HeadPen5724 t1_j6k2qny wrote on January 30, 2023 at 9:57 PM

Reply to comment by KITTYONFYRE in Debating ranked-choice voting in Vermont by orange_wires

You asked what ME had to do with it and I explained the reasoning for bringing it up. Your displayed maturity level is a part of that explanation, ergo no ad hominem attack rather it provided the basis for determining your lack of first hand experience with IRV along with not having lived in ME.

But here goes…

1.) perhaps most importantly, IRV violates the one vote- one person principle that is the foundation of our democracy. I get a vote and you get a vote. With IRV however, if I don’t rank all candidates (and there are several valid reasons someone may choose not to) then depending on how the future rounds break down, I may not actually get a vote. If I only rank one person and they’re eliminated, my vote is effectively tossed out in the trash and that’s about as anti democratic as we can get. Especially at a time where voter participation is encouraged.

2.) it’s completely obscure and which candidate is running off against which other candidate isn’t clear prior to casting your vote. Who is matched up in the 3rd round is literally anyone’s guess and how an individuals ranking plays out is as well ( I strongly suspect this is what happened with the Kiss re-election but I have no evidence for that, there were two other candidates that had 65%+ of voter support, no one thought Kiss had a shot and would have been eliminated in an earlier round). Voting should be crystal clear which candidates are running and which candidates are available to vote for. This uncertainty disenfranchises voters, especially if they know their vote may not count. In a traditional runoff you’ve got 2 clear choices, there is no confusion and it’s a straightforward as it can be.

3.) traditional runoffs allow for additional time to vet the two candidates. If you’ve got 7 candidates in a field it’s hard to get to know them all well. Maybe one candidate seems like a stellar choice and you vote for them, but they don’t make it through the first round, now you’ve got a chance to become more informed of the remaining 2 choices. IRV would force you to lose your vote, or make uninformed choices about other candidates. You should never be coerced into voting for a candidate you’re not comfortable with just to have your vote count.

4.) Even IF the prior experience with IRV was due to voters not understanding the system instead of a weird anomaly, you would now have to educate the entire state, everyone from Brattleboro to Montpelier to the backwoods of the NEK… when it couldn’t be done in Burlington… a college town full of educated people. Many of those same people still vote and would have the same struggles they had last time. Make it easy for people to cast their vote, not harder.

5.) we have a system that works. Don’t fix something that isn’t broken. Work on fixing the broken things.

KITTYONFYRE t1_j6kcix7 wrote on January 30, 2023 at 11:00 PM

First: I appreciate this comment laying this out. I'm going to respond out of order, I've slightly edited quotes just to make what I'm responding to a bit more clearly - my intention is not to misrepresent one of your points by cutting out context, if I commit this error call me out. It would be due to incompetence and not malice.

> 3.) traditional runoffs allow for additional time to vet the two candidates. Maybe one candidate seems like a stellar choice and you vote for them, but they don’t make it through the first round, now you’ve got a chance to become more informed of the remaining 2 choices.

Shouldn't you already have researched all 7 of those candidates anyway? If you researched just 1 candidate and know "I like them" you should know why you like them over other candidates.

I see what you're getting at somewhat, though. Candidates you may have discarded because of not liking them as much as your #1 won't be researched as thoroughly. Fair enough.

> 2.) it’s completely obscure and which candidate is running off against which other candidate isn’t clear prior to casting your vote

I'm not certain you understand how ranked choice voting works, to be honest. They're all running against everyone.

> there were two other candidates that had 65%+ of voter support

130% of people voted?

> Voting should be crystal clear which candidates are running and which candidates are available to vote for. This uncertainty disenfranchises voters, especially if they know their vote may not count.

Your ranked-choice vote will, at minimum, count for the exact same amount that your FPTP vote would count. Just to be sure that I'm understanding you, could you lay out a situation where you're saying that a vote will not count?

> 4.) voter education

Absolutely. By far the biggest issue with ranked choice. But at worst, it's equivalent - ie, you could just vote #1 as the candidate you want, and that's equivalent to the old system. Education will happen, and I think in the last 10 years people have learned a lot more about voting systems. The world is in a better place to understand now than it was then.

> 1. IRV violates the one vote- one person principle that is the foundation of our democracy

That's not a foundation of our democracy. 3/5s rule, anyone?

> With IRV however, if I don’t rank all candidates (and there are several valid reasons someone may choose not to) then depending on how the future rounds break down, I may not actually get a vote.

