User:Lucasvb/Is Instant-Runoff Voting the right voting system for you?: Difference between revisions
User:Lucasvb/Is Instant-Runoff Voting the right voting system for you? (view source)
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Now Let's see how well Instant-Runoff Voting addresses your concerns on the following scale: {{User:Lucasvb/Template:Bad}} {{User:Lucasvb/Template:OK}} {{User:Lucasvb/Template:Good}}
Note: Many questions overlap, but their wording may reflect different approaches to the same issues.
=== I want to... Move away from the broken principles of FPTP and runoff elections ===
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{{User:Lucasvb/Template:Good}}
IRV's use of ranked ballots means people are allowed to be more ''expressive'', offering much more information to the system than "name only one" voting systems like FPTP or runoffs.
However, this does '''''not''''' mean the information is ''actually used'' during the vote counting process. The information is in the ballots, but in a lot of ways it doesn't get used for anything.
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{{User:Lucasvb/Template:Bad}}
=== I want to... Allow voters to always support
{{User:Lucasvb/Template:
In Instant-Runoff Voting, you will never help other candidates unless your first choice gets eliminated. This means you can be sure that your current top choice will always get your full support on every elimination round, and therefore, you are free to rank the candidates in order of preference as they are eliminated.
However, this property also means you cannot ''always'' safely support your favorite first. There is a fundamental trade-off between "you can always support your favorite" and "you can always support candidates other than your favorite". The only voting systems that have both properties are exceptionally complicated, and not very good to begin with.
So you must choose whether always supporting your favorite is more important than always supporting other candidates.
=== I want to... Break free of polarization and partisanship by electing more consensus candidates ===
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{{User:Lucasvb/Template:OK}}
Since the votes third parties receive must be transferred and this transfer is important to the results, this means third parties get more attention and participation in the media.
However, in places that have used IRV for a long time like in Australia, you still have political analysis and election results being presented as [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-party-preferred_vote two-party preferred vote], which effectively ignores much of the information in the ballots and gives third-parties much less exposure. So in practice, it seems that IRV promotes a political bipolarization narrative in the media.
=== I want to... Allow third parties to be taken more seriously by the mainstream parties ===
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{{User:Lucasvb/Template:OK}}
The transfer of votes that happens under IRV tends to
However, since similar candidates still split votes and may risk eliminating one another, in highly-competitive scenarios this may still lead to some in-fighting and negative campaigning, which will act as a weak spot that can be exploited by opposing groups.
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This will also show up in pre-election polls, where third parties will get small percentage of supporters, reinforcing the idea that these parties are never going to make it big. This consistently reduces confidence of voters in supporting them, regardless or not if the voters will be transferred.
In effect, IRV was ''designed'' to deal with a "two and a half parties" scenario, and because of that it tends to perpetuate it. This is something that has been consistently observed in Australia, which has used IRV for over 100 years.
=== I want to... Have important consensus issues dominating the discussion ===
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{{User:Lucasvb/Template:Bad}}
IRV favors polarization, as vote splitting still occurs. Whenever voters must take sides and the largest groups wins, the sides will have to maximally compete with one another even if they significantly agree. Overall, the result of this is that petty differences are highlighted much more than important issues and policy.
If a voting system is not designed to work within this "taking sides" paradigm, there is no such problem.
=== I want to... Have a more cooperative non-partisan political culture ===
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{{User:Lucasvb/Template:Bad}}
IRV doubles down and amplifies the factionalism that we all hate
=== I want to... Have pre-election polls which reflect the honest opinion of voters ===
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The distortion discourages voters from promoting good candidates they believe in because they would rather promote another candidate with more chances first to prevent it from being eliminated.
=== I want to... Give voters the choice to support candidates weakly or strongly ===
{{User:Lucasvb/Template:Bad}}
Under IRV, candidates beyond your current top choice receive '''no support''' from you. Most ballot information doesn't even get considered in statistics due to this.
IRV is designed so that voters are ''always'' giving 100% of support to one candidate, and 0% to everyone else. Having multiple elimination steps doesn't change this.
=== I want to... Have election results which reflect the honest opinions of the population ===
{{User:Lucasvb/Template:Bad}}
Since only first preferences are important at any given elimination step, upcoming and rising parties may never be seen as such in the results. For example, let's suppose a small third party gets people excited and manages to secure 20% of the first-preference votes on the first step of elimination, compared to 30-40% of other mainstream candidates.
That upcoming candidate will be eliminated, and that will be the end of it. All the results will report the "20%" and nothing more.
But what if that candidate was the ''second'' preference of 80%-90% of the voters, reaching across the isle and gathering genuine bipartisan support? That information would never have been even '''talked''' about or seen by anyone, because preferences past the top choice are never looked upon without elimination of the top choice. Everyone who supported mainstream candidates only showed support for them and nobody else.
Wouldn't you agree that this would severely misrepresent the genuine opinion of the population about that upcoming party?
=== I want to... Have election results which represents everyone, not just a group of voters ===
{{User:Lucasvb/Template:Bad}}
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{{User:Lucasvb/Template:Bad}}
IRV is a super old system that has achieved very little in 100+ years of use. It is doubling down on every issue of FPTP, because the system is
=== I want to... Prevent
{{User:Lucasvb/Template:Bad}}
The way IRV addresses strategy is by making
=== I want to... Prevent
{{User:Lucasvb/Template:Good}}
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