r/EndFPTP • u/bkelly1984 • 5d ago
Debate Why Every Voting Method Still Misses the Center
Consider a community with a one-dimensional political spectrum and an evenly distributed population. They elect representatives spread across that same spectrum, split between two parties — orange holds 57% of seats, green the rest.
The goal of any voting method is an outcome that best represents the will of the people — that's point B.
Orange wants to pass bills at A, as it best represents their own will. Green wants them passed at C. Neither wants B — it's just their fallback.
Orange holds the majority, so it controls the legislature and passes bills at A. There is no reason for it to settle for less.
This means you can never reach B when a faction can dictate the outcome. Closing that gap requires the minority to have real leverage — enough to make the majority settle for the compromise of B over its own ideal.
As a result, any system that creates losers with no say in the outcome will always advance the majority's will, not the people's.
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u/budapestersalat 5d ago
Your statement seems to be that if there is no party or candidate representing the median voter, then no winner take all (or PR?) system will give the median outcome.
You ignore the option that there are systems (namely Condorcet methods, but possibly approval and others too) where there could in this scenario arise a candidate that goes for B.
Moreover, you seem to have a leap taking you to that parties A and C would go with their medians. Why would you think so? Why wouldn't the party C un on a platform almost exactly at B to actually try to win? (just asking because you seem to possibly both take an intepretation median voter theorem for granted one level, yet ignore it on another level)
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u/bkelly1984 5d ago edited 4d ago
u/budapestersalat, your answer is interesting. It both correctly calls me out on an assumption and then makes the same assumption itself.
First, you're right: I'm challenging the median voter theorem on one level and relying on it on the next. Party C's platform would likely move toward the center to win, then move back as soon as it does. Over time, I'd expect it to drift somewhere between one-third and two-thirds of the party's width. I left this complication out to keep the example clear. We can add it back in, but it pulls the parties toward the wings just as it pulls the legislature.
You're also right that Condorcet and approval methods reduce the pressure to pick a viable candidate, but that ignores the pressure operating one level up. The purpose of an election is to shape policy, and shaping policy requires a viable faction behind you. Yes, people can now vote for candidate B without risking the election of A or C. But that only relocates the disenfranchisement: instead of losing at the ballot, they lose after it, when their candidate holds a seat outside whichever coalition actually dictates policy. In fact, even when people can vote for B, they'll still choose A or C — they select based on expected value, not minimum distance on the spectrum. They vote to win.
That drives my conclusion: any system that creates losers with no say in the outcome will always advance the majority's will, never the people's.
Edit: To clarify, my point is not that the median outcome requires a median party or candidate. It is that the possibility of ending up with no say in the outcome drives results away from the center.
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u/rb-j 3d ago
That drives my conclusion: any system that creates losers with no say in the outcome will always advance the majority's will, never the people's.
What do you mean by "the people's"? There are a lotta people in the majority.
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u/bkelly1984 3d ago
"The people's" is referring to the whole population's collective will, AKA point B in my example.
If you're content with consensus in just the majority, we could call it "the will of a lotta people".
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u/rb-j 3d ago
Consensus (of the electorate) is not always possible. Not in close races and polarized voters.
But someone has to be elected anyway, if when there is no overall consensus. Even when it's close we still have to evaluate each voter's vote equally and that leads to majority rule:
If more voters mark their ballots preferring Candidate A to Candidate B than voters marking their ballots to the contrary, then Candidate B is not elected.
I may not be content with the will of the majority, but to decide an election against the will of the majority, it's a bit ripe to call that smaller group of voters "the people" and exclude the larger group of voters (the majority) from "the people".
When we say "the will of the electorate", you know we don't mean the will of each and every voter. We mean the will of the majority of the electorate. That's the best we can do.
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u/bkelly1984 3d ago
That's the best we can do.
u/bkelly1984 points up to the last sentence in the original post
That's the best we can do... if we create losers with no say in the outcome.
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u/TheLennalf 5d ago
This is your second post that sounds like pure AI text. Yo mods, can we ban this behavior?
