RCV found unconstitutional in Maine.
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In the Electoral Methods e-mail broadcast, Etjon Basha asks, "So, not even approval would pass? Nothing beyond plurality?".
Approval, Score, STAR [10], other Shentrup/Frohnmayer balance-compliant systems [9]; everything else [0].
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@sarawolk said in RCV found unconstitutional in Maine.:
It's really important to differentiate from Ranked Choice Voting, so it's really important that we stop using the term for other ranked methods.
I think a much better strategy is to just ask "which type of ranked choice voting?" Because 90% of people who like "RCV" have only a superficial understanding of the topic and aren't thinking beyond the ranked ballot, and this keeps them open to considering alternative methods of tallying those ballots. As a friend said to me in person "I don't know about all that, I just want to rank the candidates".
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Etjon Basha asks, "So, not even approval would pass? Nothing beyond plurality?".
In this context, "plurality" doesn't mean "Choose One Only" Voting or FPTP. Plurality means a class of systems where the candidate with the most votes wins, as opposed to "majority" voting systems in which the candidate with the majority of votes cast wins.
Approval is a plurality method.
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@psephomancy Even if we wanted to, redefining the term "Ranked Choice Voting" isn't within our power. They have clear and defensible trademark over the term, which again, was coined specifically for IRV, not to mention name recognition for RCV by millions of people that they've invested millions of dollars to build.
Terminology in voting science is already so jumbled. Conflating good ranked methods (Condorcet) with Ranked Choice Voting (IRV & STV) or Instant Runoff Voting (IRV only) is only going to hurt the better options in the scenarios where RCV is a dirty word, while in contexts where RCV is well regarded, conflating better ranked methods serves no benefit because RCV dwarfs all the other alternatives in terms of name recognition and market dominance.
Our only way forward here is to out RCV as the outdated and oversold method that it is, position better alternatives as the successor, and move forward from there. Strategically.
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@toby-pereira Anything can be argued and counter-argued in court, but my assessment above is based on what a fair and likely ruling would be, in my professional opinion.
I'm not a lawyer, but have been studying these things for years and we did win the case in the Oregon Supreme Court against the Oregon Legislative Council which found that RCV's ballot title in Oregon was misleading and inaccurate as it pertains to RCV's majority winner claims, though there is apparently no mechanism anymore to enforce such a ruling.
Two confounding data points:
- RCV has spent years making the argument that RCV guarantees majority winners. That's directly at odds with an argument that it guarantees plurality winners. Ironically, there's a solid case to be made that due to exhausted ballots it guarantees neither.
- The Constitution of Maine Article IV, Section 5 requires that winners be elected "by a plurality of ALL votes returned.” In cases like these where the wording is explicit that it's "all" votes "returned" or all votes "cast" RCV is eliminated from compliance by the existence of exhausted ballots alone.
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@cfrank I wish I had time to program a bot to have me reply here every time anyone mentions "approval" and remind everyone to clarify as "choose-any" until we eventually shift the terminology. "Approval" is a bad name with wrong implications (we can vote our preferences whether we approve or disapprove of every candidate). "Choose-any" needs to be the term. And we need to keep at it until it becomes the norm.
(But I'm just procrastinating by replying here, I have major other life stresses to go deal with)
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@sarawolk FTFY
Choose-any (aka 'Approval') is a plurality method.
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@wolftune that's reasonable, I think the "approval" ("choose-any") community would have to converge on that but it's worth pushing. All the nomenclature we use should definitely be standardized.
cardinal-condorcet [10] ranked-condorcet [9] approval [8] score [7] ranked-bucklin [6] star [5] ranked-irv [4] ranked-borda [3] for-against [2] distribute [1] choose-one [0]
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@cfrank I thought it through deeply enough (you might find some old post about it from me from long while back), and I got enough initial reactions. Conclusion for now is: this will be a bottom-up change. The people who have invested in "Approval" are too hesitant to embrace a rebrand and aren't facing enough catastrophic rejection or something to force it. You can test for yourself that every naive lay person off the street understands SO MUCH more readily when you say "Choose any" rather than "Approval" (and that they also feel constricted about "approving" candidates rather than just voting for preferences, as in how people don't approve of lesser-evils but do vote for them)
So, I think the more people just say "Choose-any (aka Approval)" over and over, there will be a slow shift to more and more use of just "choose any" until that just becomes the norm and the main advocates embrace it too. This bottom-up approach is the best path forward IMO, but I'll be happy for anything that fixes this problem.
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@wolftune There is this thread from 2024. I think it might have passed me by at the time. I see your point about it being clearer about what it does, but on the other hand, it's not something I've really thought about, so I don't think I will suddenly change my language immediately based on this. It's quite a big thing to do, and I think I would need to see that there is a larger consensus in the general voting community that this is the best name, rather than just individuals deciding one at a time.
Edit - Thinking about it, "Choose-any" comes across as ambiguous to me. It could come across as "choose any one".
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@toby-pereira could be “choose however many” but that doesn’t roll off the tongue per se.
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@cfrank Yes, but "choose-any" was selected on the basis of being clear (it rolls off the tongue less well than "approval" I'd say), so it really needs to do that job perfectly before we get on to how well it rolls off the tongue.
Edit - I'd say "choose any number" is a little bit less clunky than "choose however many", but neither are great in that respect.
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@wolftune Individual people going off and creating their own terms is not going to result in a larger movement wide change.
If that's a quest you care about then you'd need to get consensus from CES, CA Approves, Fargo Approves, Utah Approves, SL Approves, etc. -- which is not going to happen, imo.
I also don't think it should happen. Approval voting already has a solid one word self explanatory name that people know, and that's used in both academic and voter level contexts. That's a huge advantage!
Changing that is not worth it for questionable gains at best. I think it would do a lot of damage to try, and I think the failed efforts to market "pick all that you like" voting illustrate that.
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ADMIN REMINDER:
If your comments on a post changes topics substantively from the original post, please create your own post so we can stay on topic.Clarifying questions about terminology are on topic, but this thread is about the Maine Supreme Court ruling so advocacy to change voting system's names is off topic here.
