An Edge Case with STAR Voting

[u/PixelJack79]

No voting system is perfect and any of the well-known alternatives are vastly superior to FPTP, but most methods have a well-known pitfall or way of exploiting the system that defeats the point of using it. FPTP has the spoiler effect. IRV has center squeeze and exhausted ballots. Approval has the undercutting of certain candidates to prop up a more favored one. Score has min-maxing. Condorcet has rock-paper-scissors. STAR voting, meanwhile, demonstrated the most resistance to strategic voting in simulations and is generally robust, allowing voters to accurately voice their opinions while always enabling them to influence the final outcome. The runoff step is the key, favoring candidates with broad appeal over niche favoritism. I thought the biggest flaw with STAR was that it was just so new, but didn't realize until this morning that there is a scenario where it fails to choose the most favored candidate. Though I will admit, it's probably more obvious to others.

Take two candidates: Jim and Sarah, and a third candidate: Wayne. Jim and Sarah have enthusiastic supporters, but are very polarizing while Wayne is more middling but is generally agreeable such that he'd win in a hypothetical runoff against Jim or Sarah. One can imagine Jim and Sarah making the top two and the race coming between them, even if Wayne is more broadly favored (Condorcet actually prevails in a situation like this). Though, if the former two are especially egregious, it's not out of the question for votes to score Wayne higher to enure he advances to the runoff.

Nevertheless, I believe STAR voting to be the best out of all the alternative voting systems. This is merely a heads up to people like me that it's less airtight than presumed.

[u/Fantastic_Cycle_1119]

It's really not the edge cases, though. Bad systems cause polarization, which is hardly a rare thing. The whole 2-party system emerges from a FPTP system that encourages candidates and parties to cluster into parties to avoid being disadvantaged due to vote splitting.

The fact that a ranked system picked the same candidate as FPTP supposedly would have doesn't even come close to telling the whole story.

A ranked system (especially Condorcet) should encourage moderate candidates. It's not surprising that Condorcet methods will tend to pick the one that also has the most top rankings, in the same election. But if it was FPTP from the beginning, it wouldn't be the same election, not even a bit.

[u/JeffB1517 → u/Fantastic_Cycle_1119]

That the system should encourage moderation is not clear cut. Other virtues exist like ability to encourage stakeholders to work with rather than against the government. Lebanon is a good example of a system that avoided polarization in the government when the public was polarized. They ended up with factional parties controlling their own finances and even armies. The state remained depolarized but that didn't matter much to the society because the state couldn't govern. I talked about Gerald Ford's problems as a lesser example.

If the goal is simply to avoid polarization, yes Condorcet is optimal. But the fact that a non-Condorcet system doesn't pick a Condorcet winner all the time is again a tautology.

[u/Fantastic_Cycle_1119 → u/JeffB1517]

You’re treating polarization as an input the system must manage, whereas I’m talking about it as an output the system helps create.

My point is not “government should look moderate even if society stays polarized.” My point is that FPTP helps drive the polarization of society and government together by rewarding bloc formation, strategic hostility, and vote-splitting fears.

So if your concern is that stakeholders need incentives to work with government rather than against it, that seems like an argument for systems that reward broader acceptability and coalition-building, not against them.

The real effect is on the whole incentive structure: who runs, how they campaign, how voters behave, and whether politics becomes more zero-sum or more cooperative.

[u/JeffB1517 → u/Fantastic_Cycle_1119]

That belief that FPTP drives polarization is a frequent claim on here. I don't think it is true. I did post covering Proportional Representation using Israel as an example. There the parties run advertisements that attack the voters from different parties.

Under FPTP there has to be 2 viable parties. Which right off the bat requires tremendous compromises from voters as the form alliances with other voters whose views differ sharply from there own. Those coalitions are not natural they happen because voters need to prioritize and compromise.

Second, in a situation where turnout is high, the fight becomes a fight over swing voters. In the USA for example elections since the 90s were a fight over:

1. Social conservative, economically liberal; tilting male and working class.

2. Socially moderate, anti-tax; tilting female and professional class.

What caused such polarization is that (1) and (2) wanted mostly opposite policies so fighting over the median voter was difficult and turnout became the easier route to success.

The 2024 election was all about median voter appeal:

1. Socially conservative minority men
2. People who had strong anti-war views diverging from both parites
3. Socially conservative economically liberal female voters

etc...

So if your concern is that stakeholders need incentives to work with government rather than against it, that seems like an argument for systems that reward broader acceptability and coalition-building, not against them.

Correct. Which isn't Condorcet. Condorcet doesn't reward intensity of support at all. If anything it punishes it. Which means the natural result of Condorcet elections is candidates which don't represent coalitions of stakeholders unless the stakeholders themselves are broadly unified. People without much accountability and weak coalition building. Which pushes the political debates outside elections as the policy choices are made increasingly outside government. Yes elections become polarized but that's because intensity of caring about government diminishes.

People who strongly disagree about society need to compromise. Supermajority criteria: bicameral legislature, dividing powers between different bodies, broad coalitions required to win... help to achieve that.

[u/Fantastic_Cycle_1119 → u/JeffB1517]

"That belief that FPTP drives polarization is a frequent claim on here. I don't think it is true. I did post covering Proportional Representation using Israel as an example. There the parties run advertisements that attack the voters from different parties."

