I would like to make this knowledge more accessible in my country.

The names of sets for tournaments, Condorcet voting, etc. Are either non-descriptive or confusing. To who knows, can you tell me 1) why this is their name (if it's not just a person) 2) what other names there are 3) what is the easiest desciption you could provide 4) what could be a good name for them:

Pareto - I guess unanimity set?

Smith - since Condorcet is simple majority beats-all, from what I read and like for Condorcet: "constistent majority (candidate)" set

Schwartz - ??

Copeland - most pairwise victories?

Uncovered (Fishburn, Landau) Set - ???

Essential Set - what makes it essential?

Bipartisan Set - ?? - what makes it bipartisan???

others?

I'm curious where others are at with so many initiatives going down and the performance of IRV where it was implemented. Also, there were no approval voting ballot initiatives.

I did my own write-up here: https://www.aaronhamlin.com/heard-your-candidate-lost

What are some systems you found or made yourself that are unique or strange.

I hope to propose this plan to my state legislature. Nebraska. Not going for perfection, just improvement.

We use some partisan and some nonpartisan primaries. I think the nonpartisan ones might as well be single-ballot. But to avoid confusion, I'll focus on the main election, and will defer to the lawmakers on what primaries they may want.

Below is a conversational description of the method. If you have any suggestion as to improving what I've written, not so much changing the rules, but if my phrasing is confusing or I made some amateurish mistake, etc... If there's a better way to lay out this process, or you have a suggestion for improvement in phrasing, I'd appreciate it.

Also I guess I am curious as to how you folks like how I treat the "Fourth seed," the candidate with the 4th-most 1st ranks. I was torn whether to include them at all, and ended up saying yes, but, they only can win by being a perfect pairwise winner of the top 4. If anything goes wrong for Fourth, they're gone.

Again, not going for perfection, just improvement... that will not take a year to hand count. Hence the eliminations.

RANKING ELECTION

For Governor, Congress, and Mayor of major cities.

Voters rank the candidates, no more than one candidate per rank, and one rank per candidate.

A candidate having over 50% of all 1st ranks will be elected. (Note, this will always be a Condorcet winner.)

Otherwise, determine the top four in 1st ranks who also have over 10%, and eliminate the rest. But always include the top two candidates, regardless of percentage.

Compare the semifinalist who has the most 1st ranks (the First seed) with the Fourth seed. If the Fourth seed wins against the First, successively compare the Fourth seed against the Second and Third seeds. If Fourth wins all three comparisons, they will be elected. If the Fourth seed fails to win any of these pairwise comparisons, the Fourth will be eliminated. (The first matchup is First vs Fourth due to the strong probability of eliminating the Fourth with just one matchup.)

The First, Second, and Third seeds will then be analyzed to determine a lone candidate who is undefeated among the three, who will be elected. (Possibly having one win and one tie.)

So any of the top four may be elected for winning pairwise victories against the other three, but unlike the Fourth seed, the top three may still be eligible if they lose or tie.

When there is not a lone undefeated winner, eliminate a lone pairwise loser, and apply IRV as needed, with a 1st-rank test to break 2-way ties.

(At this point I would provide examples to illustrate the different possible outcomes, how the IRV round works, etc.)

ALTERNATE PROCEDURE

For Legislature, State Officers, and various lesser offices:

Determine the top THREE (not four) in 1st ranks who also have over 10%, and eliminate the rest. But always include the top two candidates, regardless of percentage.

And disregard the previous procedures involving the Fourth seed, while following the rest of the process.

PRIMARIES

Regardless of what primary method(s) the legislature may or may not choose, the above procedures may be used as the general election.

Optional partisan primary suggestion: Any primary candidate who gets 2nd place may qualify for the general ballot, if they have over 20% of all citizens' votes. (This is a Droop quota for the case of four candidates.) They may choose to drop out or keep running.

https://preview.redd.it/y6uvs88ef50e1.png?width=3800&format=png&auto=webp&s=254d64471cf109e5419b187bddc5ac4eb65d425d

This is based on Preliminary Report 6. 277,626 ballots in that CVR. I will NOT be updating the matrix with the more recent results as I'm not well equipped to handle this kind of data with ease.

