My main problem with STAR is that it seems to me like you should always give the highest available score to all candidates you don’t mind winning and give the other candidates a zero, because you know there are people giving the highest possible score to your dispreferred candidates and you want to offset their score total as much as possible.
So I feel like strategic voting would mostly trivialize STAR into a form of approval voting, which would still overly benefit the powers-that-be since most people would approve of the established candidates while fewer people would approve of the other candidates, who might be able to eke out a majority in ranked choice voting since they might be higher ranked than the established candidates.
But maybe I’m just not seeing the other strategic dimensions to giving the middle scores to some candidates.
Edit: The link by @themeatbridge is a very good explanation of the benefits of STAR over ranked choice voting! I for one am convinced.
That’s a viable voting strategy, if you’re voting against one specific candidate. But how often does that happen, where a voter truly has no preference between two candidates? But that’s hardly ever the case, and STAR voting strongly discourages running that kind of capaigning. Candidates want to build coalitions and find common ground, but also differentiate themselves without coming across as negative.
Nah, doing that will actually make your ballot less useful in cases where you approve of both the candidates that made it to a runoff round, because you ranked them both the same, and thus your ballot can’t count as a “vote” for either since you indicated no preference.
For single winner this is will probably be a rare issue but for multiwinner, which is what I want, that could end up biting you as the margins close in for the last seat
Haven’t done the math on how that would behave exactly, but you could effectively weight the rank of one group of candidates higher and one group lower while your total contribution is still the same, which has a similar effect as you mentioned with STAR but still forces a relative ranking to show preferences in between candidates you approve of and those you disapprove of.
Most any voting system would be better than what we have, but STAR is one that accomplishes the most. Several states and local governments have adopted Ramked Choice voting, only to face pushback when people realize that they still need to be strategic with their votes or risk being uncounted. With STAR, voters can be honest about their preferences, every vote is always counted, and there is less risk of spoiled ballots because of voter error. Votes can be counted locally and tabulated later, and fraud is harder to conceal.
Here’s more info on how it works and why it’s better for voters:
TIL about another way of voting—does it have an official name. My gut reaction is that while multiple votes would usually result in the same thing as rank choice votes, there is less preference information in your method. I suspect that it might end up electing less politically extreme candidates than ranked choice voting, but I feel like I could be wrong about that.
I do like the simplicity of your multiple votes method. I think it is easy to explain to people who maybe are off-put by ranked voting or other slightly more complex ways.
I think I would prefer ranked, but I would take pretty much anything to improve our system.
It doesn’t sound like an awful idea, but what if I don’t want my vote going to a candidate unless my first choice(s) don’t have a chance of being elected?
Like I always vote for eco or worker party here, but would absolutely put liberals as my third choice if only because I’d rather them over the conservatives.
But I really really don’t want liberals getting my vote unless I’m out of better options.
As a one-off election, you wouldn’t be able to. But in the real world, we get elections every few years, so you can see how many people approve of the eco or worker party. If it’s high enough that they can potentially take over the liberals, then you can safely drop your approval for them in the next election.
You’d have to scrap the presidential system then and move to a parliamentary system, since the presidential election is inherently fptp.
Also be aware that with a pure proportional system you’ll lose greatly in government stability, and I’m telling you as an Italian. The average duration of our governments is like on one point something years
For that system without popilar vote you’d have to do ranked choice, where the rank is in order of most to least votes. Each state votes all its electors for its top choice first, and then the ranked process goes from there.
Always thinking of ways they can game the system. I’d imagine they would just flood the ballot with names and tell their base the 50 or so people they would need to vote for.
What is your argument for this? Personally, my argument would be that its level of complication might be too much for a general election. Overall, though, it can be quite good. At the very least, it should be better than FPTP.
Just let people vote for as many candidates they want and choose the one or the ones that get the most votes.
What you are describing is a voting system called “approval voting”, which is actually quite good.
Ranked choice voting
STAR voting actually accomplishes what ranked choice aims to do.
At this point I’ll take any improvement
At this point, when any proposal is put forth, you have to ask yourself if it’s worse than what we currently have?
Proposal: Congressmen can challenge each other to fist fights. Senators can do the same, but have the option to use a knife.
Sure, it sounds insane, but is it worse?
Bring back duels for federal office! Worked for Burr!
I don’t know about worse. Make it a public spectacle, sell tickets, take bets, and cheer on your favorite blood thirsty politician.
We can all have popcorn when we watch “FIGHT NIGHT IN CONGRESS!”
