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MamaBearForestWitch t1_j4hnkz1 wrote

Ranked choice voting is the first step we have to take to get away from this two-party stranglehold on American politics.

People often have a hard time with change, but RCV isn't really hard to understand. In fact, we rank-choice things all the time: "I want ham, but if they don't have it, then turkey would be fine". "Chocolate is my first choice if they have it. If not, chocolate chip. I guess if they don't have either, I'll take vanilla"

It actually opens up our political choices, because you can vote for a third party candidate without feeling you've "wasted" your vote, or inadvertently helping a candidate you really oppose by siphoning a vote away from their opponent. I would love to see RCV everywhere.
(edited for typo)

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PurpleVermont t1_j4hq3pc wrote

I agree that we need a better voting system to get out from under the two-party stranglehold and make it viable for people to vote for someone they actually like.

However, RCV can lead to some strange and undesirable outcomes (such as where voting against your preferred candidate helps them win by eliminating their strongest competition) See this article for some examples:

>http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/~unger/articles/irv.html

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RoadAdventures t1_j4ll7uw wrote

This kind of comment is why I love hanging around Reddit, despite its many frustrations.

That information is very much appreciated, kind stranger :)

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PurpleVermont t1_j4lqpjd wrote

What I'm less sure about is whether these are weird pathological cases thought up by math nerds (like myself) that would be vanishingly unlikely to happen IRL, or if these are serious problems that more people need to be thinking about. But until someone convinces me that these are extremely unlikely to happen IRL, I will continue my skepticism of RCV. It may still be better than what we have now though!

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RoadAdventures t1_j4m5qx4 wrote

> But until someone convinces me that these are extremely unlikely to happen IRL

That's hard to prove without real life examples.

At the end of the day, one can use the one voter in those examples to stand in for a group of people that decides to vote a certain way and the math will hold.

And it would be tough to predict future voter behavior without actual results from real elections - can only speculate so much before one's assumptions become unrealistic.

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PurpleVermont t1_j4m87sh wrote

I don't know if you could do anything useful with past polling results, since that only gives a person's first choice, but in most cases you could make reasonable assumptions about 2nd and 3rd choices, and try some simulations or something.

Most of the examples you have 3-4 candidates that are all almost equally liked. That may be more likely in a primary than a general election.

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RoadAdventures t1_j4mp5qb wrote

> but in most cases you could make reasonable assumptions about 2nd and 3rd choices, and try some simulations or something.

That is not what I was suggestion - those would be the assumptions that would lead to pure guesswork as results.

I was talking about monitoring the actual results from states or towns that are using the specific voting methods that are discussed.

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