This is literally equivalent to saying "if I don't vote for a [govt position], I don't get a vote!". Yeah, you're right: if you don't vote, you don't vote.

> If I only rank one person and they’re eliminated, my vote is effectively tossed out in the trash

I mean, sure? But you could say the same about voting for anything other than the party that's going to win right now - ie, if your candidate isn't super strong, voting for them is throwing away your vote anyway. This is an issue with the current system just as much as ranked choice.

In general, let's avoid "if I do something wrong, bad things happen" type arguments. I've already said that education will be a big challenge, but for the sake of conversation now, let's pretend everyone is educated about how it works and votes properly. Eventually, everyone will understand it if it is implemented, so let's just assume for now.

HeadPen5724 t1_j6kjxe8 wrote on January 30, 2023 at 11:51 PM

I’ll apologize upfront for not being well versed in quoting in Reddit.

To you response to my #3, in an ideal world you would have researched all 7 candidates. But that’s not where we live and and in fairness, if you’ve found someone that represents you well, why keep looking. I’m glad you at least recognize it as a fair point.

To Your response to my point 2, it maybe poor communications due to typing everything out and trying to be concise. What I was getting at is they’re all running against each other in round 1, but then the lowest vote getter is dropped and those votes redistributed. If there’s still not majority, the next lowest tally gets dropped and those rankings redistributed, at this point when you’re casting your ballot you have no idea who those three left maybe. Because you don’t know who is actually in the “runoff” part how do you know how you want to vote. That’s how Burlington’s worked. I apologize if there’s a different scheme to it now.

That 65% was for both candidates, thus the necessity for a runoff… Montroll was heavily favored, Wright had strong support for a Republican, no one like Kiss and the other two were fringe candidates. I believe Kiss had like mid 20% of the first round tabulation, but seemingly picked up all of the fringe voters and well… we got Kiss who stole roughly $35M of unauthorized funds to build Burlington Telecom (which isn’t a point on the merits of BTC, just criminal malfeasance by the mayor).

To your response to my point 1. I understand the logic that’s it’s akin to not voting, but at the same time it’s not the same. If I chose to only rank 3 candidates because I think the other two are crooks, and all my candidates get knocked out and my vote can no longer be distributed than I have voted, but my vote has effectively been tossed out. I didn’t CHOOSE not to vote, I went to the polls, took time out of my day, etc to go cast a ballot. I have the right for that ballot to be counted. In order for my ballot to be counted I would have to vote for one of the remaining candidates and that’s coercion. I realize that’s very principled argument, and that may not be important to everyone. But in a traditional runoff I have a choice to vote again or not, in IRV that choice is made for me based on how everything works out.

For the sake of argument I’ll pretend everyone can be educated, but point out that in the meantime we are discounting a lot of peoples votes and I’m still not sure what the benefit is 🤷🏼‍♂️

KITTYONFYRE t1_j6l4113 wrote on January 31, 2023 at 2:18 AM

no worries, reddit formatting is kinda weird. for quoting, all you need to do is put a > and a space before the paragraph. so this:

> quote

turns into this:

> quote

> Because you don’t know who is actually in the “runoff” part how do you know how you want to vote

But it doesn't matter who's in the runoff. For example, if there's candidates A B C D E. You like A B C in that order (A the most, B 2nd, C 3rd), D and E suck. Let's say two candidates are run off. It doesn't matter which two are out, you still prefer A B C and hate D E. The remaining candidates don't effect how you feel about the other candidates. If A and B are run off, you still choose C. If A and C are run off, you still choose B. If D and E are run off, you still vote A. You already know who you want to vote for, you get to do it all at the beginning, that's the point of ranking your choices.

> To your response to my point 1. I understand the logic that’s it’s akin to not voting, but at the same time it’s not the same.

It is literally the exact same, and I will give a scenario to show you how it is the same.

> If I chose to only rank 3 candidates because I think the other two are crooks, and all my candidates get knocked out and my vote can no longer be distributed than I have voted, but my vote has effectively been tossed out. I didn’t CHOOSE not to vote, I went to the polls, took time out of my day, etc to go cast a ballot. I have the right for that ballot to be counted.

Your ballot WAS counted. What? Imagine if there were just runoffs every time until 50% was reached. You go to the polls, candidate A is out. You go again, candidate B is out. You go AGAIN, C is out. Now just D and E are left. Do you still go to the polls, or do you stay home? If you stay home, that's the same as leaving those two blank with ranked choice. If you go out to the poll, that's the same as actually ranking them, even though you despise them. Your ballot WAS counted. It was always counted, and your candidate lost. That doesn't mean it's thrown away. You still voted for them: they just didn't win, and you decided not to participate in the runoff vote of the last two candidates.

