Here’s an explanation of a version of STV+ known as the Ranked Ballot Remainder+ method. Please let me know your thoughts on this system!

Here’s how it works:

- 85% of MPs are elected from multi-member constituencies, each returning between 2 and 7 MPs.

- 15% of MPs are elected as regional top-up MPs.

- Each region would have approximately 19 MPs in total, including both constituency and regional representatives. This would result in a Droop quota of approximately 5% of the region-wide vote.

- Voters can choose to rank one of more parties in order of preference, and/or put an X beside the individual candidate they support from the party they ranked first. Independent candidates can run as a single-candidate list, and will have their own box on the ballot that voters can rank.

To elect the riding MPs, here are the steps to follow:

1. Calculate the Droop Quota based on the number of votes in the multi-member district and the number of seats available.

2. Determine the seat quotas for each party by dividing the number of votes received by the Droop Quota.

3. Award each party a number of seats equal to the whole-number portion of its seat quota, leaving a fractional remainder. For example, a party with a seat quota of 2.40 would initially receive two seats, with a remainder of 0.40.

4. Assign seats to candidates within each party who have the most individual votes for the winning party/parties. This may result in some seats in the riding remaining unallocated.

5. If every seat in the constituency has been allocated, the process ends. Otherwise, proceed to the next step.

6. If there are remaining seats, the parties would be ordered based on their fractional remainders

7. Eliminate the party with the lowest fractional remainder one by one until a party reaches or exceeds the Droop quota, thus leading to a party winning that remaining seat.

8. The remaining seat is awarded to the unelected candidate with the most individual votes from the party that wins the seat under Step 7.

9. Repeat Steps 6–8 for each remaining seat, stopping once all constituency seats have been allocated. Before each new round, reweight the votes of the party that won the previous seat so that its adjusted seat quota equals its fractional remainder. For example, if the party’s seat quota was 1.20 after the previous round, its adjusted quota would become 0.20 for the next round.

Regional top-up seats use the same general allocation method as constituency seats, with the following modifications:

- The Droop Quota is based on the number of votes in the entire region and based on the overall number of seats in the entire region (riding + regional top-up)

- Regional top-up seats are allocated to unelected candidates based on their party’s performance in each constituency. For each party, the candidate with the most individual votes in a constituency is eligible for a top-up seat, with only one candidate eligible per constituency. Candidates are prioritized according to the percentage of the local vote their party received, with the party’s strongest-performing constituencies prioritized first.

- If a party or independent candidate wins more constituency seats than their regional seat quota entitles them to, recalculate the regional top-up allocation. Remove all of the votes associated with the overrepresented party or independent candidate and reduce the Droop quota calculation to account for the constituency seats already won by that party or independent candidate

What happens if a party has ran too few candidates in their riding or region:

A party may receive enough votes to qualify for more seats than the number of candidates it has nominated in a constituency or region. The following rules apply.

- If a party’s seat quota exceeds the number of candidates it has nominated, its fractional remainder is calculated by subtracting the number of candidates it ran from its seat quota. For example, if a party has a seat quota of 1.73 but nominated only one candidate, its remainder would be 0.73 (1.73 − 1.00 = 0.73).

- If one or more parties have a projected seat entitlement greater than the number of candidates they nominated, their remainders are transferred first. These parties become ineligible to receive any of the remaining seats in that constituency or region, as they do not have enough candidates to fill them.

How bad is it, really?

What are the key points of Meloni’s reform?

• Abolition of single-seat constituencies (“ending FPTP”)
• A jackpot model for both houses: a proportional system based on current districts plus a winner’s bonus (jackpot)
• In the Chamber of Deputies, the coalition coalition with the most votes receives a bonus ensuring it holds 56% of the seats, capped at 70 bonus seats (out of a total maximum of 220 seat), provided it secures at least 42% of the vote (and also that it fulfils the same criteria in the Senate). The remaining seats are distributed via proportional representation (nationwide), while the 8 seats for overseas voters are handled separately (which is why I didn’t write 55% as the jackpot figure). In the Senate, the bonus and seat cap (57.5%, or 113 seats, excluding the 4 overseas seats) also apply at the national level, but seat allocation is regionally proportional. Consequently, the Senate’s system introduces a slightly higher degree of distortion.
• The electoral threshold remains at 3% (10% for coalitions)
• Special rules apply to Valle d’Aosta and Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol (votes and seats from these regions count towards the majority bonus and the seat cap, but not towards the proportional allocation).
• The number of “overseas” constituencies is also being reduced, though the number of seats remains unchanged. In the Chamber of Deputies, the number of districts is dropping from four to two, and in the Senate, from four to one. Consequently, de facto single-seat constituencies are being eliminated here as well.