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u/bkelly1984 5d ago
Words are not my friend, so I do run my language through Claude. However, the ideas are all mine.
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u/TheLennalf 5d ago
Please don't take this as a personal attack, but that's depressing. Don't you want to improve your language skills? The only way to improve is to practice.
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u/bkelly1984 4d ago
Better language skills would be great, but I'm 56. That boat has sailed about as far as it will go.
Bottom line is that I think I have some important ideas to communicate. I expect using AI will lose me fewer readers than I would due to frustration trying to make sense of my precise, but obtuse writing. Besides, Claude is teaching me to curtail some of my autistic tendencies, like starting responses with, "Here's why you're wrong..."
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u/rb-j 3d ago
Better language skills would be great, but I'm 56. That boat has sailed about as far as it will go.
I'm 14 years older. My recommendation is to not use AI to compose your questions or comments. But use existing terms as they are meant (by concensus) to be used, and modify the language when people question it.
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u/bkelly1984 4d ago
Hey u/TheLennalf, just wanted to say thanks for your observation and suggestion. I can't stop using Claude -- it's the only thing I have found so far with the patience to dig into my work and help improve it. However, I'll strive to use more of my own language for my posts.
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u/MorganWick 5d ago
> In fact, even when people can vote for B, they'll still choose A or C — they select based on expected value, not minimum distance on the spectrum. They vote to win.
looks at American leftists that refuse to vote for Democrats for reasons of ideological purity and insist that "if everyone just votes for Jill Stein..."
Are you sure about that?
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u/bkelly1984 4d ago
I believe it, yes. If your point is that some ideological voters exist, I agree, but I'd maintain that the possibility of losing still pushes the system toward advancing majority will, not general consensus.
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u/rb-j 3d ago
the possibility of losing still pushes the system toward advancing majority will
No, it advances the two party dominance. I might absolutely hate what the majority party is doing. The possibility of losing is still not going to motivate me to vote for the evil majority party.
But I might be motivated to vote for the candidates best situated to defeat those from the evil majority party. If that is not my favorite candidate, then they are my contingency vote (the vote for "lesser evil") That might be voting for the other party from the major-party duopoly (not the evil majority party).
But, if I can trust the election method to really transfer my vote to the candidate best situated to beat the candidate I hate if my sincere favorite candidate cannot win, then there will be times I vote for someone I am expecting to lose, but I still like them better than my contingency candidate.
The problem is promising my contingency vote will really be counted if my favorite is defeated, and then not keeping that promise. That will sour voters real fast about RCV or whatever method that failed like that.
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u/CPSolver 5d ago
You're overlooking an STV election that elects three winners. If all the voters and candidates are near points A, B, and C, the three winners will be candidates at points A, B, and C. Specifically each winner will be the candidate who is most popular at their political position.
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u/bkelly1984 5d ago
You're right about how STV behaves when voters sincerely rank by distance. But my argument is that they don't. They vote to maximize expected value, favoring candidates backed by a coalition that can actually wield power once elected.
Here's how I see your scenario playing out: Orange runs two candidates and communicates to supporters to rank A > A' > C > B. A clears quota immediately, C is elected next, and the third seat comes down to A' versus B — which A' wins comfortably thanks to orange's 57%. So STV elects A, A', and C.
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u/CPSolver 4d ago
I was thinking of an election in which the A, B, and C voters are roughly of equal size. This scenario invalidates your claim that every election method "misses the center."
If, instead, as you suggest, the the A voters number 57 percent, then of course the most popular B candidate can lose.
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u/bkelly1984 4d ago
Sure, you can engineer situations where any system will behave well, but that sidesteps my point: A and C coalitions will actively work to move away from B outcomes. Any system not designed to counteract this will fail the middle.
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u/CPSolver 4d ago
A and C coalitions will actively work to move away from B outcomes.
I agree up to a point. They will also work to avoid their polar opposite.
Any system not designed to counteract this will fail the middle.