> But in a traditional runoff I have a choice to vote again or not, in IRV that choice is made for me based on how everything works out.

No, that's not correct. In IRV, you make the choice to vote again or not immediately. You make that decision once, at the polls, one time. It's literally the exact same result as having many runoff votes.

> we are discounting a lot of peoples votes

There are no votes being discounted. You can recite how it works, but you don't understand how it works. No votes are thrown away in your scenario.

HeadPen5724 t1_j6mvfnd wrote on January 31, 2023 at 1:39 PM

I appreciate the lesson in quoting on Reddit, thank you.

I think your extrapolating a bit to make your point (and I do think it’s a fair point), If we held runoffs by holding them again and again until we got to 50%, but that’s not actually how it’s done. There are only ever two rounds, the election and then a runoff between the top two candidates. I’ll try again to articulate my point better, but it maybe we just disagree.

Let’s pretend we’ve got Sanders, Warren, Gabbard, Clinton, Biden. I really don’t want to vote for Sanders because he’s my neighbor and I don’t like him, and Clinton and Biden are old and outdated. So I rank Gabbard and Warren, both of whom get knocked out. If we have IRV I’m done, my vote “effectively” has been negated, my vote doesn’t get redistributed as others have that ranked everyone, even those candidates they don’t even know or don’t like.

In a traditional runoff maybe Sanders and Biden are the top two vote getters. I can see clearly the race and although I think Biden’s old and his time has gone by, I dislike sanders because he blows his grass all over my driveway and complains about my pickup. I’ve got the opportunity to vote “against” him. I think that’s a crappy way to vote, but realistically it happens all time. But the point is I have a choice to vote again or not. With IRV I have no choice. I HAVE to rank everyone, even the people I don’t like or I risk having my vote not count because there’s no way to know what the future matchups may turn out to be. I think clarity and choice are two critical aspects to voting and IRV does NOT make the runoff clear at all and I my only Choice is to vote for candidates that May it may not be running. I realize that a small and nuanced point, or maybe I still haven’t made it well.

This also encourages people to vote for candidates they don’t know, again because people are essentially forced to rank everyone. Not something I personally want to encourage.

And again, outside of a token amount of money saved I don’t see a benefit or reason to change the current system that is straightforward and simple. And there’s still the educational challenges that exist. If there’s no real meaningful benefit, what’s the point?

All that said, I really do appreciate this dialogue regardless of the difference of opinions. Thank you for a respectful conversation on the topic. Cheers.

KITTYONFYRE t1_j6nnpvs wrote on January 31, 2023 at 4:51 PM

> If we held runoffs by holding them again and again until we got to 50%, but that’s not actually how it’s done. There are only ever two rounds, the election and then a runoff between the top two candidates.

But that's a terrible system! It encourages two-party rule, and enforces the spoiler effect. There will NEVER be a competitive 3rd party with this rule, because if you vote for a candidate that's unlikely to win, you're effectively giving a vote to the side you dislike, pulling a vote away from the side you DO like.

> Let’s pretend we’ve got Sanders, Warren, Gabbard, Clinton, Biden. I really don’t want to vote for Sanders because he’s my neighbor and I don’t like him, and Clinton and Biden are old and outdated. So I rank Gabbard and Warren, both of whom get knocked out. If we have IRV I’m done, my vote “effectively” has been negated, my vote doesn’t get redistributed as others have that ranked everyone, even those candidates they don’t even know or don’t like.

You can't choose to not vote between two candidates, then complain you didn't get to vote between two candidates. A runoff between any two candidates could happen. If you want to participate in that runoff, rank them. If you hate them both and don't see one as slightly less bad, don't vote for either. If you CHOOSE to not vote for them, yes, of course you won't get a vote.

> In a traditional runoff maybe Sanders and Biden are the top two vote getters. I can see clearly the race and although I think Biden’s old and his time has gone by, I dislike sanders because he blows his grass all over my driveway and complains about my pickup. I’ve got the opportunity to vote “against” him.

You already had that opportunity with IRV! You chose to not rank them. There's no difference between the two, at all. You are simply choosing "I will vote for the runoff between these two people I dislike" at the polling station, rather than waiting for a second runoff and having to take more time off work and more time out of your day to do it (or to decide not to do it). It's the exact same except one doesn't require a 2nd trip to the polling stations (which is hard on many working class Vermonters!)