This race was not like NYC 2021 where we were all really wondering whether Adams was the CW -- after these SF RCV results came out, it was clear that Lurie was likely the CW. Still, it's nice to have the matrix. I'll probs do the same for the Portland, OR Mayor's race when those CVRs come out, but it sounds like we're not expecting any surprises there, either.

I didn't do the level of analysis with this race that I did with the New York race, but I'll note that there were a bunch of voters who ranked multiple candidates equally, some very clearly by accident. I left those in because Condorcet don't care. There was one voter who really, really, really liked London Breed.

Not a ton to discuss honestly, other than Farrell beating Peskin 1-on-1, which is the opposite of their elimination order with RCV. Interestingly, even though fewer voters ranked Farrell over Lurie than voters who ranked Peskin over Lurie, there were also fewer voters who ranked Lurie over Farrell than voters who ranked Lurie over Peskin. The breakdown is thus:

Lurie vs Farrell: 39.98% vs 24.36%. 15.61-point spread.

Lurie vs Peskin: 44.03% vs 27.76%. 16.28-point spread.

So despite seeing the dip with Farrell between Breed and Peskin in Lurie's column, Farrell performed "better" against Lurie than Peskin did, which is what we "want" in a nice Condorcet order like this. Of course, both Breed and Lurie crushed both Farrell and Peskin, so no monotonicity or participation shenanigans.

That's really all I've got. This was a real pain in the ass because I'm barely an amateur when it comes to dealing with data formatted like this. Special thanks to ChatGPT for writing the Python code I needed to translate the JSON files to CSVs so I could manipulate them for use in my Ranked Robin calculator, which produced the preference matrix. If you want to see some of my work, feel free to dig around in this drive folder.

It seems that, in a STAR system, the incentive is to vote in a 3-tier fashion. Highest score goes to your favorite(s). Second highest goes to those you approve. Lowest goes to those you don't.

It also seems that every voting reform advocate who doesn't like Approval says that they are worried their 2nd will beat their first.

So how about a system that is Approval with an extra column for your favorite or favorites? The Approval column gets the top 2 into a runoff and then the winner is decided based on the 3 levels of preference on the ballot. Favorite > Approve > Not marked.

The mission of Approval is to identify the candidate with the biggest tent - the one that the most voters can agree on. I personally think this is the very essence of why we have an election for our representatives and that this is the best possible system.

But some people just really feel like they need to express preference. So let's give them a column.

Surely this system has already been thought up but I didn't see anything about it.

I’ll preface this be saying that I don’t really understand the concept of precinct summarily well, honestly. I have read up on it and still don’t understand the issue well. My understanding is that it isn’t a theoretical mathematical limitation, but a limitation on the technology for sending data to a central location for computation (??). I would appreciate if someone could help me understand.

And to address the question in the title, would it be possible to send only enough information to conduct the first three rounds of voting (if three are even necessary)? My understanding of Hare IRV not being precinct summable is that the number of possible ballot permutations scales quickly with the number of candidates.

The number of possible ballot permutations, P, would be dependent only on the number of candidates, N, with this relationship:

P = N! (Not including exhausted ballots)

But when only calculating the first three rounds, the relationship (again without including exhausted ballots) is:

P = N!/(N-3)! = N*(N-1)*(N-2)

Or more generally, calculating to the Rth round is:

P = N!/(N-R)!

So for example, if there are 6 candidates, the total number of ballot permutations would be:

P = 6! = 720

But when calculating to only the third round, it would only be:

P = 6!/3! = 654 = 120

Haven't seen this one mentioned yet. South Dakota has rejected a top two open primary system where all candidates, regardless of party, run on the same primary ballot. The top two candidates move onto the general election. Currently at 65.6% No on AP (99% reporting).

Source: www.keloland.com/keloland-com-original/amendment-h-will-south-dakotas-primary-system-change

First of all, this is a sincere "change my view." I'm open to the idea that I'm wrong on this, but I have not been able to find any arguments that I find compelling. Meanwhile, there are a lot of folks who seem to disagree, I've seen a lot of RCV initiatives that included open primaries, and I'm a huge supporter of RCV.