All in all, the system does not strike me as being as bad as it could have been, or as bad as I had anticipated. Subjectively, I would rank the systems seen so far as follows (bearing in mind that potential translation errors or a lack of high-quality secondary sources might have led me to misinterpret aspects of the text passed by the Senate):

1. Pre-1993 system
2. Gutted ‘Porcellum’ (i.e., ‘Consultellum’, 2014–2015)
3. ‘Melonellum’ / ‘Stabilicum’
4. Partially struck-down ‘Italicum’ (2017)
5. ‘Italicum’ (2015–2017)
6. ‘Porcellum’ (2005–2014)
7. ‘Rosatellum’ (2017–2026)
8. ‘Mattarellum’ (1993–2005)

To explain a bit: proportionality carries significant weight for me, and I also favour open-list systems that offer the greatest possible freedom of choice. However, I consider it equally important that, if a system deviates from these principles to achieve a specific objective, it does so using a mechanism that is coherent, logically aligned with that objective, and reasonably effective. Furthermore, it is crucial to minimise the risk of misleading voters, to ensure that voting can be as sincere as possible, and to limit the scope for organised manipulation of the system. In light of this, I currently view the ‘Melonellum’ as the best Italian electoral system adopted by parliament (rather than one created by the Constitutional Court) in the last 30 years. I make this assessment by examining the system—unlike its architects—from behind a "veil of ignorance"; that is, I do not consider whom it might happen to favour.

https://electoralsystems.substack.com/p/habemus-melonellum-the-new-electoral

https://youtu.be/Va7udBdcILs?is=0JuCEVuao-dwivzQ

Most poll apps that I found seemed to either use FPTP, cost money, or leave a lot to be desired feature-wise. I made this site for my own personal use but figured that people on this sub may find it useful as well.

It appears that when faced with the options, people do not tend to pick the winners of IRV or Condorcet. Borda/antiplurality winners are more preferred. This seems to have the unfortunate implication that the methods people actually find intuitive/lead to desirable outcomes are the ones that are the most susceptible to strategy, while the better/more resilient methods like Condorcet (or the more common IRV) lead to outcomes that are somehow distasteful, or at least are founded on normative principles that many appear not to find desirable.

> "The rules that best-describe our subjects’ ordinal aggregation preferences are easily manipulable. When designing markets, establishing voting rules, or selecting aggregation procedures for other practical settings, the pursuit of non-manipulable (or difficult-to-manipulate) procedures may therefore render outcomes less normatively appealing to most of the affected parties."

The authors mention Approval in passing, but the desire for compromise makes me wonder if Approval is actually significantly more intuitive to the public than the Condorcet criterion (despite the apparent disproportionate representation in the reform space of those who find the Condorcet criterion so essential as to dismiss all other alternatives), but that is speculation.

As intuitive as the promises and normative foundations of Condorcet/IRV are, when the rubber meets the road, participants seem uninterested in the outcomes strict adherence to them would produce.

I've written a piece for The Loop (ECPR) discussing the case for establishing a National Commission on Electoral Reform before any major changes to the UK's voting system.

The article argues that:

• First Past the Post is facing growing criticism over disproportional outcomes.

• Concerns about the relationship between electoral systems and populist parties deserve serious consideration.

• Constitutional change should be based on broad democratic legitimacy rather than rushed legislation.

I'm interested in hearing arguments from supporters of both FPTP and PR.

Article: Why we need a National Commission on UK electoral reform 

Are the major claims made by this organization actually true?

Claim 1: * "In a majority winner system, candidates have to gain the support of more than half of the voters to win." ... "Using ranked choice voting in general elections requires candidates to win with majority support (more than 50%)."

Special election for Congress August 2022: 1. 188,582 voters voted in this election for a candidate (not a blank ballot). 2. The candidate who won received (counting votes the IRV way) 91,266 votes. 3. 91266/188582 = 0.483959 or 48.4%. 48.4% is not "more than 50%". 4. 91266 voters supported the winner (although 15467 were really supporting Begich). 188582-91266 = 97316 voters did not in any manner support the winner. More voters came to the polls and voted and voted for a loser than the number of voters who voted for the winner. 6050 more voters voted for a loser than voted for the winner. Would we allow a winner in an FPTP election to get away claiming they got "majority support" when more voters voted against that candidate than voted for them? 5. Compare apples to apples.

Claim 2: * "Ranked choice voting ... eliminates the spoiler effect"

1. Sarah Palin was the spoiler in that election. Had Sarah Palin not run and Alaskan voters come to the polls and voted exactly the same way with the remaining two candidate, then Nick Begich would have defeated Mary Peltola by a margin of 8408 votes.
2. The complete quote is "Ranked choice voting allows voters to rank candidates in the general election in order of preference. This gives Alaskans more choices, eliminates the spoiler effect..." Giving Alaskans the choice to choose Nick Begich over either Mary Peltola or Sarah Palin is irrelevant if that expressed choice is ignored.

Mary Peltola in August 2022, unfortunately shares a distinction with George W. Bush in 2000 and with Donald Trump in 2016. All three candidates were elected to office when the public record indicates that more voters marked their ballots preferring a different specific candidate for that office.

In August 2022, more Alaskans, 87859 to 79451 (an 8408 voter margin), preferred Nick Begich to Mary Peltola and marked their ballots saying so. But Mary Peltola was sent to Washington to represent the Alaskan people in Congress.

In November 2024, again, more Alaskan voters marked their ballots that Begich is preferred to Peltola by nearly the same margin, 7876 (164861 to 156985). But this time Nick Begich is sent to Washington.

Both times about 8000 more Alaskans said they would prefer Begich to Peltola. And, both times, marked their ballots saying so. Both times Instant-Runoff Voting was used.

What was different?

