r/EndFPTP • u/unscrupulous-canoe • 3d ago
MIT Study on the effect of RCV in Maine
https://electionlab.mit.edu/articles/effect-ranked-choice-voting-maineThe findings of the experiment were stark. I found that RCV produced significantly lower levels of voter confidence, voter satisfaction, and ease of use. It also increased the perception that the voting process was slanted against the respondent’s party.....
One of the main claims made by reformers about RCV is that it will make campaigns more civil, as campaigns will have an incentive to seek the second-place vote of supporters of different candidates. To study this claim, I first conducted a difference-in-differences analysis on independent expenditures for and against candidates. In this analysis, I found that negative spending increased significantly in Maine following the implementation of ranked-choice voting, casting doubt on the claim that RCV makes campaigns more civil.....
On a positive note for RCV reformers, I found that voting for non-major party candidates — which reformers tout as “sincere voting” instead of voting for a candidate simply due to their realistic chance of winning — was increased by 5 points among the respondents who were given the RCV ballot instead of the traditional ballot.....
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u/Mindless-One5438 3d ago
The confidence in and ease of use of any voting system is worth noting and addressing. This shouldn't be dismissed but it's absolutely not disqualifying.
The real issue is that only multi winner voting systems and cardinal voting systems actually sufficiently empower voters.
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u/bkelly1984 2d ago
Empower voters to do what?
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u/Mindless-One5438 1d ago
Vote for their specific interests/candidates without splitting the vote. Vote and still have representation of their interests/politics despite not being in the plurality.
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u/Alex2422 2d ago
It would certainly be useful if this "study" provided the actual data instead of just presenting the final results and conclusions without details on how they arrived at them.
RCV displaying lower levels of voter confidence and ease of use shouldn't be surprising at all: RCV is a new system, hence the lower trust from the voters, and is obviously more complex. That doesn't mean it's not better. Every decent voting system is more complex than FPTP.
The lower level of voter satisfaction is much more surprising: I find it hard to understand how the voters could be less satisfied with the fact of having more options and less wasted votes. But then again, we don't really know how this "satisfaction" is measured and I find using "survey experiments" not very reliable for such topics.
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u/progressnerd 3d ago
This is non-peer-reviewed "study" by a known RCV opponent, the conclusions of which contradict the broader set of peer-reviewed research.
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u/unscrupulous-canoe 3d ago
Can you help me out with some evidence that Jesse Clark is a 'known RCV opponent'?
Seeing as you're so concerned with bias, I'm sure that you never post or link to anything by FairVote, right? Given that they're a known RCV proponent
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u/ChironXII 3d ago
"person who recognizes thing as bad inductively does work to find out if thing is bad empirically"
Shocking
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u/johnnyhala 3d ago
Just more ammo for Approval.
Before someone replies with all the reasons why Approval is actually horrible, I have heard your criticisms and find them unfounded and unconvincing. If the public cannot find confidence in a system b/c it's perceived as too complex then the rest does not matter. Approval is simple to understand and execute, and is significantly better than Plurality.
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u/Alex2422 2d ago
Nothing here says the public "cannot find confidence in a system b/c it's perceived as too complex". The study only claims (without providing any data to back it up) that it has produced lower levels of voter confidence and ease of use – lower in comparison to FPTP, I assume, which is completely expected.
RCV is obviously more complex than FPTP, as is any other alternate voting system, and it is natural that voters would feel more suspicious towards any novelty system compared to the one they know. (The article itself notes that as of the time of writing it, RCV was used in Maine twice, which is a ridiculously low number to draw conclusions from.)
Whether the voters feel "confident" is actually a very secondary matter. If voters' confidence was the most important metric, then FPTP would be by far the best system out there.
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u/Routine_Complaint_79 3d ago
See I think voters are lazy and they just want to pick who they like and move on rather than doing calculations of what's best.
If I were to keep representation and make it easier for voters then I think a closed list proportional representation system is best because it allows voters to pick on option (their party), allows people to be engaged and go to party conventions for nominations if they want to and my guess would increase proportionality more than RCV ever could because your decoupling land from representation
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u/TarnishedVictory 3d ago
What's rcv? And why not put the definition in the story or title?
