I think the strongest argument is this:

Nearly all IRV-advocates and voters using IRV wrongly believe that it somehow is tabulated optimally and has no spoilers. If everyone transparently understood the IRV spoiler scenarios, they would not react particularly strongly to the cases where it arises. However, IRV is almost always oversold with claims that are false. People believe that winners always have majority support or that spoilers can't happen. Thus, IRV sets up a situation to risk losing the public's trust.

A system that violates people's basic intuitions is a system people will be suspicious of.

Because IRV spoilers are both hard to explain, hard to look at the ballots and understand, and violate people's intuitions, it is a set-up for the destruction of trust in elections and in voting reform as a movement in general.

This is far worse than the effect of the spoiler itself.

The most important feature of a voting system is that it is easy for people to understand the results and trust that the system is working and thus feel trusting of the democratic process overall.

Yeah. Everyone, including Fairvote, emphasizes that electoral systems change campaign behavior and voting behavior. There is no realistic scenario in which you change voting systems and all other behavior in the system stays. Discussing that artificial situation is only useful as a conceptual exercise in comparing some particular point in the math or something, not as an assertion about counterfactual situations.

There's no possibility that single-choice plurality voting in Burlington 2009 would have this 3-way race as it was. All the media and voters and everyone (candidates included) would have come to some pre-election idea of Montroll or Kiss as the primary non-Republican and the other as dangerous spoiler. They would have had that argument. And the result would be likely Montroll winning but maybe Kiss or even the Republican and then all the spoiler-blame fall-out. There's NO chance it would have avoided all those well-known dynamics.

I'm a maybe but I don't have a direct conflict that evening, there's no clearly better time for me.

@toby-pereira Indeed, the source of the issue is going by total score. I emphasize Allocated Score (STAR-PR) because I'm concerned about proposals that people are really promoting rather than just any sort of potential system with this issue.

Over years, I've continually said that misrepresenting IRV is worse than IRV itself. I don't support IRV, but I can tolerate it if advocates somehow promote it without false statements. However, a system that is almost impossible to clearly discuss with lay people without false statements is a problem of the system itself.

On that same page where Fairvote talks about Condorcet and such:

It may be disputed whether it would have been better for Montroll to win the election despite attracting so little core support. However, it is certain that Montroll would have also lost under a two-round runoff election or a single-choice plurality election.

This is plainly wrong. Under a plurality election, we know with certainty that voters will be strategic, and that is why Montroll would have won. Their wording is missing the key point, and can be true only with this change:

it is certain that Montroll would have also lost under a two-round runoff election or a single-choice plurality election — if the voters were all completely honest, which we know plurality voting not to be.

Fairvote in this argument is trying to assert that IRV cannot be worse than single-choice plurality. They assert that by selectively ignoring the entire issue of strategic voting, even though they focus elsewhere on strategic voting. Fairvote is a model for motivated reasoning over fair reasoning.

I heard a critique of STAR-PR that seems fair, and I want to see what the thoughts are on it.

Essentially, given:

• there are enough centrist, lesser-evil sorts of effective-clone candidates to fill all the seats
• the preferences for other candidates are all spread somewhat equally among voting groups who number as many as there are seats

Then with everyone giving middling scores or low scores to the centrist lesser-evil candidates, can win all the seats instead of getting anything proportional.

Example votes for two-seat election:

• 10 votes: A5 C3 C3 D1 (two interchangeable C candidates)
• 10 votes: B5 C3 C3 D1

So, this is okay centrists Cs (times two candidates), split electorate in liking A or B (and opposing the other), and D thrown in to show that this could be realistic if D were a lesser-evil worse than C for everyone.

Proportional would be electing A and B. STAR-PR would elect both Cs.

Another example proof, 6 seat election:

• 100: A5 Gs1
• 100: B5 Gs1
• 100: C5 Gs1
• 100: D5 Gs1
• 100: E5 Gs1
• 100: F5 Gs1

This is contrived and uses 6 seats because there are only 5 stars, so it takes splitting into 6 blocks in order to keep the 5's from adding up to less than the combined 1-star scores. Still, this stays even with some tweaks (doesn't need all tie-scores) as long as the blocks are split enough to still have G get highest scores. Given 6 effective clones for G-candidates, STAR-PR elects all Gs, and that is clearly not proportional.