My main problem with STAR is that it seems to me like you should always give the highest available score to all candidates you don’t mind winning and give the other candidates a zero, because you know there are people giving the highest possible score to your dispreferred candidates and you want to offset their score total as much as possible.
So I feel like strategic voting would mostly trivialize STAR into a form of approval voting, which would still overly benefit the powers-that-be since most people would approve of the established candidates while fewer people would approve of the other candidates, who might be able to eke out a majority in ranked choice voting since they might be higher ranked than the established candidates.
But maybe I’m just not seeing the other strategic dimensions to giving the middle scores to some candidates.
Edit: The link by @themeatbridge is a very good explanation of the benefits of STAR over ranked choice voting! I for one am convinced.
That’s a viable voting strategy, if you’re voting against one specific candidate. But how often does that happen, where a voter truly has no preference between two candidates? But that’s hardly ever the case, and STAR voting strongly discourages running that kind of capaigning. Candidates want to build coalitions and find common ground, but also differentiate themselves without coming across as negative.
https://www.equal.vote/star_vs_rcv
Nah, doing that will actually make your ballot less useful in cases where you approve of both the candidates that made it to a runoff round, because you ranked them both the same, and thus your ballot can’t count as a “vote” for either since you indicated no preference.
For single winner this is will probably be a rare issue but for multiwinner, which is what I want, that could end up biting you as the margins close in for the last seat
Ranked choice voting with room for blank spaces?
Haven’t done the math on how that would behave exactly, but you could effectively weight the rank of one group of candidates higher and one group lower while your total contribution is still the same, which has a similar effect as you mentioned with STAR but still forces a relative ranking to show preferences in between candidates you approve of and those you disapprove of.
Ahaha, yes, but have you perhaps considered the schulze method?
Would STAR voting be your preferred voting method? If so, why’s that?
Most any voting system would be better than what we have, but STAR is one that accomplishes the most. Several states and local governments have adopted Ramked Choice voting, only to face pushback when people realize that they still need to be strategic with their votes or risk being uncounted. With STAR, voters can be honest about their preferences, every vote is always counted, and there is less risk of spoiled ballots because of voter error. Votes can be counted locally and tabulated later, and fraud is harder to conceal.
Here’s more info on how it works and why it’s better for voters:
https://www.starvoting.org/star
I used to be of this opinion, however, after reading this article, I am now more in favor of something like approval voting or score voting.
Ranked choice is stupid and not needed. Just let people vote for as many candidates they want and choose the one or the ones that get the most votes.
TIL about another way of voting—does it have an official name. My gut reaction is that while multiple votes would usually result in the same thing as rank choice votes, there is less preference information in your method. I suspect that it might end up electing less politically extreme candidates than ranked choice voting, but I feel like I could be wrong about that.
I do like the simplicity of your multiple votes method. I think it is easy to explain to people who maybe are off-put by ranked voting or other slightly more complex ways.
I think I would prefer ranked, but I would take pretty much anything to improve our system.
It doesn’t sound like an awful idea, but what if I don’t want my vote going to a candidate unless my first choice(s) don’t have a chance of being elected?
Like I always vote for eco or worker party here, but would absolutely put liberals as my third choice if only because I’d rather them over the conservatives.
But I really really don’t want liberals getting my vote unless I’m out of better options.
As a one-off election, you wouldn’t be able to. But in the real world, we get elections every few years, so you can see how many people approve of the eco or worker party. If it’s high enough that they can potentially take over the liberals, then you can safely drop your approval for them in the next election.
Sounds like they’re describing what we call “approval voting”
I agree.
The system relies on voters having unique opinions. There’s a lot that could go wring, but its still way better than winner takes all.
That’s just approval voting
I refer you to this extremely informative and well-written article.
You’d have to scrap the presidential system then and move to a parliamentary system, since the presidential election is inherently fptp.
Also be aware that with a pure proportional system you’ll lose greatly in government stability, and I’m telling you as an Italian. The average duration of our governments is like on one point something years
Its not porportional its winner is whoever got most votes.
So the same you have now minus the grand elector bullshit?
For that system without popilar vote you’d have to do ranked choice, where the rank is in order of most to least votes. Each state votes all its electors for its top choice first, and then the ranked process goes from there.
Always thinking of ways they can game the system. I’d imagine they would just flood the ballot with names and tell their base the 50 or so people they would need to vote for.
Yeah that’s another issue. You’d need a primary with a cap for the number of candidates who can win.
What is your argument for this? Personally, my argument would be that its level of complication might be too much for a general election. Overall, though, it can be quite good. At the very least, it should be better than FPTP.
What you are describing is a voting system called “approval voting”, which is actually quite good.