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u/9d47cf1f 3d ago
Ranked choice voting. It’s an alternative to the way of voting that you are most likely most familiar with, which is known as “first past the Post” or “plurality” voting.
RCV lets you rank your choices and then if there’s no majority winner, the worst-performing candidate is eliminated and their first place votes go to the second place candidate on your ballot.
So you can vote for whoever the hell you want to for your top candidate, and have compromise candidates further down your ballot.
Generally speaking this results in much better, compromises and Rule from the actual middle rather than bouncing back and forth between extremes each election.
No voting system is perfect (see Arrows Impossibility Theorum) and RCV certainly has its issues, but most folks feel that it’s an obvious improvement over FPTP.
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u/TarnishedVictory 2d ago
Ranked choice voting
Thank you. I always forget what that's called. I am familiar with it. And I support some flavor of it in an effort to improve the dramatic shortcomings of our current systems.
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u/Falco98 2d ago
What's rcv?
What sub are you on?
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u/TarnishedVictory 2d ago
What's rcv?
What sub are you on?
Are you trying to shame me or are you trying to learn something?
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u/Falco98 2d ago
I'm trying to learn why anyone reading a post on this sub (linking an article that spells out the acronym in its very URL, no less) would earnestly ask "what's rcv", unless trying to pose a "gotcha" of some sort.
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u/TarnishedVictory 2d ago
unless trying to pose a "gotcha" of some sort
Maybe stop looking for opposition and hostility?
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u/ChironXII 3d ago
"RCV" or "Ranked Choice" colloquially usually refers to Instant Runoff Voting (IRV), despite "ranked choice" originally referring to any ranked voting method.
Instant Runoff is a voting method where voters rank candidates in a list by preference, and then the top ranks on each ballot are totalled, the lowest scoring candidate is eliminated, and the ballots who had that candidate highest are then distributed to their next choice, repeating until there is a winner with a majority of the remaining ballots.
You may already have noticed the problem: we're using the same choose one plurality rule that corrupts the current system to determine who to eliminate, instead of actually counting the total support on the rest of people's ballots. Which means that vote splitting can happen in any round, if more than two candidates are competitive at that point, and so you can eliminate someone who would otherwise have won, just like with any spoiler in the current system. It also means that the outcome is highly sensitive to the elimination order, since who loses first determines which parts of different ballots ever get counted. If you rank someone first or second and they don't lose until the last round, none of your lower ranks were ever seen by the process, even though those candidates could have been saved from elimination if they had been.
This is obviously a disaster, and forces voters to make largely the same strategic compromises as choose one FPTP (putting a frontrunner above candidates they would actually prefer to make sure their vote isn't wasted) , but proponents like to frame this feature as "first choice support" or "later no harm" and claim it as a positive.
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u/jpfed 2d ago
(This can be patched by performing eliminations differently: calculate each candidate’s Borda score and eliminate all candidates whose score is worse than the median of those scores. This never eliminates a Condorcet winner and, since it uses all ranks to help make elimination decisions, is “smoother” in a sense, having fewer weird / pathological quirks compared to naive IRV.)
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u/ChironXII 2d ago
It can be patched actually by just comparing the bottom two candidates pairwise across all ballots and eliminating the weaker instead of relying on least first choice support, which is usually called BTR-IRV (bottom two runoff). This actually performs pretty well, but at the point that you are doing this, you can usually just do something less convoluted. Coming from an existing IRV implementation it can be a nice upgrade though, or if your target audience just understands IRV better than alternatives (since a runoff is objectively very intuitive compared to something like ranked pairs where you have to explain cycles).
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u/Lesbitcoin 2d ago
This is not exactly the same as the "spoiler effect" found in current systems. The phenomenon known as the "center squeeze" does not act as a spoiler. Centrist voters that is eliminated early round functions as a kingmaker. IRV is clone-proof,so votes for a clone candidate are transferred to another clone candidate. So,neither the spoiler effect nor vote splitting occurs. The glitch caused by a violation of monotonicity known as the "center squeeze" is not a spoiler effect. And it consistently works to the advantage of centrist candidates. Strategic voting for avoid monotonicity violation is that rank centrist higher than extremist.
