Take a look at this video. A City in Utah just voted 5-2 against implementing IRV. Stated reasons, they'd rather have STAR voting and don't want to pass a stepping stone and then change it, and monotonicity.

Here's a discussion at one of the more interesting comments. https://youtu.be/TQbr4KYzxR4?t=11667

I think that's a bit confusing and redundant. Having replies only show up under the comment they are replying to would be better.

@Keith Exactly. And the intent is not only to reduce the need for strategic voting, but to actually incentivize honest voting, and to ensure that the system is fair and equal. This is the key to eliminating an "electability" bias, or status quo glass ceiling. There are a lot of reasons why and it's not just about any one of these reasons in isolation. I see it as a very empowering voting method overall.

For voters who don't like the frontrunners, their vote is still as powerful as a voter who does have a strong candidate on their side. The full repercussions of this are hard to quantify, but this is one reason that I think STAR is the most powerful single winner voting method to break two party domination.

I added a sentence on explicitly opting in to email notifications under section 1. From what I read I think we may need this in there for legal reasons.
"If you create an account on the Website, you are explicitly authorizing the Forum to send you emails regarding forum activity and updates. You may opt out of most email notifications at any time."

@Jack-Waugh @Marylander
Sounds good to me.
Thanks for looking into it. I don't think it's time sensitive or anything, just thought I'd flag it here as a feature request.

Nice to have our categories all sorted out so clearly with a spot for these types of questions.

I haven't had much time to engage here on the forum since we launched, but I've been sending people over and it seems like there are conversations happening!

Looking forward to having more time to invest here soon.

STAR Voting is designed to maximize both utilitarianism and finding majority supported winners where possible. I look at it like a debate between quality and quantity. Both are important. In STAR Voting the scoring round measures quality of support, (how much do the voters like the various candidates. Then, the runoff measures quantity or number of supporters, (between the two front-runners, which do you prefer.)

As for why I believe STAR Voting is more fair and representative compared to Score, of course I have to start with the disclaimer that Score is a very good system, and they get the same winner most of the time, but in Score Voting if I vote honestly and don't give any front-runners a top score, then my vote's impact is less than if I had strategically given my lesser-evil a top score.

Another shortcoming with Score that is addressed by STAR is if some voters fail to use the full scale. Strategically speaking, the best strategy in both methods is always to give your favorite 5 stars, but it's to be expected that some voters will give a mediocre score to a mediocre favorite, especially if they are new to the system. Unless you normalize scores, Score voting gives voters a chance at an equally weighted vote, but doesn't actually guarantee it. Hopefully this will be corrected with voter education and good instructions, but with STAR there's the added failsafe that the runoff is binary. Ultimately your vote is just as powerful as everyone else's.

These voters, voters who are currently marginalized in our current system, should have just as powerful a vote as a voter who does support a frontrunner. Guaranteed. STAR Voting does that. If your favorite can't win, you can give your favorite 5 stars, give your lesser evil 1 star, and that will still ensure that if it comes down to it, your fully weighted vote will help prevent your worst case scenario. That's how STAR Voting prevents tyranny of the Majority. If your lesser-evil is actually substantially better than your worst case scenario you can give them a better score.

As far as I know STAR may be the only method where even if none of the candidates you like can win, your vote can still make a difference and help prevent your worst case scenario.

Great. I updated it as suggested. If Connor and David approve it as well we can call it done and check the Code of Conduct off the list.

Hi everyone. We’re gearing up for the next board meeting and are still looking for more leadership and moderation help. Please join us if that’s something you can contribute!

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@robertpdx All voting methods which pass Later No Harm fail Favorite Betrayal Criteria, meaning that it's not always safe to vote for your honest favorite and you should consider voting lesser-evil instead.

Voting methods which pass this criteria fail to eliminate vote-splitting.

It's not a good pass/fail criteria. It's an important consideration to balance to find a well rounded system that does a good job overall.
This article explains: https://www.starvoting.us/farewell_to_pass_fail

Exactly. When the ruling was made no voting method had delivered an Equally Weighted Vote ever. So "as nearly as is practicable" was good enough. In districting (what the ruling was about) a perfectly equal vote is impossible, because populations move and change faster than district lines, but in voting an equal vote is totally practicable.

Fargo, ND (thanks to the Center for Election Science) made history as the first election where an equally weighted vote was guaranteed to every voter, no matter how many candidates they might have one their side. No vote-splitting in the voting method itself! (Voters can obviously still refuse to coalition and be divided and conquered, but they can also choose not to be.)

So, since Fargo has done it, we have proven that an equal vote in the voting method itself is practicable. (Thank you CES!) The bar has been raised.

I'm not a lawyer or a legal scholar, but I'll lay out my understanding:
Wesberry v Sanders was a Supreme Court Ruling. That ruling, I think, hinges on 'one person, one vote', or actually 'one man, one vote' (but that's another can of worms).