> IRV does NOT make the runoff clear at all and I my only Choice is to vote for candidates that May it may not be running

This doesn't make sense. it's not "I have to vote for candidates who may or may not be running", it's that you get the BENEFIT of BEING ABLE to vote for candidates who might not win, without killing your primary party's chances. So I can vote for Bernie without killing Hillary's odds. You are never "voting for candidates who are not running". You literally CANNOT get your vote thrown away unless you choose not to vote at all at some point in the runoffs, at which point you've DECIDED not to vote - not had that vote take naway from you.

> And again, outside of a token amount of money saved I don’t see a benefit or reason to change the current system that is straightforward and simple.

A huge benefit of removing the spoiler effect (3rd party votes taking away from your primary party votes, thus helping the other side) and reducing (but not eliminating) two-party rule. Pretty gigantic benefits. On top of money saved on runoffs, which is a minor benefit. It would also dramatically increase voter turnout, because it means a vote for a 3rd party isn't a wasted vote, so people have more choice and will feel better represented.

HeadPen5724 t1_j6nwbtp wrote on January 31, 2023 at 5:43 PM

I don’t see two party rule as any more of a problem than 3 party rule. All parties suck as far as I’m concerned, and as long as we allow political parties to run out elections whether it’s 2,3 or 5 doesn’t really matter. Get rid of all party affiliation on election material and maybe we can rid ourselves of this ridiculous party system all together.

Time isn’t an issue. We mass mail out ballots now.

KITTYONFYRE t1_j6nzb37 wrote on January 31, 2023 at 6:01 PM

> I don’t see two party rule as any more of a problem than 3 party rule.

You think that having fewer viable options is the same as having more viable options? I'm not sure how to respond to that. That's pretty ridiculous. If you don't like the mainline dem/rep candidate now, you're fucked. If there were 5 options, you could have someone your beliefs more closely aligned to to vote with.

It's not "5 party rule" at that point. That's just having five different candidate options. Maybe some are the same party, maybe they aren't.

HeadPen5724 t1_j6o17s4 wrote on January 31, 2023 at 6:13 PM

As long as there are parties involved, I don’t believe there will ever be more than two viable candidates. The current system allows for more than two parties but human nature is to align with others, that share similar beliefs to maximize power, which is always going to lead to 2 groups only. If everyone was an independent and not beholden to a party platform, that would give people more options to choose somebody that is most closely aligned with your personal beliefs.

KITTYONFYRE t1_j6o3phc wrote on January 31, 2023 at 6:28 PM

> As long as there are parties involved, I don’t believe there will ever be more than two viable candidates. The current system allows for more than two parties but human nature is to align with others, that share similar beliefs to maximize power, which is always going to lead to 2 groups only.

Actually, no. The two party system is 100% due to our current voting system and how it works, not just simple human nature. This is a fact.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-past-the-post_voting

Under "Effects on political parties and societies", it mentions Duverger's law. Essentially, the two-party system only exists because of this style of voting. Ranked hcoice won't totally eliminate it, but it'll remove a few of the contributing factors such as the spoiler effect (see: ralph nader taking some of Al Gore's votes, making Bush win even though Nader voters would have preferred Al Gore).

> If everyone was an independent and not beholden to a party platform

then people would start grouping those independent people as "gun supporters", "socially liberal", etc etc, until you've got a list of labels that describe a general group of people. you've not got parties again. having political parties grouped around general beliefs is unavoidable: having only two of those parties dominate, however, IS avoidable.

HeadPen5724 t1_j6o8m4r wrote on January 31, 2023 at 6:58 PM

Quick question, when you quote do you have to retype the entire damn text? I can’t copy and paste, it’s just collapses your comment? Or am I missing something???

KITTYONFYRE t1_j6omerp wrote on January 31, 2023 at 8:23 PM

Are you on a computer? Not sure.

You can also just type in whatever after the > and it'll show up as a comment

(ps, if you want > or any other markdown symbol to appear, you need to put a backslash before it, so you'd type this \> to get this > to appear)

HeadPen5724 t1_j6oq0zh wrote on January 31, 2023 at 8:46 PM

Thanks. I’m using Reddit on my phone so that’s probably the issue.

HeadPen5724 t1_j6o8e01 wrote on January 31, 2023 at 6:56 PM

At least if voters started grouping people it would mean they actually learned about the candidates and didn’t just look for the letter next to their name, that would be an improvement, but I doubt that would actually happen realistically.

