Posts made by psp_andrew.s

@sarawolk

We can address these.

1. Our research has shown that a 2-choice voting system is the 2nd easiest for voters to understand when compared with STAR and RCV. We can do some more research and even conduct live, representatively sampled polls with your assistance if you're interested in finding out which option lay-people feel is easiest to understand.

2. A better voting method does not need to completely eliminate vote splitting. In fact, any system that forces voters to make any kind of explicit preference decision will incur vote splitting. That's not an issue as long as the systems sufficiently reduces the IMPACT of vote splitting, which 2CV does to negligible levels.

3. You've given no evidence to support this. Every scenario that we've tested 2CV in, which includes a variety of political landscapes and candidate quantities has produced "desirable*" election outcomes. Please give some examples where this might not be the case.

4. 2CV does not magnify electability bias compared to plurality voting. It may have slightly more bias than unlimited-choice systems, but unlimited choice methods introduce either gamesmanship (in the case of unlimited-choice Borda) or significant complexity (normalization of scores in Score voting). Most voters only have 1 or 2 preferences anyway, as every election results study has shown, and eliminating all data from any system on rankings of 4th choice or lower almost never has a material impact on the election outcome. 2CV asks voters for enough data to create a statistically sufficiently informed single-winner choice (assuming 250k+ voters, representatively sampled).

5. I've heard all the feedback. I've listened and taken it into account, which led to modifying the runoff election so that no candidate can win without 50% support (either a 1st or 2nd choice from the majority, if none of the top3 get 51%, we drop the 3rd place candidate by points and upgrade all the their voter's 2nd choice votes to 1st choice votes). 2CV now ensures, unlike any other proposed system, that the winner will, under all circumstances, be one who received at least 51% of 1st or 2nd choice votes. Which leads to majority-consensus election outcomes, always.

* We can have a discussion as to what "desirable" means, but for our purposes it means that the winning candidate had a significant amount of 1st choice preference among the voting population, as well as acceptance/preference from among 51% of the entire voting population.

@cfrank I have done an immense amount of research and have yet to find significant flaws that would make 2CV a worse system than the currently proposed ones such as RCV/STAR/YNA etc. That said, I consider myself HIGHLY objective and I'm willing to admit where I'm mistaken. I'm open to discussion on it, preferably by voice / video chat, since I feel that would be more productive. I will however say that, in EVERY scenario I've tested the model, it DOES NOT allow minority rule by strategic voting. I can show you if you want to look at the model together. Add me on Discord @lamppost

@Jack-Waugh If 2CV were implemented in our own General Elections, it wouldn't matter what method Parties used in their party primaries. Parties are necessary evil, like it or not, since people WILL form groups/coalitions to collectively enact legislative change. Therefore, implementing 2CV would allow multiple Parties to thrive and be competitive SIMPLY by getting 2nd Choice Votes. This is a huge change and significant upgrade on our current voting system while being easy to understand and implement, and works within our existing government and electoral frameworks.

To address your concern - using 2CV in a Ralph Nader-esque scenario would have still allowed Gore, who was more BROADLY approved of, to win, which I believe is the desired result given the polling data. If you want to have a video/screenshare discussion, we can run through a 7-candidate model and you can tell me yourself if it produces the desired result. Add me on Discord @lamppost

And in your scenario of ABCDE candidates, if a A/C 1st and 2nd choice vote would "deny" candidate B the win, then a balanced countervote would be B/C 1st and 2nd choice, which would equivocally restore their win.

@cfrank Please provide an example, because I cannot come up with one where I've seen multiple candidates from Party A running against multiple candidates from Party B in a general election. This should never happen and it's a bad system if it allows as such (does not promote sufficient candidate diversity).

@cfrank I actually STRONGLY disagree with your premise that having clones in a general election is desirable. I think it's actually highly UNDESIRABLE and that we should want our general elections to offer us REAL CHOICE, meaning true, tangible, distintinct differentiation of candidates and ideas. No healthy election should only offer a choice between 3 shades of Red and 5 shades of Blue.

The party system is good and works, so long as it allows for alternative parties / moderates to win by getting a large amount of general approval (even if they're not 1st choice of the highest number of voters) - I think we can all agree with this premise.

