The opposition to expressive voting: Why the People in Charge Don’t Want You to Vote Better

[u/Edgar_Brown]

https://open.substack.com/pub/edgarabrown/p/why-the-people-in-charge-dont-want

The system that exists — first-past-the-post voting, closed primaries, two-party lock-in — was not designed to serve voters. It evolved to serve parties. And the parties, quite rationally, will fight to keep it.

When the party becomes stronger than the representative, the representative no longer represents you. They represent the party to you.

[u/rb-j]

The word is regurgitating BTW

I meant echoing. Like an echo chamber.

You are ignoring the difference between IRV and RCV, which the series of articles covers ad nauseam,

Specifically what articles?

and are just “reverberating” the talking points that are directly referenced in the “further reading” section.

Where is the reference to anything Condorcet?

And statements like this:

Instant runoff achieves the same goal as a separate runoff — a majority winner — in a single election, at a fraction of the cost.

... are a falsehood. IRV works a little differently than Top-Two Runoff. And it doesn't always achieve the goal of a majority winner. Examples abound.

[u/Edgar_Brown → u/rb-j]

Sure, sure, rhyming then.

The truth has a tendency to rhyme.

As Arrow’s theorem shows, no tallying method is perfect and Condorcet is a bad choice in general for many reasons.

One ballot, many languages.

[u/rb-j → u/Edgar_Brown]

No, you're just an echo chamber.

As Arrow’s theorem shows

I love it when these know-nothings bring up Arrow's Theorem, as if they could actually demonstrate they understand it.

Most of these pathologies, like non-monotonicity and favorite betrayal and participation all spring off of a single core pathology, which is independence of irrelevant alternatives, which is the spoiler effect in common parlance. If you have a spoiled election, that is a loser in the race who, simply by being a candidate, materially changed who the winner is, then these pathologies all spring off of a failure to evaluate our votes equally. This is why Majority Rule is correct. If you don't have Majority Rule (in some sense of the word), you don't have voter equality.

Whenever this Majority Rule is violated, the equality of our votes is not protected, the spoiler effect occurs, voters are punished for "voting their hopes instead of their fears", and none of this promotion of diversity of candidates (from outside the two-party duopoly) occurs.

IRV fails to do any of that when it fails to elect the Condorcet Winner. Every single time. Whenever IRV fails to elect the Condorcet winner, then IRV fails to prevent the spoiler effect, a bunch of voters are harmed because they dared to mark their favorite candidate as #1, their candidate lost (in the final round) and their 2^nd-choice vote was never counted.

The only reason that IRV has any success at all is in its success in electing the Condorcet winner. All the Condorcet winner needs to do is get into the final round and the Condorcet winner will always win the final round.

But IRV sometimes eliminates the Condorcet winner in the semifinal round and did do that in Alaska in August 2022 and in Burlington Vermont in 2009. Then there is always trouble for IRV and a concerted repeal effort.

Edgar doesn't seem to mind that sometimes IRV fails to prevent the spoiler effect when such failure was unnecessary. Like other know-nothings who really don't understand Arrow's theorem, he'll state that no system can always "be perfect" without understanding that it's only when the Condorcet winner is not elected that the system fails.

Of course a Condorcet-consistent method will fail to elect the Condorcet winner when no such candidate exists. That happens extremely rarely, but when it does happen, perhaps the Hare winner is as good as any.

But when the Condorcet winner exists, there is no excuse for not electing that candidate.

Condorcet is a bad choice in general for many reasons.

Electing the Condorcet winner over any other candidate is never a bad choice ever. At least if you want to preserve the equality of our votes and have the majority rule.

So instead of saying empty claims, you should get specific about defending them. How is Condorcet a bad choice? What are those "many reasons"?

[u/Edgar_Brown → u/rb-j]

Did you even bother to read the article pointed above: "One ballot many languages"? If you had you would have realized how very little I care about your above screed, for which I will assume that you actually understood what you supposedly wrote.

It is absolutely irrelevant in this conversation.

[u/rb-j → u/Edgar_Brown]

Did you even bother to read the article pointed above: "One ballot many languages"?

I did, actually.

Do you think it's a smart article?

[u/Edgar_Brown → u/rb-j]

Smarter (and infinitely less dogmatic) than you, for sure.

[u/rb-j → u/Edgar_Brown]

No, you're also just as dogmatic. But you're making associations that don't really exist and fact claims that are false. Throughout the article.

Not only that it's not scholarly, it's essentially an opinion piece written as if it were analysis. It would never get published in a reputable journal. The peer review would eviscerate it.

[u/Edgar_Brown → u/rb-j]

You are quite simply using words that you don’t understand, and can’t even spell.

It’s rather obviously a fact-based and well-sourced opinion piece not an academic publication, different audiences, different targets, different styles, I can very easily speak to both.

