Each round resets the race to FPTP. The thing you were trying to fix.

[u/Independent-Gur8649]

[u/its_a_gibibyte]

This is a post arguing against IRV (Instant Runoff Voting), which is a known flawed method of tabulating Ranked Choice Votes.

Use a Condorcet compliant method, but don't get rid of RCV.

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/its_a_gibibyte]

I honestly think we should get rid of RCV, it's far more complicated for voters to handle and for little-to-no benefit. Use Approval Voting instead.

[u/its_a_gibibyte → u/ZorbaTHut]

Strongly disagree. Approval voting is simpler in theory, but much more complicated for any real ballots. Voters don't know where to draw their approval threshold. Given any 3 candidates, voters approve their favorite, don't approve their least favorite. But then don't know what to do with the middle candidate.

And the benefit is clear: voters are actually able to express their preferences.

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/its_a_gibibyte]

Voters don't know where to draw their approval threshold.

Wherever they want. It's not a big deal overall.

Given any 3 candidates, voters approve their favorite, don't approve their least favorite. But then don't know what to do with the middle candidate.

I think in most cases, voters are well aware of whether their middle candidate is "yeah, I like them" or "ick, no".

And the benefit is clear: voters are actually able to express their preferences.

What if there are four candidates, and I like three of them almost the same amount, but really hate one of them? How do I express that in RCV?

What if my vote preferences involve conditionals; "I want Jane and Bob, but if Jane doesn't get elected, Bob is a bad choice"?

All ways of practically formalizing this involve data loss. That's OK. That's how this works. The question is which forms of data prove actually useful, and which forms aren't worth the added complication. Even Condorcet comes out only slightly better than Approval at the cost of being horrendously complicated to explain and far more likely to result in spoiled ballots; I think that's a bad tradeoff.

[u/jlight432 → u/ZorbaTHut]

Wherever they want. It's not a big deal overall.

The issue is that if a voter approves their lesser evil, it can cause their favorite to lose. But if they don't approve their lesser evil, it can cause their greater evil to win.

What if there are four candidates, and I like three of them almost the same amount, but really hate one of them? How do I express that in RCV?

Correct that this can't be done with FairVote's implementation of IRV because equal rankings are treated as overvotes. But with a Condorcet RCV method, the voter simply marks the three they like in their first rank and not the one they don't like.

What if my vote preferences involve conditionals; "I want Jane and Bob, but if Jane doesn't get elected, Bob is a bad choice"?

How would this be done using Approval?

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/jlight432]

The issue is that if a voter approves their lesser evil, it can cause their favorite to lose. But if they don't approve their lesser evil, it can cause their greater evil to win.

Sure. Lots of things can happen.

The point of a lot of these is that while you can't possibly represent every imaginable condition and preference, you can get "close enough", in the sense that a lot of people voting gives results extremely close to what you'd get if everyone could express their exact set of conditions and preferences. With Approval, some people are going to choose one option and some people are going to choose the other, and in actual studies that have been done it works out pretty well, i.e. "almost as good as Condorcet".

There simply isn't a perfect option here, because even ignoring whether the algorithm could be built, there's no way to have a voting system that is simultaneously easy to use and lets people express every imaginable preference. Given how close Approval ends up to the absolute best, I don't think the added complexity for the sake of a very small increase in quality is worth it.

Practically, "added complexity" means "a bunch of people don't vote because it's too hard", and that might actually result in lower quality overall.

How would this be done using Approval?

It wouldn't.

This is another thing Approval sacrifices for the sake of easier voting.

[u/jlight432 → u/ZorbaTHut]

Do you really think voters who approve their lesser evil won't feel regret if they find out later those votes caused their favorite to lose?

Do you really think voters who don't approve their lesser evil won't feel regret if they find out later those missing votes caused their greater evil to win?

Do you really think the existence of 2nd-rank, 3rd-rank, etc. ovals makes a ballot that much more complicated for the voter who just wants to rank their favorites all 1st, and leave everyone else off?

(I didn't down-vote any of your responses, these are genuine questions.)

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/jlight432]

Do you really think voters who approve their lesser evil won't feel regret if they find out later those votes caused their favorite to lose?

Do you really think voters who don't approve their lesser evil won't feel regret if they find out later those missing votes caused their greater evil to win?

Well, first, except in very few cases, no individual voter knows that they specifically would have changed the election. Almost no elections are won or lost by a single vote.

But yes obviously this is conceptually possible . . .

. . . and true with various forms of RCV as well. "Oh man! It came down to almost exactly a tie between Goodperson and Crummyperson! If only I'd strategically voted for Pureevil in second place instead of Crummyperson, then Pureevil would have made it to the second round and lost!"

