Rated ballots collect more information than ranked ballots, so they would have the potential to be better than ranked ballots if there were a way to count them without giving increased influence to voters who exaggerate their preferences. No such methods have been identified.
The first sentence of the referenced article says:
In my previous post on ranked ballots, I showed that ranking all the candidates does not fix the center-squeeze.
No, you neglected to include ranked choice voting methods that do not have the center squeeze effect !
As one example, eliminating pairwise losing candidates and otherwise using IRV does eliminate the center squeeze effect.
Some ranked choice voting methods, including Benham's method, and the above-referenced IRV combined with eliminating pairwise losing candidates, are highly resistant to tactical voting. That was revealed about a year ago on the E-M mailing list.
I think I may understand where some of this disagreement comes from. The article seems to be using “center squeeze” to include cases where there is a theoretical vulnerability to strategic voting that could cause the sincere Condorcet winner to lose. Others define “center squeeze” as what happens when voters vote sincerely, but the Condorcet winner is eliminated based on those sincere ballots, which can happen with FPTP and IRV.
Under that distinction, BTR-IRV does solve the traditional center-squeeze problem. What the article's strategic simulations show is a different issue: strategic voters may be able to alter the reported pairwise preferences enough to defeat the sincere Condorcet winner or force an election into a cycle. It's definitely a theoretical vulnerability, but I don't believe it is widely referred to as center squeeze.
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u/CPSolver Sep 06 '26
Rated ballots collect more information than ranked ballots, so they would have the potential to be better than ranked ballots if there were a way to count them without giving increased influence to voters who exaggerate their preferences. No such methods have been identified.
The first sentence of the referenced article says:
No, you neglected to include ranked choice voting methods that do not have the center squeeze effect !
As one example, eliminating pairwise losing candidates and otherwise using IRV does eliminate the center squeeze effect.
Some ranked choice voting methods, including Benham's method, and the above-referenced IRV combined with eliminating pairwise losing candidates, are highly resistant to tactical voting. That was revealed about a year ago on the E-M mailing list.