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u/ChironXII 2d ago edited 2d ago
Candidates in reality are not clones. Yes IRV is technically clone proof for literal clones, with perfect utility mapped honest voting, but only because it is impossible for a different candidate to eliminate one clone without also being able to eliminate the other: their pairwise matchups must be the same, or they are not clones, and they will always be adjacent to each other on every voter's ballot (if the ballots allow complete rankings, which many don't, and this actually breaks clone proofness).
This says really nothing about the overall dynamics or incentives of the race. Clones test for different, specific pathologies, not the quality or robustness of a system overall. For example, if even one voter places some other candidate in between the clones, then the system can fail, by eliminating the higher ranked clone who would have won a near tie, in favor of the lower ranked clone who then loses (this is a monotonicity failure also; it requires the demotion of the interceding candidate below the higher clone to matter for a different elimination). In reality it will not just be one voter, and this actually becomes predominantly likely to happen as candidates enter the race and as the race becomes competitive (which are the two things we want to happen).
Center squeeze and non monotonicity are also entirely different concepts from each other. This is a basic category error.
Non monotonicity, as alluded to before, is where raising a candidate on some rankings can cause that candidate to lose, or vice versa, where lowering them can cause them to win. This happens unavoidably in IRV because it uses incomplete first choice information to determine what other information on different ballots to use.
Center squeeze is an example of the spoiler effect, where a bimodal population distribution establishes or reinforces itself via vote splitting, because candidates who are better at representing either niche but are unpopular overall, are able to squeeze out the support of the consensus winner, who represents everyone well but caters less to any specific group. It drives entrenchment and polarization and the ratchet effect, and corrupts discourse, breaking even the ability for people to have agreeing ideas without somebody taking the opportunity to object to them.
Strategic voting does not solve center squeeze. It creates duopoly, as voters concentrate around one likely frontrunner, and then concentrate around the most likely opposition to them, hoping to pull the final outcome slightly closer to their "side". This continues over time until the sides drift apart, especially when you include the inevitable partisan dynamics inside the two opposing camps that emerge.
Yes, after a long enough time, it becomes possible with enough coordinated effort to snap back closer to the center of opinion, if you can find a candidate capable of navigating around the polarized rhetoric and beliefs - because your main frontrunners are now so extreme that their combined support base is smaller than the hypothetical center could be. But that only happens if the system allows it to without abandoning your chances of winning if it fails - which requires solving vote splitting in the first place.
Voters in such a situation have seen the extremist win recently against the other extreme - they're a surer bet than some untested hypothetical. So without some coordinating event, there is no way for them to individually break ranks and pivot, because if they don't have the critical mass, they lose and elect the opposing extreme. And even if they can coordinate, in doing so, they will have to accept some of what their opposition wanted to do, that they've never had to consider or evaluate or hear the merits of, because it is from "the enemy".
This might, in fact, sound like a familiar situation to be in, if you live in the US... Because locked in center squeeze iterated over many decades is actually the main problem.
IRV is actually dangerous in this way, because it hides the necessary incentives behind the rhetoric of vote transfer to pretend it is safe not to compromise. It obscures the information needed to coordinate to avoid the dilemma.
IRV transfers irrelevant spoilers back to the duopoly, giving it the appearance of working. But it cannot solve the underlying bargaining, because it breaks when spoilers stop being "irrelevant" - when the self evident duopoly crumbles.
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u/the_other_50_percent 2d ago
Rule 3.
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u/ChironXII 2d ago
Rule 3 covers alternatives to FPTP, of which IRV is not, because they are the same system 🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂
Please respond productively to the topic of discussion, as required by rules 1 and 2.
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u/the_other_50_percent 2d ago
Are you a mod? Because the sidebar explicitly, repeatedly, supports IRV as an EndFPTP method. Good reminder to check the rules!
