NIMBY always has an excuse. They need to convince fence-sitters they're reasonable. It's still NIMBY.
Liz
joined 2 years ago
A voting system by itself will not unseat the two party system. You been proportional representation if you want lots of parties. I suggest Sequential Proportional Approval Voting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequential_proportional_approval_voting). Run a local referendums and work your way up.
While RCV is better than the usual "choose one," having to wait to find out the results is a big disadvantage. I wish more places would use Approval Voting.
Literally exactly what this person just said is the advice I give to you: use the correct tool for the job.
I mean......I guess. That's kinda a solution. Ish.
I suggest moving to proportional representation. Essentially, proportional systems try to ensure that if a party gets 5% of the votes, they get 5% of the seats. It's obviously not a solution for single-winner elections like mayor, but it's a great system for councils and legislatures. That way, it's much more likely that voting for a minority party candidate will actually get you some representation in office. (There's a million ways to it, with some trying to place an emphasis on local representation and others trying to get as close to proportional as possible, but they're all leagues ahead of pure single-winner systems.)
Now, you might be saying "you didn't solve the problem for single winner methods!" Never fear, we can use a voting system that satisfies the sincere favorite criterion. My favorite is Approval Voting, but any of them will do. The sincere favorite criterion says that the optimal voting strategy should always include giving your true favorite maximum support, whatever that means under that particular voting system.
No voting system by itself will do much. We need to switch to a proportional system or else minority parties won't have a fair shot at representation. If a party gets 2% of the vote, they should get 2% of the seats. Not possible with single-winner methods.
Tbf, that's not really fair, is it?
Strategic voting can be an optional strategy under ordinary approval voting. If I don't like either of the top two candidates, it's still in my best interest to vote for the runner-up, if I hate them less than I hate the front-runner.
And look man, I'm honestly not interested in picking over the details. Any proportional system is better than single-winner. By miles.
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While this complaint is technically true for SPAV, the likelihood that a popular candidate would fail to win a seat because everyone thought they were too popular is just.... Not gonna happen. We already know from real-world AV elections that voters largely prefer to vote honestly, there's no reason to think they would get more strategic when it gets harder to figure out the optimal strategy.
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This is a problem inherit to nearly all systems designed to produce proportional results. I honestly can't think of a worthwhile system that doesn't have this problem. Anyway, the goal is not to make the parties take turns. It's to make it possible for minor parties to win seats in the legislature. In the end, no single party would ever have a controlling majority, and they would be forced to form coalitions to pass legislation.
So I own stock in Rivian. I guess I don't have any ownership in this comment company, eh?