You'd think midterms would be a great time to get your name out there and run high profile candidates to win House districts led by charlatans...
this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2024
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ranked choice voting (or similar)
proportional representation
If we could have both of these, it would be American democracy—only better!
I like Approval Voting for single-winner elections and Sequential Proportional Approval Voting. Approval is way easier than RCV in every sense (RCV is complex enough to disenfranchise minorities) and it gets more accurate results because it doesn't have spoilers (RCV actually does, they're just different than what you're used to).
Approval is great for third parties because their full support in the final results, which RCV doesn't always do. Those results are important because they influence voters in the next election, helping little parties build up legitimacy even when they lose.
It's currently in use in Fargo and St. Louis, and of course they're very happy with it.
Yeah, as long as we can get rid of lesser-of-two-evils voting, things would get a lot better.
Right; ranked choice seems to have a lot of momentum behind it. There are a lot of other possibilities with pros and cons. I don't think it's worth bickering too much about what makes the best one. I do know first past the post needs to go. If ranked choice is being pushed, I'll go with it.
Just gonna throw STAR voting into the rink for the hell of it. Any of these systems is better than FPTP and I would endorse any of them in a local push for better voting.
I used to mention AV a lot, but STAR is my preference now. Of course, any improvement to the voting system makes it easier to further improve the voting system (which is why improvements are against the interest of either of the main two parties - they will not help)
Democrats have shown a willingness to work on it. If you look at Wiki's map of ranked choice states, the ones that fully or partially adopted it are mostly blue states. The ones that banned it are almost all red states.
That's pleasing news. Thanks for disabusing me of some unwarranted pessimism
Let's say one voter gives all candidates 5 stars each, except 1 who gets no stars; and another voter gives no candidate any stars, except 1 who gets 3 stars?
Couldn't tell you the outcome unless you actually gave me the actual votes for each candidate. For personal impact, the first voters has communicated "anyone except this guy" and the second has communicated "I don't like this guy but I hate every other option".
STAR does have the risk of having more than two candidates win with the same rating, but the chances of that happening are astronomically low - even in town elections. You'd have to be using an insanely low number of voters for it to even be plausible.
Let's say 101 voters each give Trump 5 stars.
Let's say 100 voters each give RFK JR 3 stars, Biden 2 stars, and Stein 1 star.
Let's say 100 voters each give Biden 3 stars.
301 voters
200 gave Biden stars
101 gave Trump stars
however,
Trump gets 501 stars
Biden gets 500 stars
RFK Jr gets 300 stars
Stein gets 100 stars
1401 stars, and with 501 Trump wins.
I'm not totally opposed to the idea, but it seems to have some weakness.
EDIT: just realized the math is off. 101 giving 5 stars each is 505 stars. Doesn't change outcome, just the math'll be slightly different.
It feels like you do not fully understand the system yet.
Yes trump and Biden win the most stars, and trump has ~~1~~ 5 more stars.
Then runoff happens. It's now a two-person race between the two individuals with the most stars.
Each person has their vote count towards the candidate they gave more stars to, with equal ratings being treated as abstained votes.
I am taking your writing to mean that if a candidate isn't mentioned for a group, then that group gave zero stars to that candidate. So that is now 200 voters who gave more stars to Biden than trump. Biden 200 - 101 Trump. Biden wins.
The star count only matters for the first stage in narrowing the playing field to two candidates. The actual vote then occurs in runoff. That is not a flaw. The system operated as intended, and the candidate preferred by the largest portion of society won.
505 not 501 stars: thanks for the correction.
Runoffs can be done without stars.
Runoffs would improve either form of counting.
That is a bit of a weird criticism of STAR voting. Scoring Then Automatic Runoff. The runoff is fundamentally a key stage of STAR voting.
I also do not think runoff fixes most voting systems. It isn't compatible with FPTP, approval voting with runoff would cause alot of vote erasure (if you approve of both finalists, your vote is ignored even if you approve one more than the other), and you'd fundamentally have to change how ranked choice works to accept runoff, to the point that you've essentially recreated STAR voting again (but with more or fewer boxes depending on how many candidates there are).
sortition
I want to expand the House to proper proportionality and staff it by sortition.
I still think an elected chamber is important. Might be better to create a third chamber filled by sortition. Legislation needs to pass 2 out of 3 chambers of Congress to get to the president. Call it the "House of Jurors" or something. It would consist of 5,000 members divided proportionally to by state or territorial population and selected by sortition among registered voters for a term of two months or until they quit (people can quit immediately if they don't want to serve). There is no formal debate, but members can talk to each other. No legislation can be introduced. Their only job is to show up and vote. The meeting place is a football stadium, once a week. Scantily-clad cheerleaders will be present for halftime and there will be free beer, Coca-Cola, and Costco hot dogs. Participants get $20,000 for their trouble. Accommodation provided free of charge at a hilariously large Motel 6.
All of this would probably still cost less to the taxpayers than Congressional salaries and expenses. And besides, what are corporate interests going to do, bribe five thousand people? Lol
Senate
The composition of the Senate is very problematic and also entrenched in the constitution and requires unanimous ratification to change.
If I recall correctly, that’s how the president of the government in The Songs of Distant Earth was chosen.
Proportional Instant Runoff Voting is usually just called Single Transferable Vote (STV). But there are others, the best one being Comparison of Pairs of Outcomes by the Single Transferable Vote (CPO-STV) which is STV but implementing Condorcet's method instead of IRV.