I have never seen a solid definition of a wasted vote or voter contribution. I'll offer a few suggestions and let anyone comment.

1.) You voted for a losing candidate.

Ex: Assume Single Winner, FPP. Candidate A=300, Candidate B=200, your vote=+1 (Candidate A / Candidate B). The vote was won by 100 votes, and you only have one vote.

Contribution: You contributed 1/100th to the outcome. Formula = (your vote for 1st)/(votes for 1st - votes for 2nd). Waste (zero contribution): any vote not towards the winning candidate, as you did not contribute to the outcome.

2.) Insincerity

Ex: Assume Single Winner, FPP. Candidate A=300, Candidate B=200, Candidate C=100. Your vote=+1 (Candidate A / Candidate B). You preferred C>A>B, but realizing C had no chance at plurality, and that there is a single winner, you insincerely "hoisted" A>C. Candidate A won, and you did contribute to the outcome, yet your vote was insincere (tactically so). Any vote not accurately capturing or communicating voter preference is wasted.

3.) Misinformation.

You have objectively incorrect information on the candidates. You not uninformed, rather misinformed. Any vote made with incorrect information is wasted.

4.) Non counted/miscounted/diminished Vote:

Your ballot is either not counted or miscounted. Perhaps your vote was purposefully diminished due to the timing of your election. Any vote not accurately capturing or communicating voter preference is wasted.

5.) Candidate Withdraw:

You voted for Candidate A. Candidate A was not able to fulfill his term (maybe he never began!). When the successor was chosen your input was not solicited directly or indirectly. Your 2nd place vote was not counted, or you were not re-consulted via new vote, and Candidate A was not able to choose their successor (indirect input). If you participate in US Presidential Primaries, and your state is an early state, you likely have voted for a candidate that suspended their campaign prior to the announcement of the winner. Any vote for Candidate A that is attributed Candidate B without your direct input is a wasted vote.

6.) Candidate Addition:

In the 2008 Michigan Democratic Presidential Primary, Hillary Clinton got 54.61% of the popular vote, while Barack Obama was not on the ballot. For the Democratic Convention, the end pledged delegate votes was 34.5 for Clinton, and 29.5 for Obama (who was not on the ballot and write-ins were not allowed). Any vote for Candidate A that is attributed Candidate B without your direct input is a wasted vote.

Thoughts on what is, or is not, a wasted vote?

Edit: Word-choice for title of 1.)

I'm not sure if this is the correct subreddit. But I recently started thinking about voting systems and how their properties. Specifically I was thinking about Condorcet voting systems. Even more specifically, I was thinking about the ballots used in Condorcet voting systems. For usage in determining seats in a council (since Condorcet voting systems don't always give a single winner).

Technically the ballots should let people give pair-wise preferences for every pair of candidates; at least if we want to be mathematically accurate. But using a ranking ballot is used; this aligns with how an individual person's preferences are usually transitive, so if A is better than B and B is better than C then A is better than C. It also drastically reduces the size of the ballot. This system works fine for a small number of candidates. But this led me to think about how to make a good ballot when a lot of candidates exist; like hundreds of candidates.

The idea I had was to structure the ballot as follows. There are two ranking groups and the unranked group. The first ranking group lists the person's preferences in the or of preference. The second group gives the person's negative preferences (disliked candidates) in order of preference. And the unranked group is in-between in terms of preference. There would also be a minimum number of candidates that must be ranked.

So if a candidate is in the preferred group they win to all unranked candidates and all disliked candidates. And if a candidate is unranked they win against all disliked candidates. If two candidates are in the same preference group then the preferred candidate is determined by looking at their positions in that preference group. If two unranked candidates are compared it is a tie.

The idea is that the preferred group allow people to state who they want. The disliked group states who people do not want. And the unranked group is for people that aren't important enough for consideration. The minimum number of candidates that must get ranked is to prevent people from only voting for one person, so it mitigates strategic voting.

As the title says, I am seeking feedback about any issues this sort of ballot would have.

I live in a Presidential non-swing state but am not enamored with either the Democratic or Republican nominees. I plan on voting this year, as I always do.

Mathematically speaking, my vote is a wasted vote, as my state’s Electoral votes will go to Trump, regardless of how I vote.

Am I helping either of the major parties MORE by voting for a third party or by simply not voting for President?

I wish a pox on both their houses and prefer to help neither.

Help me decide, mathematically — ethics be damned.

Oftentimes, disagreements on political policy are redundant, because political actions have negligible expected value on self-interested grounds.

But people still do politics in the same way as if doing otherwise would be unbearable.

Immigration is a good example.

This makes little sense - generally, we perform actions that benefit the impartial good more when we won't bear costs ourselves.

