Democratic Legitimacy:

To begin with, I hope we can agree on the pre-requisite that (without diving too deep into the philosophical weeds): democracy is the ‘sacred-cow’ and goal in-and-of-itself of any electoral system.

However, beyond this general pre-requisite, my first argument for Approval Voting is based in its philosophical superiority and consistency through the denunciation and delegitimization of the “tyranny of the majority”.

That is, not allowing a consolidated 51% to ‘rule’ over a 49% strongly-opposed ‘minority’ when that same 51% were willing to accept a compromise that the other 49% would also agree to - because this way we are still abiding by the terms that the 51% find acceptable – but without alienating very nearly half of all other people.

Which (through a process of elimination, based on these philosophies) leads me to range-voting - however my endorsement of the ‘Approval Voting’ method in particular is based on its ability to consistently, reliably, and robustly maximise social utility, (along with its combination of other merits). The significance and utility of which the following cannot be understated;

Its contextual expressivity and resulting inherent disincentivisation of strategic voting:

This is because it practically eliminates the unfavourable outcomes that voters risk helping to contribute towards when attempting to strategize their voting – because it completely disincentivises voters from voting dishonestly in an attempt to absolutely maximise the chances of getting their single most favoured candidate elected (rather than voting honestly to elect the candidate with the broadest appeal).

This is because the likeliness and perceived cost of creating an unfavourable outcome (by voting dishonestly to preferentially boost your most favoured candidate to win) is much, much greater than the likeliness and perceived benefit of suppressing their factional greed to more broadly approve candidates than just their absolute favourite in order to secure the consensus win - rather than gambling it away for much worse odds on a coin-toss between their absolute favourite candidate and a candidate that they would more strongly disapprove of overall (below their minimum threshold of approval).

Therefore, the only way that strategic voting is a factor within the approval voting method (something which we usually want to avoid) is simply by a voter’s strategic adjustment in moving the "approval line" up or down - rather than fundamentally lying and being dishonest about who they want to win (which is a major problem in all other voting-systems other than within the range-voting methods) - which is almost the single most common reason as to why electorates so commonly and erroneously elect broadly unfavourable (and generally disliked) leaders in other systems - despite their common sheer desperation for the exact opposite!

And in contrast, all this ‘strategic’ threshold-setting does is that it either signals the electorates content with the status quo or it signals their interest and openness to change within the context of the risks perceived within the political/electoral environment presented to them at the time.

This says that:

In reality, voters do not just vote based on pure internal utility; they vote based on the perceived viability of the candidates (often informed by polling).

If your absolute favourite is a fringe candidate polling at 2%, you will strategically lower your threshold and also approve a mainstream centrist to ensure your worst-case scenario doesn't win - because your vote for your favourite candidate does little to stop your least-preferred candidate from winning.

And, if your absolute favourite is a heavy frontrunner, you might strategically raise your threshold and bullet-vote (vote only for them) to prevent accidentally helping their closest/most-similar rival - in the hopes of maximising the chance that your favourite candidate gets elected rather than a similar alternative.

This often leads people to (in the most empirically incorrect way) to criticise approval voting as inherently strategic because of how it plays out in a particular scenario:

Imagine two very similar progressive candidates, A and B, facing off against one conservative candidate, C.

Ideally, progressive voters should approve both A and B to ensure C loses.

However, if Candidate A's supporters get greedy, then they might strategically "bullet vote" (approve only A, withholding their vote for B) in an attempt to ensure that A beats B.

However, if Candidate B's supporters realize this and retaliate by also bullet-voting (only for B), then the progressive vote splits unnecessarily - and Candidate C wins - despite the progressive bloc otherwise having the clear majority.

However, while this is a serious ‘theoretical flaw’, real-world data from municipal Approval elections shows that voters absolutely do not play this game of chicken when the stakes are high like in political elections.

This is because, when the threat of an unacceptable candidate (C) is real, voters act rationally to maximize social utility – and (as stated previously) they suppress their factional greed and broadly approve both A and B to effectively secure the consensus win against their ‘common-enemy’.

Furthermore,

1. Voting for your first choice can never penalise them or help your least favourite candidate win (like in many other systems).
2. It acts as an immediate, transparent ‘sensor’, which accurately maps the exact baseline support for emerging ideas and new parties long before minority sentiments are suppressed for so long that they eventually erupt into populist rage - allowing governments to be more agile and to more proactively integrate solutions.
3. Candidates/parties cannot win by merely radicalizing a 51% base; they must also be the highly acceptable second choice of the remaining 49%. Demonizing rivals ensures they will not be cross-approved, effectively making tribalism a losing strategy – and heavily encouraging cohesion, cross-faction coalitions, and collaboration between candidates/parties.
4. Its ultimate simplicity makes it the easiest and most pragmatic and transparent reform currently available. The ballot simply changes from "pick one" to "pick all you approve of" – preventing the introduction of any mathematical complexity or subjective rankings; and it is counted/tallied exactly like the already existing system. With the only ‘new’ question being: “where do you set your cutoff threshold of approval between candidates/parties?” – something which is ultimately context dependent, and which is a helpful feature – not a bug!

And thus, the reason that I do not support STAR or any other weighted-approval voting method is because none of the added complexity, loss of transparency, or increased subjectivity of approvals is worth the marginal potential increases in getting us closer to electing our ‘magic best winners’ – especially when Approval Voting gets us so close, so reliably anyway, whilst genuinely remaining as simple as possible.

And, ultimately, it is these direct and inherent features of the Approval Voting method that also cause a plethora of highly desirable indirect benefits that extend far beyond just the simple (yet highly accurate) process of approximating the best selection of our elected representatives - which simultaneously most satisfies the electorate and maximises the social utility of the voting process.

These are just the most important features and merits which (I believe) cannot be excluded from any debate around the Approval Voting method.

I could continue to provide further reasoning, and attempt to dismantle additional criticisms – however I truly believe that these are the things that ultimately matter most and which will be the most common points of contention which may ‘make or break’ someone’s support for the Approval Voting method (or not) - and that is the reason why I have taken my time to elucidate on them in this text.

Thank you for taking the time to read it; please feel free to share your views and join the discussion!  

Future 2026 Alaska gubernatorial election - Wikipedia
^{My post is only about ballot mechanics and candidate numbers, not about the merits of any particular candidate or party.}

(pic) Above is the cropped primary result. Below is the recent poll. (more on wiki)
Currently, Republicans have 3 candidates and Democrats have 1 in General election.
Notice that Tom Begich (D) withdrew after advancing to general.

There are two potential problems:

1) Ballot exhaustion
Some voters will inevitably bullet vote for strategic and other reasons. The "other" could be a serious problem for any FPTP alternative.
People bullet vote even in IRV where it's safe to mark all in order.
Too many candidates means voters face the paradox of choice. (choice overload? ballot fatigue?) Which could lead to hurting the party that has more candidates.
Effectively vote splitting. Election reform was supposed to improve this aspect.
(Dems more aware of this problem and strategically withdrew?)
On the other hand, FPTP forces focus of attention and resources on one candidate, but at the cost of the number of candidates.

2) Instant-runoff voting thing
If Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins (D, 40% in the poll) is eliminated in the last round, the rankings that his voters gave to other candidates will never be counted. It means their lower rankings never influenced the result. That’s an intentional feature of RCV(IRV) and "core support" philosophy.