Here's my current thought process, as a registered independent voter who has never been able to participate in a primary, despite having been a registered voter for decades:

The purpose of primaries, historically speaking, is for political parties to choose their candidates for President. State governments run the primaries to ensure fairness, and because we let them (and of course any time you offer the government power, they're happy to accept it). As a registered independent, I've never been dismayed by not participating in primaries. It has always seemed perfectly fair to me personally. I'm not willing to put my name next to any of them or to provide general support for any one party, and I've voted for three different parties for president over the years. Why should I get any say in who those parties run?

I'm also concerned that in very blue or very red states, allowing people to cross party lines for primaries allows for dishonesty. I remember Rush Limbaugh telling his listeners to go register as democrat when Obama and Clinton were competing in the primary, because it was 'more important' for them to mess with Democrats and get a worse Democrat on the ballot than it was to vote in their own primary.

Wouldn't it make more sense to do away with primaries as we know them? It seems to me that having state elections boards even participating in how parties choose their candidate should be out of bounds. Why not let parties do whatever they want to choose their candidates?

Better yet, isn't is way past time to set some real qualifications for the job? The current qualifications for President are Natural Born American Citizen, and at least 35 years old. There are several disqualifiers in the constitution as well, but few if any of them have ever been tried.

From my perspective, the dream would be to completely eliminate primaries and the electoral college, and set rigorous enough qualifications for the presidency that we don't have hundreds of candidates to choose from.

I'm neither surprised or even disappointed at how bad this election turned out. Ranked voting referendums are failing and a trifecta government makes electoral reform that much more impossible. But something I'd like to see out of all of this, is a higher emphasis on how electoral reform can be implemented at a state by state level.

Clearly, Federal reform can't be expected now. But that doesn't mean state and local politics won't make a difference. If anyhing, it will be the only thing that makes a difference considering that conservatives will try and block any type of reform at a federal level, but can't touch state politics due to how our constitution is written.

In which case, here's my proposal for how to reform our electoral system at a state by state level, without any help from the Federal Government.

Summary:

1. Ban plurality voting, and replace it with approval - Its the "easiest", cheapest, and simplest reform to do. And should largely be the 'bare minimum' of reforms that can adopted easily at every local level.

2. Lower the threshold for preferential voting referendums - So that Star and Ranked advocates can be happy. I'm fine with other preferential type ballots, I just think its too difficult to adopt. Approval is easier and should be the default, but we should make different methods easier to implement.

3. Put party names in front of candidates names - This won't get too much pushback, and would formally make people think more along party lines similar to how Europe votes.

4. Lower threshold for third parties - It would give smaller parties a winning chance. With the parties in ballot names, it coalesces the idea of multiple parties.

5. Unified Primaries & Top-Two Runoff - Which I feel would be easier to implement after more third parties become commonplace.

6. Adopt Unicameral Legislatures - It makes bureaucracy easier and less partisan.

7. Allow the Unicameral Legislature to elect the Attorney General - Congresses will never vote for Heads of State the way that Europe does. So letting them elect Attorney Generals empowers Unicameral Congresses in a non-disruptive way.

This can all be done at a state level. And considering there is zero incentive for reform at a federal level from either parties, there's a need for push towards these policies one by one at a state level.

Hey everyone!

So I'd like to start off by saying that while I'm passionate about electoral reform, I haven't fully dived into the math or criterion terminology, so apologies in advance if I say anything dumb

Anyways, I personally support Condorcet methods of ranked choice voting (personally I favor RP since that's the easiest to explain to people). I know most people on this sub tend to be fans of STAR, approval or other cardinal voting and go on about the advantages but I have a fairly simple concern

Basically, wouldn't people having different thresholds or rating scales kind of throw things off? Like if you use a website like MyAnimeList for example, it's not very hard to find people arguing about whether 5/10 or 7/10 is "average". But even past disagreements over what is average, some people are just flat out nicer and give everything they sorta like a 10/10. Meanwhile others are critical of everything and will rate it a 2/10

Wouldn't these subjective differences in scales give people more or less power depending on how nice they are, and resultantly give people reason to inflate their scores?