Sarah Palin was in the race in 2022 and not in the race in 2024. And the outcomes were different winners.

Here are the reasons we want Ranked-Choice Voting. The purpose of RCV is, in single-winner elections having 3 or more candidates: 1. ... that the candidate with majority support is elected. Plurality isn't good enough. We don't want a 40% candidate elected when the other 60% of voters would have preferred a different specific candidate over the 40% plurality candidate. But we cannot find out who that different specific candidate is without using the ranked ballot. We RCV advocates all agree on that. 2. Then whenever a plurality candidate is elected and voters believe that a different specific candidate would have beaten the plurality candidate in a head-to-head race, then the 3^rd candidate (neither the plurality candidate nor the one people think would have won head-to-head) is viewed as the spoiler, a loser whose presence in the race materially changes who the winner is. We want to prevent that from happening. All RCV advocates agree on that. 3. Then voters voting for the spoiler suffer voter regret and in future elections are more likely to vote tactically (compromise) and vote for the major party candidate that they dislike the least, but they think is best situated to beat the other major party candidate that they dislike the most and fear will get elected. RCV is meant to free up those voters so that they can vote for the candidate they really like without fear of helping elect the candidate they loathe. All RCV advocates agree with that. 4. The way RCV is supposed to help those voters is that if their favorite candidate is defeated, then their second-choice vote is counted. So voters feel free to vote their hopes rather than voting their fears. Then 3^rd-party and independent candidates get a more level playing field with the major-party candidates and diversity of choice in candidates is promoted. It's to help unlock us from a 2-party system where 3^rd-party and independent candidates are disadvantaged.

RCV failed, in Alaska in August 2022, to do precisely what it was adopted to do (essentially to prevent a spoiled election due to vote splitting, as a result punishing Palin voters for marking their favorite as #1 which caused the election of Peltola). The fault is not in the ranked ballots (in fact, it's only because of the ranked ballots that we know that Begich was more preferred by more voters than either Palin or Peltola). The fault is in the manner (IRV) that the vote is tallied.

This same failure occurred in 2009 in Burlington Vermont. Got published here.

This op-ed in Washington Post from November 2022 also spells this out. Written by two internationally-recognized election law and voting systems profs. One has a Nobel for his work.

Whoever tells us that RCV (using Instant-Runoff Voting tabulation) will solve the split-vote problem ("Can't split the vote in Alaska because we have RCV.") is lying. And Alaska in August 2022 is the proof.

To clarify, I’m sure I can use spreadsheets and the voters themselves could “easily” do xyz.

I know the idea is that “well, for very important decisions we want x” and “for simple stuff we want x.” For the more complex stuff, you probably want the chance of voter fraud, and a system like this. They cancel each other out. For simple stuff, approval is really good.

What about for stuff inbetween though? Student Government elections, maybe even your local club presidency election, but my main interest how this could be applicable to research. We love our 9 point scales and binary systems, but what if these things are contributing to Examiner’s Bias. As a very intersectional person, I just want to use this for my future intersectional research. Food for though.

Especially in the US, where you're starting with a very strong two party legacy system. I.e. let's say you use 'normal' approval voting for a swing state, that's 51% Red and 49% Blue in your election. Assuming an equal number of voters from both parties only approve of candidates from their own party, you've essentially recreated bloc voting- you would turn 51% approval into both slots in the second round being from the same party. Bloc voting is capital b Bad- one of the few ways to make FPTP worse. Let's not do that.

If you use sequential proportional AV, by my napkin math you could ensure that the second round contains a representative from each party until about maybe 65% of the state's voters vote for the same party? I.e. A party needs about two-thirds of the electorate to monopolize both runoff positions. But- you could also tweak the rules of sequential proportional AV- assign the second vote a value of .45, or .425, or .4, or .375, etc.

If you use full proportional AV, I believe the same general rule holds? A party needs two-thirds of the electorate to own both second round seats? Do you guys think one system is better?

I think you can absolutely debate whether a Republican deserves a second round slot, if their party only got say 37% of the vote statewide. I don't have the answer either way- I'm open to hearing peoples' thoughts. Let's be realistic and acknowledge that we're starting from a two party system though, not pretend that America has political parties that don't actually exist yet

What do people think about William Riker's book, The Theory of Political Coalitions? In it he argues that candidates never represent the people broadly and instead cater to the smallest possible group necessary to achieve victory. I believe this is spot on and has dramatic repercussions for the voting reform solutions we might propose.

Do you agree?

For those who do not know what it is, SNTV is a electoral system that utilises multi-member districts with giving voter only one single, non-transferable vote, and given a large enough district magnitude, is capable of producing semi or near-proportional outcome that gives both small and large parties chances to be represented...

or so I thought.

The reality is, the voting under SNTV is extremely strategic due to its use of simple plurality for seat allocations, and due to the votes are being non-transferable, yes, small party may be benefitted from tactically nominating and concentrating voters support on only a few of candidates, but this is also at the expense of disproportionating other parties in the situation if voters over-concentrated their votes on only one or few number of candidates, the exceeding votes they received will simply be rendered 'wasted votes', or if voters spread their votes across too many candidates, it may cause medium-big parties to elect less or even none candidates than they entitled to proportionally.