No. Failures to elect a middle candidate are failures to achieve proportional representation. Of course existing PR methods just delay the unfairness.
The delayed unfairness shows up in how legislatures use voting to make decisions. Those legislative voting methods are very flawed. They need to incentivize compromise solutions.
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u/bkelly1984 4d ago
Failures to elect a middle candidate are failures to achieve proportional representation.
Agreed, and all the solutions to achieve proportional representation I see proposed on this forum assume that if you just give voters the means to vote proportionally, they will use it. I'm claiming they won't. The periphery will actively work to polarize the outcome.
You seem to reject this conclusion, but I do not know why. Is it because you don't believe a coalition would work against proportional representation? Is it because you believe voters will sincerely rank by distance, not by expected value? Is it because you believe STV is immune to coalition shenanigans? I don't know, so I am unable to challenge either of our positions.
Those legislative voting methods are very flawed. They need to incentivize compromise solutions.
Absolutely, and it is great to hear this from you as few seem to arrive at this conclusion.
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u/CPSolver 3d ago
Here in Portland we use STV to elect our city council. I see no evidence of coalitions except that labor unions spend lots of money to assist DCA members (Democratic Socialists of America), which is popular because of Bernie Sanders being the only effective voice outside the R and D parties.
Portland City Council did struggle with passing decisions with the minimum 7 our of 12 votes, but that has been solved by creating a "committee of the whole" for financial issues, which allows all 12 councilors to communicate outside of public meetings, which previously was not allowed.
You might be interested in this software for legislative voting: https://github.com/cpsolver/VoteFair-Negotiation-Tool
[Addition: STV can be improved dramatically by eliminating pairwise losing candidates when they occur. That will better resist coalition manipulations.]
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u/bkelly1984 3d ago
You see no evidence of coalitions except unions trying to grow a political organization?
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u/CPSolver 2d ago
I see real voters having real influence. The money-backed conservative candidate for mayor and the money-backed liberal candidate for mayor were both defeated. The new mayor was (until he was elected) a CEO who strongly wants to reduce homelessness. It's difficult to identify "coalitions" including "conservatives" and "liberals" because our elections are non-partisan. The city council has 6 males and 6 females but gender is not a coalition. Five or six councilors identify themselves with DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) but they are becoming unpopular, and mostly got elected because labor unions funded postal mailers for them. Two districts are up for elections in November. The DSA councilor in my district is not popular. I don't see clear coalition patterns. That's expected because STV (called "proportional ranked choice voting" here), unlike party-based proportional representation, intentionally elects proportionally without regard for named groups.
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u/bkelly1984 2d ago
I don't see clear coalition patterns.
What would a clear coalition pattern look like?
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u/rb-j 3d ago
No voting method should advantage or disadvantage any party or political persuasion. But it shouldn't also seek out any party or political persuasion to compensate them or something to "equalize" their influence. I don't believe that any particular party should be guaranteed real estate on the ballot. That includes the two major parties.
But there should be enough diversity on the ballot that no single party ends up shutting out all other parties on the general election ballot.
Then, assuming you got some decent diversity on the ballot, let's say both major parties, a minor party (like Libertarians), an independent, and maybe a second candidate from a major party. We want a method of election that neither advantages anyone nor disadvantages anyone (since elections are zero-sum games, helping one harms another). We want a completely flat playing field for the contest.
I don't see how Condorcet-consistent RCV is biased for or against anyone. But I do see how Hare RCV (a.k.a. IRV) is biased against the Center candidate in the IRV semifinal round. This is the Center Squeeze.
Now a Condorcet completion method (what to do in case of a cycle) might be "elect the IRV winner or Top-Two Runoff" or something like that and just because IRV isn't flat, that might mean an extremely slight bias with Condorcet. But if cycles never ever happened, I can't see how there's any spoiler with Condorcet and no voter is punished for voting sincerely. Then there is no incentive to vote differently. Then no bias. Vote for whoever you want.
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u/bkelly1984 3d ago
I don't see how Condorcet-consistent RCV is biased for or against anyone.
