Comment by AnthonyMouse

Comment by AnthonyMouse 7 months ago

18 replies

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These are independent problems.

To prevent the government from ignoring the constitution, create remedies in each of the other branches of government. The US doesn't make this as strong as it should be. Constitutional challenges in the judiciary get shut down as a result of standing or sovereign immunity when that ought not to happen, and there should be a better mechanism for states to challenge federal constitutional violations.

The two-party system in the US is caused by first past the post voting. Use score voting instead. Not IRV, not some other nonsense, a rated voting system that removes the structural incentive to avoid spoilers by limiting the number of parties.

"The existing system isn't perfect" is why you improve it, not why you give up.

nerdsniper 7 months ago

Approval voting is also worth considering, where you put a checkmark in the box for any candidate you’d be okay with. Advantage over ranked choice is that communicating the scoring to citizens is simple: “$CANDIDATE received the most checkmarks.” Whereas with ranked voting, the person who gets the most #1’s might not win and that can confuse some citizens.

Approval voting would result in “the okay-est” candidate winning rather than anyone towards an extreme winning in the primaries. Works well when there are a lot of fairly similar milquetoast candidates that split votes, like the Republican primaries of 2015.

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  • AnthonyMouse 7 months ago

    > Whereas with ranked voting, the person who gets the most #1’s might not win and that can confuse some citizens.

    Not ranked voting, ranked voting is still very broken. Rated voting. Approval voting is a rated voting system.

    Score voting: Rate each candidate on a scale of 1 to 10.

    Approval voting: Rate each candidate on a scale of 0 or 1.

    Score voting (or STAR) is generally better and the argument that people are going to be confused by "that thing they use at the Olympics" is nonsense, but approval voting is fine if you want to silence the complainers while still using something that basically works.

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    • amalcon 7 months ago

      Score voting is just approval voting with an additional permitted tactical error.

      In both systems, the correct tactic is to determine the two candidates most likely to win. Then, assign maximum score to whichever of those is better and to everyone preferable to that candidate.

      It is never correct to assign a score between the minimum and the maximum, so why allow it in the first place?

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      • AnthonyMouse 7 months ago

        > It is never correct to assign a score between the minimum and the maximum, so why allow it in the first place?

        Because it is often correct.

        Suppose there are candidates A, B and C. Candidates A and B are each polling around 6/10 and candidate C is polling around 4/10, but candidates A and B are quite similar to each other and share a base of support. According to your strategy, A and B are the two most likely to win, so if you prefer A then even though you still prefer B to C you refuse to express your preference and instead assign 10/10 to A and 1/10 to B and C. The voters who prefer candidate B do the same. The result is that A and B end each up at 3.5/10, C ends up at 4/10 and C wins. In other words, you've devolved back into first past the post and caused your least favored candidate to win because of your erroneous strategizing.

        By contrast, if you assign 10/10 to A, 5/10 to B and 1/10 to C, you've given A a significant advantage over B without assigning B such a low score that you could deliver the election to C if C defeats A.

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      • ClayShentrup 7 months ago

        tactical error is GOOD, because it donates more utility to society than that non-strategic voter loses. AND for a lot of not-so-math-savvy voters, an honest score ballot is actually a better vote than a botched attempt to use strategic approval thresholds.

        http://scorevoting.net/RVstrat6

        https://www.rangevoting.org/ShExpRes

        > It is never correct to assign a score between the minimum and the maximum, so why allow it in the first place?

        it would help you to spend at least 30 seconds researching a complex field like voting methods before asking a deeply misguided question like this.

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