We don’t have FPTP voting, so I’m not sure the relevance of that. You can’t win with a plurality (see Shumlin v Milne 2014) or any traditional runoff really.

In VT IRV would actually likely lead to 1 party rule. The GOP would stop being a viable party. Progressives would pick up some of the democrats, but democrats would pick up almost all of the independents/centrists AND conservative voters who no longer have a viable candidate. One party rule is even worse than 2.

It really doesn’t save enough money to warrant a change, mail out balloting negates the “saves time” benefit, and it won’t disrupt the 2 party system (which isn’t really the problem, rather the party system as whole is).

I’ll finish here with my original comment, IRV is a solution looking for a problem.

I appreciate the conversation though and I’m glad we continued it through. I’ve given IRV more thought that I otherwise would have and that’s a positive. I’ll look forward to more dialogues in the future. Thanks.

KITTYONFYRE t1_j6oreh1 wrote on January 31, 2023 at 8:54 PM

> In VT IRV would actually likely lead to 1 party rule. The GOP would stop being a viable party. Progressives would pick up some of the democrats, but democrats would pick up almost all of the independents/centrists AND conservative voters who no longer have a viable candidate. One party rule is even worse than 2.

No? What? This is just wrong. Why would democrats pick up people voting independent? It's the other way around: People who voted democrat, even though they supported, say, a progressive candidate instead, would now put that progressive candidate as #1 and the democrat (who they previously would have voted for) as #2. Same with any popular party: Lesser parties will, in general, get more votes now.

This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how and why ranked-choice voting works.

> We don’t have FPTP voting, so I’m not sure the relevance of that. You can’t win with a plurality (see Shumlin v Milne 2014) or any traditional runoff really.

We have FPTP voting. Plurality vs majority doesn't matter, it's still FPTP. And more importantly, I'm not aware of any cases where a plurality was reached and the person who was runner-up didn't cede the election - so we effectively have a plurality anyway. This is a distinction without a difference - it doesn't matter if it's majority or plurality on paper because it has always been plurality in practice.

> mail out balloting negates the “saves time” benefit

no it doesn't. mailing out ballots still takes a ton of labor. it's less than in-person, sure, but it's still there. you can say "mitigate" maybe, but definitely not negate.

> and it won’t disrupt the 2 party system

It won't fully disrupt it, it will help break it up and placate the spoiler effect. It will do better than what we have now.

HeadPen5724 t1_j6oul8v wrote on January 31, 2023 at 9:14 PM

Independents are generally to the right of democrats from progressives. The majority of those votes will go the democrats, and in far greater numbers than democrats switching to progressive. We will end up with 75% Democratic representation in Montpelier. It will be 1 party rule.

Realistically I don’t see it passing, but maybe we will get to see how it all works out 🤷🏼‍♂️

KITTYONFYRE t1_j6oviwe wrote on January 31, 2023 at 9:19 PM

no. less popular parties will get MORE votes. this is literally the basis of how it helps (but does not prevent or totally dissuade from) two party rule

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting

this is discussed under "resistance to tactical voting"

and fun fact, this is under "voter confusion":

> Research shows that voters in general can understand and use IRV. Various surveys in the U.S. found 80%–90% of voters reported understanding the ballot very well, and 90% reported it was easy to use. Voter comprehension increased with repeated use, eliminating demographic disparities over time. Older voters were more likely to say they found the system confusing, but in practice correctly completed IRV ballots at the same rate.[20]

so education isn't really a big deal either

HeadPen5724 t1_j6p4sgo wrote on January 31, 2023 at 10:17 PM

Less popular parties will get more total votes, that doesn’t mean they will get more candidates elected. The flaw in your view, is that you are assuming the VTGOP remains a viable party. It won’t, it barely is now. AND, by definition an independent voter sometimes votes right, sometimes votes left… they aren’t beholden to either party. So they are fairly centered. They aren’t all of a sudden going to leap frog the more moderate party to support the more extreme party? If you have Trump, Biden, and Sanders as candidates, and you remove Trump because the Republican Party is no longer relevant, who do you think those right leaning independents and conservatives are going to vote for? Sanders or Biden? The left leaning independents were mostly already voting for Biden anyways. It has nothing to do with popularity, it has to do with where on the political spectrum the party is compared with where the voters are.

You can rank away all you want, but the shift in votes has to come from somewhere and we are already almost at 1 party rule as is. This will exacerbate it. Republicans already can’t even override a veto?