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[Strawpoll] STV and the Presidential Election
[Strawpoll] STV and the Presidential Election
#1
The one thing we got really, really right when we started this whole democracy thing here..... An election process than more or less works.

You could have a 4 candidate election and sure in an FPV system the one with 40% of the votes would win, but the system we use acknowledges the fact that 60% of the electorate voted *against* that person - they don't want him in Power. So it asks them, hey, if you can't have your candidate, who would you prefer instead.....

And that might not be the one with 40% of the first preference votes.....

It avoids so many of the adverse incentives of first past the post voting. 2 candidates can't really split the vote, 3rd party or compromise candidates have more of a chance of being deemed 'tolereable' by the electorate when faced with two diametrically opposed alternatives.

Theoretically the system outputs the candidates the majority of the electorate would at least tolerate in government, and the whole system rumbles on.

It also makes it simple to vote against the candidates you *hate*. Just mark everyone else in order of preference, and leave the Sinn Fein box empty and then they will 'never' get your vote.

It'd be curious under an STV type system to see how the US election would turn out.
I'm curious to see how different the result would be using an Irish-style Single transfereable vote system, rather than first past the post.....

Would anybody care to indulge my curiosity? Maybe we don't have enough people to do it, but it'd be interesting to try.

So, let's write up a balllot card

[ ] Clinton, Hilllary
[ ] Trump, Donald
[ ] Bush, Jeb
[ ] Huckabee, Mike
[ ] Sanders, Bernie,
[ ] Stein, Jilll
[ ] Johnson, Gary
[ ] McMullin, Evan
[ ] O'Death, Sweet Meteor

We're making a few assumptions here. For one thing that defeated candidates in the primaries didn't drop out, but clung on. Either as independants, or to try and nail a win for at least one party candidate on transfers. I picked most of the names out on wikipedia so I've no idea who the fuck most of them are.

Mark your card with a number beside the name of the candidate you most prefer, then on down in the order of decending preference. The finished product might look something like this, for example

[ 3 ] Clinton, Hilllary
[ ] Trump, Donald
[ 4 ] Bush, Jeb
[ 5 ] Huckabee, Mike
[ 2 ] Sanders, Bernie,
[ 1 ] Stein, Jilll
[ 6 ] Johnson, Gary
[ 7 ] McMullin, Evan
[ 8 ] O'Death, Sweet Meteor

We would love a Jill Stein presidency (Even though we know it'll never happen), be more or less OK with a Sanders presidency, tolerate a Clinton presidency, find the idea of a three-generation political dynasty amusing, have heard Huckabee's name without major scandle attached to it, Would like to make Johnson jokes, have no idea who McMulin is we just that we think Trump is worse. We never want Trump to win, so we leave his box blank.

That's basically how it goes. You don't really have to mark the card the whole way down, but it helps the system a great deal if you do. Or if you want to vote none-of-the above, leave the ballot blank. It's still a legal vote.

Either post below. Or if you'd like your ballot to be secret, PM it to me.

Come November, I'll count according to Irish presidential election rules and see which ticket would've won. And post the secret ballots anonymised, to see 'how' the count worked through.
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#2
[3] Clinton, Hilllary Competent but considers herself entitled.  I haven't seen enough confirmed evidence to make a final judgment on "corrupt."  I find it believable, though.
[ ] Trump, Donald Sometime about three thousand millennia after I get an affidavit from God that Hell has frozen over and Satan is now a ski instructor.

[6] Bush, Jeb A dynasty is something a democratic republic (NOT the commie kind) doesn't need.

[8] Huckabee, Mike Ordained Southern Baptist minister.  Clergy should NOT be allowed to run for elected office.  Sometimes I think they shouldn't be permitted to vote. 

[1] Sanders, Bernie Possibly tied with Stein for least objectionable of the lot.

[2] Stein, Jill Green Party?  Seriously?  Oh well; she's not Clinton....

[5] Johnson, Gary Has pretty much screwed himself up.  Would a Libertarian government be able to get anything done, anyway?

[4] McMullin, Evan More socially conservative than I'd like, but seems competent, and even (perhaps) reasonable.  

[7] O'Death, Sweet Meteor Preferable to Trump or Huckabee.

-----
"The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water, signifying by divine providence that this was some killer weed."
-----
Big Brother is watching you.  And damn, you are so bloody BORING.
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#3
I think there is a quote along the lines of Democray is a bad system, but it is much better than the alternatives.