So you think immigrants will take your job, hurt your wages and overwhelm your city?

Why not vote in favor of immigration anyways?

I wrote about this in more detail here:

https://open.substack.com/pub/dylanrichardson/p/why-not-vote-on-principle?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=rj6jj

The link for the guide is here: docs.google.com/document/d/1J-LJ7RSHnQ_8R-EmpOs3CVWMf511-bjB-OswDRqUT8g/edit

We have a vote coming up; 6 people running for 4 open seats. I like 2 candidates; A & B. But dislike 4 candidates; C, D, E & F. Of the disliked candidates, C & D are more tolerable than E & F.

At least 2 of the disliked candidates will win, but I'd like to keep that # at 2, plus E & F really need to lose. Which is the better strategy:

1. Only vote for A & B to give them a better chance of winning, or

2. Vote for A, B, C & D with the hopes of my favorites winning and keeping E & F off the board.

Hello, we are a group of psychology researchers from the University of Kent, UK. It would be a huge help if anyone from any background who is interested would fill out our quick survey (18+ years old only) about your views of politics, society, and more.

Fill out the survey here: https://universityofkent.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_8ICkX7mBre5IGpM

We are posting here because we hope to collect responses from a wide range of political perspectives and backgrounds. Please let us know if you would like a summary of your responses in comparison to others once the data collection is complete.

The survey takes 15-30 minutes to complete, and we are happy to respond to any queries or questions. Please private message us to avoid giving away the point of the study to others.

Thanks for your time.

Edit: The survey is now closed! Thank you very much for your time, we will be sure to post the results up here when they're ready.

I am using a ranked choice or single transferable vote to have students decide which movies to watch. There are 10 different movies to chose from and there will be 3 winners that get watched.

When it comes to ranking, should students be able to vote 1st choice all the way to 10th choice. Should it be cut off at 3rd choice because there can only be 3 winners. A current test run of the program let them pick 1st to 5th choice. Does it actually matter?

This may be the dumbest question. I'm in the USA and I get that 2024 is apparently gonna be a big election. But I just turned 18 and I can finally vote and I wanna make sure I'm doing it right, not just in federal elections but all the way down, judges and things. How do you know you're making the right decision?

Every person should have election day off not just bankers and postal workers etc… it should be a mandatory federal holiday

What is the minimum number of delegates the Republican and Democratic parties in your state(California) will be able to send to their next national nominating conventions?

Which party will be able to send bonus delegates?

He has researched it online to no avail as have I. Or perhaps any leads on how I might go about figuring this out? Thank you so much!

I'm far from an export on ranked ballot voting theory, but I find it interesting and have looked at a number of RCV and Condorcet advocacy sites as well as basic math sites on the topic. I don't recall ever seeing discussion of a 2 stage election which I’m trying to research now. Anyone know of any references? (haven't found one yet, but if I do, I'll comment below)

More Details:

In a 2 stage ranked ballot election, the first stage (primary) may have a large (but still limited) number of candidates and you are allowed to rank as many as you want (thoughtful ballot design required), and the second stage (general) should be limited to the "best" (with best up for definition) N candidates to be in the general election. Presumably more people will vote in the general than the primary and most primary voters will also vote in the general (with some sore losers exiting). I'd choose N between 5 and 10 somewhere, and I'd lean towards a Condorcet scheme that uses precinct by percent matrix accumulation, but if two stage has been discussed at all, I imagine it's been looked at with multiple counting schemes.

One could argue that “best” = the same thing when you fill an N seat council. That may not pick up that many minority candidates, but if N is in the higher side (say 10 rather than 5), maybe that is still the best way to handle it as it is familiar to everyone and would likely pick up someone very popular to say 5% of the people.

Hi everyone! I'm new to this subreddit.

I'm in the US but like to follow parliamentary elections in other countries, and I often notice how the outcome of an election in countries with proportional representation (party list or MMR) depends (somewhat arbitrarily) on which parties barely make it above the PR threshold and which parties fall just below it.

I've wondered why, in order to avoid wasted votes, no jurisdiction that I'm aware of lets voters rank party lists in order of preference, and then, if that voter's first-ranked party choice does not meet the PR threshold, allows their vote to contribute to the vote share and seat count of whatever that voter's highest-ranked party is that does meet the PR threshold.

Here's an example. Suppose that in an election in some imaginary country, a left-leaning voter ranks the parties in order of preference, putting a very small socialist party first, a slightly larger green party second, and a large social democratic party third. If, as is likely, the small socialist party fails to meet the PR threshold based on people's first preferences, but the green party does, that voter's vote will contribute to the vote share (after reallocation of preferences) and seat count in the parliament of the green party. If the green party doesn't meet the PR threshold with people's first preferences but the social democratic party does, then that voter's vote will contribute to the vote share and seat count of the social democratic party.

