this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2025
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I'm a pretty intelligent person. And I can understand this small article you've written about voting systems and it's still bored the ever living shit out of me. Do you honestly expect the average voter to be capable of understanding all of what you just laid down here?
Ranked choice voting has the added benefit of everybody can understand what the fuck it is. It's very simple and it's much better than first past the post. Sure it's not perfect but perfect is not going to happen not when people are so dumb that they vote against their own interests simply because a washed up TV star said things they wanted to hear.
Approval is better than Ranked Choice at this. And it lacks the weaknesses of RCV. Literally the only major change from FPTP is that you can vote for as many candidates as you'd like on your ballot. No spoiler effect because there's nothing to spoil. Strategic voting isn't remotely as bad either. RCV is in many cases a step up from FPTP (but not always and the more voters actually understand it the worse it gets) but it's still a bad solution to the problem.
I'd support STAR over RCV because it's mathematically better but my go to is Approval, mostly because of the specific issue with STAR you've pointed out - it's more complicated to explain, vote under and report on than FPTP or Approval.
The thing is, Ranked Choice is broken in dozens of ways. It's actually more broken than First Past the Post.
It gives bad results that do not match the lies that it's advocates tell, because FairVote lies their asses off about the system.
Fuck, it fails the Monotonicity Criteria.
I'll explain this one simply. The Monotonicity Criteria says more support for Candidate A should increase the chances that Candidate A wins. Under Ranked Choice, listing Candidate A first can cause Candidate C to win.
That and the insecurity around counting make Ranked Choice a fucking stupid idea. It was a bad system when invented and it's not gotten any better.