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Maine votes to use Ranked Choice Voting

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  • #16
    Originally posted by Sparko View Post
    So I voted for Hillary, she lost, so I get to vote for Bernie as second choice? That is like getting a do-over and a second vote. Basically Bernie gets all of Hillary's votes PLUS his own follower's votes and beats Trump? And you don't think that would be unfair?
    No, I don't see how it would be unfair. Trump would be in the same boat. Evan McMullin's independent candidacy to challenge Trump probably would have gotten even more traction under this system, and there's a good chance he actually would have carried Utah as some polls a couple of months before the election suggested.
    "I am not angered that the Moral Majority boys campaign against abortion. I am angry when the same men who say, "Save OUR children" bellow "Build more and bigger bombers." That's right! Blast the children in other nations into eternity, or limbless misery as they lay crippled from "OUR" bombers! This does not jell." - Leonard Ravenhill

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    • #17
      More generally: This would have the advantage of allowing voters to vote for who they believe is the best candidate rather than who they think is most likely to win among any candidates they find acceptable. The latter consideration prevents any meaningful challenge to the two party status quo which I think most voters will admit is unsatisfying.
      "I am not angered that the Moral Majority boys campaign against abortion. I am angry when the same men who say, "Save OUR children" bellow "Build more and bigger bombers." That's right! Blast the children in other nations into eternity, or limbless misery as they lay crippled from "OUR" bombers! This does not jell." - Leonard Ravenhill

      Comment


      • #18
        Ranked choice voting seems to generally be viewed by modern day politician scientists as one of the best voting systems available (especially in its multi-seat form where 2-4 seats are combined into larger seats that have 2-4 representatives elected to fill them).

        The only voting system I'm aware of that generally seems to be regarded as better is Range Voting (or Approval Voting in its simplified form), where voters score each candidate out of 5 or 3 or 2. e.g.


        or in the out-of-2 version known as approval voting, where you give each candidate an 'approve' or 'disapprove' (by voting or not voting for them in the example below):
        "I hate him passionately", he's "a demonic force" - Tucker Carlson, in private, on Donald Trump
        "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" - George Orwell
        "[Capitalism] as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy" - Albert Einstein

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        • #19
          BTW, Maine's ranked choice method is not really suitable for US presidential elections because of the existence of the Electoral College. It could only be implemented for national presidential elections if there was an constitutional change or an interstate compact to remove or rig the Electoral College. So although Sparko and I have been using Bernie, Hillary and Trump in our examples, it's worth clarifying that this method cannot actually be applied to Presidential elections the way things currently stand.

          The ranked choice method is fine for all other elections though (congress, senate, state congress and state senate, governor, mayors, city councils, judges etc).
          "I hate him passionately", he's "a demonic force" - Tucker Carlson, in private, on Donald Trump
          "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" - George Orwell
          "[Capitalism] as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy" - Albert Einstein

          Comment


          • #20
            Originally posted by Roy View Post
            No, because Donald would have acquired all the votes for Rand, Herman, Jeb, Bobby, Rick, Mitt, etc. Quit being a snowflake.
            That's not how elections work. In the Presidential election you would have one final candidate for each party. Republican, Democrat, and Independent. I was thinking of Sanders as an independent. So if the votes were 45% Hillary, 49% Trump, and 6% Sanders, then instead of Trump winning, all of the votes that went for Hillary could go for Sanders and Sanders could end up with 51% of the vote and win. All of the Hillary voters would basically have a second vote and cast it for Sanders.

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            • #21
              Originally posted by Starlight View Post
              So in this example case, you're saying the majority of voters prefer Bernie to Trump, yet you think it's "unfair" that a vote-counting system should produce an outcome where Bernie beats Trump in such a situation? I think that's actually exactly the outcome a vote-counting system should produce.

              Unfortunately in the situation you outline, ranked choice voting actually doesn't produce the outcome you suggest, because its algorithm removes candidates from the bottom-up not top-down. So if people's first votes are Trump 45%, Hillary 35%, Bernie 20%, the system does not wipe out Hillary like you suggest and then look at her voters' 2nd preferences. The system wipes out the lowest first-preference getter, which is Bernie at 20%. With Bernie gone, it looks at the Bernie-voters 2nd preferences and adds them to the Hillary-Trump tallies. Let's say all Bernie voters put Hillary 2nd. Then it would be a Trump 45%, Hillary 55% match-up in the second round, and thus Hillary wins. The voting system has produced this result because the majority of the voters preferred Hillary to Trump.