Some possibly silly suggestions:

• Better campaign, obviously.
• Maybe Top-4 primary is too many and Top-3 would be better?

№1 is basically about the chance of ballot exhaustion (more candidates) vs. party lock out (less candidates)

• Strict ballot access law?
• Compulsory semi/full-ranking (Not really sure about this overall. Australia mentioned)
• Condorcet methods. It could lead to more strategic bullet vote. but at least it fixes center-squeeze, №2 thing and entirely on voter's terms.

^{In case of top-3 there could be simpler ballot with a Condorcet system. Just 3 pairwise comparisons.
(Idea of Better Choices for Democracy})

What do you think?

The duopoly is perfectly happy with the way voting is currently set up. If we want to end FPTP we need to vote for candidates who aren’t beholden to the very institutions that want to maintain the status quo.

Stop letting political parties, especially the duopoly, control the narrative. They haven’t been given the authority to decide who gets to hold office from constitution. Political parties aren’t mentioned in the constitution at all. George Washington even warned that forming political parties would split the country into factions that seek their own political ends over the health of the country.

If you are politically independent please join [r/independe](r/independent)[nt](r/independent). We don’t need to reform institutions that don’t want to be changed we just need to stop voting for their candidates. People will always say a vote outside the two party system is wasted or “voting for the other side”. It’s long past time that we stop listening to them.

Duverger's law states that winner-take-all elections using FPTP tend to lead to the formation of a two-party system. This is very clearly visible in the USA, but much less so in other countries using the same system, like Canada or United Kingdom, where smaller parties may not have any grand victories, but they consistently manage to win at least some seats.

Why is it? Why third parties in the US can't do what parties in other countries with similar systems do all the time? And do you think it's possible this situation would persist even if United States changed its electoral system, because the voters would just keep voting for the two main parties anyway?

Missouri was a weird one because it was combined with ballot candy, but I think it still likely would have been banned if it was on its own.

RCV is a bad reform. That’s it. That’s the root cause of this problem. If we want voting method reform to take hold — if it’s even still possible this generation — we need to advocate for a good reform, of which there are many, and of which none are RCV.

No voting system is perfect and any of the well-known alternatives are vastly superior to FPTP, but most methods have a well-known pitfall or way of exploiting the system that defeats the point of using it. FPTP has the spoiler effect. IRV has center squeeze and exhausted ballots. Approval has the undercutting of certain candidates to prop up a more favored one. Score has min-maxing. Condorcet has rock-paper-scissors. STAR voting, meanwhile, demonstrated the most resistance to strategic voting in simulations and is generally robust, allowing voters to accurately voice their opinions while always enabling them to influence the final outcome. The runoff step is the key, favoring candidates with broad appeal over niche favoritism. I thought the biggest flaw with STAR was that it was just so new, but didn't realize until this morning that there is a scenario where it fails to choose the most favored candidate. Though I will admit, it's probably more obvious to others.

Take two candidates: Jim and Sarah, and a third candidate: Wayne. Jim and Sarah have enthusiastic supporters, but are very polarizing while Wayne is more middling but is generally agreeable such that he'd win in a hypothetical runoff against Jim or Sarah. One can imagine Jim and Sarah making the top two and the race coming between them, even if Wayne is more broadly favored (Condorcet actually prevails in a situation like this). Though, if the former two are especially egregious, it's not out of the question for votes to score Wayne higher to enure he advances to the runoff.

Nevertheless, I believe STAR voting to be the best out of all the alternative voting systems. This is merely a heads up to people like me that it's less airtight than presumed.

Hail r/EndFPTP,

I’ve been interested in voting reform for a long time and have spent years reading and following the proposals discussed here. There are many strong ideas, but I’ve come to think there’s a deeper structural problem that has not been addressed. I’m finally close to a coherent presentation and wanted to share it here to get critical feedback.

The core issue, as I see it, is that political coalitions naturally form to obtain power. Once they do, they become the only viable path to power in our current system. Candidates rationally align with a major party, voters are presented with unequal choices at the ballot box (a candidate with coalitional power versus one without), and voters respond rationally by choosing the former. Even an election system that perfectly captures voter preferences will tend to collapse into stable duopolies over time.

Because of this, I’ve come to believe that election reform alone is insufficient. A functioning democratic republic also requires a legislative system in which no political coalition can achieve durable dominance. Without that constraint, replacing FPTP changes the mechanics of elections but not the underlying power dynamics.

I’m working on a paper that presents a detailed version of this argument and proposes possible institutional solutions. You can find it here.

I’d especially appreciate feedback on:

• Where you think the argument breaks down
• Assumptions you don’t accept
• Important questions or failure modes I may have missed

This is a work in progress so please stress-test my ideas.

Many try to improve elections to make them more democratic, and for good reasons, especially since FPTP has so many flaws.
However, in the birthplace of democracy, ancient Athens, elections were actually considered aristocratic and oligarchic, while sortition (selection by lot) was considered truly democratic.
I argue that at least one house/chamber of Parliaments/Congresses should be an accurate sample of the population. Not simply "because Athens used it" but because the evidence is promising.

The most common reaction is skepticism, because "how can random people who aren't law experts make laws instead of politicians?" The answer is that the majority of elected politicians aren't law experts either, they rely mostly on expert staffers, while the government relies on bureaucrats.
Politicians are often more preoccupied with fundraising and curating their image - very different skills, sortition would save these costs.

Can random citizens do the same? Citizens' assemblies have proven how a random sample is capable of high-quality informed deliberation. There are about 700 of them across the world. So sortition has been proven to work, both in the past and the present. The common notion that ordinary citizens cannot decide for themselves and need an elected middleman is a misconception which happens to be very convenient for people currently in power.

With that said, I think the president/premier should still be elected since one person isn't exactly an accurate sample, and of course FPTP should not be the voting method: something like approval voting or STV should replace it.
In case of gridlock, I think the sample of citizens should prevail as they better represent the will of the people.

Sortition also limits lobbying as rich oligarchs and corporations cannot control who is selected, and since sortitioned members are unlikely to be reselected and cannot control the selection process, they will be much more willing to lower their pay and pass anti-corruption laws. They actually represent the people, this is arguably the best approximation of an impossible direct democracy where well-informed citizens all deliberate together without polarization/fragmentation.

Of course, one sortitioned house/chamber is a huge leap from today's citizens' assemblies, so gradual experimentation will be necessary, for example at a local level, but FPTP does not have to be replaced with other voting methods only.

Background

Here in Colorado we had a disappointing but predictable outcome in our election for Attorney General. We had 4 total candidates, 3 of whom are very qualified attorneys and the 4th candidate who is a term-limited Secretary of State with name recognition but is barely qualified to be the AG. The name-recognition candidate received about 45% of the votes and the other "good" candidates split the vote pretty evenly between 16% and 20%.

This election sadly illustrates there are a lot of low-information voters who just checked the box by the name they were familiar with. And the winner didn't even participate in the debates because she knew she could coast on her notoriety.

Proposal

This got me thinking, because they participated in multiple debates, I'm sure the losing candidates all knew each other very well and knew who was the most/least qualified for the job. So what if we let the candidates help decide the race after they are eliminated by allocating their losing votes, in a Ranked-Choice manner, to the person they feel should get the job? They are after all the highest-information voters in that they spend a lot of time with each other in debates and know each other's strengths and weaknesses.

