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PurpleVermont t1_j4lqpjd wrote

Reply to comment by RoadAdventures in Opinion: Brain science supports ranked choice voting by orange_wires

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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