That's the problem with our system - not that it doesn't promote the running of candidate clones (that's actually a GOOD thing, in my opinion), but rather that it doesn't allow for sufficient voter expression whereby they can choose a 2nd or backup candidate to gauge candidate acceptance / support more broadly than Single-Vote can indicate, and allowing for the victory of more populist candidates, which 2CV does elegantly.

I've thought very hard about your hypothetical, and I've come to the conclusion that it's an impossible situation, since it would likely NEVER be the case in an 8-candidate Mixed Primary Election (which is undesirable in and of itself, in my opinion) that no candidate would attempt a strategy of populist appeal and be more "moderate," to gain 2nd Choice Votes, since doing so is a huge competitive advantage. So I don't personally see that as a valid criticism of 2CV, though I'm open to more discussion if you have counter-arguments

EDIT: I may have misunderstood, I think your hypothetical assumes that there are 50/50 weighted voters for liberal vs conservative, right? I'll readjust and look at it.

@cfrank Ok, I think I kind of understand where you're going with that, I'll think hard on it and let you know what I find. I'm also updating the model to support 8 candidates to run it through.

I will say, however, that I think the hypothetical is flawed, as I can't think of a scenario whereby 5 candidates from 1 single party could, or ever have, competed in the same general election as 3 candidates from ANOTHER party. Typically the POINT of parties is to align around 1 candidate, so those parties will have their own Primary before selecting whom to choose as their Party's candidate in a given general election.

Please advise and let me know if my criticisms of your hypothetical are valid or not.

Edit: I think your hypothetical requires the running of MIXED Primaries, which I neither support nor think are a good idea. But we can get into that separately if you genuinely believe that mixed Primaries are preferred to our current unmixed systems.

@cfrank I've read through your hypothetical several times and some things don't make sense - not sure I'm understanding the variables correctly. Are you available to discuss via screenshare/video chat so I can better understand?

@cfrank I think 2CV satisfies this. Would you be available for a Discord video call to discuss and run it through the Election model that I built? You can add me on discord @lamppost

@jack-waugh I've responded to your criticism of not passing the Frohmayer Balance test in my edit to the main post. I think this system does satisfy it, since there is the ability for any voter to bring balance to another voter's ballot cast in an equally weighted and balanced opposing vote, which would many times result in the "common ground" candidate being more highly supported, which is a benefit of the system - rewarding candidates with higher overall support.

@cfrank I've responded to you main criticisms in the edits above! I'll have to dive deeper into the vote splitting hypothetical, but my guess is that you won't often have "Clones from 1 party" since most parties would only allow 1 candidate to have their party's endorsement. So this hypothetical of "clones" seems, at face, extremely unlikely, especially considering no 2 humans are exact clones. There will almost certainly be SOME differences between the "clones," so I feel that the premise is likely flawed. But I'll humor the hypothetical and dive in and reply more in depth

Hi Everyone!

I wanted to share with everyone a new voting system that not too many people are familiar with yet, but that combines some of the best parts of RCV, STAR, and Approval Voting, all into one simple, easy-to-understand voting system!

ELI5 (Explain Like I'm Five)

You have a 1st-Choice Coin (worth 2 Points) and a 2nd-Choice Coin (worth 1 Point). You can give each coin to a separate candidate that you support. We then tally to find out who has the most Points, and if that candidate ALSO has the number of Coins greater than 50.1% of the number of voters, they win! (i.e. the majority of voters gave them a 1st- or 2nd-Choice Coin aka “Majority Support”)

If the candidate with the most points doesn’t have Majority Support, we redo the vote, but with only the Top 3 candidates with the highest number of coins from the first vote (Top 3 Runoff by Support). Everyone votes again with the same method, and if none of the Top 3 received 51% Majority Support, we eliminate the 3rd ranked candidate and upgrade all of that candidate's voters' 2nd choices to 1st choices (doubling their 2nd choice point value, thus making them equivalent with 1st choice value). The winner is the person with the most points!

The Proposal and Model

I've created both a Google Docs Proposal that proposes and explains 2CV in depth, as well as a Google Sheets 2CV Election Model, where you can run up to 7 candidates with a separate 3-candidate runoff in the case of no candidate receiving Majority Support.