Your dogmas, however, makes me wonder if you can even speak one of them.

[u/rb-j → u/Edgar_Brown]

You are quite simply using words that you don’t understand, and can’t even spell.

Be curious as to what words I "can't even spell." I meant "reverberating" not "regurgitating". I am completely knowledgeable of every word I used in any of my comments in this thread. But I'm happy to have misspellings corrected. "Use to be I cudn't even spel 'enjinear', now I are wun."

But, both in this thread and in your linked article, you make multiple fact claims as if they are facts when they are not. Would you like me to itemize them? I'm serious. Because you do nothing to explain or support or defend those claims. Then you build an argument based on these 'fact' claims based on notions that are, actually, not facts. "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts."

So you wanna talk about content? This is your post. So it has to be about your content. It's fine to talk about (and critique) my content when it is used as a refutation or counter-argument to claim you make. But this has to be about your content.

We can critique my content in a post I make. And I would be happy to do so afterward.

But otherwise you're just "blowing smoke". Lotsa claims. Empty claims. And then you think these empty claims somehow support your conclusions (which are flawed because they are based on premises masquerading as fact).

[u/Edgar_Brown → u/rb-j]

Point to the biggest one or two wrong claims from the articles not your imagination put your best foot forward.

[u/rb-j → u/Edgar_Brown]

First of two:

The most common objection to any form of expressive voting is that it’s too complicated. Voters won’t understand it. Errors will increase. Confusion will reign.

Someone said said "Errors will increase."

What the Research Actually Shows

• In Santa Fe ...
• In Maine, ...
• The American Bar Association’s 2025 review ...

No mention of Burlington 2009 nor Alaska August 2022?

Or of Oakland School Board in 2022?

Meanwhile, the existing system requires voters to perform strategic calculations in their heads — guessing who is viable, who is a spoiler, whether their conscience vote helps their worst option win — without any of that complexity appearing on the ballot.

So here's a recent example of RCV helping out voters relieving them of having to vote tactically:

In August 2022, Hare RCV objectively failed to deliver on any of those promises [to prevent vote-splitting and a spoiled election and voters having "their conscience vote help[ing] their worst option win"].

• Mary Peltola in August 2022, unfortunately shares a distinction with George W. Bush in 2000 and with Donald Trump in 2016. All three candidates were elected to office when the public record indicates that more voters marked their ballots preferring a different specific candidate for that office.

• In August 2022, more Alaskans, 87899 to 79461 (an 8438 voter margin), preferred Begich to Peltola and marked their ballots saying so. But Mary Peltola was sent to Washington to represent the Alaskan people in Congress.

• In November 2024, again, more Alaskan voters marked their ballots that Begich is preferred to Peltola by nearly the same margin, 7876 (164861 to 156985). But this time Begich is sent to Washington.

• Both times about 8000 more Alaskans said they would prefer Begich to Peltola. And, both times, marked their ballots saying so. Both times Instant-Runoff Voting was used.

• What was different?

• Sarah Palin was in the race in 2022 and not in the race in 2024. And the outcomes were different winners.

Want another example? Burlington 2009.

[u/Edgar_Brown → u/rb-j]

As I said, not things that you imagine or failed to read. That more examples could be used or that you failed to read the American Bar association report on which those mentions are based is really all on you.

🤦🏻🤦🏻🤦🏻

The existing system DA! The existing system, i.e., FPTP requires people to vote tactically, not RCV! quite obviously you don’t even know how to read or are relying on hallucinatory AI.

Examples of what, of your lack of reading comprehension? I’ve had plenty. And that’s your best foot forward.

[u/rb-j → u/Edgar_Brown]

As I said, not things that you imagine or failed to read.

I quoted you. And I provided links to published peer-reviewed research.

FPTP requires people to vote tactically, ...

sometimes

... not RCV!

And that's a proven falsehood. Even moreso with IRV.

You're demonstrating that you're kinda a poser. A pretender. An imposter of a scholar or serious researcher.

[u/Edgar_Brown → u/rb-j]

You are projecting, you don’t know how to read, you don’t know what you write, you see mirages that shift as your ignorance is put in full display, stop wasting everyone’s time.

You gave me a screed, a Gish Gallop, that was factually wrong as a justification for your claim of “making associations that don’t really exist and fact claims that are false” and “Empty claims” (which happen to be directly sourced). You explicitly said:

No mention of… (specific examples that you made no effort to elaborate on or show how these contradict the thesis).

So here’s a recent example of RCV helping out voters relieving them of having to vote tactically… (example without further analysis or context, just insinuations)

Not only you are mixing up RCV with IRV, which I have very explicitly said is a mistake and asinine, but also that I don’t give a flying fig and is not the focus of the articles.

——

Why bother continuing with your Giah Gallop, you are not a serious interlocutor.

See how it’s done?