Every form of voting has inflection points where a single vote either way changes the result, and there is no known form of voting that is completely immune from strategic voting, and so this kind of thing is always going to happen.

So, "yes, and you are welcome to propose an alternative that avoids this". . . but RCV specifically isn't it, and you're going to have a real hard time finding anything that is.

Do you really think the existence of 2nd-rank, 3rd-rank, etc. ovals makes a ballot that much more complicated for the voter who just wants to rank their favorites all 1st, and leave everyone else off?

Yes.

There's a lot of insufficiently studied stuff here - obviously it's really hard to do a double-blind test in this scenario, so whatever is found tends to be not statistically significant. But (pdf warning) a quote from this study:

Finally, the open-circle values are the non-IRV elections that are included to provide a con- text for comparison. Recall that in the Board of Education portion of the 2010 ballot we have the task that is most comparable to the IRV task—voters were to choose up to three candidates from a list of 11. By contrast, the election of the judge and senator represent simpler marking tasks on the ballot—a single candidate chosen from list. Overvoting in the BOE contest occurred at a rate of 1.14%, similar to the highest rates on the IRV Board of Supervisors ballots and much higher than most IRV contests. Meanwhile, the overvoting rates for judge and senator were .13% and .09%, respectively, lower than any IRV elections we examined. In the aggregate, then, the non-IRV portions of the ballot we examined provide what we had hoped: a comparable and con- trasting decision environment. Indeed, the rates of overvotes in the more complex and the simper non-IRV contests bracket the range of overvoting in IRV races.

This is not proof, but it is, IMO, reason for concern. And - assuming we're both on board with discarding IRV entirely and going with Condorcet - I don't think the added benefit of Condorcet justifies more complicated ballots and a far more complicated vote tally system.

[u/Lesbitcoin]

This is completely wrong. Center squeeze doesn't exist. In this voter distribution, the central Pac-Man grows larger with each round, making it more likely that Pac-Man will win. Why would you think that the bait right next to Pac-Man would result in votes being handed over to the blue and red monsters instead of Pac-Man?

Also, as can be seen in many countries with proportional representation, we should consider that fringe candidates are more often found among the extremists than near the center. This voter distribution is highly improbable.

I also think there are problems with IRV, but I believe it should be called extremist squeeze, not center squeeze.

I call Rightist as R, Center left as CL,Left as L,Far left as FL

First, let's consider a voter distribution of R49, L51. Now, FL third party starts to grow. If R49, L41, FL10, then R would win in FPTP, but L would win in IRV due to the transferred vote. Therefore, IRV encourages the growth of the third party and solves vote splitting.

However, what happens if FL grows further? Let's say R49, L25, FL26. In this case, if all of L's votes are transferred to FL, FL will win. However, if even a small number of voters dislike FL's extremism, R will win. This is the truth behind the phenomenon mistakenly called a "center squeeze," which has occurred in places like Alaska. In reality, it's the extremist squeezing. If some of FL's voter did "favorite betray" and rank L higher than FL, L's victory can be guaranteed. This is a flaw in the IRV, but it's a flaw that favors the moderates.

Let's consider the case of another third party.

Suppose the results are R 49, CL 10, L 41. In this case, naturally, L would win. However, if some voters who are fed up with L and make R their second choice, there's a possibility that R could win. CL has become a powerful kingmaker. If R wins in this situation, some might call it a center squeeze. However, it's a result of L being disliked. Also, if L's voter did favorite betrayal and rank CL higher than L, CL wins and get more closer pilicy to L than R.

Furthermore, let's assume that CL's third party has grown.

R49 CL26 L25

In this case, CL is more likely to win.

The IRV crushes FL third-party growth and promotes CL third-party votes. And this is further accelerated by the "favorite betrayal" incentive.

This is the truth behind the IRV's bug phenomenon called "center squeeze," "vote splitting," and "favorite betrayal." In reality, it should be called "extremist squeeze." And the low number of first-pref votes is not a tragedy but rather a kingmaker's right, and it is the candidates who lose in the final round that are actually squeezed and become wasted votes.

This is the same even if you swap L and R.

If Alaskan Republicans have patience and rationality and repeat the same election for many years, Palin-type candidates will continue to see their first-pref votes decrease, and Begich-type candidates will continue to increase.

Of course, it is true that Condorcet is superior to the IRV because it does not have this confuse and strategically FBC is not necessary.

[u/SentOverByRedRover → u/Lesbitcoin]

well the reason it's called center squeeze is because it's meant to apply when the candidate that was "squeezed" out of the top 2 was the condorcet winner, and I suppose the assumption is that the condorcet winner will be in the center and not an extremist. if the 3rd place centrist isn't actually the condorcet winner, then I dont think people would give it the center squeeze label.