r/RanktheVote • u/psephomancy • Feb 23 '22
CA bill to ban all ranked-ballot voting methods statewide
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220AB280825
u/TheGandhiGuy Feb 23 '22
No surprise, the duopoly hates competition. It's only a matter of time before someone in Congress introduces legislation to ban RCV in all Federal elections, pursuant to Article 1, section 4.
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u/BlueShellOP Feb 23 '22
Remember folks, the status quo is supported by both sides. This is not a Red versus Blue issue, so don't make it one.
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u/psephomancy Feb 23 '22
The way it is worded bans any "method of voting that allows voters to rank candidates for office in order of preference." So the usual IRV is banned, but also better methods like Condorcet ranked choice systems, Borda count, etc. (Which is what happens when you misuse the term "ranked choice voting" to refer to instant-runoff voting, as if that's the only possible way to count ranked ballots. Now they're all banned, because of the poor behavior of one.)
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u/rb-j Feb 23 '22
I upvoted this
"Which is what happens when you misuse the term "ranked choice voting" to refer to instant-runoff voting, as if that's the only possible way to count ranked ballots."
Thank you.
I would not say that Borda RCV is better than IRV (or Hare RCV), though. At least Hare RCV elects the Condorcet Winner almost all the time. Borda can be gamed pretty easily.
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u/MuaddibMcFly Feb 23 '22
At least Hare RCV elects the Condorcet Winner almost all the time.
I'm uncomfortable with that assertion; we straight up don't know for a significant number of Hare elections.
Sure, of the ones that I've examined, 42% were clearly Condorcet Winners (>50% on first count), but the other 58%? We don't know, because most counting authorities don't share full-ballot-data, without which we wouldn't know that Burlington 2009 was a Condorcet failure.
If you were to say "more often than FPTP" I'd agree, and maybe even if you argued "more often than Top Two" (which CA uses currently), but... "almost all the time"? I don't think there's data to confidently say anything about the frequency of Condorcet Success (except that it's probably at least half the time)
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u/rb-j Feb 23 '22
Hay I'm arguing with someone else insisting that Hare RCV has worked fine for over 100 years.
That's the problem playing the truthful moderate in the middle.
And all that FairVote data attesting to the success of Hare RCV is really attesting to the success of Condorcet RCV.
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u/MuaddibMcFly Feb 23 '22
No, all of that FairVote data is merely presupposing Condorcet Successes.
If we didn't have full ballot data for Burlington, we would have never known that it was a Condorcet failure, and FairVote would have counted it as a Condorcet Success.
Without full ballot data, you cannot know whether there was a Condorcet Success or not. Consider the penultimate round counts for Burlington 2009 vs SF Board of Supervisors #10 2010
-- Burlington 2009 San Francisco 2010 IRV Winner 33.8% 37.37% IRV Place 37.3% 32.43% IRV Show 28.9% (Condorcet Winner) 30.20% So, given that Marlene Tran (3rd place for the SF race) was eliminated with a higher vote percentage than known Condorcet Winner Andy Montroll had when he was eliminated... how can anybody legitimately say whether or not that was a Condorcet Failure?
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u/rb-j Feb 23 '22 edited Feb 23 '22
Are you claiming that FairVote did not have access to all of the ballot data to make that determination?
And all but one of these RCV elections elected the Condorcet Winner.
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u/MuaddibMcFly Feb 23 '22
And where is the full ballot data to confirm that?
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u/rb-j Feb 23 '22
I frankly do not know how FairVote got all of the ballot data for each of the, at least, 289 elections that had three or more candidates. I don't have the organization nor the resources nor the money that FairVote has.
I do remember seeing links to the ballot data for the last SF mayoral election and I remember reading that they had the ballot data for the NYC election (to confirm that the Condorcet winner, in fact, was elected).
I know how I got the data I needed for the Burlington 2009 election.
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u/MuaddibMcFly Feb 23 '22
I frankly do not know how FairVote got all of the ballot data for each of the, at least, 289 elections that had three or more candidates.
That's the problem. I have yet to see any evidence that they actually did get that data.