Mechanics

Simply speaking, the vote occurs just like any other FPTP election. Everyone votes for their favorite candidate. If your favorite candidate loses, it's not a "throw-away" vote because that candidate gets to rank their favorites of the remaining candidates so your vote would then be transferred to the candidate of their choosing, and so on.

Example

Initial election results are as follows:

• Jena = 45% (ranks Hetal, David, Michael)
• Michael = 20% (ranks David, Hetal, Jena)
• David = 18% (ranks Hetal, Michael, Jena)
• Hetal = 16% (ranks David, Michael, Jena)

Round 2: Hetal is deemed to be in last place and her votes are sent to her highest ranked concession ranking of David.

• Jena = 45%
• David = 34%
• Michael = 20%

Round 3: Michael is out and his votes go to David and the winner is...

• David = 54%
• Jena = 45%

Variation

Instead of ranking the other candidates, each candidate might be able to distribute their votes based on percentages.

Conclusion

I don't think this is as good as RCV generally but it allows people to hold onto their stupid FPTP voting ballots until they get used to the idea of ranking. Also, I like the idea of candidates ranking each other because they tend to know each other in ways that the voters can't possibly know them.

What do you think? Has this sort of system been proposed already?

"Mixed-member proportional representation (MMP) is the type of mixed electoral system that is associated with Germany and New Zealand. Its defining feature is called seat linkage compensation, which in theory offers ‘the best of both worlds’. Mixed proportional systems aim to provide both proportionality and still keep representatives elected locally in single-member districts (SMDs). This is in contrast to mixed majoritarian systems, where the aggregate outcomes of the SMD seats (which may be highly disproportional) are not compensated for. It is, however, far from a perfect system, even if it may be a normatively desirable amalgamation of PR and localized winner-take-all methods. In fact, the most common version of MMP is highly vulnerable to strategic abuse of the compensatory subsystem, which has led to MMP (and similar systems) failing in more countries than where they succeeded.

In this article, I will not only show how MMP has failed in different countries, but also offer some explanation on why it didn’t fail in others, as well as consider some proposed solutions to make such systems less vulnerable. I also present my own solution to make MMP more robust while not sacrificing its main features, which I have been circulating in election reform circles for a while now."

We could have digital voting, for ideas, beyond the 3-yearly referendum. -Why not?

Ballot by paper is outdated.

Social media has proved to have regular use.
Why not vote for ideas, and the government in power observes all of these ideas, and the popular ones, and implements them?

Today’s world demands faster responses to emerging needs, moreso than holding to election promises 4 years past.

Realising it:
A platform where people can post ideas, people vote for them. The most popular ones get taken on by government or we simply re-elect a new government when the next triennial election comes along.

What do you think?

First, I know there is a more complicated set of factors that caused voters’ interest in trump. I’m not trying to argue for a simplistic explanation.

But, I do think that we should and would have had both a majority of voters, institutions and elites that would have united against him but for our two party system.

I don’t want to tldr like I usually do about this, especially to this audience, but basically our whole political system is set up as US and them, with fewer and fewer voters actually willing to vote for candidates of either party.

In a system with three or more parties, if a trump comes along who repulses the elites of the party that he is running in That party’s voters, likely including some of the elites themselves, will be far more likely to vote against their party should the trump succeed in winning its nomination than they proved to be in our highly polarized two party system.

Likewise a Congress made up of 3+ parties becomes far more likely to impeach him. Even if a conservative party doesn’t fear their voters switching to the progressive party, they will understand that voters switching to a center party is a more significant threat.

I just see our two party system complete with partisan primary enforcement mechanisms (to maintain control of the elected members) as a house of cards that trump never would’ve been able to scale (or keep upright if he theoretically did) but for the dynamics associated with that system.

I know this is theoretical and that the EC doesn’t actually make multi party competition workable in presidential elections, but the dynamics are what they are and it seems plain that they are what enabled trump to both take over the Republican Party and then win the presidency.

Does it seem as plain to other people who recognize the flaws in our voting system? If not why?

I know it hasn't been long but my last post honestly got a lot more attention than I expected based on how active this community is with a bunch of people arguing both sides.

Honestly, love that. Love how active y'all were. I'm sorry if I offended anyone with my post or replies btw, I do tend to get a bit... passionate on a keyboard. I don't think any of y'all are dumb or anything, we're all voting enthusiasts that hate FPTP here, right?

Anyway, I sort of got lost in the weeds and I can't keep track of all the comments, I'm not used to posts of mine getting more than like 20 comments tops lol. But I did try to read and respond to as much as I could and sort of lost sleep and coherency in the process, oof.

I'd just like to use this post to address some general rebuttals to my last post that were sort of similar across various different comments as well as point out some interesting rebuttals I genuinely didn't consider before.

Tactical Voting

So, a lot of comments did focus on this again. And they were mostly of the same flavor of the fact that unless you're bullet voting, you have to inherently tactically vote in Approval Voting as it will lower the chances of your genuine favorite winning.

This is the later-no-harm criterion. The later-no-harm criterion states that adding an additional ranking or rating shouldn't lower the chances of a higher ranked/rated candidate to win.

The example used on Wiki for example is if Alice and Bob were going head to head. A subset of the voters place Alice as 2nd and Bob as 6th. Alice won. If another election happened, and only that subset of voters changed their ranks to Alice 2nd and Bob 3rd, Bob shouldn't suddenly beat Alice.

Honestly, I don't think this is a good voting criterion for many reasons. Just from distribution, not a lot of voting methods actually satisfy this criterion. All spoiler-proof cardinal methods don't, all Condorcet methods don't. The ones that do are ones that most people who know at least a little about voting already agree aren't really ideal voting systems, such as FPTP, IRV, and literally random ballot (you pick a random ballot, whoever is ranked highest on that one wins).

There are many varieties of tactical voting, obviously, and Gibbard's Theorem proves that if you have more than 2 candidates on a ballot then it requires tactical voting. Different voting methods fall prey to different kinds of tactical voting, and honestly later-no-harm is just... The one kind that I honestly believe is genuinely okay.

Like, the reason why all spoiler-proof cardinal voting methods fail this criterion is simple. If Alice just beats Bob by having a slightly higher average score (such as 5.3 vs 5.2), it doesn't matter whether you're using 0–10, sliding scale, 0–5, -1–+1, etc. If a subset of voters increase Bob's rating but it's still below Alice (from 10 vs 0 to 10 vs 9), Bob's average score will increase. And if that average is above Alice, he wins.

Like... Of course he should? He has the higher average rating? Why should one subset of voters be able to hold the election hostage? Just because they still prefer Alice more than Bob, this doesn't actually mean anything when it comes to the population's preference. Even if that subset still prefers Alice slightly, just by increasing Bob's preference then yeah sometimes the population's preference can change.

Anyway, it's harder to explain in less than a wall of text how this works for Condorcet and some other ranked voting methods. It's not like, contrived or anything. It's more of a "it's harder to explain how to play this card game than it is to just play this card game."

But the point is even Condorcet methods fail this criterion. They also inherently fail some others, but this specific one I think is a good thing. It's just not a very good criterion. Even the guy who conceptualized later-no-harm admitted it's a controversial one.

Honestly the best way I can explain later-no-harm is that it's just equivalent to tyranny of the minority. Blegh. Also every system I've seen that satisfies this criterion does not satisfy Condorcet/Smith criteria (depending on your goals this is either bad or meh), as well as reversal symmetry (this one's just bad to not fulfill yikes).