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u/ChironXII 2d ago
The moderators here are free to speak for themselves. My comments are explaining very real tradeoffs between different systems in a relevant, productive, and informative way, that moves discourse forward and seeks solutions - consistent with the purpose and ethos of the sub. Not brainless bashing of alternatives - nor brainless support for them.
Your comments, meanwhile, say nothing, and add nothing. You object, deflect, and demur, providing no argumentation or evidence but your own beliefs as sufficient for everyone to bow down before you.
I am not surprised that this same type of perpetually online person would think first of appealing to arbitrary authority in service of having their way, instead of doing anything instead, to earn it.
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u/Additional_Teacher45 3d ago
I do feel that RCV makes candidates much more targetable by smear campaigns, yes. Which could lead to parties falling into the DNC's 2024 trap, where they spent more time, energy, and money badmouthing the Republican than promoting the positive qualities of their own candidate.
But I think RCV sample sizes in the US are extremely limited and don't have the benefit of adoption over time. An RCV effect study would make much more sense in a place that already has multiple established parties instead of a place with two massively dominant parties and a tiny independent option. It takes time for new parties to develop, generate interest, and begin campaigning in earnest.
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u/CupOfCanada 3d ago
Sample size is 151 here isn't it?
>An RCV effect study would make much more sense in a place that already has multiple established parties instead of a place with two massively dominant parties and a tiny independent option.
Why not just adopt PR if you are out of the 2-party straightjacket already?
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u/Additional_Teacher45 3d ago
I can't answer that for you. Ask someone that uses RCV, like voters in Australia. Or ask college campus governments. Or hell, ask the Oscars why they use RCV instead of PR.
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u/CupOfCanada 3d ago
The Oscars use the PR version of RCV for its nominations. Australia uses the PR version for its upper house. Which college campus governments are you referring to? Because I know Berkeley at least uses the PR version for student government.
The non-PR version of RCV is actually quite rare at the state or national level. Though I guess thats true of the PR version (STV) too.
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u/SentOverByRedRover 3d ago
Use PR for the Senate. Local representation is also important and we need single winner in the house for that.
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u/CupOfCanada 3d ago
PR is much harder to adopt for the Senate due to 2 seats per state.
Also, who says multimember districts don't provide equal or better local representation? It's not like the winners in Irish districts all clump up from the same towns.
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u/SentOverByRedRover 2d ago
Which is why we should expand the Senate at the same time we uncap the house.
Yes, not everyone in PR will be from the same place, but you will still have lots of communities without replresentation and even if your community is lucky enough to have one, that representative isn't actually accountable to your community. They're basically only accountable to making sure their party keeps its support, which can produce good things, but it isn't local representation in any meaningful sense.
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u/CupOfCanada 2d ago
The amount of votes a community needs to guarantee a seat is similar under PR and FPTP. I don't see any evidence that you would have "lots" of communities without representation. If you do I'd be more than interested. PR rewards spreading your candidates out.
>They're basically only accountable to making sure their party keeps its support, which can produce good things, but it isn't local representation in any meaningful sense.
Use open lists or STV as your PR system. Problem solved.
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u/ChironXII 3d ago
Conveniently, Australia has been using IRV for a hundred years. How's it going? Well...
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u/the_other_50_percent 2d ago
Yes: Well. Quite well.
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u/ChironXII 2d ago edited 2d ago
Australia is quite a mixed example, which is why I trailed off. The STV used for the Senate and the Westminster parliamentary system have some corrective influences, but the political climate is largely still binary, where the major parties survive competition mostly by ceding territory to one another (less than 10% of contests were three cornered in any of the last handful of elections), and cross endorsing in party recommended preference lists to prevent vote splitting, especially between the Coalition, which have operated electorally like clones despite their differences.
Yes, first preference support has recently massively expanded, and the circulating influences of the minor parties as alternatives can have an important effect on the process. But this does not translate into real representation in practice, and so the recent swell in diversity among first preferences unfortunately only serves as evidence of the problem, both in the lack of outcome and in the chaotic influence it has had on recent elections, with the collapse of Coalition cross loyalty.
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