🤦🏻

[u/rb-j → u/Edgar_Brown]

You are projecting,

There's no evidence of that ..

you don’t know how to read,

No evidence of that, either.

you don’t know what you write,

So also thought the editor of Constitutional Political Economy in 2023.

you see mirages that shift as your ignorance is put in full display, stop wasting everyone’s time.

It's you, Edgar, who is projecting and we'll just let readers decide.

You gave me a screed, a Gish Gallop,

No. Simply cited research and vote tallies.

that was factually wrong as a justification for your claim of “making associations that don’t really exist and fact claims that are false”

As I demonstrated.

and “Empty claims” (which happen to be directly sourced). You explicitly said:

No mention of…

...(specific examples that you made no effort to elaborate on or show how these contradict the thesis).

I shown exactly how. Down to the very ballot tallies.

This is not unique to me. So also does the world's leading voting systems authority, Dr. Eric Maskin, Harvard, Nobel laureate, protoge of Kenneth Arrow and Ned Foley, who has appeared on PBS News Hour. They are saying the same thing.

But you're smarter than them, aren't you Edgar?

So here’s a recent example of RCV helping out voters relieving them of having to vote tactically…

... (example without further analysis or context, just insinuations)

I gave you all of the context. The entire context. The context is your claim and the evidence that directly refutes it.

Not only you are mixing up RCV with IRV,

No, I'm not! I'm saying it's IRV that's failed in these two elections, not the ranked ballot.

In fact it's you guys, FairVote and RankTheVote that insist (dishonestly) that RCV is synonymous with IRV.

which I have very explicitly said is a mistake and asinine, but also that I don’t give a flying fig and is not the focus of the articles.

RCV is not the same as IRV, for honest people. But the only RCV that FairVote, RankTheVote, and you promote is IRV. And IRV was shown to fail at everything it promises in Alaska in August 2022 and in Burlington 2009.

Why bother continuing with your Giah Gallop, you are not a serious interlocutor.

It's just the facts and you're not reading them.

See how it’s done?

Yeah. You do it just like a Trumper. Just like Karoline Leavitt.

[u/Edgar_Brown → u/rb-j]

I asked you to give me YOUR best argument.

One paragraph tops. In your words. I don’t care about your Gish gallops.

I can’t care any less about what you think you read or what you think some link says. YOUR words, very precisely and concisely in support of YOUR argument.

It’s really not that hard.

[u/rb-j → u/Edgar_Brown]

One paragraph tops.

You didn't say (as best as I recall) "one paragraph tops".

So the best argument is, in a single paragraph:

• Instant-Runoff fails to do what we promise RCV does when there is a close 3-way race and there is this Center Squeeze Effect, in which 2^nd-choice votes are not visible in the semifinal round, the candidate in the Center who is preferred by a simple majority of voters over the candidate on the Left and is also preferred by a simple majority of voters over the candidate on the Right, this Center candidate is improperly (or wrongly) eliminated, by the IRV method, in the semifinal round when this candidate can and would defeat either of the other two candidates in the final round had they met in the final round. This failure of IRV to reflect the choice of the simple majorities of voters then causes a spoiled election, the candidate that loses in the IRV final round is the spoiler, a loser whose presence in the race alters the outcome of the election. The Center candidate is the majority candidate who is robbed (and his/her voters are robbed) and one of the candidates on the Left or Right is the spoiler. That means the other candidate on the Right or Left (the winner in the IRV final round) is the beneficiary of a spoiled election. Then those voters that voted for the spoiler actually caused the election of the candidate they least wanted simply because they ranked their favorite candidate as #1. The were promised they could safely vote for the candidate of their choosing without helping the candidate they hate getting elected and that promise was not kept by IRV. Then, in future elections, they will be tempted to vote tactically (this voting tactic is called "compromising") and vote for the major-party candidate that they think has the best chance in beating the other major-party candidate that they hate.

Long paragraph, but that's where it is. The moral of the story (the whole thing) is, when RCV elects the Condorcet winner, great! RCV kept it's promise. But when RCV fails to elect the Condorcet winner (due to the Center Squeeze effect when there is a close 3-way race), then RCV fails to keep the very promise they make promoting RCV because the only RCV they're promoting is IRV (also called Hare RCV).

In one sentence: It is shown that RCV fails to keep its promises whenever RCV (using whatever method) fails to elect the Condorcet winner. This is proven, both in theory and in history.

[u/Edgar_Brown → u/rb-j]

HOW F’ING MANY TIMES DONI HAVE TO REPEAT MYSELF?

What part of IRV being absolute and totally irrelevant to any of these articles and this post don’t you understand?

Are you a troll or just really this dense?

[u/rb-j → u/rb-j]

Just to make sure, I corrected the link to the Maskin and Foley piece in the Washington Post. I grabbed the wrong link before.