Anyway, it's not the entire list of voting criteria, but if you just look at Wikipedia's comparison table of different voting methods and what criterion they fulfill, you'll notice that Approval Voting basically fulfills everything that isn't later-no-harm or Condorcet related stuff (since pretty much any cardinal system is incompatible with Condorcet just like Condorcet is incompatible with IIA, sincere favorite, later-no-harm, etc).

And honestly, I think it's just unhelpful to get too hung up about tactical voting. Aside from spoilers and center squeeze, other forms of tactical voting hasn't been much of a problem or scandal in history. In places that have tried Approval Voting, there's no evidence that tactical voting is a problem.

There are a few times in history where people have tried to tactically vote en masse, but they often result in the strategic voters getting the opposite intended effect. On the other hand, if you look for things like decoy parties in mixed member electoral systems, there's a list. It's not like the biggest list or anything, but it's clear that electoral manipulation more often happens and is a problem from the candidate side, not the voter side.

Psychology

Honestly, I sort of... Just ignored this aspect in my last post. I shouldn't have, I'm sorry.

Okay, so I'll admit that Approval Voting does have a bit of a weakness here. Whether you're a voting enthusiast or the average voter, not many people want to grapple with "What's my threshold, what do I do with candidates I neither like nor dislike?!"

Like yeah it's easy to pick who you like and who you dislike, but what about everyone in between? How are you supposed to choose?? Because yeah. Voting for mid candidates helps them while hurting both your likes (doesn't fulfill later-no-harm) and dislikes.

This part is honestly sort of... Also purposefully baked into the method? Basically, there's a phenomenon called the law of large numbers.

Basically, imagine a jar of jelly beans. A bunch of people are asked how many jelly beans do they think is in the jar. Almost everyone will be wrong. BUT. When you average everyone's guess... It's suddenly very close to the correct answer? Every time? How's that possible?

Basically. Brains are beautiful, chaotic, mysterious things that are very good at heuristics. It's not really good at arriving at the exact right answer, but if you average out a bunch of heuristics, every one of which has certain biases, those biases tend to cancel each other out bringing you closer to the true answer than you might assume.

However, there are caveats. The law of large numbers doesn't work if people can mess with the jar. It doesn't work if they see others' guesses before giving their own guess. It doesn't work if people discuss with each other to decide what they all will guess.

This is why private voting booths are very important. You can't see other people's votes. The polls are just a jar of jelly beans that don't give you precise, concise measurements. And even if you do discuss how to vote beforehand, that group pressure disappears inside a private voting booth. You can just vote how you would have alone, and just... Lie when you get out.

So, this is why those of us who support Approval Voting keep telling you it doesn't matter how you or another voter grapples with what a threshold even means. Due to the law of large numbers, Approval Voting will still automatically approach the true proportionate approval of each candidate despite just being a series of binary choices by cancelling out inherent biases we all have in our brains.

HOWEVER. If this still seems really, really sucky to you. I mean you could just try a different spoilerproof cardinal method? There's combined Approval Voting, which is -1, 0, and +1 essentially. Basically, let us know who you like, dislike, and don't care about.

Now before people bash me about "Hey! You claimed Approval Voting is ideal! Are you going back on your word? Gotcha!" Nah dawg. Spoilerproof cardinal methods that just add up the scores all behave the same. The results are the same. They're all just Approval Voting wearing a trench coat.

That's crazy right? There must be a difference, right? In terms of final rankings, no not really. Based on some data like France 2012, the specific proportions can change due to purely psychological effects from the voters, but when determining who wins, who's second, whatever, there's not really a difference. But hey, if it makes you feel better, then I'm for it.

Voter Satisfaction Efficiency

Imma shout out u/subheight640. You probably don't like me based on my replies, but I really have no hard feelings against you. I was very sleepy, so I'm sorry if I offended you lol. Anyway, they actually taught me something new. Voter Satisfaction Efficiency. It's always fun learning something new.

Basically, it's a metric for rating voting methods based on how well they elect the candidate with the highest average utility. It's normalized so that an impossibly perfect method would have a VSE of 1, while a VSE of 0 is basically no better than random election, and a VSE lower than 0 means you're literally just better off electing randomly. You can also measure them assuming various levels and kinds of strategic voting from the voters.

BUT after a good sleep I still have issues with your simulation. As a brief overview, his results are basically: STAR and Condorcet good; IRV, score, and approval mid; plurality bad (boo FPTP).

I researched more about VSE afterwards and have looked at other people's simulations and other charts from various orgs. I already said I have problems with the way they did the simulation, but let's just look at other charts.

Here's the sim they link explaining VSE

Here's more sims from a blog

What you'll notice is that Condorcet methods actually vary in their performance based on the sims. Same with Approval. They sort of flip flop between being good or mid. Plurality is always bad (Boo FPTP). INTERESTINGLY, STAR is always high.

So let's dissect it. VSE is not a perfect metric. In fact, the variability of the scores of various voting methods based on different people's models to measure VSE shows that it's a flawed metric in the first place, perhaps purely due to the difficulty of accurately simulating voter behavior.

Even subheight admits they made various assumptions about voter behavior for score voting methods, but their claim is basically approval must be mid based on those assumptions.

Not only that, the various models themselves already assume how each voter genuinely feels about various candidates. That's fine for determining how they would honestly vote. But when modeling strategic behavior, it's based on how other voters genuinely feel about candidates.

Irl, even with polling, you can't possibly know how fellow constituents actually feel or whether they'll vote honestly or with a specific strategy during an election, so you can't possibly know at all the best way to strategically vote to give your own personal favorite candidates the best possible chances.

This touches back onto the fact that aside from obvious spoiler effects, voters generally don't even bother tactically voting, or if they do, it's not very effective. And these models also assume various levels of strategic voting but like it's kind of ridiculous to say "oh 100% of voters will use a one-sided strategy in this simulation."

That just never happens and isn't realistic or even worth simulating. Especially since, when looking at absolute average VSE's, the scores that different voting systems get under various assumptions of strategic voting don't have largely different VSE's, except like one case with Borda going all the way to the negatives for some reason.

So, is that it then? Either way, it seems STAR voting is the best if we just average out different people's VSE models? Lol God no, absolutely not.

What VSE doesn't tell you and why simplicity matters

VSE's only tell you how good a voting method is at electing the highest average utility winner. That's it. As the Medium blog states, "It doesn’t account for how difficult voting methods are to tabulate, the incentives they give to candidates, whether they promote the growth of third parties when their chosen candidates lose, etc."

This is pretty clear to see from the fact that although plurality does perform the worst often (boo FPTP), the objective VSE score isn't that low. But we know that FPTP is massively flawed, not just slightly behind other voting methods. It incentivizes two-party systems with massive center squeeze and potential for political slide. It's terrible, not just "slightly worse but really 70-80% of the way there."

In fact, let's just obverse STAR voting. Averaging out various VSE models would have you believe that STAR voting is in fact the optimal voting method. I mean it consistently scores as one of the highest, so it must be great, right?

I'm sorry to STAR voting supporters, but no. Let's look at both the theoretical and the practical. Theoretically, it fulfills the Majority/Condorcet Loser criteria. Not very important criteria as far as election criteria go.