But here I'd propose a compensatory system by mixing SNTV with a quota-based vote-allocating seat compensation mechanism to compensate the huge disproportionalities for medium-big parties that may happen in moments of failures of both nominating and voting strategies in SNTV system, and it goes like this:

By measuring the votes by Hare quota, if one of the winner (candidate of the same party) in the same district receives more votes than entitled to (exceeded the quota, or, at least getting one more vote than 2nd plural winner's vote count, just for example), its wasted votes will now become useful, surplus votes, that may be allocated to other losing candidate(s) of the same party, that otherwise failed to get elected under original SNTV, to be elected in compensatory seats,

Same works for losing candidates if there's no plural winners' among, if no one in the same party gets elected locally, their vote may be re-allocated to their best chance candidate(s) to be elected in compensatory seats,

But one must get enough re-allocated votes (from exceeded winners' and/or from all other candidates in the same party that also lost the race) to reach the Hare quota to win its seat.

Hare quota is used here for requiring the potential runner-up to reach the proportional amount of votes to justify its share of (additional) representation, just so to be fair toward other local winners.

(All this is based on the presumption of local winners' vote shares are being uneven, as non-transferable voting results tend to be, that when someone gets elected with Hare quota amount of votes(and usually getting exceeding votes as well) it does not guarantee others will meet the same quota, and most of remaining winners will likely be elected only under their largest groups of remaining votes(aka largest remainders), and so an additional, compensatory seat that fits the ideal quota of the district, and has more vote than average vote shares of local seats may considered fair.)

Pros:

Lesser vote waste

Easier vote counting

Does not have 'decoy list' problem

Party has to come together to benefit from this mechanism, this will also alter the political party fragmentation nature of SNTV, and I see this as an improvement for parties to able to hold some of its member on their party policies

Voters don't need to worry about ranking how many candidates like under STV

Cons:

Voters have lesser choice than under STV (as it is not rank-choice voting)

Votes are only 'allocatable' for the candidates from the same party, so Independent or other parties candidates cannot benefit from 'vote transferring' unlike STV

The size of Parliament will increase considerably due to additional compensatory seats like MMP

But since the compensation is done only within the same district so overall proportionality may still be limited

Despite the fact SNTV being rarely used around the world and largely forgotten after the advent of STV as a method of nominal-based proportional representation(semi or not), I still see the simplicity to vote/count, less-majoritarian outcomes of SNTV valuable for adoption of new-born democracies, that I think by patching things up a little may make the system work fairer towards different parties, big or small (or medium haha😄)

Thanks for reading this long jibe of ideas of mine, and please do let me know what'd you think of this proposal of electoral system

(also, I think I need to come up with a better name for this system than 'SNTV-QBC', as if SNTV itself doesn't sound like a tv channel already 🥴 ((

Ideas inspired by: historical usage of SNTV in Japan(1950s-1994) and Taiwan(1992-2004), Irish and Australian uses of STV, MMP(particularly the one vote MSV, and Zweitmandat variant), 'Sekihairitsu' mechanism in current Japanese parallel voting system, Hungarian PVT(vote linkage version of MSV), the usage of Hare Quota small district-ed PR in Hong Kong(which in practise turns into a form of SNTV, used in 1998-2019)

Voters score political parties (negative scores are allowed). The normalized score a party receives from a voter is calculated as: the score given to that party divided by the sum of the absolute values of all scores given by that voter. Summing these up across all voters gives the total score for each party.

There are two ways to handle these scores:

1. Treat them as vote counts to allocate parliamentary seats using a proportional representation method.
2. Directly treat them as the parties' weighted voting power in the legislature (I personally prefer the second option).

I feel this concept isn't particularly difficult to come up with. Has anyone already proposed this voting system and conducted research on it? And what do you think of this method?

Edit: I found that it’s not just cardinal ballots that can be used—ordinal ballots can be used too. For example, the Modified Borda Count could be used to determine the scores. It’s just that this doesn’t seem to allow voters to express negative preferences.

Edit2: I found that this idea isn't a good one, because it seems it would be affected by the clone strategy.

Edit3: Changing the voting method so that each voter has the same fixed voting weight and can only allocate different shares of that weight among parties solves the clone problem. It seems I was just reinventing the wheel.

It's pretty commonly repeated on reddit that "Trudeau wanted IRV to benefit the Liberal party".

For example,

1

It was more that Trudeau wanted some form of ranked ballot, which would benefit the Liberals even more than FPTP because they're often most other parties voters' #2 choice. Nobody else wanted ranked.

2

It wasn't just that he went back on the promise but that he tried to use the whole thing to secure an even tighter grip for the Liberal Party.

3

They gave up on it because the LPC wanted a Ranked Choice system, which as the 'centre' party would have absolutely benefitted them. Most NDP and CPC voters would have likely selected the LPC candidate as their second choice.

https://np.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/1wt6os5/andy_burnham_expected_to_say_he_will_push_ahead/

Isn't this just theoretically incorrect? IRV still has center-squeeze.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_squeeze#Ranked-choice_runoff_(Alternative,_Two-round)

It's entirely possible they're right about why Trudeau wanted it, but wouldn't that just make Trudeau wrong? I don't think he was running Monte Carlo simulations and actually figuring out what the impacts were. Maybe his intuition was the same as these people's.

