What has PR/ranked choice done for any sovereign state that uses it?? You contrive a majority by reducing the choices available to people. STV and IRV have all been given their chance - but people are CONVINCED that it does something special just because they are currently using an even worse system.

They’re marginally better than FPTP, so you put them on a pedestal - but go to somewhere that already has STV or IRV, and what do they say? Are the electorate happy? Do they vehemently defend their system? Most likely not!!

This idea that we need fragmented governments filled with sectarian minority parties is just insane.

I don’t understand why people are so married to the concept of STV or IRV when we have lots of real world data concerning how elections actually play out over time and how we are still left with similar duopolies.

Whereas I see the most insane arguments against Approval Voting. The attacks on Approval Voting are always based on maximal strategic voting - even though the evidence suggests that Approval Voting encourages people to vote more sincerely.

Similarly, the fact that bullet voting makes it ‘identical’ to FPTP is a FEATURE - not a bug!! It makes it an easy sell to the electorate and prevents the need for explaining weird scenarios to them (at it’s worse, it’s the same as we already have now - at it’s best, a lot more people are happy)! It’s low risk and prevents tons of backlash.

Not to mention, when people talk about approval voting - everyone always talks about elections with 0 context or as if they exist within a vacuum rather than actual election cycles. No one wants to talk about the indirect election effect that approval votes have - in the way that they might not give you exactly who you want today - but they boost approvals of your favourite candidates and prevent you needing to give out so many ‘safety’ votes next time around.

Over time, loud minorities get drowned out - and that is a GOOD thing!! Representation should spread out from the median - not in from the fringes!!

I seriously struggle to understand. The experts are genuinely in agreement that range-voting methods work best. And you only have so much political capital - especially when it comes to something as unpopular as electoral reforms.

I live in the UK, and the way that everyone is rallying behind STV seriously makes me worry about the backlash and pushing progress back decades. Once we change it - that’s it. We don’t get another chance - and the electorate will say “we already tried that, and now you’re just going to change things to try to get what you want again!” My brain hurts just thinking about it.

Edit: another thing. People always say “How do I know where to cut off my vote/approvals?” And the answer is literally that you just don’t vote for anyone who you DISapprove of. If everyone did that then you would get a proper democracy where pure numbers actually determine the outcome. Sure, you can say “well is that what people would actually do?” And the answer is that people will be responsive to the political environment.

When populist politics are high, people will withhold votes from “the other side” more readily - and elect the ‘mildest’ candidate - but when politicians are building consensus with each other and working together, people will hand out votes more liberally - and then you get a positive feedback loop towards particular candidates with the most hype.

I just don’t understand why we don’t want that??

I would like to make a poll here about the direction of electoral reform.

Many people who oppose FPTP / plurality voting probably agree that it has serious problems. It can create spoiler effects, strategic voting, minority winners, two-party domination, and incentives for candidates to mobilize only their core base instead of seeking broader acceptance from the electorate.

But when it comes to the question of what should replace FPTP, electoral reformers often have different institutional goals.

I want to simplify the discussion into two broad directions:

1. Centripetal democracy: encouraging candidates to seek broader acceptance

The core idea of centripetal democracy is this: Electoral systems should not merely reward the candidate who is best at mobilizing a loyal base. Instead, they should encourage candidates to seek second preferences, third preferences, or broader support in head-to-head comparisons.

This perspective is often associated with scholars such as Donald Horowitz and Benjamin Reilly. Their main concern is that, in divided societies, multiethnic societies, or highly polarized political environments, electoral systems can be designed to give candidates incentives to reach beyond their own camp and seek preference support from other groups. This is sometimes called vote-pooling.

This reform direction focuses more on who can become a broadly acceptable winner in a single office or single-member district.

Possible effects include:

• Candidates may find it harder to win merely by using extreme rhetoric to mobilize a loyal base.
• Politicians may need to seek second-preference support from voters outside their own camp.
• The winner may be more broadly acceptable, rather than simply representing the largest core base.
• Electoral competition may shift from “intensifying us-versus-them conflict” toward “expanding acceptability.”
• Policy may become more stable, with fewer large-scale retaliatory reversals after alternation in power.

Examples of systems that may fit this direction include:

• IRV / Alternative Vote
• Condorcet methods, such as Minimax, Ranked Pairs, and Schulze
• Two-round system
• Approval Voting
• Score Voting
• STAR Voting

Condorcet methods are especially relevant here. They emphasize that if there is a candidate who would defeat every other candidate in head-to-head contests, that candidate should win. This is often seen as a way to identify a candidate who is acceptable to a majority against each alternative.

2. Consensus democracy: making legislatures more inclusive of plural viewpoints

Another reform direction is consensus democracy.