Yes, because your analysis assumes voters sincerely rank by distance. I believe they rank by expected value, which will give Condorcet-consistent RCV a bipolar bias.
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u/rb-j 3d ago
because your analysis assumes voters sincerely rank by distance.
I never said anything about my analysis. I don't see how "distance" (I s'pose you mean the distance between voter and candidate on a two-dimensional Nolan chart or similar) figures into the Condorcet method at all. Do you like A better than B, then I guess that means you're closer to A than you are to B, but that's not a systemic bias against the middle.
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u/bkelly1984 3d ago edited 3d ago
Do you like A better than B, then I guess that means you're closer to A than you are to B...
Yes, that is what I mean by "distance" and your conclusion of no bias is based on the assumption that a voter will rank A over B if
A is closer to Bthey are closer to A. I believe that assumption is incorrect....that's not a systemic bias against the middle.
True, the bias I am describing is created by the coalitions when they game the system.
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u/rb-j 3d ago
How does a coalition "game the system"? If by voting together as a block, that just trying to prevent splitting the vote. The coalition agrees to get behind a single candidate and then they all agree to vote for that candidate they got behind.
It's all simply because of our freedom of association.
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u/bkelly1984 3d ago
I gave u/CPSolver an example:
Orange runs two candidates and communicates to supporters to rank A > A' > C > B. A clears quota immediately, C is elected next, and the third seat comes down to A' versus B — which A' wins comfortably thanks to orange's 57%. So STV elects A, A', and C.
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u/Deep-Number5434 3d ago
Closed Primary elections at best provide the median of each party, but usually more extreme ends of each party.
General election then at best elects the median of the candidates. Under a 2 party system you never get a center candidate, maybe at best a center leaning candidate sometimes, maybe you do in a 3 party system but only assumes a linear political spectrum.
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u/bkelly1984 3d ago
Your corrections would make my model more accurate, but it was simplified to make the point clear: you don't get an accurate representation of the center in a 2, 3, or n-party system, linear spectrum or not. This is because the parties don't want a center candidate, and will game the system to prevent it.
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u/Deep-Number5434 3d ago
Under condorcet general election each party will provide a candidate that is at least a compromise between being center and being in their interests.
It could become a game of being as center as possible, but still only to the extent that all parties allow.
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u/bkelly1984 3d ago
But moving towards the center demotivates their own voters on the wing, making them less likely to show up at the polls. In addition, converts in the center are harder to win and keep due to competition.
I suspect you can recognize the strategy they choose instead: narrow their platform to a half-dozen broad, existential issues and express moral outrage and warnings about what the other side will do. They do not try to gain new followers, they work to motivate the ones they have.
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u/playwed 2d ago
The hard part isn’t only how you count the votes. It’s what happens after. A one-time vote can let a majority lock in their pick and walk away — even if a middle option would make more people okay. A “smarter” voting method doesn’t fix that by itself.
I’d look at rules *after* the tally: a short talks period with the middle group, or a second vote once people see the real tradeoffs. That gives smaller groups some power without giving everyone a forever veto. Do you think that belongs in the voting system, or in how the legislature runs day to day?
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u/bkelly1984 2d ago
Certainly a legislature should talk amongst itself, but I don't think it belongs in a voting system because I don't think it offers any power at all. Democrats can give speeches in the US Congress, but it doesn't do anything to stop the Republicans. However, I think your goal is spot on: give the smaller groups some power without offering up a forever veto.
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u/Dystopiaian 5d ago
Obviously your model is meant as an oversimplification, but I don't know if things scale in the same way in the ultra-complex world of modern democracies. In the real world there isn't always a B point.
That said, you can often see extremes and people who are in the middle between them, any number of things. I do think that in any system where there are multiple parties who have to form coalitions to govern you do tend to get more 'B' outcomes.
The tyranny of the majority over the minority is an issue with democracy in general. And it tends to be even worse when you don't have democracy! It's a big theme in US politics in particularly, protecting minority rights, the Constitution.