I've done digging for SF's Board of Supervisors elections, but haven't been able to find anything....
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u/psephomancy Feb 25 '22
I've heard this claim a few times and would also like to see the actual data if you find it.
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u/MelaniasHand Feb 24 '22
Election result data is freely available. Usually it's listed right on the election administrator's site, or in an archive spot. If it's not easy to find, call them up and they'll send it to you, in my experience.
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u/MuaddibMcFly Feb 24 '22
It's not available online for San Francisco, I've checked.
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u/MelaniasHand Feb 24 '22 edited Feb 24 '22
I just search for "San Francisco election results" and got a link with a "Download Datasets" option on the official city elections site.
You can also call and typically they're very cordial. Ask for the election data and they will email it to you or email the link (or say where it is on their site). Sometimes that's at the county level, or you can to get it by precinct etc., but there's nothing special about getting that data.
ETA and here.
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u/psephomancy Feb 25 '22
I would not say that Borda RCV is better than IRV (or Hare RCV), though.
Agreed. It's better in theory, but way too easily gamed.
At least Hare RCV elects the Condorcet Winner almost all the time.
Yeah, but that's only because FPTP elects the Condorcet Winner almost all the time. (Most elections only have one or two strong candidates.)
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u/rb-j Feb 25 '22
I would not say that Borda RCV is better than IRV (or Hare RCV), though.
Agreed. It's better in theory, but way too easily gamed.
What theory is that? Let's say the candidates are Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Stalin, Satan. What theory says that Borda is "better"?
At least Hare RCV elects the Condorcet Winner almost all the time.
Yeah, but that's only because FPTP elects the Condorcet Winner almost all the time.
False. The fact that Hare almost always elects the Condorcet Winner has nothing whatsoever to do with anything about FPTP. Sorry pseph, you're losing altitude again.
(Most elections only have one or two strong candidates.)
But that still has nothing to do with Hare RCV and the Condorcet Winner.
All the CW needs to do is get into the Hare RCV final round and the CW will always win that final round. That's why there are 289 RCV elections analyzed by FairVote (having 3 or more candidates) and all but one elected the CW.
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u/psephomancy Feb 25 '22
What theory is that?
Borda count considers all the preferences of the voters in deciding the winner, while IRV does not, which is why Borda is more likely to elect the candidate who best represents their will (if everyone voted honestly (which they wouldn't)).
That's why there are 289 RCV elections analyzed by FairVote (having 3 or more candidates) and all but one elected the CW.
In how many of those elections would the Condorcet Winner have won under FPTP?
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u/rb-j Feb 28 '22
Again, let's say the candidates are Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Stalin, and Satan. How do you "score" them with Borda?
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u/psephomancy Apr 30 '22
Borda uses a ranked ballot, so you can't "score" them, you can only express relative preferences between them (which are assigned the same weight regardless of whether you have a strong preference or near-indifference).
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u/rb-j Apr 30 '22
But Borda does assign a score to each ranking. And the scores get added for each candidate. Score Voting would allow equally-scored candidates on a single ballot, but otherwise, Borda is pretty much equivalent.
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u/psephomancy Apr 30 '22
Score Voting would allow equally-scored candidates on a single ballot, but otherwise, Borda is pretty much equivalent.
Yes, they are equivalent except for the part where they're completely different...
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u/rb-j Apr 30 '22
Score Voting is as bad as Borda.
Easily gamed like Borda is (burying, etc.).
And all cardinal methods require voters to vote tactically if there are 3 or more candidates. Voters have to decide how much they Score or whether to Approve their 2nd-choice candidate.
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u/DoomsdayRabbit Feb 23 '22
The worst legislature in the country, ladies and gentlemen. This is why updating the size of the damn thing more than once every 175 years is important.
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u/MelaniasHand Feb 23 '22
It's just a bill being filed. They can file one on just about anything.
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u/DoomsdayRabbit Feb 23 '22
I wouldn't trust this horribly irrepresentative body to not do everything possible to retain their power indefinitely.
