mccJul 11, 2024

What is your favorite alternative voting system?

[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
15.8%
Instant Runoff
48.6%
Approval
23.3%
Multiround runoff
12.3%
Poll ended at .
Show threadmccJul 11, 2024

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 .
Show threadmccJul 12, 2024

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 .
Show threadJames WidmanJul 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.)

Show threadmccJul 12, 2024
@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.
Show threadjmelesky
@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.
Jul 12, 2024 at 11:42pmWeb
Show threadmccJul 12, 2024
@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.)
Show threadjmeleskyJul 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.
Show threadmccJul 12, 2024
@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.
Show threadjmeleskyJul 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.