What are the responses to this? Is this just a weird edge case? At the least, does this demand some qualification in how STAR-PR is described?

@toby-pereira

At what value of x are AB and CC equally good?

Yes, but another question is: at what value of x can we be comfortable calling CC "proportional"? Anything less than x=1?

I think any method that elects CC for any x over 0.5 is doing PR wrong

Do you mean under 0.5?

Anyway, I do think again there's two issues: what is fair to call "proportional" and what method is good for representation, and those do not need to have the same answer.

@toby-pereira that doesn't change my point. Blocking someone's election just because they are nobody's favorite is not a goal I support at all. Being the top favorite of anyone is not the point in itself. A candidate that is nobody's favorite and that everyone really still highly approves of is likely a good candidate to elect as long as any quota-sized blocks of voters get their favorites.

I don't like the idea of getting rid of "favorite of nobody" as an end in itself. The goal I'm describing is to elect the clear favorite of a quota-sized block. There's no goal of stopping the election of consensus non-favorite candidates, and I would oppose making design choices based on that goal.

@sarawolk I think 100% of your arguments apply to plain score voting as being preferred to STAR. If everyone is honest, plain score is better than STAR for all the reasons you express. I agree with the values and the balance you describe. However, I think all the justifications for STAR over plain score also apply to adding the first step of block-allocation based on 5-star counts over plain Allocated Score.

Do you see my point about how the runoff in STAR is a balancing factor and discouragement of strategizing in the same way as the adjustment to STAR-PR that came up here?

We don't need to discuss whether brown should win, because the argument that brown should win is also an argument for brown getting elected in single-seat elections even when the majority has a more polarizing favorite. So, again, if you accept the reasons for STAR over plain score, then all the same reasons need to be dealt with in determining the best STAR-PR instead of going with a score-PR that doesn't address what STAR was invented to address.

@k-shenefiel said in Allocated score (STAR-PR) centrist clones concern:

For a six seat election in the above example a score of 1 isn't a low score of disapproval it's a modest score of approval.

I object to the entire premise that any of these voting systems say anything about approval/disapproval. I want "approval voting" changed to "choose-any voting". Except for a system like 3-2-1 that asks about approval explicitly, all these systems of rating and ranking are relative. Voters might approve of all or none of the candidates. We can only discuss "preference".

The idea of encouraging bullet voting and not using low scores seems to me to show the whole system to be flawed rather than be a solution. It's a bad workaround at best.

The description of STAR-PR doesn't have the top-two runoff step of STAR so there's no incentive to use intermediate scores as it is.

That's a problem IMO. At the very least, this undermines the credibility of the label "STAR-PR".

Award seats to candidates that qualify for seats based on their top scores alone first. … Afterwards this would switch to Allocated Score instead of the elimination round. … [the rest of your suggestion 2]

That seems (by first impression) to be a potential real solution.

Your suggestion 3 might make mathematical sense, but I think it's too complex for public-perception to go well.

My inclination is that the check-top-scores-first and award seats by quota and then do Allocated Score… that seems optimal. It brings in a bit of later-no-harm. It makes it safe to express preferences for non-first-choice candidates. Without this top-scores-checked-first step, any block large enough to get a seat can force their favorite by bullet-voting.

The whole point of STAR vs plain score is to give the majority their wish no matter what. STAR brings a weak sort of later-no-harm which disrupts the pressure for majority to bullet-vote in plain score. Effectively, "don't worry about bullet-voting to force your favorite, we'll give it to you no matter what if you have a true majority, so you can express preferences and not worry about strategizing". And while STAR is not strictly Condorcet, it's effective enough to achieve this reduction of bullet-vote pressure.

STAR-PR needs to keep this core point. We don't want voting blocks to feel regret that they could have forced a preferred outcome by bullet-voting. Simply giving seats to any blocks with enough 5-star votes seems the answer to me.