I've always thought some variation of the STV system should be used in all elections as amongst other benefits it gives people the chance to vote for so called no-hope candidates without worrying about letting the canditate you hate through with a split vote between the alternatives.

From what I heard about the early candidates (which wasn't all that much), Ben Carson seemed the best of the republican candidates and I couldn't even name another Democrat except for Hillary and Bernie.

Mark
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#4
Heh.  Jerry Brown just vetoed a bill to allow STV in local voting because "STV is too confusing".  Hey, don't get too mad at him, Sutter Brown is in the dog hospital.  But I've seen a lot of STV elections at my university -- ten with six elected, five with one elected -- and I was involved enough to know that they produced reasonable, representative, and even predictable results.  For the senatorial seats, people would have to have at least two constituencies behind them to win, like "sororities and environmentalists", "hispanics and insiders", or "fraternities and assholes".  The asshole vote is a real thing.
Democracy is good and all, but we're too invested in the republican form where voting is the only major right.  We really need to consider other democratic forms of policy making, like sortition, perhaps in balance with with republican representatives?  Democracy is pretty great, but as soon as Neo Queen Serenity shows up I'm defecting in favor of absolute monarchy.  Just FYI.
[ 2 ] Clinton, Hilllary
[ 9 ] Trump, Donald
[ 3 ] Bush, Jeb
[ 8 ] Huckabee, Mike
[ 1 ] Sanders, Bernie,
[ 4 ] Stein, Jilll
[ 5 ] Johnson, Gary
[ 6 ] McMullin, Evan
[ 7 ] O'Death, Sweet Meteor
At my university we had a tradition that the person receiving the most last place votes would become the Most Hated Person on Campus, by virtue of receiving the most last-place votes.  Mathematically, these will never be counted, so the only reason to put the number there is to tell someone you really care.  And yes, that is me on the list for the mock election.
-- ∇×V
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#5
One of the nice things about a STV ballot is that you don't have to fill it out completely.

[ ] Clinton, Hilllary
[ ] Trump, Donald
[ ] Bush, Jeb
[ ] Huckabee, Mike
[ 2 ] Sanders, Bernie,
[ 1 ] Stein, Jilll
[ ] Johnson, Gary
[ ] McMullin, Evan
[ ] O'Death, Sweet Meteor
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
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#6
Quote:robkelk wrote:
One of the nice things about a STV ballot is that you don't have to fill it out completely.

[ ] Clinton, Hilllary
[ ] Trump, Donald
[ ] Bush, Jeb
[ ] Huckabee, Mike
[ 2 ] Sanders, Bernie,
[ 1 ] Stein, Jilll
[ ] Johnson, Gary
[ ] McMullin, Evan
[ ] O'Death, Sweet Meteor
I guess I really don't need to worry about foreigners casting ballots in our elections if they just end up in the exhausted pile.
-- ∇×V
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#7
Small problem also in the U.S...unless your candidate is registered in that particular state, that vote does not count. Dartz, for your idea to work, the voting system will have to administered at the federal level. Which is not gonna happen.
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Charge ahead! No! Never turn
Yes, it's into the fire we fly
And the devil will burn!
- Scarlett Pimpernell
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#8
Nah, there doesn't need to be any federal government involvement whatsoever.   There's an approach going on where states agree to vote for the national popular vote winner in the electoral college, if states with sufficient electors all decide to get in on the scheme.  If enough states agree to this approach, the national election becomes popular vote only rather than our crazy map-based elections.
A similar scheme could be adopted via STV.  STV ballots are all aggregated by a multi-state committee -- these things already exist to deal with things like water and energy rights.  The election is then run on a really big computer (seriously, I've written STV software, it's kind of a slow algorithm).  All electors from those those states go to the winner of the STV election.   Alternatively states can run their own STV elections and they just be assigned electoral college votes of that state.
I've also run an STV election by hand to pick a committee chair.  That took like 10 minutes to calculate, lol.
-- ∇×V
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#9
Quote:skyfire2020 wrote:
I think there is a quote along the lines of Democray is a bad system, but it is much better than the alternatives.
Mark
"Many forms of Government have been tried and will be tried in this
world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or
all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of
government except all those other forms that have been tried from time
to time."
Winston Churchill, 1947.
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.
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#10
Yeah, that's the quote I was thinking of. Thanks for finding it.

Mark
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#11
So, who won the strawpoll? (Were there any ballots sent in privately instead of posted in this thread?)
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
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#12
Afraid not.

I haven't had a chance to run through it yet. Got to do it manually.
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