sagefault ugh point taken

RAOF Jul 12, 2024

@mcc @sagefault Yeah, sorry!

Rainne Jul 11, 2024

@mcc Condorcet is probably the 'best' system in terms of performance (encouraging and reflecting honest voter preference), but Approval is nearly as good, easy to implement on existing papers/equipment, and actually *simpler* than FPTP. So that's my vote.

lieberal Jul 12, 2024

@mcc it's hard to know how this would work in practice, but tactical voting under approval voting seems way too obvious. And if there's widespread tactical voting then the benefit over FPTP is limited. Condorcet is somewhat more complicated than IRV but when the condorcet winner isn't the IRV winner, I think condorcet better matches people's intuitions of who should win. IRV is advertised as selecting moderates but it doesn't actually do that. This matters in practice (see Burlington 2009.)

Meg Jul 12, 2024

@mcc my real answer is "fuck single winner elections (and so also a powerful executive offices)"

Avi Bryant Jul 11, 2024

@mcc I’m fine with any of them but if I have to rank them I’d put approval voting first.

mhoye Jul 11, 2024

@mcc I read that first option as "cordycep" at first glance, and was momentarily startled that this was an option. "You think you choose, but in fact the fungus chooses."

@mhoye this is how capitalist democracy actually works

Andy Wootton Jul 11, 2024

@mcc We seem to call them different things in the UK, and to have more options https://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/voting-systems/types-of-voting-system/ I'd like people to be able to say who they strongly don't want. I'd hope that would help keep dangerous extremists away from power.

Types of Voting System

ShadSterling Jul 11, 2024

@woo @mcc I’ve always wanted “none of the above” to be on every ballot, and if that one wins the whole election must be redone and the candidates that lost are not allowed to run again (until the next election cycle)

Might cause some problems if it wins too many rounds tho

Andy Wootton Jul 12, 2024

@ShadSterling @mcc I agree that 'None of the above' is essential or you can't tell the difference between 'you are all rubbish' and 'I can't be bothered'. You don't ever want disgust being mistaken for (or spun as) apathy. I wouldn't ever ban anyone from standing or from voting. That's a very slippery slope.

Korinne Jul 11, 2024

@mcc https://rangevoting.org/ seems the most interesting to me, but in terms of actually getting things changed I feel like IRV/RCV has momentum in the US.

RangeVoting.org - Center for Range Voting - front page

Voting reform advocacy and educational organization.

@kadler @sagefault it seems to me that even if there are mathematical proofs Condorcet ranked is better IRV has an advantage in that it's very easy to explain without having to introduce math concepts

Korinne Jul 11, 2024

@mcc @sagefault yeah, IRV is definitely simpler as people already understand the concept. It's a little less expressive and maybe has some perverse outcomes in certain situations (at least that's what they say), but it's likely good enough in most cases, simple enough for people to accept, and has momentum to actually happen. "Don't let perfect be the enemy of good" and all that - anything is better than FPTP.

Berkubernetus Jul 14, 2024

@mcc @kadler @sagefault No question. I would never suggest Condorcet to a non-techie audience.

STAR seems even more intuitive, but given its lack of mainstrem support must have major drawbacks.

Devine Lu Linvega Jul 11, 2024

@mcc lottery

∴ esoterik ∴Jul 11, 2024

@neauoire for groups with strong ties this one is also my favorite @mcc

@d6 @neauoire We can generalize it by picking very short terms. So for example in the USA we can have everyone be President for 0.09 seconds per year

Floating Point Error Jul 12, 2024

@d6 @mcc @neauoire one president for one decision?