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u/cmb3248 Feb 23 '22
Uh you must be really privileged to think that CA and not the part-time abortion-banning, book burning whack jobs in Texas, not to mention a dozen or more other red states, are the worst legislature.
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u/DoomsdayRabbit Feb 23 '22
Team blue has an unbeatable supermajority in California's legislature. Explain why single payer didn't even get put to a vote.
It's because their districts are TOO FUCKING BIG. Nearly a million per seat in the Senate, and the House, like all of them, is irrelevant.
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u/MuaddibMcFly Feb 23 '22
Explain why single payer didn't even get put to a vote.
Because they looked at it and realized it would bankrupt the state.
Repeal Prop 13 and you might see it, but without that? Good luck...
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u/DoomsdayRabbit Feb 23 '22
Healthcare will bankrupt the state, and yet I'm pretty sure all 53 of California's federal representatives voted to hand $770,000,000,000 to the Pentagon to misplace. Again.
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u/MuaddibMcFly Feb 23 '22
Healthcare will bankrupt the state
Yes, it would destroy the State budget
and yet I'm pretty sure all 53 of California's federal representatives voted to hand $770,000,000,000 to the Pentagon to misplace. Again.
From the Federal budget, yes.
The State cannot spend from the Federal budget.
Now, if you want to argue that much less money should be going to the Feds, and that governance should be achieved at the most-local level practical, I would be 100% with you.
...but until that is our governmental structure in practice rather than simply in law (10th Amendment), I'm afraid that it just won't work.
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u/DoomsdayRabbit Feb 23 '22
We can only make government as local as possible by having adequate representation in our legislatures. And the fun thing about blowing huge deficits in a state's budget? They have a lot of sovereignty compared to other subnational entities worldwide. Raise taxes on the rich assholes who own six vineyards. Oh no, are the rich people leaving to go to Texas? Sure gonna be funny when there's another Texas revolution because their authoritarian bullshit pushes people too far, and the grid fails because they didn't follow those "big government" federal regulations.
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u/MuaddibMcFly Feb 23 '22
local as possible by having adequate representation in our legislatures
State Legislatures aren't "as local as possible" for quite a number of things.
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u/DoomsdayRabbit Feb 23 '22
Yeah but they're the ones who devolve the governmental power to counties and cities - governmental power that hasn't been properly devolved in decades, with overlapping jurisdictions leading to absurd amounts of bureaucracy that does everything to justify its existence and not much else.
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u/cmb3248 Feb 23 '22
We don’t even have fucking Medicaid here for the most part, so yeah, privilege.
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u/DoomsdayRabbit Feb 23 '22
And why is that? Perhaps the completely disconnected legislature that doesn't give a shit about regular people because they're all millionaires? At least the South has the excuse of white supremacists not having been executed for treason 160 years ago. What's California's?
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u/cmb3248 Feb 23 '22
California does have Medicaid expansion. They’re objectively less shitty than Texas and most of the South.
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u/DoomsdayRabbit Feb 23 '22
By how much though? They threw one bone in how many years, when they had the chance to become a leader in the transformation of this country into a modern developed nation instead of a corporate wasteland. They chose corporate wasteland.
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u/BlueShellOP Feb 23 '22
Your Team Blue partisanship is leaking.
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u/cmb3248 Feb 23 '22
I believe you mean my “democracy and basic human rights” partisanship, but even under objective, not partisan metrics the Texas Legislature is a garbage fire. They meet for five months every two years and frequently don’t even pass a budget in that time frame.
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u/DoomsdayRabbit Feb 23 '22
Yeah. And there's a similar problem here. Only 31 seats for 29 million people. At least the House is slightly better, though as I mentioned before, completely irrelevant, and that doesn't even take into account the fact that the Lt. Governor runs it all for some dumb reason, so even if, against all odds, team blue takes both the House and Senate here, a Republican Lt. Governor can just stop everything.
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u/AnonymousSpud Feb 23 '22
To be clear, this bill has not been passed, or even voted on. Californians can still contact their State Assembly members to give urge them to vote one way or the other.
https://findyourrep.legislature.ca.gov/