• Liz
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    212 years ago

    Me:

    APPROVAL VOTING AND FIVE MEMBER DISTRICTS, DAMNIT!

    • Tlaloc_Temporal
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      2 years ago

      While I agree, Ranked is a solid improvement over FPTP.

      EDIT: After some reading, I retract my statement, Ranked has a bunch of glaring flaws and can be worse sometimes. Still good that people are talking about it though.

        • Tlaloc_Temporal
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          22 years ago

          Among other things discussed ITT, ranking your second candidate higher can result in your first candidate loosing in basically a spoiler effect.

          • @[email protected]
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            12 years ago

            I assume you mean ranking your second choice lower can make your first choice win? I would say that’s actually a great advantage of RCV, it means moderates have more chance to win. Someone who’s liked by everyone but is nobody’s favorite can win.

            • Tlaloc_Temporal
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              32 years ago

              No, ranking your second higher can make your first (and second) loose. The spoiler effect still exists, except it punishes moderates instead of extremists. If the orange party gets larger than the yellow party, it becomes an election between the greens and oranges, despite most people being okay with yellow. The compromise is unlikely to win.

              I though FPTP was so aweful that basically anything is better, but a few variants of ranked voting are nearly as bad for selecting prefered candidates, and encourage extremism, while being more complex (difficult to trust) and possibly a fraud risk (because all votes need to be processed together, double checking and anti-tampering is more difficult).

                • Tlaloc_Temporal
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                  22 years ago

                  Yes, that. It’s kust burying the spoiler a little deeper, causing a bad situation at the most important time.

                  Just that is still better than FPTP, but it’s not that much netter, is more complicated, and needs to be switched to. I’d bet that if IRV was implemented without good explanation (which it won’t get), it would become the scapegoat for the loosing parties (especially the loosing major party).

                  There’s also the potential security flaws of needing all the votes in one place to be counted, which significantly reduces the number of hands the votes pass through, which may allow larger scale fraud.

                  If we’re going to go through with switching systems and adjusting how we vote, the new system needs to be a clear and significant improvement to avoid being blamed for everything.

                  But I haven’t really looked into these systems deeply, so there’s lot’s of nuance I’m missing. Something with a better Condorcet result would be nice though.

      • @[email protected]
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        52 years ago

        The biggest advantage of ranked choice is that it allows third (… tenth) party votes

        It’s also more fun television, watching as candidates come last and their votes flow

      • @[email protected]
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        22 years ago

        That’s what is frustrating it is very marginally better yet consuming all the discourse, probably bc it would not dramatically change election results.

    • @[email protected]
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      2 years ago

      So, I understand what approval voting is, but I’m not sure I follow with “fiver member districts”. Is this referring to something like congressional districts, but instead of electing one person they elect five? Or maybe it means breaking a constituency into a huge number of tiny 5 voter districts?

      EDIT: Seems like maybe combining districts that only have 1 representative into larger districts that elect 5 representatives?

      • Liz
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        82 years ago

        Yeah 5 member districts is just saying that every legislative district elects 5 members at the same time instead of just 1. You assign winners using a proportional method so that the winners parties/opinions totals look like the general population. In a simple example, if a district has voters that are 40% blue, 40% red, and 20% yellow, 2 winning candidates should be blue, 2 should be red, and 1 yellow.

        Having multiple winners and assigning seats proportionally gets rid of the winner-take-all problem, which encourages a two party system regardless of what voting system you use.

        • prole
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          12 years ago

          Sounds like a parliamentary system with extra steps.

          • Liz
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            12 years ago

            The only thing that makes a parliamentary system such is that the head of state is elected by the legislature. Single-seat districts can and do exist under parliaments.