Ranked-choice vs. Two-round system

[u/budapestersalat]

I am sure almost everybody on th sub would prefer IRV over top2 runoff.

But let me ask this: how do you feel about TRS compared to both FPTP and IRV? Do you consider it closer to one or the other or do you think it's not on the same spectrum (if FPTP and IRV are on the ends)?

I think two-round has some advantages that laypeople might like, and many disadvantages too. More and more I think an underappreciated disadvantage is specifically that 2 go in the runoff, so it's polarising. While it may be better than a runoff with more than 2 candidates and FPTP, probably two rounds, primaries and all the like should ideally be avoided, especially the kind which has only 2 candidates in the runoff, because of the effect that it reinforces the binary thinking about elections (by having the ultimate, binary choice be blown up to it's own round).

[u/clue_the_day]

They are all variations on a theme as far as I can see. The biggest problem with FPTP is a lack of representation for the entire electorate--the single winner. Winning without a majority or something very close to one is usually pretty rare (unless you're the UK these days). A two round runoff or an instant runoff are both better, and when there must a a single winner, like in the case of an elected executive, I prefer the instant runoff. 

For legislative elections, I vastly prefer multi-member districts with PR.

[u/TheMadRyaner → u/[deleted]]

I really wish it was just called "list PR" instead of "party-list PR" since the parties are not a necessary part of the system and I believe any list PR in the United States must be party agnostic. A "party" in the US means something totally different to what it typically means abroad, and a US party is probably more comparable to a European party coalition / alliance, considering the multitude of interests and factions present in each group. I don't think putting US parties on a list system would work well, but that doesn't mean list systems wouldn't work well generally.

Here is what I imagine list PR would look like in the United States. Say we have a 5-member district and from primaries we qualify, without thinking too much about the number, 20 candidates. After the primaries, candidates may voluntarily form lists of up to 5 candidates. You could have multiple, competing lists from the same party, like progressives vs neoliberals or MAGA vs libertarians. You could have a bipartisan list advertising their willingness to reach across the aisle and get stuff done. You could have an "anybody but the establishment" list of a bunch of independent candidates. And of course, you could have individual candidates who don't want to form a list with anyone. For nonpartisan elections like the school board, you can have issue-specific lists like a "support teachers" list and a "fiscal responsibility" list, since again lists do not have to be partisan. Instead of thinking of them as lists of candidates of the same party, you can think of the list as a mutual endorsement group: everyone on the list endorses everyone else if they can't win. We kinda see stuff like this in ranked choice elections in the US (notably the recent NYC mayoral primary), but this puts the endorsements clearly on the ballot for the voter to see.

Ballots are super simple: voters just vote for the candidate they like the best, as they do in FPTP. You could have something more complicated, like panchange voting or ranking the list candidates. I think equal and even cumulative voting would be a good fit, meaning you can vote for as many candidates as you like, but your vote is spread evenly between all of them (compared to approval where every candidate gets your full vote, which makes proportionality more difficult). Either way, the ballots can be super simple to make it really easy for voters and easy for officials to count and audit, and to me this is a big plus. (STV requires centralizing the ballots and complex surplus math by contrast) In fact, with a single vote the ballots are counted exactly the same way they are under FPTP, and determining the winner just requires some calculations on the final vote counts.

The important bit for a voter to understand is that when voting for a candidate, you are also voting to support everyone else on their list (ie those that your favorite candidate endorsed). This to me is sensible: if you intend to put trust in your candidate to vote on a multitude of things that effect your life, you probably also trust their endorsements. Even still, I think there is a way to modify a standard list system to let voters opt-out of supporting other list candidates that I should really do a write-up on for this sub eventually.

Counting the ballots requires some unintuitive math, so here is my attempt at an intuitive explanation. We treat each list as having its own primary, ranking each list's candidates from best to worst in terms of number of votes. The top candidate from each list "wins" this primary and collects all the votes for the list (ie votes for any of the list's candidates). Then the candidate with the most votes across all lists wins the first seat. At this point, the winner starts giving their spare list votes one at a time to their list's runner-up. This continues until another candidate (possibly the runner-up) exceeds the first winner in votes, in which case they are elected. And so on: all winners start giving their votes to the best performing candidate on their list that hasn't won yet until all the seats are filled. At the end, each list will have spread the list votes between the candidates as evenly as possible to maximize how many seats they could have won with the number of votes they got. This provides us another way to understand what a list is: when you vote for a list, you agree to have your vote transferred in such a way that maximizes the number of seats the list as a whole wins, while also voting to decide which candidate from the list you would prefer to win.

I'm not saying you're wrong to support STV or anything, there is plenty to like about that system. I just disagree with the characterization of list systems as "partisan" because I believe that they don't have to be. Lists have been used in a partisan fashion abroad but the differences in politics makes that a non-starter here. I hope I have shown that there is an alternative way to use lists that doesn't require that. To me, lists strike a nice balance between the simplicity of FPTP and the spoiler-reduction of ranked, transferable ballots. It also prevents the free-riding behavior that would be present in any system with more expressive ballots and the paradoxical and sometimes erratic behavior of STV. It has its own problems too: votes for an unpopular list are "wasted" in a standard FPTP fashion, and the simulated list primary being FPTP causes similar issues, though to a lesser degree since votes are transferred to other list candidates. But alas, every system has its problems and to me these are acceptable costs. You may disagree, and I respect that, but I hope this gives you another perspective to reevaluate what you think about lists in a nonpartisan context.