              But what you might reasonably argue to be unfair is that Hillary won over Bernie. Because, let's say 100% of the Trump voters had listed Bernie second and left off Hillary entirely because they loathe her - Bernie would then be the candidate most liked overall by voters out of the 3 available candidates, but the algorithm never even looked at the Trump voter's 2nd preferences so it never spotted this. (There are other ways of implementing ranked choice algorithms that do spot this, e.g. if a voter has ranked a candidate #1 that candidate gets 3 'points' and if #2 the candidate gets 2 'points' and if #3 the candidate gets 1 'point', and then all points are totaled and the candidate with the most points wins) It's possible to construct situations where the outcome looks a bit 'unfair'. But the voting system overall is still leagues ahead of plurality voting in terms of general fairness and allowing voters to express their preferences.
              so it is backwards from what I suggested? OK same result. Someone who's candidate loses gets to vote again for another candidate. a second vote and like in your example, a losing candidate can sweep up the other losing candidates votes and win.

              And you guys were upset because Hillary won the popular vote but not the electoral votes?

              Can you imagine if Trump had won because he garnered the votes from a third party candidate? Ha!

              All of these schemes the democrats keep coming up with are only because they lost. If their person was in power and some republican suggested something like this, or eliminating the electoral college, the democrats would be screaming about how we need to respect the constitution and the founding fathers knew what they were doing.

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              • #22
                Originally posted by Roy View Post
                No, because Donald would have acquired all the votes for Rand, Herman, Jeb, Bobby, Rick, Mitt, etc. Quit being a snowflake.
                Many of those who voted for "Rand, Herman, Jeb, Bobby, Rick, Mitt, etc" would have been very displeased if their vote was suddenly transferred to Trump. That was not the person who they voted for.

                I'm always still in trouble again

                "You're by far the worst poster on TWeb" and "TWeb's biggest liar" --starlight (the guy who says Stalin was a right-winger)
                "Overall I would rate the withdrawal from Afghanistan as by far the best thing Biden's done" --Starlight
                "Of course, human life begins at fertilization that’s not the argument." --Tassman

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                • #23
                  Originally posted by rogue06 View Post
                  Many of those who voted for "Rand, Herman, Jeb, Bobby, Rick, Mitt, etc" would have been very displeased if their vote was suddenly transferred to Trump. That was not the person who they voted for.
                  And you don't think that applies symmetrically to Hillary/Bernie?
                  Jorge: Functional Complex Information is INFORMATION that is complex and functional.

                  MM: First of all, the Bible is a fixed document.
                  MM on covid-19: We're talking about an illness with a better than 99.9% rate of survival.

                  seer: I believe that so called 'compassion' [for starving Palestinian kids] maybe a cover for anti Semitism, ...

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                  • #24
                    Originally posted by Sparko View Post
                    That's not how elections work. In the Presidential election you would have one final candidate for each party. Republican, Democrat, and Independent. I was thinking of Sanders as an independent.
                    But you aren't capable of thinking of Rand Paul as an independent.
                    So if the votes were 45% Hillary, 49% Trump, and 6% Sanders, then instead of Trump winning, all of the votes that went for Hillary could go for Sanders ...
                    Or of understanding something before you criticise it as unfair.
                    Jorge: Functional Complex Information is INFORMATION that is complex and functional.

                    MM: First of all, the Bible is a fixed document.
                    MM on covid-19: We're talking about an illness with a better than 99.9% rate of survival.

                    seer: I believe that so called 'compassion' [for starving Palestinian kids] maybe a cover for anti Semitism, ...

                    Comment


                    • #25
                      Originally posted by Roy View Post
                      And you don't think that applies symmetrically to Hillary/Bernie?
                      I don't recall a Never Hillary movement among the Democrats.

                      A lot of folks were none too pleased about rigged primaries and the like and don't want the powers that be selecting who wins. They want their vote to go to who they voted for, not be given to someone else.

                      I'm always still in trouble again

                      "You're by far the worst poster on TWeb" and "TWeb's biggest liar" --starlight (the guy who says Stalin was a right-winger)
                      "Overall I would rate the withdrawal from Afghanistan as by far the best thing Biden's done" --Starlight
                      "Of course, human life begins at fertilization that’s not the argument." --Tassman

                      Comment


                      • #26
                        Originally posted by rogue06 View Post
                        I don't recall a Never Hillary movement among the Democrats.