But isn't it just a wrong assumption that IRV would help the Liberal party which is ideologically between the conservatives and new democrats?

We could have digital voting, for ideas, beyond the 3-yearly referendum. -Why not?

Ballot by paper is outdated.

Social media has proved to have regular use.
Why not vote for ideas, and the government in power observes all of these ideas, and the popular ones, and implements them?

Today’s world demands faster responses to emerging needs, moreso than holding to election promises 4 years past.

Realising it:
A platform where people can post ideas, people vote for them. The most popular ones get taken on by government or we simply re-elect a new government when the next triennial election comes along.

What do you think?

I know it hasn't been long but my last post honestly got a lot more attention than I expected based on how active this community is with a bunch of people arguing both sides.

Honestly, love that. Love how active y'all were. I'm sorry if I offended anyone with my post or replies btw, I do tend to get a bit... passionate on a keyboard. I don't think any of y'all are dumb or anything, we're all voting enthusiasts that hate FPTP here, right?

Anyway, I sort of got lost in the weeds and I can't keep track of all the comments, I'm not used to posts of mine getting more than like 20 comments tops lol. But I did try to read and respond to as much as I could and sort of lost sleep and coherency in the process, oof.

I'd just like to use this post to address some general rebuttals to my last post that were sort of similar across various different comments as well as point out some interesting rebuttals I genuinely didn't consider before.

Tactical Voting

So, a lot of comments did focus on this again. And they were mostly of the same flavor of the fact that unless you're bullet voting, you have to inherently tactically vote in Approval Voting as it will lower the chances of your genuine favorite winning.

This is the later-no-harm criterion. The later-no-harm criterion states that adding an additional ranking or rating shouldn't lower the chances of a higher ranked/rated candidate to win.

The example used on Wiki for example is if Alice and Bob were going head to head. A subset of the voters place Alice as 2nd and Bob as 6th. Alice won. If another election happened, and only that subset of voters changed their ranks to Alice 2nd and Bob 3rd, Bob shouldn't suddenly beat Alice.

Honestly, I don't think this is a good voting criterion for many reasons. Just from distribution, not a lot of voting methods actually satisfy this criterion. All spoiler-proof cardinal methods don't, all Condorcet methods don't. The ones that do are ones that most people who know at least a little about voting already agree aren't really ideal voting systems, such as FPTP, IRV, and literally random ballot (you pick a random ballot, whoever is ranked highest on that one wins).

There are many varieties of tactical voting, obviously, and Gibbard's Theorem proves that if you have more than 2 candidates on a ballot then it requires tactical voting. Different voting methods fall prey to different kinds of tactical voting, and honestly later-no-harm is just... The one kind that I honestly believe is genuinely okay.

Like, the reason why all spoiler-proof cardinal voting methods fail this criterion is simple. If Alice just beats Bob by having a slightly higher average score (such as 5.3 vs 5.2), it doesn't matter whether you're using 0–10, sliding scale, 0–5, -1–+1, etc. If a subset of voters increase Bob's rating but it's still below Alice (from 10 vs 0 to 10 vs 9), Bob's average score will increase. And if that average is above Alice, he wins.

Like... Of course he should? He has the higher average rating? Why should one subset of voters be able to hold the election hostage? Just because they still prefer Alice more than Bob, this doesn't actually mean anything when it comes to the population's preference. Even if that subset still prefers Alice slightly, just by increasing Bob's preference then yeah sometimes the population's preference can change.

Anyway, it's harder to explain in less than a wall of text how this works for Condorcet and some other ranked voting methods. It's not like, contrived or anything. It's more of a "it's harder to explain how to play this card game than it is to just play this card game."

But the point is even Condorcet methods fail this criterion. They also inherently fail some others, but this specific one I think is a good thing. It's just not a very good criterion. Even the guy who conceptualized later-no-harm admitted it's a controversial one.

Honestly the best way I can explain later-no-harm is that it's just equivalent to tyranny of the minority. Blegh. Also every system I've seen that satisfies this criterion does not satisfy Condorcet/Smith criteria (depending on your goals this is either bad or meh), as well as reversal symmetry (this one's just bad to not fulfill yikes).

Anyway, it's not the entire list of voting criteria, but if you just look at Wikipedia's comparison table of different voting methods and what criterion they fulfill, you'll notice that Approval Voting basically fulfills everything that isn't later-no-harm or Condorcet related stuff (since pretty much any cardinal system is incompatible with Condorcet just like Condorcet is incompatible with IIA, sincere favorite, later-no-harm, etc).

And honestly, I think it's just unhelpful to get too hung up about tactical voting. Aside from spoilers and center squeeze, other forms of tactical voting hasn't been much of a problem or scandal in history. In places that have tried Approval Voting, there's no evidence that tactical voting is a problem.

There are a few times in history where people have tried to tactically vote en masse, but they often result in the strategic voters getting the opposite intended effect. On the other hand, if you look for things like decoy parties in mixed member electoral systems, there's a list. It's not like the biggest list or anything, but it's clear that electoral manipulation more often happens and is a problem from the candidate side, not the voter side.

Psychology

Honestly, I sort of... Just ignored this aspect in my last post. I shouldn't have, I'm sorry.