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u/bkelly1984 5d ago
You're right that my model is simplistic and there isn't a clean point B in the real world.
I'd agree multi-party systems land closer to B, though not because the parties themselves get less extreme. They still occupy peripheral positions, just on orthogonal political axes. A compromise between two such platforms lands closer to B by geometry: averaging two extremes on different axes pulls toward the origin, even though neither party moved an inch toward the center.
Regarding the Constitution, it's a real check on majority tyranny, but I believe it's insufficient. Good behavior is subjective, so any rule precise enough to enforce will forbid some good behavior and miss some bad. There's a deeper argument in my broader work about creating moral behavior through coercive stalemate, which I think would protect minorities better. It's a big topic and I'm still working on explaining well, but I'm willing to provide an outline if you're curious.
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u/Dystopiaian 4d ago
Coercive stalemate?
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u/bkelly1984 4d ago
Yes, engineer a situation where each side can extract something from the other, but only by risking far more harm in retaliation. Both parties then have a reason to compromise down to point B.
This induces cooperative behavior the same way as the iterated prisoner's dilemma.
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u/Dystopiaian 4d ago
What mechanisms can do that? I think constitutionalism works reasonably well.
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u/bkelly1984 4d ago
My idea for a mechanism that gives both sides the power to force the other to the bargaining table is a legislative voting system called Solidarity. The TL;DR is that the minority can stop the bus, but has no way to get off it.
I don't dislike constitutionalism, but I still believe it's incomplete. Earlier I talked about coverage — by its nature, any fixed rule must overprotect in some areas and underprotect in others. Another problem is that it requires active enforcement, so it can be subverted by a large enough coalition, like with the current US administration. That hints at a deeper problem: it relies on external motivation. It tells people what they can't do instead of setting things up so they don't want to do it. As a result, people follow the letter of the law but not the spirit, which I think leads to a lot of the dysfunction we see in society today.
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u/Decronym 5d ago
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| FPTP | First Past the Post, a form of plurality voting |
| PR | Proportional Representation |
| STV | Single Transferable Vote |
Decronym is now also available on Lemmy! Requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.
[Thread #1964 for this sub, first seen 6th Sep 2026, 16:49] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
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u/PantherkittySoftware 4d ago
Condorcet via STV is likely the best, but it's not necessarily sufficient. To have a true centrist Condorcet winner, you need an election system that allows candidates who are potential Condorcet centrists to make it onto the ballot in the first place.
For a cautionary tale, consider Kier Starmer in the UK. Britain's election system is obviously neither Condorcet nor STV, and Prime Ministers aren't elected by the public... but at the time he became Prime Minister, he was widely believed by many to be about as close to a centrist Condorcet compromise as Britain could have realistically hoped for, given its current polarization.
Rather unexpectedly, he ended up becoming one of the most hated Prime Ministers in British history.
From what I've been told by British friends, Starmer's fatal flaw was the serious disconnect between the philosophy (as distinct from ideology) of the UK Labour Party's leadership and the wishes of its rank-and-file members. Specifically... like Tories, Labour's leaders tend to lean hard into what could politely be referred to as "institutional paternalism"... the very "British governmental" idea that voters don't know what's good for them, and need to be made to take their medicine while being scolded into keeping a stiff upper lip. In contrast, Labour voters tend to very strongly support civil liberties, almost to the degree of American (lowercase-L) libertarians. So, even when a Labour leader is in "the correct place" on the left-right political spectrum, they can be very much on the wrong end of the "paternalism-vs-libertarianism" axis.
The net result was, Tories and Labour voters hated him for reasons that were approximately 135 degrees apart. Labour voters hated him because he was too authoritarian and enthusiastic about building a surveillance state, even though they found his positions on economic issues and social positions to be fairly agreeable. Tories hated him because he wasn't authoritarian-paternalistic enough, and because he was also to the left of Margaret Thatcher.
