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On the technical properties there are no issues here.

On the practical considerations there are a number.

1. It requires explaining the Smith Set
2. It requires explaining Condorcet winners
3. It requires explaining Approval voting.
4. It requires introducing two new voting methods , with two different ballot types, each with different instructions, at the same time.

I recommend having one voting method only. If you want to have a primary and general then use the same good method for both and don't narrow it down too much before the general. That's actually simpler and will get much broader support from stakeholder factions and minor parties who want real choices on the general election ballot.

Condorcet is accurate enough to just skip the primary all together unless there are too many candidates. If you want Condorcet with a simple tiebreaker why not just make the tiebreaker between the finalists (tied candidates) automatic in the event that it's even needed? In the tiebreaker, each voters ballot counts as a vote for their favorite(s) still in the running. If a voter ranked two candidates equally that would count as a vote for both. The finalist with the most votes wins.

The tiebreaker never even has to be explained. It's literally just a built in tiebreaker like a Plurality provision might call for a drawing of lots or a coin toss, but the ballots already have the tiebreaker info they need so it can be done instantly.

Two-stage voting systems seem like a hard sell in the USA. However, I think a two-stage system is an extremely natural way to satisfy principles of majority rule and self governance.

My opinion is that an ideal single-winner system consists of a first round (or primary) of rank-based voting. If there is a Condorcet winner, no second round is needed. This can be decided easily by a run of B2R and checking if the winner is Condorcet.

Otherwise, the Smith set can be computed and made public. Once known, a second round of approval voting can be run over the Smith set.

Does this have any objectionable properties other than requiring two rounds of voting?

@gregw I think Condorcet is great when a Condorcet winner exists, but when one doesn’t exist it’s really troublesome. Ideally, we would have a method to check whether one exists without unearthing the Condorcet cycle that reveals the jilted majority upon the choosing of any winner, but that is essentially impossible.

I think it makes sense to do Condorcet//Approval, in two separate rounds, the approval round restricted to the Smith set. But two round voting outright is a difficult sell in the USA (even though two-round voting is pretty common all over the rest of the world…).

People try to put the two together in a single round vote, but the strategic incentives of casting rank and approval/score indications on the same ballot cause issues.

My personal belief is that this system of two-round voting for single winner elections, I.e. approval conditional on already knowing the Smith set, would be most ideal. I think actually implementing the approval aspect first however is an easier sell than implementing the Condorcet aspect first. I can envision a natural progression as: (1) implement straight approval, (2) eventually indicate the shortcomings of approval in guaranteeing election of Smith set candidates, (3) reform to include a ranked primaries to restrict to the Smith set before the final approval vote.

I feel even having rank/Smith-based primaries makes way more sense than what we have if the subsequent system is approval. There’s no issue with vote splitting in that instance, and it fits at least partially into the political system we already have (although this would also require substantial changes).

@gregw hm I’m just not sure how well-studied this method in particular is, as in, why it needs to be “most wins, fewest losses.” It makes as much intuitive sense as anything else, and it’s Condorcet so that’s fine.

Also it’s obviously susceptible to potentially unfortunate results when the Condorcet winner does not exist (which the above has ignored in their last step of the “how it works” section as “the candidate who beats all the others wins.”)

I still think rank-based methods are going to be much more difficult to gain firm ground on than approval. IRV got some traction but now it’s facing backlash (some rightfully so). Approval on the other hand seems relatively hard to argue against. I think it would yield a more lasting forward step.

@toby-pereira Anything can be argued and counter-argued in court, but my assessment above is based on what a fair and likely ruling would be, in my professional opinion.

I'm not a lawyer, but have been studying these things for years and we did win the case in the Oregon Supreme Court against the Oregon Legislative Council which found that RCV's ballot title in Oregon was misleading and inaccurate as it pertains to RCV's majority winner claims, though there is apparently no mechanism anymore to enforce such a ruling.

Two confounding data points:

1. RCV has spent years making the argument that RCV guarantees majority winners. That's directly at odds with an argument that it guarantees plurality winners. Ironically, there's a solid case to be made that due to exhausted ballots it guarantees neither.
2. The Constitution of Maine Article IV, Section 5 requires that winners be elected "by a plurality of ALL votes returned.” In cases like these where the wording is explicit that it's "all" votes "returned" or all votes "cast" RCV is eliminated from compliance by the existence of exhausted ballots alone.
   

@psephomancy Even if we wanted to, redefining the term "Ranked Choice Voting" isn't within our power. They have clear and defensible trademark over the term, which again, was coined specifically for IRV, not to mention name recognition for RCV by millions of people that they've invested millions of dollars to build.

Terminology in voting science is already so jumbled. Conflating good ranked methods (Condorcet) with Ranked Choice Voting (IRV & STV) or Instant Runoff Voting (IRV only) is only going to hurt the better options in the scenarios where RCV is a dirty word, while in contexts where RCV is well regarded, conflating better ranked methods serves no benefit because RCV dwarfs all the other alternatives in terms of name recognition and market dominance.

Our only way forward here is to out RCV as the outdated and oversold method that it is, position better alternatives as the successor, and move forward from there. Strategically.

@Jack-Waugh

Etjon Basha asks, "So, not even approval would pass? Nothing beyond plurality?".

In this context, "plurality" doesn't mean "Choose One Only" Voting or FPTP. Plurality means a class of systems where the candidate with the most votes wins, as opposed to "majority" voting systems in which the candidate with the majority of votes cast wins.

Approval is a plurality method.

@toby-pereira I’m sure the courts will conjure up whatever question-begging definition of vote they need to for whatever ruling they decided on beforehand. I think getting the reasonable notions settled on to facilitate progress without constitutional amendments will require more lawyering than only appeals to reason. It’s unfortunate that Maine’s constitution encoded plurality into its state voting law, I think it’s important to know what other states might have this same kind of language issue in their constitutions.

@sarawolk said in RCV found unconstitutional in Maine.:

@toby-pereira
In RCV a vote is the voters top choice in the first round and each round following. The first round finds the Plurality winner and if that candidate has a majority of active votes the election is called right then and there, but if that winner has a plurality of votes but not a majority of active votes, the system may reject that and go on to find a separate winner by reallocating or exhausting those votes. That's why it's not a Plurality method.

In STAR Voting the first round never determines a winner because votes haven't been awarded to candidates yet. That always happens only once in STAR Voting and the candidate with the most votes always wins.

Right, so you're saying that because the IRV counting process could end after any round, it is necessary to call each round a vote.

However, IRV does not need to use the counting process where it stops in the round when a candidate first has a majority. It could just continue until there are two candidates left and just call that final round "the vote". It would never affect the (first place) result, but would just require a bit of extra counting.

But regardless, as I say, I'm not sure a voting method's own definition of what a vote is would hold any weight against what a court says a vote is.

And even if we allow that, by calling just the final run-off in STAR the vote, the method is also excluding most of the candidates from the voting process, which I think might be considered unconstitutional.

Obviously it's not me you would be arguing against, but these are just things that I can imagine might come up.

@toby-pereira
In RCV a vote is the voters top choice in the first round and each round following. The first round finds the Plurality winner and if that candidate has a majority of active votes the election is called right then and there, but if that winner has a plurality of votes but not a majority of active votes, the system may reject that and go on to find a separate winner by reallocating or exhausting those votes. That's why it's not a Plurality method.

In STAR Voting the first round never determines a winner because votes haven't been awarded to candidates yet. That always happens only once in STAR Voting and the candidate with the most votes always wins.