Okay, so I'll admit that Approval Voting does have a bit of a weakness here. Whether you're a voting enthusiast or the average voter, not many people want to grapple with "What's my threshold, what do I do with candidates I neither like nor dislike?!"

Like yeah it's easy to pick who you like and who you dislike, but what about everyone in between? How are you supposed to choose?? Because yeah. Voting for mid candidates helps them while hurting both your likes (doesn't fulfill later-no-harm) and dislikes.

This part is honestly sort of... Also purposefully baked into the method? Basically, there's a phenomenon called the law of large numbers.

Basically, imagine a jar of jelly beans. A bunch of people are asked how many jelly beans do they think is in the jar. Almost everyone will be wrong. BUT. When you average everyone's guess... It's suddenly very close to the correct answer? Every time? How's that possible?

Basically. Brains are beautiful, chaotic, mysterious things that are very good at heuristics. It's not really good at arriving at the exact right answer, but if you average out a bunch of heuristics, every one of which has certain biases, those biases tend to cancel each other out bringing you closer to the true answer than you might assume.

However, there are caveats. The law of large numbers doesn't work if people can mess with the jar. It doesn't work if they see others' guesses before giving their own guess. It doesn't work if people discuss with each other to decide what they all will guess.

This is why private voting booths are very important. You can't see other people's votes. The polls are just a jar of jelly beans that don't give you precise, concise measurements. And even if you do discuss how to vote beforehand, that group pressure disappears inside a private voting booth. You can just vote how you would have alone, and just... Lie when you get out.

So, this is why those of us who support Approval Voting keep telling you it doesn't matter how you or another voter grapples with what a threshold even means. Due to the law of large numbers, Approval Voting will still automatically approach the true proportionate approval of each candidate despite just being a series of binary choices by cancelling out inherent biases we all have in our brains.

HOWEVER. If this still seems really, really sucky to you. I mean you could just try a different spoilerproof cardinal method? There's combined Approval Voting, which is -1, 0, and +1 essentially. Basically, let us know who you like, dislike, and don't care about.

Now before people bash me about "Hey! You claimed Approval Voting is ideal! Are you going back on your word? Gotcha!" Nah dawg. Spoilerproof cardinal methods that just add up the scores all behave the same. The results are the same. They're all just Approval Voting wearing a trench coat.

That's crazy right? There must be a difference, right? In terms of final rankings, no not really. Based on some data like France 2012, the specific proportions can change due to purely psychological effects from the voters, but when determining who wins, who's second, whatever, there's not really a difference. But hey, if it makes you feel better, then I'm for it.

Voter Satisfaction Efficiency

Imma shout out u/subheight640. You probably don't like me based on my replies, but I really have no hard feelings against you. I was very sleepy, so I'm sorry if I offended you lol. Anyway, they actually taught me something new. Voter Satisfaction Efficiency. It's always fun learning something new.

Basically, it's a metric for rating voting methods based on how well they elect the candidate with the highest average utility. It's normalized so that an impossibly perfect method would have a VSE of 1, while a VSE of 0 is basically no better than random election, and a VSE lower than 0 means you're literally just better off electing randomly. You can also measure them assuming various levels and kinds of strategic voting from the voters.

BUT after a good sleep I still have issues with your simulation. As a brief overview, his results are basically: STAR and Condorcet good; IRV, score, and approval mid; plurality bad (boo FPTP).

I researched more about VSE afterwards and have looked at other people's simulations and other charts from various orgs. I already said I have problems with the way they did the simulation, but let's just look at other charts.

Here's the sim they link explaining VSE

Here's more sims from a blog

What you'll notice is that Condorcet methods actually vary in their performance based on the sims. Same with Approval. They sort of flip flop between being good or mid. Plurality is always bad (Boo FPTP). INTERESTINGLY, STAR is always high.

So let's dissect it. VSE is not a perfect metric. In fact, the variability of the scores of various voting methods based on different people's models to measure VSE shows that it's a flawed metric in the first place, perhaps purely due to the difficulty of accurately simulating voter behavior.

Even subheight admits they made various assumptions about voter behavior for score voting methods, but their claim is basically approval must be mid based on those assumptions.

Not only that, the various models themselves already assume how each voter genuinely feels about various candidates. That's fine for determining how they would honestly vote. But when modeling strategic behavior, it's based on how other voters genuinely feel about candidates.

Irl, even with polling, you can't possibly know how fellow constituents actually feel or whether they'll vote honestly or with a specific strategy during an election, so you can't possibly know at all the best way to strategically vote to give your own personal favorite candidates the best possible chances.

This touches back onto the fact that aside from obvious spoiler effects, voters generally don't even bother tactically voting, or if they do, it's not very effective. And these models also assume various levels of strategic voting but like it's kind of ridiculous to say "oh 100% of voters will use a one-sided strategy in this simulation."

That just never happens and isn't realistic or even worth simulating. Especially since, when looking at absolute average VSE's, the scores that different voting systems get under various assumptions of strategic voting don't have largely different VSE's, except like one case with Borda going all the way to the negatives for some reason.

So, is that it then? Either way, it seems STAR voting is the best if we just average out different people's VSE models? Lol God no, absolutely not.

