@lime said in STLR - Score Than Leveled Runoff might not be too complex for voters:

...

I wouldn't add anything about tactics; much better to avoid discussing it. I'd rather encourage voters to give honest ratings of each of the candidates, so we can get rid of spoiler effects; instructing them on how to vote tactically (or worse still, instructing them to normalize ballots) increases the rate of spoiled elections.

I disagree.

First off, let's separate official communication about an election from communication from a person's or a group's political takes.

The official communication about an election should indeed avoid laying out or suggesting tactics. It should only state the freedom of movement the voter has in filling out the ballot without invalidating it, and how the tally will work to determine the winner.

In non-official channels of communication, I see urging "honesty" as problematic and dishonest. Voting is not an opinion poll; it is an exercise of political power. It's like steering a boat. When you command "right full rudder", it's not an opinion, but a muscular exercise that feeds into the whole dynamic of the boat's motion in accord with the Laws O' Physics (TM), the design of the boat, the propeller's rotational velocity, etc.

What reasoning leads you to think that Score voters pushing exaggerated support hose toward compromise candidates tends to spoil elections? They are still giving more support to their true favorites. If enough proportion of voters are standing with them, that candidate can win.

Urging "honest" votes as though the election were an opinion poll is just sucker bait. People who follow your urging are giving up power to their opponents.

The Gibbard theorem showed that optimal voting takes any guesses or estimates of the positions of other voters into account.

@brozai Bear in mind that this was one of the systems used to choose Allocated Score so getting the same result is not a surprise. Also, SSS performed equivalently from my recollection. Allocated Score was chosen because there was some intuition that it was better than SSS in terms of strategy.

@Jack-Waugh I mean that partisan voters will rank their candidate first and the main opposition last. So one (or both?) of the top contenders is likely to be eliminated early.

@robertpdx said in Vote for 2 then Instant Runoff:

"Vote for 2" is a standard, well-accepted method for choosing two winners. And a runoff is the standard, well-accepted method for deciding between two candidates. So I propose to combine those two steps into a single election.

Right, well, that's an interesting point. If Vote for 2 then Instant Runoff can be sold to Joe Sixpack on account of its being based on well-accepted methods, but Approval cannot, because it is novel, then getting something better than FPtP/IRV in place may be better than nothing, in helping to replace the omnicidal regime with a people's regime.