[ekimekim]

Being vulnerable to strategic voting is a huge downside that outweighs other considerations.

As the article mentions, in the real world score voting would just be approval voting where you put a max score on some choices and 0 on others.

And in approval voting you need to think about how others will vote and pick your cutoff point based on who you think has a chance - do you vote "yes" for the center-right party to avoid the hard right party getting in? Or do you vote "no" to help the center-left party beat the center-right party? (swap those directions to personal preference)

RCV isn't perfect, but in all but the smallest elections there's really no practical strategic voting considerations. You just state your true preference order.

Of course, I'll take any of them over FPTP.

[yellowapple]

> Being vulnerable to strategic voting is a huge downside that outweighs other considerations.

I disagree that strategic voting as a downside outweighs the downsides of RCV or FPTP - especially when FPTP itself is susceptible to strategic voting, too. None of the three satisfy the condorcet winner criterion (that is: none of them guarantee the winner would beat every other candidate head-to-head), but it seems less likely / more contrived for score/approval voting to fail it.

> And in approval voting you need to think about how others will vote and pick your cutoff point based on who you think has a chance - do you vote "yes" for the center-right party to avoid the hard right party getting in? Or do you vote "no" to help the center-left party beat the center-right party? (swap those directions to personal preference)

That's why I'd personally go with a simple three-level score vote: "yeah", "meh", or "nah". If people really want to shoot themselves in the foot by ignoring the "meh" option, then so be it, but at least the option is there for people to vote "meh" for candidates that are merely acceptable/tolerable (and reserve "yeah" for ideal candidates and "nah" for unacceptable/intolerable candidates).

[ekimekim]

> I disagree that strategic voting as a downside outweighs the downsides of RCV or FPTP - especially when FPTP itself is susceptible to strategic voting, too.

To clarify, I never intended that as a defence of FPTP. It's awful and I'll take any of the systems being discussed here over it. It was a statement specifically towards IRV over score/approval.

[ClayShentrup]

there's nothing special about the condorcet criterion. it's mathematically proven that the most favored candidate can even be the condorcet _loser_. you just want the voting method with the highest voter satisfaction efficiency.

https://electionscience.github.io/vse-sim/

[ClayShentrup]

> As the article mentions, in the real world score voting would just be approval voting where you put a max score on some choices and 0 on others.

utterly false.

https://www.rangevoting.org/HonStrat https://www.rangevoting.org/Honesty https://www.rangevoting.org/RVstrat6

> And in approval voting you need to think about how others will vote and pick your cutoff point based on who you think has a chance

1. this is true of _every_ deterministic voting method. it's mathematically proven.

2. even approval voting is extremely accurate. see voter satisfaction efficiency calculations from harvard stats phd jameson quinn, who served with me on the board of the center for election science. https://electionscience.github.io/vse-sim/

> RCV isn't perfect, but in all but the smallest elections there's really no practical strategic voting considerations. You just state your true preference order.

ludicrous. IRV is extremely vulnerable to strategic voting. my aunt who voted biden even tho she preferred warren (to stop trump) would do the same thing with ranking: rank biden 1st to prevent warren from losing to trump.

something similar happened in the first alaska house special election. palin was a spoiler. she caused the democrat mary peltola to win, even tho fellow republican nick begich was preferred to peltola (and to palin) by a large majority. in other words, palins supporters hurt themselves by honestly ranking palin 1st. they would have been strategically better off burying palin and ranking begich 1st.

https://rcvchangedalaska.com/

and the VSE metrics show that even 100% honest IRV performs worse than approval voting with all voters being strategic.

IRV is simply one of the worst voting methods in existence. not to mention being radically overcomplicated and opaque.

i'm sorry that you posted this before having even an inkling about how any of this works.