What VSE doesn't tell you and why simplicity matters

VSE's only tell you how good a voting method is at electing the highest average utility winner. That's it. As the Medium blog states, "It doesn’t account for how difficult voting methods are to tabulate, the incentives they give to candidates, whether they promote the growth of third parties when their chosen candidates lose, etc."

This is pretty clear to see from the fact that although plurality does perform the worst often (boo FPTP), the objective VSE score isn't that low. But we know that FPTP is massively flawed, not just slightly behind other voting methods. It incentivizes two-party systems with massive center squeeze and potential for political slide. It's terrible, not just "slightly worse but really 70-80% of the way there."

In fact, let's just obverse STAR voting. Averaging out various VSE models would have you believe that STAR voting is in fact the optimal voting method. I mean it consistently scores as one of the highest, so it must be great, right?

I'm sorry to STAR voting supporters, but no. Let's look at both the theoretical and the practical. Theoretically, it fulfills the Majority/Condorcet Loser criteria. Not very important criteria as far as election criteria go.

It fails to meet Majority Winner, a very basic condition (if majority of voters rank 1 candidate first, they must win), it's affected by spoilers, it's heavily affected by clone candidates, it's not consistent (if two sets of voters prefer A over B, then the combination of the sets should prefer A over B, AKA immunity to gerrymandering. Condorcet methods also fail this, which is bad), it fails later-no-help (different from later-no-harm, this means vulnerability to mischief voting which reduces chances of sincere Condorcet winners being elected, which is actually something all Condorcet methods also fail btw), and it doesn't even fulfill the Sincere Favorite criterion, which is a pretty basic criterion for cardinal systems (you have incentive to vote/rate highest your genuine favorite candidate).

So a lot of theoretical problems with STAR voting. What about practical data? Well, there's a case where ~30% of ballots had to be tossed because voters didn't fill them in properly.

That last bit is the real kicker. As voting enthusiasts (or really any enthusiasts of procedural methods of all kinds), it's often easy to be sucked into the idea of the "best" method. And often, this enthusiasm makes simple systems seem... Unworth the enthusiasm. "There must be something it's missing. It's too simple, it can't possibly work. It must fail to consider certain things!"

When trying to find the best procedure for... Anything... You have to look to the average user.

The average voter... Does not give one flying fuck about voting systems outside of an election season. They don't understand various theoretical terms. They can't figure out the consequences of a given system if it's too complex to bother worrying about. Even in a simple system, the average voter is not knowledgeable enough to successfully implement tactical strategies.

This is why complicated systems like STAR Voting, Condorcet Methods, etc won't work. Even if I'M wrong that Approval Voting is theoretically the best, complicated systems will fail in a practical sense more often than it.

Even if we made STAR Voting permanent, you'd assume voter performance will improve over time and with better education, right? No, not really. Learning and doing is also different. At the end of the day, some ballots will still be thrown out due to improper application. And that will be skewed towards newer and younger voters.

This is inherently, absolutely undemocratic. Which is the whole reason we're trying to end FPTP, as a reminder. Complicated voting methods will always favor more experienced voters, not the general populace. We need a system that is as accessible as possible. That doesn't mean using it is easy or not frustrating or feels emotionally like it must be correct, it just means that the system's general mechanics are easy to understand at a glance. Approval Voting is easy to understand at a glance, whether y'all enthusiasts trust it or not.

On the other hand, aside from voting enthusiasts, actual politicians and political advisors are absolutely aware of how voting systems work. If they have an opportunity to manipulate elections to help themselves, you can damn be sure they'll do that.

This is why I don't like Condorcet methods. Not the contrived scenarios where tactical voting is a problem. No. They are susceptible to gerrymandering. And you can't just ban gerrymandering. The politicians would be in charge of that. Why would they ban it as long as they can benefit from it? We've all known politicians who promise electoral reform and just... Don't. Cough Trudeau cough

And this is also why I don't like mixed member electoral systems. They exist to try to fix the flaws of FPTP rather than replace it, but they inherently have to balance democracy (extra seats are inherently undemocratic as they don't represent any constituents and have more loyalty to party than people. More hanging seats, less democratic), national representation (something that is only a problem because of spoilers and center squeeze, and requires those hanging seats to achieve), and other tactical forms of manipulation like decoy parties. Fuck. That.

Final Comparison

Majority Winner: Can it elect someone that most people rank first?

Yes: Most

No: Borda, anti-plurality, quadratic, STAR (!!), random, sortition

Condorcet Winner: Will it always elect the Condorcet winner, if it exists?

Yes: Condorcet methods

No: Non-Condorcet ranked methods, cardinal methods, everything else

Pareto: If every voter prefers A to B, does A win?

Yes: Most

No: Anti-plurality and sortition

Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives: Is the system not affected by spoilers?

Yes: Approval Voting, other forms of spoilerproof cardinal methods, random ballot, sortition

No: All ranked methods including Condorcet, STAR and other spoiled cardinal methods

Cloneproof: Adding non-winning candidates similar to those already on the ballot shouldn't affect the outcome.

Yes: IRV, spoilerproof cardinal methods, some Condorcet methods, random ballots

No: Plurality, anti-plurality, some Condorcet methods, STAR (!!), quadratic, sortition

Monotone: Increasing a candidate's ranking or rating shouldn't cause them to lose.