Like let us say that if I am rating honestly, I would give Candidate A 5/10 since I think they're just fine but Candidate B a 0/10 because I hate them. However you love Candidate B and give them a 10/10

Wouldn't this essentially give you more power than me because you are nicer with your ratings? And consequentially, wouldn't I be incentivized to lie and just give my preferred candidate a 10/10 too to make sure I can maximize my vote?

Like only way around this I can think of is by normalizing everyone's ballots, but that comes with its own massive host of issues.

From my POV only way to avoid this is to just rank the votes, because there the magnitude of preference does not matter. Me preferring A to B while not loving A is worth just as much as you absolutely loving B.

I'm very open to being convinced though as it seems like a lot of math-y people prefer cardinal methods, but would appreciate it if someone could address these concerns

Looking at the ballot measures across the different states there was so much connection between the type of primary system and using RCV.

I don't understand why this should be the case. Political parties are private organizations that can pick their candidates however they wish.

I have voted in Australia, the US and Israel which are all quite different. But both in Israel and Australia different parties decide how their candidates are selected using different methods. Some have primaries of all registered members, others have smaller committees, while others all candidates are chosen by the leader of the party.

It always struck me as weird growing up in the USA that the government was involved in running the primaries for the major parties. Is that the reason?

I wish we used a Condorcet tabulation method, but IRV still did the trick of electing a reasonable, middle ground candidate, out of four candidates that all had between 20 and 30 percent support. (there were a total of 13 candidates, only the last few rounds are shown)

You could argue that FPTP would have produced the same results (Lurie got the most first choice votes), but that ignores the fact that ranked methods discourage those more on the extreme from running in the first place, compared to FPTP. Ranked methods encourage candidates that have moderate positions relative to the electorate, both to run in the first place, as well as encouraging them to take positions that are fairly well in the center.

Most people I know don't care all that much for one mayor candidate vs another. That's a good thing, in my opinion.... it means that no one is going to be too upset. Lots of people are disappointed in London Breed not being able to achieve what she aspired to (this city has some tough problems without simple solutions), but very few hate her or even strongly disagree with her positions, they just question her effectiveness. Which is how it should be.

And by the way, whatever party these candidates may affiliate with, none of them bother to state it and it isn't listed on the ballot. They all consider themselves non-partisan, at least relative to this election.

rounds 11-14 (preliminary)

I so wish federal and state elections were more like this.

Missouri was a weird one because it was combined with ballot candy, but I think it still likely would have been banned if it was on its own.

RCV is a bad reform. That’s it. That’s the root cause of this problem. If we want voting method reform to take hold — if it’s even still possible this generation — we need to advocate for a good reform, of which there are many, and of which none are RCV.

I'm sure I can make a more compelling case with evidence,™ but I lack the conviction to go into exit polls rn.

All I know is one candidate received 0 votes in their presidential nomination, and the other won the most votes despite 55% of the electorate saying they didn't want him.

I'm devastated by these results, but they should have never been possible in the first place. Hopefully this can create a cleansing fire to have the way for a future where we can actually pick our candidates in the best possible - or at least a reasonable - way

In the United States yesterday, there were five different states and DC, that had referendums on adopting a ranked choice voting system. But in every single one of the referendums, except the one in DC, voters voted against ranked choice.

Is there some reason I'm not aware of that this issue isn't currently very popular in practice?

I'm writing this from a stop light so I probably don't have much time, but can someone make a post with some of the big non-FPTP races today? I know that Portland, OR is officially doing its first STV election today, the biggest one in the US in many years. San Franciscois also having its first instant runoff race for mayor during a presidential election. I'm sure there are others, but I think this sub should highlight them. Anyway, gtg and Thx!

The Equal Vote Coalition accused Fairvote of negative campaigning against STAR vote in Eugene, Oregon. Has there been any update on this? Any lawsuits for Equal Vote? News articles? I'm basically compiling evidence to prove FairVote did this.