Is 'one person, one vote' in the Constitution? My understanding is that it would have been if it were not for the "great compromise" which replaced the 'one person, one vote' concept with the familiar 'one state, 2 votes,' system we know all to well from the US senate and electoral college. (Article 5 of the constitution.) Still, each voter or each state is guaranteed an equal vote in the constitution and the equality of the vote is a fundamental concept.

IRV and FPTP do not ensure an equal vote for voters, or for states.

Per wikipedia, "The constitutionality of IRV has been subsequently upheld by several federal courts.[24][25] In 2018, a federal court ruled on the constitutionality of Maine’s use of ranked-choice voting, stating that "'one person, one vote' does not stand in opposition to ranked balloting, so long as all electors are treated equally at the ballot."[26]

The operative there is "so long as all electors are treated equally at the ballot." Voting method scholars know that all electors (voters) are not. Some will have their 2nd choices counted if their favorites are eliminated. Some will not. A voter whose ballot is exhausted is not equal to a voter whose ballot counts in the final round.

"In 1975, a Michigan court ruling declared that [IRV] did not violate the one-man, one-vote rule:[23] ... no one person or voter has more than one effective vote for one office. No voter's vote can be counted more than once for the same candidate. In the final analysis, no voter is given greater weight in his or her vote over the vote of another voter."

In IRV, yes, no voter has a vote weighted more than 1, but some voters absolutely have their vote reweighted to 0 between the 1st round and the final round.

@Keith
For "better" semi-proportional methods for inclusion in a chart I mean methods in use or that people are familiar with. Or methods that are too fabulous to not include. What's SNTV?

Re Party List vs. nonpartisan PR, the difference there is the number of winners, not the partisanship.

I have no idea where exactly STAR or Cumulative should go, or which order they would go in. I'd like to think they should be reversed, but I also have no basis for that.

Agenda: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1joMflKwR0C1u65Jg_5pLBxIga8Y8v87VapaI9MDNMcc/edit?usp=sharing

Notes are in purple and motions passed are in green.

Please feel free to add comments or additional notes if you see something that was discussed but missed.

I don't know that partisan PR is more PR than non-partisan PR. It's just less clear what exactly is getting portioned out.

Without knowing Keith had made the chart above, I also made a chart to try and hone in on this concept.

That said, I think graphing systems on a chart like this will always get pushback unless it's made with real data, and even then I doubt it's worth sharing...

In any case, single winner elections which elect plurality winners will always have lower PR than those which ensure at least majority support, and methods which take into account voters secondary and tertiary preferences and level of support for other methods will also have a higher level of PR.

Can anyone think of some better multi-winner methods that would qualify as semi-proportional?

It's worth noting that an electoral system with no PR is possible (dictatorship) and perfect proportionality is also possible if a given election had everyone neatly assigned to a viable sized team, but I focused my chart on the actionable and democratic section of the spectrum.

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MEETING ANNOUNCEMENT! We’re gearing up for the next board meeting for the Voting Theory Forum and are still looking for more leadership, web dev, and moderation help. Please join us if that’s something you can contribute!

DETAILS: Tuesday 7/20, 5:30pm PT, Zoom. https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86278415212

AGENDA: Please email us at forum@equal.vote with agenda items or to let us know if you are interested in the positions above. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1joMflKwR0C1u65Jg_5pLBxIga8Y8v87VapaI9MDNMcc/edit?usp=sharing

Thanks for posting this Psephomancy!
I do hope someone here does a fully detailed data analysis and data visualization of the available data, and that they eventually release the full preference data and CVR.

In retrospect, I also want to add that I'm impressed with the accuracy of your predictions of how this would all play out. I'm just surprised nobody predicted the ballot stuffing. That was just beyond...

@Jack-Waugh I found the setting and just did it! I can and will change it back though. This can be something we talk about at the next meeting since it's not an urgent need. I can see pros and cons both ways.

[EDITED]
I think that could make it more intuitive to check in and see what's happening, and then navigate to unreads or whatnot from there.

The current default page for /forum is the Categories page, which is also nice in that it gives a very clear layout.

Can any of you who are admins find a setting for this change? [Edited to add: Found it!]

I think the thing that I'm not liking about the current /forum page is the sidebar on the right. I always try and click on the post (which I think is the most recent post/comment in that category,) but they are not quicklinks to that thread.

If the sidebar did quicklink, and if was highlighted comments sorted by date posted that would be better.

Hi everyone. We’re gearing up for the next board meeting and are still looking for more leadership and moderation help. Please join us if that’s something you can contribute!

Our doodle poll will close tomorrow, so please chime in soon with your availability. It’s looking like a Tuesday will probably be the pick. https://doodle.com/poll/9tvtz7kp7fsv5fzn?utm_source=poll&utm_medium=link