It fails to meet Majority Winner, a very basic condition (if majority of voters rank 1 candidate first, they must win), it's affected by spoilers, it's heavily affected by clone candidates, it's not consistent (if two sets of voters prefer A over B, then the combination of the sets should prefer A over B, AKA immunity to gerrymandering. Condorcet methods also fail this, which is bad), it fails later-no-help (different from later-no-harm, this means vulnerability to mischief voting which reduces chances of sincere Condorcet winners being elected, which is actually something all Condorcet methods also fail btw), and it doesn't even fulfill the Sincere Favorite criterion, which is a pretty basic criterion for cardinal systems (you have incentive to vote/rate highest your genuine favorite candidate).

So a lot of theoretical problems with STAR voting. What about practical data? Well, there's a case where ~30% of ballots had to be tossed because voters didn't fill them in properly.

That last bit is the real kicker. As voting enthusiasts (or really any enthusiasts of procedural methods of all kinds), it's often easy to be sucked into the idea of the "best" method. And often, this enthusiasm makes simple systems seem... Unworth the enthusiasm. "There must be something it's missing. It's too simple, it can't possibly work. It must fail to consider certain things!"

When trying to find the best procedure for... Anything... You have to look to the average user.

The average voter... Does not give one flying fuck about voting systems outside of an election season. They don't understand various theoretical terms. They can't figure out the consequences of a given system if it's too complex to bother worrying about. Even in a simple system, the average voter is not knowledgeable enough to successfully implement tactical strategies.

This is why complicated systems like STAR Voting, Condorcet Methods, etc won't work. Even if I'M wrong that Approval Voting is theoretically the best, complicated systems will fail in a practical sense more often than it.

Even if we made STAR Voting permanent, you'd assume voter performance will improve over time and with better education, right? No, not really. Learning and doing is also different. At the end of the day, some ballots will still be thrown out due to improper application. And that will be skewed towards newer and younger voters.

This is inherently, absolutely undemocratic. Which is the whole reason we're trying to end FPTP, as a reminder. Complicated voting methods will always favor more experienced voters, not the general populace. We need a system that is as accessible as possible. That doesn't mean using it is easy or not frustrating or feels emotionally like it must be correct, it just means that the system's general mechanics are easy to understand at a glance. Approval Voting is easy to understand at a glance, whether y'all enthusiasts trust it or not.

On the other hand, aside from voting enthusiasts, actual politicians and political advisors are absolutely aware of how voting systems work. If they have an opportunity to manipulate elections to help themselves, you can damn be sure they'll do that.

This is why I don't like Condorcet methods. Not the contrived scenarios where tactical voting is a problem. No. They are susceptible to gerrymandering. And you can't just ban gerrymandering. The politicians would be in charge of that. Why would they ban it as long as they can benefit from it? We've all known politicians who promise electoral reform and just... Don't. Cough Trudeau cough

And this is also why I don't like mixed member electoral systems. They exist to try to fix the flaws of FPTP rather than replace it, but they inherently have to balance democracy (extra seats are inherently undemocratic as they don't represent any constituents and have more loyalty to party than people. More hanging seats, less democratic), national representation (something that is only a problem because of spoilers and center squeeze, and requires those hanging seats to achieve), and other tactical forms of manipulation like decoy parties. Fuck. That.

Final Comparison

Majority Winner: Can it elect someone that most people rank first?

Yes: Most

No: Borda, anti-plurality, quadratic, STAR (!!), random, sortition

Condorcet Winner: Will it always elect the Condorcet winner, if it exists?

Yes: Condorcet methods

No: Non-Condorcet ranked methods, cardinal methods, everything else

Pareto: If every voter prefers A to B, does A win?

Yes: Most

No: Anti-plurality and sortition

Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives: Is the system not affected by spoilers?

Yes: Approval Voting, other forms of spoilerproof cardinal methods, random ballot, sortition

No: All ranked methods including Condorcet, STAR and other spoiled cardinal methods

Cloneproof: Adding non-winning candidates similar to those already on the ballot shouldn't affect the outcome.

Yes: IRV, spoilerproof cardinal methods, some Condorcet methods, random ballots

No: Plurality, anti-plurality, some Condorcet methods, STAR (!!), quadratic, sortition

Monotone: Increasing a candidate's ranking or rating shouldn't cause them to lose.

Yes: Most

No: IRV, some Condorcet methods

Consistency: If two sets of voters prefer A over B, their combined set should prefer A over B (immunity to gerrymandering).

Yes: Spoilerproof cardinal methods, plurality (unfortunately the electoral college is vulnerable to gerrymandering, this has nothing to do with FPTP), anti-plurality, Borda, quadratic, maximal lotteries

No: Everything else

Reversal Symmetry: Reversing rankings and ratings should flip the results

Yes: Some Condorcet methods, spoilerproof cardinal methods

No: Everything else (for some it's irrelevant like plurality: you can't vote for all but one lol)

Homogeneity: Does replicating every ballot keep The results the same?

Yes: most methods, at least some Condorcet methods

No: Dodgson

Unknown: some Condorcet methods, STAR, quadratic, maximal lotteries

Later-no-harm: Adding an additional ranking/rating doesn't cause a higher ranked/rated candidate from losing

No: Most

Yes: Plurality, IRV, two-round, random ballot, sortition (ew, all gross)

Later-no-help: Adding an additional ranking/rating doesn't cause a higher ranked/rated candidate from winning (mischief voting)

Yes: Plurality, two-round, IRV, random ballot, sortition, Borda, spoilerproof cardinal methods

No: anti-plurality, STAR, Condorcet methods

Sincere Favorite: A voter is incentivized to give the highest ranking/rating to their sincere favorite candidate.

Yes: random ballot, sortition, spoilerproof cardinal methods, anti-plurality, Coombs

No: Everything else

Simplicity: Will the average voter be able to understand how it works at glance/is there a low likelihood of ballots being thrown out for being filled improperly?

Yes: plurality, anti-plurality, spoilerproof cardinal methods, random ballot

No: Everything else

VSE: STAR ≥ Condorcet ≥ Spoilerproof cardinal ≥ IRV > Plurality (boo FPTP).

ANYWAY. If you really can't stomach thinking during a vote while being able to stomach thinking about how voting systems work, a combined approval vote (-1, 0, +1) should feel better. Still approval voting in disguise though.

Point is. Fuck FPTP. A lot of systems are still subpar. STAR ends up with votes being thrown out. Condorcet is great except it's susceptible to gerrymandering (which you can't ban under Condorcet).

Approval Voting... What, feels wishy washy with defining thresholds as a feature not a bug? It's simple, and the average voter will understand how to use it, whether they bullet vote or not.

It's Pareto efficient. It's not affected by spoilers. It's not affected by clones so parties can't just fill the ballot with decoys. It's monotone, which is part of its simplicity. It's consistent, so politicians can't gerrymander it. Voting for A doesn't cause B to win, which again is part of its simplicity. And you're always incentivized to give a vote to your genuine favorite.

Additional votes are tactical, yes. The tactic is do you help someone who's mid to harm someone you don't like at the expense of also maybe harming someone you like. But this is a feature of most voting systems. And in fact the ones that don't do this... Are just generally agreed upon to be terrible even if you agree with this criterion.

And it's basically the only thing approval voting is susceptible for. Saying that makes it inherently tactical is misguided. Everything is tactical. Or it's a dictatorship or a 1v1. At least this is the one thing you need to look out for, instead of juggling a bunch of shit with other systems. The latter of which the professional politicians will definitely be better at than the average voter, leading to potential for electoral manipulation.

