• gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    3
    ·
    5 months ago

    Can we talk about RCV just one fucking time without someone mentioning “it has a ton of problems”, as if that makes it worse than FPTP? Because I honestly struggle to think of a single thing FPTP is better at than RCV.

    Don’t let perfection be the enemy of good (or more accurately, meaningful incremental improvement).

    • borebore@lemmy.worldOPM
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      5 months ago

      Agreed. It is harder to explain, but better in every other way. Not much of a down side in my book.

    • tyler@programming.dev
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      5 months ago

      Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply it’s worse than Plurality, as it’s not. But if we’re going to change voting systems then it’s only ever going to happen once. If we fuck it up it ain’t happening again, and we’ve already fucked up IRV/RCV in several locales in the US. We need to switch to something that has almost 0 problems, like 3-2-1 or STAR voting. You’re going to have to explain it to the populace anyway. Better to get something that’s almost perfect rather than something that people will hate because it’s change and because it spoils elections. See this article on how IRV does that. https://electionscience.org/library/irv-degrades-to-plurality/

      Notably, that Center for Election Science is the one that has shown that 3-2-1 or STAR are technically the best, but they actually advocate for Approval Voting, rather than those two. https://electionscience.org/approval-voting-faqs/

      Funnily enough MIT says that IRV/RCV doesn’t provide a lot of the benefits that supporters say it should. https://electionlab.mit.edu/articles/effect-ranked-choice-voting-maine