This concept is often associated with Arend Lijphart. He argues that democracy does not have to mean that the majority wins all political power. Democracy can also use proportional representation, coalition government, power-sharing, and multiparty negotiation to include more social groups in decision-making.

Consensus democracy is not necessarily focused on who wins a single office. Its main concern is whether the overall political system gives different groups representation and space for negotiation.

This reform direction focuses more on whether the legislature as a whole can include diverse political forces, rather than allowing one large party to dominate politics with a plurality-based seat advantage.

Possible effects include:

• Legislative seats may correspond more closely to voters’ actual support.
• Smaller and emerging parties may have more room to survive.
• Winner-take-all domination by one large party or bloc may be reduced.
• Coalition government, cross-party bargaining, and policy compromise may be encouraged.
• The system may be better suited for handling conflicting interests and values in plural societies.

Examples of systems that may fit this direction include:

• Party-list PR
• STV
• MMP
• Open-list PR

Compared with centripetal democracy, consensus democracy does not necessarily aim to elect the “most centrist” single candidate. It places more emphasis on overall representation and power-sharing, allowing different political forces to exist proportionally in the legislature and then form governments or policies through negotiation.

3. The two approaches can partly be combined

In my view, centripetal democracy and consensus democracy are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

For example, a country could use IRV, Condorcet, or a two-round system for single offices or single-member districts, so that candidates must seek broader support. At the same time, another chamber or proportional tier could use STV, party-list PR, or MMP to ensure that diverse viewpoints are represented.

Australia is one example worth discussing. The Australian House of Representatives uses preferential voting / IRV, so single-member district competition is not simply FPTP. Meanwhile, the Australian Senate uses STV, which gives smaller parties and more diverse political forces greater opportunities for representation.

In other words, one institutional design can pursue several goals at once:

• Broad acceptability in single offices or single-member districts;
• Proportionality and plural representation in the legislature as a whole;
• Negotiation and stability in government formation.

4. But for this poll, I will still provide only two options

Although the two approaches can be combined to some extent, in real-world politics many countries cannot freely redesign their entire political system.

In some countries, constitutional amendment is extremely difficult. Some countries cannot easily change presidentialism, parliamentarism, bicameralism, or the electoral system for a particular office. Some reformers can only work within the existing institutional framework and prioritize one reform direction first.

Therefore, in this poll, I am not listing “combine both” as a third main option. Instead, I want to ask a more basic question:

If you could only prioritize one reform direction, which one would you support more?

Poll options

• Centripetal Democracy

I place more importance on encouraging candidates to seek broader acceptance. I tend to support systems such as IRV, Condorcet, two-round voting, Approval, or STAR as replacements for FPTP, especially for single offices or single-member districts.

• Consensus Democracy

I place more importance on making legislatures more representative of diverse political forces. I tend to support systems such as PR, STV, MMP, or party-list PR as replacements for FPTP, with the goal of encouraging coalition government, cross-party negotiation, and power-sharing.

My question is:

After opposing FPTP, what should electoral reform prioritize?

Should it prioritize electing candidates who are more broadly acceptable? Or should it prioritize building legislatures and governments that can better include plural viewpoints?

View Poll

I have been exploring alternative voting systems to first past the post, and so far am a fan of STV. I was looking at real-world examples of STV, and I noticed that the Republic of Ireland uses STV, but each of the constituencies have different amounts of seats allocated to them (3-5). Does this affect fairness between constituencies?

I am designing a possible ballot format for a ranked runoff election.

The basic idea is that a preliminary first round would narrow the field to either the top 3 or top 4 candidates. These candidates would then advance to a ranked runoff.

In the runoff, voters would not manually rank the candidates by writing numbers next to each name. Instead, the ballot would list every possible complete ranking, and each voter would choose one complete ranking.

For 3 candidates, there are 6 possible rankings.
For 4 candidates, there are 24 possible rankings.

For 3 candidates:

1.Vertical Full-Ranking Ballot 

https://preview.redd.it/m504hyaw5e2h1.png?width=575&format=png&auto=webp&s=8566841c2f340f25f5df39cd885daed08b9cd73b

2.Horizontal Full-Ranking Ballot

https://preview.redd.it/dc98c5ca6e2h1.png?width=671&format=png&auto=webp&s=58c36b697e098b8d08311b6dc5a6d93a2640c4be

3.Numerical Preference Matrix Ballot

https://preview.redd.it/hk3h1oud6e2h1.png?width=446&format=png&auto=webp&s=e1e08d4b5340ad944f7e8e6aa0663e1c78721d3d

Meaning of the numbers in the table:

1 = most preferred, 2 = second preferred, 3 = least preferred.