You can view the Proposal Here

You can view the Model Here

Potential Cost / Benefit Attributes

Costs

• Does not allow for voting of more than 2 candidates or choices
  • most voters don't care to vote down ballot anyway, and those votes are rarely significant in their effect
• Requires a runoff election if no candidate receives Majority Support in the first vote (aka Primary election)
  • not a big deal, we already do this, and doing so gives benefits to voters whereby they can uniquely express their preference of those candidates who make it into the runoff.

Benefits

• Allows for "Majority Support" whereby the winning candidate will have either had 50% support or a
• Simple and easy to explain to prospective voters (THIS IS IMPORTANT)
• Provides for maximal candidate-choice expression by allowing voters to express uniquely in both the Primary and the Runoff elections
• Rewards moderate, populist candidates by allowing those with a fewer number of 1st Choice votes to win by making up the difference by getting a significant number 2nd Choice votes
• Encourages honest, exhaustive voting, since voters only get 2 choices, and their 2nd choice helps prevent the election of their less preferred choices

Conclusion

I'd love to hear everyone's feedback on this one, but please read through the Proposal first and play with the Model to see if it either confirms or satisfies your concerns

Looking forward to seeing if this thing holds up to everyone's much-appreciated scrutiny!

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EDIT: Responses to Criticisms

Criticisms

Possibly Requires 2 Rounds of Voting - We already do this, and it's absolutely not a big deal. In fact, I would argue that having a completely separate 2nd round of voting for a Runoff is a BENEFIT and actually INCREASES accurate voter expression. A voter should have the ability to CHANGE their preference once they know who the runoff will be between. E.g. a Voter didn't do a lot of research on a candidate who they ranked low on their STAR ballot, but it turns out many others liked that candidate and they went into a top-2 runoff. Now that voter becomes disenfranchised because they didn't know that candidate would be in the top 2 and may want to do additional research to change their vote, now that they know. You cannot expect voters to adequately research ALL candidates on the ballot, so when there is a runoff, those voters should be able to reevaluate and recast their votes. It actually INCREASES accurate voter expression.

Loss of Expressive Ballot / Only 2 Choices - 2CV gives voters double the expression of our current system, which is already not horribly insufficient. I think many of you think that MAXIMUM voter expression is required from a system; it's not. All that's required is enough expression whereby the system will produce a desirable result given the level of expression, which should be VERY SERIOUSLY CONSIDERED AND WEIGHED against the system's simplicity, as simplicity and ease of use/understanding matters FAR MORE for the average voter if trying to convince them to adopt a new voting system. 2CV provides significant, adequate expression to produce the desired result in the VAST majority (~95%) of electoral simulations. This is a mild tradeoff in favor of simplicity, which is much more important than I think many on here consider. Voter understanding of the system is probably the highest consideration when trying to implement a new voting system for our government.

Voters Forced to Allocate Positive Support - At no time is a voter REQUIRED to cast their 2nd choice vote. However, it is in their benefit to do so, as a 2nd choice vote helps prevent the election of that voters less preferred candidate. It's an optional "insurance" but not a requisite.

Practical Consequence Unclear - Not sure if you read the whole proposal (Which I requested people do before making criticisms), but this is addressed in the Proposal, which I additionally expressed in the "benefits" section. Among them are:

• Easy for voters to participate optimally, without gamification - just pick your favorite and a backup
• Significantly less complicated than other proposed alternatives (STAR, RCV)
• Rewards populist candidates by creating a simple system whereby a candidate can win with fewer "primary preferences" that are made up by a significant number of 2nd choice votes

On Frohmayer Balance - 2CV passes this challenge, to my understanding. E.g. If there are candidates ABCDE and 1 voter selects A/C as 1st/2nd choice, another voter can cast E/C as 1st/2nd choice to create balance between A/C and E/C preferences. The effect of which would be that candidate C would gain additional support from both voters, but that is still EQUAL in weight and thus satisfies Frohmayer, to my understanding. Likewise, if a voter ONLY votes A, another voter can choose to ONLY vote E to create balance, as 2nd choices are optional, not required.