This voting system would not help any party that fell short of the PR threshold to make it into parliament. Rather, it would help prevent the votes for parties that fall short of the PR threshold from being wasted by allowing those votes to go to the second, third, fourth, etc., preferences of their voters.

Note that this system might sound like but is different from STV like the system used for the lower house of the Republic of Ireland and for the Australian Senate. STV has multi-member districts with candidates winning seats based off voters' listed preferences, but because voters vote for candidates rather than for party lists, you often wind up with a large number of independents being elected, which can make coalition-formation even more difficult than it is with multiple small parties. Although some people like this system because it has the potential to encourage deliberation and compromise, I was looking for a voting system that tries to award votes proportionally to parties rather than individual candidates. (There are ways to allow voters to express their preferences for individual candidates in party-list PR systems, such as with open-list PR.)

Does this type of voting system exist and do I just not know about it? Does it have a name? Has anyone ever used it?

Hello,

At my library in Florida apparently there will be early voting for a "Preferential Primary Election" in March, then a "General Primary" in August. I found an explanation of what PPP is on the myflorida.com website, but can't find an explanation of GP, nor can I find anywhere on the internet in general that explains the GP and the difference between the two. Can you help me understand?

Thank you

General idea is to use a very simple ballot like in first past the post where you vote for a single candidate but to have multiple members per district so that candidates don't end up representing only 50% of the population.

Each district has a set number of vote shares and these voteshares are distributed among the elected candidates as per the election results

Example. Let's just say our hypothetical country is divided into districts of 100 people each, and each district has 10 voteshares in the congress/parliament.

The results in one district for candidates A, B, C, D, E and F are as follows

A - 49 votes, B - 20 votes, C - 15 votes, D - 10 votes, E - 4 votes, F - 2 votes

Each candidate has to show enough votes to control a vote share. In this case, (100/10)+1=11 votes

So,

Round 1 - A gets voteshare 1. Now we have

A - 38 votes, B - 20 votes, C - 15 votes, D - 10 votes, E - 4 votes, F - 2 votes

Round 2 - A gets voteshare 2. Now we have

A - 27 votes, B - 20 votes, C - 15 votes, D - 10 votes, E - 4 votes, F - 2 votes

Round 3 - A gets voteshare 3. Now we have

A - 16 votes, B - 20 votes, C - 15 votes, D - 10 votes, E - 4 votes, F - 2 votes

Round 4 - B gets voteshare 4. Now we have

A - 16 votes, B - 9 votes, C - 15 votes, D - 10 votes, E - 4 votes, F - 2 votes

Round 5 - A gets voteshare 5. Now we have

A - 5 votes, B - 9 votes, C - 15 votes, D - 10 votes, E - 4 votes, F - 2 votes

Round 6 - C gets voteshare 6. Now we have

A - 5 votes, B - 9 votes, C - 4 votes, D - 10 votes, E - 4 votes, F - 2 votes

Round 7 - D gets voteshare 7. Now we have

A - 5 votes, B - 9 votes, C - 4 votes, D - 0 votes, E - 4 votes, F - 2 votes

Round 8 - B gets voteshare 8. Now we have

A - 5 votes, B - 0 votes, C - 4 votes, D - 0 votes, E - 4 votes, F - 2 votes

Round 9 - A gets voteshare 9. Now we have

A - 0 votes, B - 0 votes, C - 4 votes, D - 0 votes, E - 4 votes, F - 2 votes

Round 10 - E gets voteshare 10. (I've decided to give ties to the candidate with fewer voteshares but this can be resolved in any number of ways) Now we have

A - 0 votes, B - 0 votes, C - 4 votes, D - 0 votes, E - 0 votes, F - 2 votes

So, we have ended up with A having 5 vote shares, B having 2, C, D and E having 1 voteshare each which seems like a fair representation of the electorate.

This appears to preserve locality (i.e. candidate is local), representation (i.e. most voters have a representative they can call that they actually voted for), while also letting parties that have a broad national support but few local political strongholds (think lib dems in the uk), and those that have a strong regional base (think SNP) have representation proportional to voters.

Also, no need to explain what approval voting or ranked choice or STV or MMP or party lists to voters, nor is there any need for complex mathematics nor computer calculations required to tabulate the results. Everything can easily done by hand when verification is required with simple arithmetic. And finally, no need for centralized counting that some methods require (as in counts from different precincts can just be tallied up and it'll be fine). Oh, and you get to have both independent candidates and party candidates

I haven't really put much thought into this. I just had a showerthought earlier. So, what am I missing? Does this method already have a name? What are the weaknesses? Am I missing something blindingly obvious?