                        A lot of folks were none too pleased about rigged primaries and the like and don't want the powers that be selecting who wins. They want their vote to go to who they voted for, not be given to someone else.
                        Again, you need to make sure you understand a concept before you criticise it. You shouldn't be making these errors, rogue. You're smarter than this.
                        Jorge: Functional Complex Information is INFORMATION that is complex and functional.

                        MM: First of all, the Bible is a fixed document.
                        MM on covid-19: We're talking about an illness with a better than 99.9% rate of survival.

                        seer: I believe that so called 'compassion' [for starving Palestinian kids] maybe a cover for anti Semitism, ...

                        Comment


                        • #27
                          Originally posted by Roy View Post
                          Again, you need to make sure you understand a concept before you criticise it. You shouldn't be making these errors, rogue. You're smarter than this.
                          We have this quaint concept here about one person one vote. If your candidate loses you don't get a second vote which is in effect what happens if you get to shift it.

                          I'm always still in trouble again

                          "You're by far the worst poster on TWeb" and "TWeb's biggest liar" --starlight (the guy who says Stalin was a right-winger)
                          "Overall I would rate the withdrawal from Afghanistan as by far the best thing Biden's done" --Starlight
                          "Of course, human life begins at fertilization that’s not the argument." --Tassman

                          Comment


                          • #28
                            Originally posted by rogue06 View Post
                            I don't recall a Never Hillary movement among the Democrats.

                            A lot of folks were none too pleased about rigged primaries and the like and don't want the powers that be selecting who wins. They want their vote to go to who they voted for, not be given to someone else.
                            In my understanding, it would go to who they voted for - just not necessarily their top preference. If someone ONLY wanted, e.g., Rand to win, they'd only vote for Rand - and their vote would not be given to someone else. If they only voted for Rand and Herman, once those two were eliminated their vote would not go to anyone else.
                            Enter the Church and wash away your sins. For here there is a hospital and not a court of law. Do not be ashamed to enter the Church; be ashamed when you sin, but not when you repent. – St. John Chrysostom

                            Veritas vos Liberabit<>< Learn Greek <>< Look here for an Orthodox Church in America<><Ancient Faith Radio
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                            I recommend you do not try too hard and ...research as little as possible. Such weighty things give me a headache. - Shunyadragon, Baha'i apologist

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                            • #29
                              Originally posted by One Bad Pig View Post
                              In my understanding, it would go to who they voted for - just not necessarily their top preference. If someone ONLY wanted, e.g., Rand to win, they'd only vote for Rand - and their vote would not be given to someone else. If they only voted for Rand and Herman, once those two were eliminated their vote would not go to anyone else.
                              So much for one person one vote.

                              I'm always still in trouble again

                              "You're by far the worst poster on TWeb" and "TWeb's biggest liar" --starlight (the guy who says Stalin was a right-winger)
                              "Overall I would rate the withdrawal from Afghanistan as by far the best thing Biden's done" --Starlight
                              "Of course, human life begins at fertilization that’s not the argument." --Tassman

                              Comment


                              • #30
                                Originally posted by rogue06 View Post
                                I don't recall a Never Hillary movement among the Democrats.
                                It was called Bernie or Bust. I supported it.

                                They want their vote to go to who they voted for
                                That's what ranked choice voting does.


                                Originally posted by Sparko View Post
                                All of these schemes the democrats keep coming up with are only because they lost.
                                I've supported it since 1994 when I first learned about because my country had a referendum on what voting system to use (we'd previously used plurality voting). Ranked choice voting was the method I supported to win the referendum. It didn't, and we got a different system instead, which is still vastly better than plurality voting. The very next election after the change (1996) gave representation to 4 additional minor parties.

                                In Maine, the primary impetus is their crazy governor Paul LePage. His approval rating is negative, and so many people keep trying to run against him simultaneously to get rid of him that they end up splitting up the anti-LePage vote between them and so he skates through with a plurality and keeps on being in office despite the populace hating him. So they want a voting system that can actually detect that everyone hates LePage and that he therefore shouldn't win.
                                "I hate him passionately", he's "a demonic force" - Tucker Carlson, in private, on Donald Trump
                                "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" - George Orwell
                                "[Capitalism] as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy" - Albert Einstein

                                Comment

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