For 4 candidates:

https://preview.redd.it/gkd63lyz6e2h1.png?width=969&format=png&auto=webp&s=a164688a1b7e486c89febd47d1ce220e28a414ff

Meaning of the numbers:

1 = most preferred, 2 = second preferred, 3 = third preferred, 4 = least preferred.

Advantages over separate head-to-head matchup questions

Compared with asking voters to answer separate head-to-head matchup questions — 3 matchups for 3 candidates, or 6 matchups for 4 candidates — I think this design may have several advantages.

First, it may be faster to count and easier to audit, because each voter selects only one complete ranking. Election officials can simply tally how many voters chose each ranking, and then derive all pairwise results from those totals.

Second, each individual ballot is guaranteed to be internally consistent. A voter cannot accidentally create an intransitive preference cycle, such as Alice > Bob, Bob > Charlie, and Charlie > Alice, on the same ballot. Of course, a Condorcet cycle could still appear in the aggregate electorate, but it would not be caused by an individual voter filling out contradictory pairwise answers.

It didn't tell me anything I didn't know, or even really sketch a path forward, but it's always encouraging to hear anyone say that Proportional Representation is even possible in America. Lee's always worth a listen. Did anyone else hear the interview?

Anti-plurality is truly terrible. IRV still suffers from center-splitting (and -splitting in general).

Just how badly would an IRV-variant that on each round instead of throwing out the smallest top-rank, instead throws out the largest bottom-ranked? Is this a proposed system, and if so what is it called? What are the obvious terrible failure modes? And to what degree are they ameliorated by BTR-IRV equivalents of taking full-rankings between the two most-hated in determining which to eliminate?

I found this poll on r/polls that requires the respondent to choose from one of six preference orders of three dating candidates. If this were an election, the preference order with the most votes would win.

https://www.reddit.com/r/polls/comments/1sorpy3/from_most_likely_to_least_likely_in_what_order/

Would a ballot of this type be Condorcet-compliant? If so, would it be a valid alternative to voting each pairwise matchup individually as proposed in https://www.reddit.com/r/EndFPTP/comments/1tacszu/what_is_consensus_voting_legislator_wants_to/ (which allows voters to mark down Condorcet cycles on their ballot) in situations where ranked ballots are not allowed?

First, I know there is a more complicated set of factors that caused voters’ interest in trump. I’m not trying to argue for a simplistic explanation.

But, I do think that we should and would have had both a majority of voters, institutions and elites that would have united against him but for our two party system.

I don’t want to tldr like I usually do about this, especially to this audience, but basically our whole political system is set up as US and them, with fewer and fewer voters actually willing to vote for candidates of either party.

In a system with three or more parties, if a trump comes along who repulses the elites of the party that he is running in That party’s voters, likely including some of the elites themselves, will be far more likely to vote against their party should the trump succeed in winning its nomination than they proved to be in our highly polarized two party system.

Likewise a Congress made up of 3+ parties becomes far more likely to impeach him. Even if a conservative party doesn’t fear their voters switching to the progressive party, they will understand that voters switching to a center party is a more significant threat.

I just see our two party system complete with partisan primary enforcement mechanisms (to maintain control of the elected members) as a house of cards that trump never would’ve been able to scale (or keep upright if he theoretically did) but for the dynamics associated with that system.

I know this is theoretical and that the EC doesn’t actually make multi party competition workable in presidential elections, but the dynamics are what they are and it seems plain that they are what enabled trump to both take over the Republican Party and then win the presidency.

Does it seem as plain to other people who recognize the flaws in our voting system? If not why?

I've been seeing proposals for top-3 Condorcet systems lately and I was wondering about the first round: if a candidate gains an absolute majority in the first round, are they necessarily the Condorcet winner, thus obviating the need for a second round? My gut says yes, and in any case, this seems like a fair streamlining, to use the top-3 Condorcet as a runoff rather than a mandatory second round.

>“Though I voted in favor of S.B. 63, the problems ranked choice voting sought to address are very real,” Blessing said. “I have introduced S.B. 395 that captures all of the benefits of ranked choice voting with none of its flaws. Weep not for ranked choice voting when we could have this better system known as consensus voting.”

>Under S.B. 395, all candidates for an office would appear on a single primary ballot, regardless of party affiliation. Voters could select up to three candidates, and the top three vote-getters would advance to the general election.

Blessing seems to be coordinating with Better Choices for Ohio

Modern legal warfare, in this case spearheaded by the Heritage Foundatiob, targets automated signature validation to manufacture logistical bottlenecks. By exploiting outdated procedural requirements, a small minority creates systemic delays, aiming to veto the majority’s will through “legal games.”

https://open.substack.com/pub/skybird2395/p/the-paper-coup-how-minority-rule?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=android&r=1fiew6