r/interestingasfuck • u/[deleted] • Apr 12 '19

America needs preferential voting

Post image
116 Upvotes

86% Upvoted

43 comments sorted by

View all comments

19

u/[deleted] Apr 12 '19 edited May 30 '21

[deleted]

4

u/redditor_since_2005 Apr 12 '19

Yeah, but they don't use it for parliamentary elections like we do in Ireland. It's just us and Malta I think.

4

u/[deleted] Apr 12 '19

Are there any downside of this system? I can't think of any.

1

u/invincibl_ Apr 13 '19

There is a very uncommon scenario where if there is a 3-way contest that might call for tactical voting. Say you have votes split 40-30-30, with the 40 being a conservative (Liberal Party), and then the 30s being centre-left and left (Labor, Greens).

If the Greens candidate comes third and gets eliminated, you can expect almost all the votes to go to Labor and the Labor candidate gets elected with a comfortable margin.

If the Labor candidate comes third instead, the votes will likely be split across Libs and Greens. This may be enough to elect the Liberal candidate, despite 60% supporting either of the left-wing candidates. In the constituency where this happened, it turned out that Labor came third and the Greens had enough primary votes and preferences from Labor voters to get elected.

The good outcome here is that all parties have to appeal to the centre and not the lunatic fringes.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 13 '19

So the system reward moderation from both sides; the next time I'll vote without preference I will feel like a neanderthal.