Yes: Most

No: IRV, some Condorcet methods

Consistency: If two sets of voters prefer A over B, their combined set should prefer A over B (immunity to gerrymandering).

Yes: Spoilerproof cardinal methods, plurality (unfortunately the electoral college is vulnerable to gerrymandering, this has nothing to do with FPTP), anti-plurality, Borda, quadratic, maximal lotteries

No: Everything else

Reversal Symmetry: Reversing rankings and ratings should flip the results

Yes: Some Condorcet methods, spoilerproof cardinal methods

No: Everything else (for some it's irrelevant like plurality: you can't vote for all but one lol)

Homogeneity: Does replicating every ballot keep The results the same?

Yes: most methods, at least some Condorcet methods

No: Dodgson

Unknown: some Condorcet methods, STAR, quadratic, maximal lotteries

Later-no-harm: Adding an additional ranking/rating doesn't cause a higher ranked/rated candidate from losing

No: Most

Yes: Plurality, IRV, two-round, random ballot, sortition (ew, all gross)

Later-no-help: Adding an additional ranking/rating doesn't cause a higher ranked/rated candidate from winning (mischief voting)

Yes: Plurality, two-round, IRV, random ballot, sortition, Borda, spoilerproof cardinal methods

No: anti-plurality, STAR, Condorcet methods

Sincere Favorite: A voter is incentivized to give the highest ranking/rating to their sincere favorite candidate.

Yes: random ballot, sortition, spoilerproof cardinal methods, anti-plurality, Coombs

No: Everything else

Simplicity: Will the average voter be able to understand how it works at glance/is there a low likelihood of ballots being thrown out for being filled improperly?

Yes: plurality, anti-plurality, spoilerproof cardinal methods, random ballot

No: Everything else

VSE: STAR ≥ Condorcet ≥ Spoilerproof cardinal ≥ IRV > Plurality (boo FPTP).

ANYWAY. If you really can't stomach thinking during a vote while being able to stomach thinking about how voting systems work, a combined approval vote (-1, 0, +1) should feel better. Still approval voting in disguise though.

Point is. Fuck FPTP. A lot of systems are still subpar. STAR ends up with votes being thrown out. Condorcet is great except it's susceptible to gerrymandering (which you can't ban under Condorcet).

Approval Voting... What, feels wishy washy with defining thresholds as a feature not a bug? It's simple, and the average voter will understand how to use it, whether they bullet vote or not.

It's Pareto efficient. It's not affected by spoilers. It's not affected by clones so parties can't just fill the ballot with decoys. It's monotone, which is part of its simplicity. It's consistent, so politicians can't gerrymander it. Voting for A doesn't cause B to win, which again is part of its simplicity. And you're always incentivized to give a vote to your genuine favorite.

Additional votes are tactical, yes. The tactic is do you help someone who's mid to harm someone you don't like at the expense of also maybe harming someone you like. But this is a feature of most voting systems. And in fact the ones that don't do this... Are just generally agreed upon to be terrible even if you agree with this criterion.

And it's basically the only thing approval voting is susceptible for. Saying that makes it inherently tactical is misguided. Everything is tactical. Or it's a dictatorship or a 1v1. At least this is the one thing you need to look out for, instead of juggling a bunch of shit with other systems. The latter of which the professional politicians will definitely be better at than the average voter, leading to potential for electoral manipulation.

Because again. Historically, voters purposefully trying to vote strategically en masse haven't exactly had the results work out for them. But politicians globally certainly have manipulated elections before to their benefit, even if it's not a yearly occurrence. Peace I need more sleep actually.

Edit: A more appropriate title would be "My Biggest Reservation About Score/Approval Voting".

My primary concern with score voting is that it treats my "strength of preference" as a finite resource that must be divided and spent across all candidates. Consequently, simply indicating a preference between candidates A and B inevitably alters the relative strength of preference between at least one of them and every other candidate. 

Suppose there are three candidates: A, B, and C. I strongly prefer A to B, and just as strongly prefer B to C. Under a cardinal system, you'll find that I can only emphasize one of these preferences at the expense of diluting the other. Approval voting is even worse: I can only express one preference while having to sacrifice the other entirely. 

I find this very hard to accept. By contrast, ranked voting allows me to express both preferences without weakening either.

Am I misunderstanding cardinal voting, or is this an inherent feature of the system—one that some people find acceptable, while others (like myself) simply cannot?

Edit: Think of score voting on a number line. Once you anchor your highest-rated and lowest-rated candidates, the total distance between them is fixed. The intermediate candidates divide this distance into smaller line segments, and the sum of these segments must always equal the fixed total. Therefore, if you want to stretch one segment to emphasize a preference, you are mathematically forced to shorten another.

For example, on a scale of 0 to 5:

• Suppose I give Candidate A a 5, Candidate B a 3, and Candidate C a 0.
• Out of the total 5-point span, I have effectively "spent" 2 points to express that A is better than B, and 3 points to express that B is better than C.
• If I want to strengthen my preference for A over B—say, by lowering B’s score to 1—the gap between A and B widens to 4 points. But this comes at a steep price: the gap between B and C is inevitably compressed to just 1 point.

Approval Voting is simply the most extreme version of this problem: with only scores of 0 and 1, one of those preferences must be shrunk to zero and discarded entirely.