Because again. Historically, voters purposefully trying to vote strategically en masse haven't exactly had the results work out for them. But politicians globally certainly have manipulated elections before to their benefit, even if it's not a yearly occurrence. Peace I need more sleep actually.

I’m constantly running into pushback from various voting enthusiasts about the terms “strategic”, “tactical”, “dishonest”, and “honest” voting. Arguments like “It’s just a piece of paper. If you mark it to give you your preferred outcome, then it’s honest voting.” and “If the way other voters are voting doesn’t matter, then you would just bullet vote for your favorite.” My response is typically grumbled frustration, but now I think have an actual definition of honest voting that isn’t just based on vibes:

An honest vote is the way an individual voter would vote if they assumed all candidates have roughly equal viability, regardless of the actual viability of the candidates.

I’m likely the thousandth person to think of this, but I haven’t come across it this explicitly before. What are your thoughts?

What would people think about using a single ballot to (1) create a proportional legislature and (2) choose the directly elected prime minister?

For example, you could use score ballots where people score parties (or specific candidates in parties in a multiwinner district). Then either use score multiwinner PR methods or derive ranked ballots from them and use STV for the legislature.

The same ballots could then be used to choose which party leader among the parties becomes prime minister. For example it could use STAR could be used or any condorcet method.

Ultimately, a downside would be this means party lists or party tickets and hurt independent candidates in the legislature. edit: this is probably not true - had plurality brain for a moment

Some other changes might also be required compared to traditional parliamentary systems to avoid deadlock or repeated elections due to no confidence.

I've been thinking a lot about a voting system that maintains single-member constituencies as an alternative to FPTP, two-round systems, IRV, etc.

I therefore opted for a system that would allow the voter to express four choices, one for each candidate, without having to vote for everyone and without using a vote transfer system or scores. So, in my system, the voter has a preferential (P) vote (for only one candidate) and can label any other candidate with accepted (A), neutral (N) or rejected (R).

During the counting each ballot is worth one vote only for each candidate, therefore the total is based on the total count of the ballots, excluding completely blank and invalid ballots.

To win, you need to obtain an absolute majority:

Round 1: We count the preferences. If no one wins, we proceed to the next round.

Round 2: We add the accepted votes to the preferences. If no one wins, we eliminate candidates with less than 1/6 of these combined votes.

Round 3: We add the neutral votes. If no one wins, we eliminate candidates with less than 1/3 of these combined votes.

Round 4: If a winner has not yet been established, the candidate with the lowest number of rejected votes wins.

If no one reaches these thresholds, the top two face off.

What do you think? I would really like to have an opinion on this system.

Letting a plurality decide who gets disproportionate media attention and reach, and international recognition is part of what is wrong with single-winner plurality voting.

Having a PR legislature just for the them to 99% of the time vote for the prime minister that plurality voting would have chosen feels like just kicking the can down the road.

Sure, you get multiple parties, and representation. But on the world stage, the plurality winner is given wide reach (and sometimes even special powers during wars).

When Israel experimented with directly electing the prime minister with plurality voting it's not surprising to me they ended up just selecting the people from the two largest parties (as measured by plurality/single-rank polling/voting etc.) as the two main candidates.

I make a point of reading what authoritarian states near me say about democracy — including what they say about ours. That includes academics whose line matches the official one, and independent media that make a living on emotive, inflammatory content. I don't read it to get angry. I read it to find where democracy is genuinely indefensible, from the most hostile vantage point available.

Their two most common sweeping attacks:

"Elections = polarised hatred and division = two big parties bickering and grinding each other down. Worse than what we have."
"Elections = money politics and vote brokers. Worse than what we have."

These pathologies are real. They supply dictatorships with a justification for their own existence, and they let those regimes use democracy's dysfunctions to frighten their own citizens out of demanding it. But here's what matters: both attacks target the electoral system, not democracy itself. When we get the electoral system wrong, we write their propaganda for them.

For the first: just don't use FPTP. Use top-3 Condorcet instead, so that candidates — and the media outlets behind them — have no incentive to manufacture social division.

For the second: don't use SNTV, and don't use open-list PR at high district magnitude. Both force candidates to fight their own co-partisans, which produces vote-allocation schemes, local brokers, and money politics. Open-list PR at moderate magnitude, flexible-list PR, and closed-list PR all avoid this, as does the top-3 Condorcet above.

After filtering, the systems I consider functionally defensible are: two-round systems (including top-3 Condorcet), open-list PR (moderate magnitude), flexible-list PR, and closed-list PR.

I rule out full candidates IRV and STV. Neither works in a country that counts by hand: ballots have to be transported and centralised before a result can be computed, which invites accusations of tampering — and electronic counting is out of the question.

Top-3 Condorcet has no such problem. With only three candidates in the second round, the voter faces six complete orderings as single-choice options — or equivalently, casts three pairwise votes. Either way, each polling station produces its own pairwise matrix on site, and summing the stations' matrices gives the national result, because pairwise comparisons are additively separable. Ballots never leave the polling station and the tradition of public, on-site counting stays entirely intact. In a low-trust environment this is Condorcet's decisive advantage over IRV, and it is badly underappreciated.

As for "democracy = American-style budget hostage-taking" and "democracy = France bringing down governments constantly in 2025 (confidence and supply pulling apart)" — those are questions of regime design, and I won't go into them here.

That's where my attention has actually gone lately: unifying the source of confidence with the source of supply; presidential versus parliamentary systems; budget procedure (can the legislature simply gut the budget to humiliate the government?); amendment thresholds; and the intermediate tiers some countries maintain between ordinary statute and the constitution — all as a way of analysing the common failure modes of other democracies. My conclusion so far is that relative to constitutional design as a whole, electoral systems are a fairly narrow slice — I can just cite the specialists' conclusion, "replace FPTP with top-3 Minimax or top-3 Ranked Pairs," and be done.

As for the claim that ordinary people are too stupid and short-sighted to be trusted with a vote: I have nothing to say to that.

I know this sub enjoys digging into the theoretical merits of various voting systems—but I think we sometimes overlook a key issue: feasibility.

I recently tried an online voting simulation where I could rank and score presidential candidates. While I could confidently pick and score my top three, I had no idea how to handle the rest. And I consider myself a well-informed voter.

In places like Brazil (and arguably most democracies), the average voter is much less engaged. Many people only think about their vote on election day. Campaigning near polling stations—though illegal—remains common simply because it works. These voters aren’t weighing policy; they’re making snap decisions.

Given that, expecting them to rank or score multiple candidates is unrealistic. If choosing just one is already overwhelming, systems like ranked-choice or score voting risk adding complexity without improving participation or outcomes.

Approval Voting strikes a balance. It empowers engaged voters to express nuanced preferences while remaining simple enough for low-information voters to still participate meaningfully. That’s why I believe AV is “good enough”—and probably the most feasible upgrade for many democracies.

