u/unscrupulous-canoe

>The findings of the experiment were stark. I found that RCV produced significantly lower levels of voter confidence, voter satisfaction, and ease of use. It also increased the perception that the voting process was slanted against the respondent’s party.....

>One of the main claims made by reformers about RCV is that it will make campaigns more civil, as campaigns will have an incentive to seek the second-place vote of supporters of different candidates. To study this claim, I first conducted a difference-in-differences analysis on independent expenditures for and against candidates. In this analysis, I found that negative spending increased significantly in Maine following the implementation of ranked-choice voting, casting doubt on the claim that RCV makes campaigns more civil.....

>On a positive note for RCV reformers, I found that voting for non-major party candidates — which reformers tout as “sincere voting” instead of voting for a candidate simply due to their realistic chance of winning — was increased by 5 points among the respondents who were given the RCV ballot instead of the traditional ballot.....

As the title states. Recommending PR for the US is a hot topic these days, and people like Lee Drutman make it sound like the US would turn into a 4-6 party system. But I believe American PR would retain two major party blocs, with a couple of smaller & frankly not very relevant parties- more like the UK today. Why?

• Absolutely enormous path dependence on having 2 major parties. The US has had the same 2 parties since the 1850s, which is older than most democracies today. The US was arguably always a 2 party system even prior to the 1850s (Federalists and anti-Federalists, etc.). America is not going to suddenly change her stripes after 250ish years of being run by 2 major parties
• Similarly, the race for the presidency would incentivize bipolar competition
• The Senate can, by unalterable constitutional design, never be proportional. I always find it amazing that people handwave 'the US can adopt PR' without noting that only the House, specifically, can
• So with 1 Senator per-state, this incentivizes 2 major blocs. Same thing with state governorships- single winner offices tend to incentivize a 2 party system

So you'd probably end up with 2 major parties who trade the presidency between them- and then 2-3 smaller parties who regularly win House seats but never control of a chamber. Which I guess is a mildly interesting system, and I guess you could argue is superior to what we have now? But it's hardly the major change that Drutman et al make it out to be.

Also interesting to think about who exactly would get control of the legacy Democratic & Republican party brands, versus who gets kicked to the curb. In the specific case of the Dems it's quite possible that PR would weaken the relatively far-left because they'd be kicked out of the formal party structure. Just a thought!

In regular TWS, not without needing an external script. Example- buy at $100. I want the trailing stop of let's say .5% to kick in at 1% gain ($101), and respect a stop loss at $101. So the product can sell either because the trailing stop is activated, or because it hits $101. I know how to set a trailing stop that starts activation above a given price point, but not 'sell when the trailing stop activates or when I hit $101, either or'

Example- buy at $100. I want the trailing stop of let's say .5% to kick in at 1% gain ($101), and respect a stop loss at $101. So the product can sell either because the trailing stop is activated, or because it hits $101. I know how to set a trailing stop that starts activation above a given price point, but not 'sell when the trailing stop activates or when I hit $101, either or'

Matthew Shugart (one of the more accomplished political scientists of the last 75 years) asks why Graham Platner is going to win the Democratic nomination in Maine, if RCV is supposedly such a moderating influence.

I think rather than get in a foodfight about Platner's candidacy, it seems notable that single member districts just do not seem to support multiple viable candidates for office- even in a primary. This is pretty bad news for every anti-FPTP reform, from RCV to approval to STAR/Score/Condorcet whatever. All of these assume that multiple strong candidates will enter the race, and then postulate that their system allows for the greatest voter satisfaction. In practice, I'm just not seeing evidence that multiple candidates want to run for high-profile public office under RCV. (To be fair, there seem to be more in lower-level offices like mayor, state rep, etc.)

Alaska tried to get around this by mandating 4 candidates in the general election. The parties promptly circumvented this by pressuring lower-performing candidates to drop out (the Republicans literally did this last election to clear the way for Begich). Yes there are still 4 candidates in Alaskan races, but the bottom 2 are fringe candidates that no one's ever heard of or will vote for.

All of this is just a big, big problem for voting reform theorists. I guess to be fair we could still try San Francisco-style RCV, with no primaries and one big general election. Still, it's not a great look for reformers. I will quote Shugart:

>The (American) RCV activists have assured us that RCV in single-seat contests would open up contests and lower barriers to entry. So the fact that there are only, at this stage, two serious candidates is precisely a huge piece of evidence against one of the key tenets of the advocates.

I know there was a little discussion of this in the comments the other week, but feels like we should have a whole thread dedicated to it. A bill in the Ohio legislature would establish the following:

A two round system, where every candidate can run in the 1st round. The top 3 vote getters move onto the 2nd round (a bit like Alaska), and in that 2nd round voters are asked to pick them in a head-to-head matchup. A vs. B, B vs. C, A vs. C.

https://ohiosenate.gov/members/louis-w-blessing-iii/news/blessing-introduces-bill-establishing-a-consensus-voting-system-in-ohio

It seems...... OK to me? I'm not going to say it's 'fantastic' or will radically change American politics, but it is- Condorcet. Precinct-summable and fast.. Fairly easy to explain. Tolerates incomplete vote totals (i.e. if you want to bullet vote that doesn't break anything). Relatively cognitively simple for voters (will some voters not fill out all 3 matchups? Sure, but again the system can survive that). In theory requires candidates to attract a fairly large base. I'd be willing to give it a shot at the state level and see how it works?