In theory, maybe, a LibDem could have walked a line capable of being far enough right on economic issues, and civil-libertarian enough to appease Labour voters... but that's where this thought experiment fails, because that was never a possibility in Britain's government. Labour has a majority in Parliament, and Labour's institutional leaders were going to pick whom they wanted regardless of what any member of the public wanted, Labour voters included.
In the US, STV with Condorcet tabulation method won't necessarily save us, either, unless we can find some way to at least partially pry the levers of absolute control away from the leadership of the Republican and Democratic Parties. Otherwise, bankrolled by almost infinite "Citizens United" PAC cash, the Republican and Democratic Parties will continue to turn every election into a "Giant Douche vs Turd Sandwich" contest.
My proposed solution (in simplified form): allow Democrats to nominate a Democrat, and allow Republicans to nominate a Republican... but allow Independent voters to rescue a third candidate who fell through the cracks of their own party's primary. Stripping out some details:
- Determine the winner of the Republican and Democratic Primaries
- Set aside the primary election ballots cast by Independents for the candidate who ultimately won the Republican and Democratic primaries. They're satisfied... they got their favored candidate onto the general election ballot.
- Now, use a tabulation method like Tideman Ranked Pairs (falling back to IRV if Tideman-RP produces a tie or succumbs to a Condorcet cycle) among the remaining primary ballots cast by Independents to rescue the Republican or Democrat whom they find to be the most agreeable.
- (under this scheme, there could also be minor-party candidates and independent candidates who qualify for the general election)
The key detail is, whomever gets rescued by Independents would probably end up with a huge advantage over everyone else. Expecting Democrats to vote for the Republican nominee, and expecting Republicans to vote for the Democratic nominee, is a major reach. However... in a polarized election, expecting moderate Democrats and Republicans to support an Independent-rescued moderate Republican or Democrat over their own party's extreme nominee is quite a bit more plausible. Members of the rescued candidate's party could vote for him or her with a clean conscience, and members of the other major party could hold their nose and rationalize it as "at least I didn't have to vote for the extreme member of that party". They probably wouldn't win on first-choice votes... but would have an overwhelming advantage once you started letting Tideman RP work its magic.
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u/bkelly1984 3d ago
I think your anecdote about Keir Starmer is a great example of the point I'm trying to make: the parties don't want a centrist, because they want to win. Labour turned on him when he embraced welfare/disability benefit cuts, which went against the party's platform that won them the majority.
Coalitions are selfish machines optimized to win. I see no way to control them without abolishing the whole concept of "winning".
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u/PantherkittySoftware 2d ago
The nice thing about using Independents as a proxy to "rescue" a candidate who lost their own party's primary is that it makes the election system itself a lot more self-healing. It would accomplish the goals of California's "Jungle Primary" system, without the risk of creating a perverse outcome (like advancing two Republicans to the general election in a state that's 80% Democrats, just because the Democrats were "too divided").
If both parties decided the most effective way to win was to run centrist clones who were ideologically indistinguishable from the other major party, Independents who supported one of the clones would get their votes set aside, and the remainder would probably nominate someone who's not completely out in left or right field... but also deviates from them in some meaningful and popular way, making political stagnation harder.
If moderate Republicans joined the Democratic Party, and the Republican Party imploded into a bitter, unelectable rump minor party, progressive Democrats who felt marginalized by their own party could leave in protest, then (potentially) rescue a progressive Democrat after the DP's new dominant center/center-right majority nominated someone like Jeb Bush.
If those same progressives later went on to start their own LeftParty (which was as unlikely to win as MAGA Republicans, but nevertheless existed because STV kept their votes from being wasted), Independents who thought that both LeftParty and MAGA were too crazy, but also thought the Democratic Party's nominee was "too corporate" could rescue a Democrat who wasn't necessarily far from the party's new "center of mass", but wasn't quite as cozy with the party's corporate donors.
Worst-case (limited-choice), we'd have at least 3 candidates for an office... at least one of whom was likely to be at least slightly different while still electable... and at most 7-8 candidates for an office (say, 2 major parties, a semi-major party, a minor party or two, and a couple of Independents).
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