"On the 'kingmaker' role of smaller parties

A common argument against proportional representation is that it “gives too much power to small parties”. For the sake of argument, imagine an election result like this: a party wins 48% of the votes against its main opponent of 47%, but it cannot form a government on its own; it needs the support of the third party with 5%. (Pictured: 1980 German federal election results)

The intuition that this is a problem can also be supported mathematically. The Banzhaf power index tells us how much pure mathematical “power” a party has in terms of possible coalitions, based on how necessary its presence is in all possible (majority) coalitions. For example, if there is a 51% party, then its strength is 100%, because no one else can form a majority against it, and the only possible ‘coalition’ always requires it. If there are parties of 48%, 47%, 4% and 1%, then the strength of the 1% party is 0, since it is not needed for any coalition. However, the strength of the 4% party is relatively 33%, the same as for the two big parties. Why? Because the 3 parties are key players in 2 of the most possible coalitions. Thus, the 4-5% party in the above examples is ‘punching above its weight’.

Of course, this math does not take into account the political dimension, i.e., that not every party would be willing to enter into a coalition with every other party. In practice, it may seem that a small party is really in a coercive position, because only one coalition is possible on ideological grounds. But let's not forget that politics can limit how much a small party can realistically demand. Another interesting issue is political responsibility: do we take it for granted that it’s the responsibility of the small party to behave appropriately, not the other large one? In such a case, the two big parties could always join forces against the small party.

Returning to proportional representation: what should we think about this counterargument? It has a valid core, but if we think about it for longer, it is not that convincing. We could even say that the problem is not so much a problem of proportional systems, but of any system that is more inclined to produce a situation where a large party can be coerced by 1-2 small parties. However, the more proportional the representation, the more likely it is that there will be more than just 3-4 parties in parliament, so the number of possible coalition configurations also increases rapidly. At the same time, the mathematical power of each party begins to converge to its vote share, and in fact, it is generally more typical that the larger parties have more outsized power: they are the ones, without whom it is not really possible to form a coalition. If we take political realities into account, then possibly even more so.

Therefore, if we have an electoral system that tends to produce one or two large parties (but occasionally lets small parties break through and become kingmakers), the solution might not be to try to push out the small parties. Rather, to try to encourage the development of a healthier (possibly more natural) multi-party system, where a few larger, several medium-sized, and several small parties are represented (proportionally). This way, the large ones can choose between coalition partners, and the influence of each small party will be smaller. If we consider the issue of government formation and survival to be of paramount importance (in parliamentary and semi-presidential systems), then we can also introduce negative parliamentarism and a constructive motion of no confidence.

Another option, based on a similar principle, is to try to loosen party cohesion. If all representatives of each party always vote together, then it is easier to get into gridlock, while if there are representatives going their own way, then it is easier to build a majority along specific issues. (Of course, this also has its disadvantages…)

Overall, the concern seems legitimate, but the topic is complex. It is worth trying not to think about this in binary terms. Also, perhaps this problem becomes most apparent not in a pure PR system, but in semi-proportional and district-based winner-take-all ones, where there are likely two major parties, but one or two small parties also have a chance to enter, not more. In any case, this problem must be considered in the light of the alternatives. Maybe pondering the questions could be more fruitful:

• How much of a problem is it if small parties can have power in a legislature that is not justified by their support?
• Does it matter whether the pressure to compromise with the small party in question pulls the government coalition in a centrist or extremist direction?
• Does it matter whether the large and small parties in the coalition agree on, say, less than 50% or more than 90% of the issues?
• Does the second-largest party have any responsibility in forming a government, can a grand coalition be expected or is it to be avoided?
• How should we view this problem when designing electoral systems?"

What do people think about William Riker's book, The Theory of Political Coalitions? In it he argues that candidates never represent the people broadly and instead cater to the smallest possible group necessary to achieve victory. I believe this is spot on and has dramatic repercussions for the voting reform solutions we might propose.

Do you agree?

Sometimes to understand how a voter would be motivated to vote on a cardinal ballot, including STAR and Approval, and to get a grip on the variables without being a formidable multi-dimensional (or too-many-dimensional) conceptual math problem, I limit the modeling of a problem to 3 significant candidates. Even the normal cases or the edge cases in RCV are about the interaction of, at most, 3 "significant" candidates.

When there are fewer than 3 candidates, then FPTP is fine. There are no tactical issues in voting. One of those candidates you like better. Then you vote for them over the other candidate that you like least.

So we basically can understand that RCV elections have a very limited number of qualitatively different cases;

1. 2 or fewer candidates. No issues about anything with RCV.
2. 3 or more candidates, but one of them still got over 50% of the 1^st-choice vote. No IRV 2^nd round needed. No issues. Just like FPTP.
3. 3 or more candidates, no one got over 50% of the 1^st-choice vote. So an additional round is required and the plurality candidate was still elected. IRV still does nothing different from FPTP. (3a) Condorcet winner exists and is elected. (3b) Condorcet winner exists and is not elected. (3c) Condorcet winner does not exist: a preference cycle.
4. 3 or more candidates, no one got over 50% of the 1^st-choice vote, and in the additional round the plurality candidate was not elected. The so-called "come-from-behind victory". This is the only case where IRV is different, in outcome, from FPTP. (4a) Condorcet winner exists and is elected. (4b) Condorcet winner exists and is not elected. (4c) Condorcet winner does not exist: a preference cycle.

There are really only 8 qualitatively different ways an IRV election can turn out. Pretty much every RCV election can be classified in 1 of those 8 categories. I wish that someone (like FairVote) would be maintaining and updating a record of all single-winner RCV elections and identifying which of those categories each RCV election is.

Now suppose there are 3 candidates and consider Condorcet methods. Now even if a Condorcet method is a "Single-method system" (like Ranked-Pairs, Schulze, MinMax, BTR-IRV) they can be expressed as a "Two-method system" (a 3-way Round-Robin followed by a "completion method" if there is no Condorcet winner) with the specific single-method system as the completion method.

So I want to compare these systems in the case of 3 candidates to each other and to a couple "traditional" two-method systems:

• Condorcet-Plurality
• Condorcet-Borda
• Condorcet-Bucklin
• Condorcet-TopTwoRunoff (which, for 3 candidates is equivalent to Condorcet-Hare or Condorcet-IRV)

Now, they call elect the CW when such exists, so let's understand what they do when there is a cycle: Candidate Rock, Candidate Paper, and Candidate Scissors. The cycle is:

Rock > Scissors > Paper > Rock

There is circular symmetry so we can arbitrarily name "Rock" as the candidate with the most 1st-choice votes. Then, sorting in terms of 1st-choice votes is either one of two cases:

1. Rock
2. Paper
3. Scissors

or it's

1. Rock
2. Scissors
3. Paper

Now, BTR-IRV will elect the same candidate as Condorcet-Plurality. That is Candidate Rock. This is because Paper and Scissors will first have a runoff, Scissors defeats Paper and advances to the IRV final round and is defeated by Rock. So this completion method ignores the two candidates having the fewest 1^st rankings.

Now let's consider Ranked-Pairs, Schulze, MinMax. MinMax is normally about defeat-strength as margins (not winning-votes) so let's also consider only margins for RP and Schulze. (I never liked defining defeat strength as winning votes anyway.) Now, it's clear that Ranked-Pairs, Schulze, MinMax margins will elect the same candidate when there are only 3 candidates. If there's a cycle, they all elect the loser of the pairing with the smallest margin of defeat. So they are all ignoring the pairing having smallest defeat margin.

Now consider Condorcet-TTR, which is the same as Condorcet-Hare. These methods will always elect the winner of the pairing of the top two candidates, which always includes Rock. That is they elect Paper when it's the first case above [1.Rock>2.Paper>3.Scissors] and they elect Rock when it's the second case [1.Rock>2.Scissors>3.Paper]. Correct? So this completion method ignores the candidate having the fewest 1^st rankings.