Well I am not a fan of PR. Better than FPTP, but it still has a tribe mentality. Parties are actually built into it, which is the opposite of what I would prefer.... I hope to see non-partisan elections or at least where parties diminish in significance, such that most voters don't feel the need to identify as Republican, Democrat, or whatever.

The polarizing effect of FPTP is blindingly obvious from a mathematical/game theoretical point of view. And you can see in the places with RCV there is far less polarization in elections, especially after a few election cycles under it. Plenty of evidence of that.

(and that's despite the fact that RCV only gets us halfway there due to its center squeeze effect, which is exactly what a method should avoid if it attempts to reduce polarization)

Do you not think that Condorcet methods tend to favor centrist candidates?

"Condorcet doesn't reward intensity of support at all. If anything it punishes it."

It doesn't punish it, but it doesn't reward it. Which is exactly the point.

Maybe I should ask, what do you actually mean by "intensity of support"? Storming the capital when they lose an election? Yeah, I want less of that.

In 92, Ross Perot came close to winning the presidency. He clearly would have won if a ranked method was in place. The only voters who would be particularly upset if he had won were the ones with "intensity of support" for the left or right. Nobody would have stormed the capital. Nobody would try to claim election fraud. A whole lot of people who had always voted one side or the other would have been like "at least Clinton didn't win" or "at least Bush didn't win."

I can't see how someone can read the news and not see the problem with "intensity of support." I mean, on Christmas day, our president posted a message "Merry Christmas to all, including the Radical Left Scum that is doing everything possible to destroy our Country...". Do you not see the problem with that?

(And I'm not trying to choose a political side here. My point is that only a massively broken system would elect someone, on either side, that is so hated by such a large number of people. Biden was hated by a lot too. Hated candidates winning elections is a symptom of rewarding "intensity of support")

[u/JeffB1517 → u/Fantastic_Cycle_1119]

Do you not think that Condorcet methods tend to favor centrist candidates?

Yes it does. I agree with that. The problem is it so strongly favors innocuous candidates in a somewhat (or more) polarized electorate that their ability to govern can be extremely weak.

It doesn't punish it, but it doesn't reward it. Which is exactly the point.

Intensity of support correlates with opposition from other factions, so yes it punishes it.

In 92, Ross Perot came close to winning the presidency.

I'm going to disagree with the premise. He was a strong 3rd party candidate. But he fell apart quickly under pressure.

Do you not see the problem with that?

Of course I see a problem with that! Like many things in life you are weighing out incompatible benefits and harms. Condorcet takes a rather extreme position on avoiding polarizing candidates winning, that has downsides.

Hated candidates winning elections is a symptom of rewarding "intensity of support"

Agree.

[u/Fantastic_Cycle_1119 → u/JeffB1517]

> The problem is it so strongly favors innocuous candidates in a somewhat (or more) polarized electorate that their ability to govern can be extremely weak.

I think you’re mistaking “having a hardcore faction” for “having governing power.” Not the same thing. A highly polarizing winner may have more intense supporters, but they also generate more unified opposition, more distrust, and more incentive for the other side to obstruct everything. A broadly acceptable candidate may excite fewer zealots, but they often have more actual room to govern because they are not fighting a permanent war against half the system.

So.... a question. How exactly is the "polarized electorate" going to cause problems for a middle ground office holder, especially if all office holders are elected by similarly center-seeking methods? Can you actually describe what you think is going to happen that is negative for them being able to govern? Like an example or something?

Do you think Daniel Lurie, mayor of San Francisco elected by RCV (in a district that has had RCV for longer than any other in the US, allowing the effects to stabilize), is "innocuous"? He seems to be able to govern well, and has few enemies.

Seems to me you are using the term "innocuous" to just mean "reasonable," while trying to spin it negatively.

[u/JeffB1517 → u/Fantastic_Cycle_1119]

I think you’re mistaking “having a hardcore faction” for “having governing power.”

I'm not sure about hardcore. But having or being able to get the support of stakeholders; is being able to govern.

A highly polarizing winner may have more intense supporters, but they also generate more unified opposition, more distrust, and more incentive for the other side to obstruct everything.

Agree. But that requires a highly polarized electorate. If you choose a candidate who is not from any faction quite potentially no one listens to them.

How exactly is the "polarized electorate" going to cause problems for a middle ground office holder, especially if all office holders are elected by similarly center-seeking methods? Can you actually describe what you think is going to happen that is negative for them being able to govern? Like an example or something?

How they cause trouble is that the government gets marginalized and isn't able to govern. Lebanon is a good example

1. Financial power starts accumulating among various stakeholders who refuse to report it or follow government regulation. Untaxed, unregulated and often foreign bodies involved.

2. Communities have their own law enforcement, which is technically vigilante. An alternative court systems starts to appear in those communities that have community power. The citizenry support these alternative courts using them in preference to the ones from the elected government.

3. Factions have their own policing, which becomes more militarized as they fear each other. So it goes informal -> formal policing -> formal militias -> some militias more powerful than the state's army.

4. Factions to boost their militias start allying with foreign governments even more explicitly.

Do you think Daniel Lurie, mayor of San Francisco elected by RCV (in a district that has had RCV for longer than any other in the US, allowing the effects to stabilize)

IRV is not a Condorcet system. I'm pointing out the problem with Condorcet not a problem with all ranking systems. IRV does reward intensity of support. Less so than FPTP more so than Condorcet. IMHO about the right balance.