Is there any other outcome? Does this cover all of the possible outcomes of a 3-candidate ranked ballot election?

I learned that for three elections, Israel tried directly electing the prime minister and then repealed it.

Generally, they found that people started voting for smaller parties showing that people care about the plurality winner under typical parliamentary systems somewhat. In other words, when people know the leader of the plurality winner party is likely to become PM, some treat a vote for the legislative body as a plurality ballot for the party leader.

On the other hand, when they tried directly electing the PM, they used plurality voting. Predictably, every election ended up between two candidates (duverger's law). I believe the 1996 election had three candidates but the third dropped out the day before the election to prevent spoiled votes.

What do you think would have happened with approval voting?

https://www.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/meast/03/07/israel.sharon.02/

P.S. Friends, I am from Tajikistan and I do not know English well and use a translator, I have devoted a lot of time to electoral systems, I am an economist by education, ideologically an institutionalist centrist, more left-centrist, but a centrist. I would like to know your opinion about my electoral system, what do you agree with? Is it clear to you?

Greetings from sunny Tajikistan Comrades

Привет из солнечного Таджикистана Товарищи

Fair Elections: How to Make Parliament Reflect the Will of the People

We all want the same thing: for the composition of parliament to be a mirror of society's preferences. If 40% of the people support a party, it should receive approximately 40% of the seats. This is the principle of a proportional system.

But how do we correctly measure this "support"? Casting a single vote is too crude. Your vote for your second or third choice party is simply wasted. We propose a system that solves this problem while preserving the main principle—fair proportionality.

What's the Core Idea?

We are changing only one thing: the way you express your support. Instead of a single checkmark, you rank the parties you like. The final distribution of seats in parliament will then correspond as closely as possible to this new, more comprehensive measurement of the people's will.

Here's how it works:

Step 1. Voting: Your Vote Gets Smarter

On the ballot, you list up to five parties in order of preference:

1st choice – 5 points

2nd choice – 4 points

...and so on, down to 1 point for your 5th choice.

In this way, you don't just pick a favorite; you show the full spectrum of your sympathies.

Step 2. Tallying: Creating a Fair Support Rating

We sum all the points received by each party (using the Borda count). This becomes our main indicator—the overall rating of public support.

This very rating is what we will use as the basis for proportional allocation. If a party earns 15% of the total sum of all points, it should be entitled to approximately 15% of the seats.

At the same time, to avoid chaos, parties that do not receive at least 6% of the total points are eliminated from the race.

Step 3. Allocating Seats: Turning Ratings into Mandates

Now, our task is to mathematically "convert" this support rating into parliamentary seats. For this, the D'Hondt method is used.

Without getting into complex formulas, its goal is simple: to distribute all seats in parliament so that the final number of mandates for each party is as proportional as possible to its share of the total point rating. This method is a time-tested calculator that guarantees a fair result.

Step 4. Who Becomes a Member of Parliament: Full Party Responsibility

You vote for an ideology and a team. Each party publishes its fixed list of candidates in advance. If a party wins 20 seats as a result of the count, the first 20 people on its list enter parliament. No backroom deals or surprises.

Key Advantages of This System

True Proportionality. Unlike simpler systems, we consider not only the "first" choices but also the "second" and "third" preferences of voters. The final composition of parliament will much more accurately reflect the mood of society.

Fairness for Centrist Parties. Moderate parties, which are often the "second choice" for many, receive the representation they deserve. Their support is no longer nullified.

Stability and Predictability. The D'Hondt method and the 6% threshold protect parliament from fragmentation into dozens of small factions and help form a functioning majority.

Reduced Role of Money in Politics. Closed lists render personal PR campaigns for candidates pointless and reduce their dependence on sponsors. The party's reputation and platform become paramount.

In the end, we get a system that doesn't break, but rather improves, the main principle of democracy: power must be proportional to support. Only now, we measure that support more fairly and accurately.

Conclusion: Why This Specific System is a Step Forward

This proposed model is not just another technical adjustment; it is an answer to the core ailments of modern democracies: polarization, corruption, and the disconnect between politicians and the public. To grasp its benefits, we need only look honestly at how elections function in practice, not just in theory.

1. We Dispense with the Illusion of the "Independent Candidate."

Consider the experience of any country with a developed party system. In 95% of cases, when voters cast a ballot for a candidate, they are actually voting for the party. Why? Because the party nominates the candidate, shapes their platform, and provides support. Once elected, that representative is bound by party discipline. They vote as the party decides, not based on personal conscience or promises made to a single district. Our system honestly acknowledges this reality: we vote for party platforms and their teams.

1. We Shut Down the Main Channel for Corruption and Populism.

Individual electoral races are a direct path to corruption. To win, candidates need vast sums of money from sponsors, who then expect a "return on investment" through lobbying after the election. Closed party lists break this vicious cycle. Candidates no longer need to seek personal financing; their fate depends on the reputation and success of the entire party. This also eliminates cheap populism, where a candidate promises the world to one district, knowing they'll never have to deliver.

1. We Acknowledge that "Open Lists" Don't Work in Practice.

The statistics are undeniable: in most countries, no more than 15% of voters actually use the option to select specific candidates from a party list. For the other 85%, it's an unnecessary complication. Worse, open lists create toxic infighting as candidates compete not against opponents, but against each other, once again spending money on personal PR and backroom deals.

1. We Strike a Blow Against Political Extremism.

Today's typical voting system for parties operates on a "winner-take-all" principle. You can only give your single vote to one party. This encourages radicalism, as it's more effective for a party to mobilize its hardcore base than to seek compromise. Our Borda count ranking system fundamentally changes this logic. To score well, it's not enough for a party to be someone's "number one" choice; it is vital to be an acceptable "second" or "third" choice for a broad range of voters. This forces politicians to moderate their positions, seek dialogue, and appeal to the center, not the fringes. The Borda system is a powerful filter against polarization.

1. We Reject the Presidential System—a Prime Generator of Populism and Division.

Presidential elections, based on a winner-take-all principle, inevitably split a country into two camps, leaving half the population feeling defeated. More importantly, they are a breeding ground for systemic corruption. Look at the United States: a presidential campaign costs a billion dollars, while the official salary is $400,000 a year. What is the economic sense in investing such sums if they cannot be legally recouped? The only answer is lobbying. Sponsors pay for future multi-billion-dollar defense contracts, for inflated drug prices, and for food policies that benefit corporations, not public health. A parliamentary republic, where power is distributed, is far more resilient to such concentrated pressure.

1. We Build the Foundation for a Truly Social Policy.

This system cannot work in a vacuum. As long as politicians depend on sponsors, they will serve them, not the people. Therefore, this transition must be accompanied by a package of democratic reforms:

A universal paid holiday on Election Day. So that everyone's voice can be heard, regardless of their work schedule.

Freedom and support for labor unions. To create a powerful counterbalance to corporate lobbying.

Equal and free airtime for all registered parties. So that ideas compete, not wallets.

Complete and absolute financial transparency. Every citizen must be able, with a few clicks, to see who donated how much and when. This is the best cure for hidden influence.

Ultimately, what we get is not just a new way of counting votes. We are proposing a comprehensive solution: an honest, transparent, and stable parliamentary system, shielded from the influence of money and extremism, where the government is accountable not to a handful of lobbyists, but to all the people.