I don't think this is inherently obviously good, just as I don't think majority-winners in single-seat elections are necessarily good (compared to consensus candidates with wider support). However, I support STAR in its majoritarian emphasis because that encourages honest preference expression. STAR-PR needs to follow the same pattern, to achieve the same overall effect.

@toby-pereira

Okay, so your "over 0.5" idea for "wrong" is contrasted with <0.5 being worse than "wrong" (in your words, "bad" is worse than "wrong" it seems). This is a confusing way to put things.

As for terminology, yes, there's a question of what it means to be proportional. I don't think "everyone is equally represented" is enough. That would mean electing everyone's least favorite is still proportional. I think proportional needs to mean something like if there's a clear block of voters enough to have a quota of a seat, that block gets to elect whoever they prefer.

IMO, Proportional Representation means that whatever blocks happen to emerge in the stats are used to elect representatives as a contrast with geographically-drawn seats. PR should give the same results as if we could identify the voting blocks and designate them as we do with geographic districts for single seats. Or at least it is in this direction.

@toby-pereira

At what value of x are AB and CC equally good?

Yes, but another question is: at what value of x can we be comfortable calling CC "proportional"? Anything less than x=1?

I think any method that elects CC for any x over 0.5 is doing PR wrong

Do you mean under 0.5?

Anyway, I do think again there's two issues: what is fair to call "proportional" and what method is good for representation, and those do not need to have the same answer.

@marcus-ogren while I recognize that there are pros and cons here, the core issue is that elect-all-acceptable-centrists is not so reasonable to call "proportional representation".

I think the weighting toward consensus candidates and PR are working toward different approaches to representation. I'm okay with saying that Allocated Score is a balance between consensus and PR. That seems more fair than saying it is PR. At least given the examples.

I'm concerned with fair and transparent presentation of what a voting method is. I think that concern is independent from discussion about how good a method is for various goals.

The extreme case of lots of clones that only got 1-star does seem still to be essentially a failure for Allocated Score, but I don't see it as realistic.

@toby-pereira Indeed, the source of the issue is going by total score. I emphasize Allocated Score (STAR-PR) because I'm concerned about proposals that people are really promoting rather than just any sort of potential system with this issue.

I heard a critique of STAR-PR that seems fair, and I want to see what the thoughts are on it.

Essentially, given:

• there are enough centrist, lesser-evil sorts of effective-clone candidates to fill all the seats
• the preferences for other candidates are all spread somewhat equally among voting groups who number as many as there are seats

Then with everyone giving middling scores or low scores to the centrist lesser-evil candidates, can win all the seats instead of getting anything proportional.

Example votes for two-seat election:

• 10 votes: A5 C3 C3 D1 (two interchangeable C candidates)
• 10 votes: B5 C3 C3 D1

So, this is okay centrists Cs (times two candidates), split electorate in liking A or B (and opposing the other), and D thrown in to show that this could be realistic if D were a lesser-evil worse than C for everyone.

Proportional would be electing A and B. STAR-PR would elect both Cs.

Another example proof, 6 seat election:

• 100: A5 Gs1
• 100: B5 Gs1
• 100: C5 Gs1
• 100: D5 Gs1
• 100: E5 Gs1
• 100: F5 Gs1

This is contrived and uses 6 seats because there are only 5 stars, so it takes splitting into 6 blocks in order to keep the 5's from adding up to less than the combined 1-star scores. Still, this stays even with some tweaks (doesn't need all tie-scores) as long as the blocks are split enough to still have G get highest scores. Given 6 effective clones for G-candidates, STAR-PR elects all Gs, and that is clearly not proportional.

What are the responses to this? Is this just a weird edge case? At the least, does this demand some qualification in how STAR-PR is described?

Yeah. Everyone, including Fairvote, emphasizes that electoral systems change campaign behavior and voting behavior. There is no realistic scenario in which you change voting systems and all other behavior in the system stays. Discussing that artificial situation is only useful as a conceptual exercise in comparing some particular point in the math or something, not as an assertion about counterfactual situations.

There's no possibility that single-choice plurality voting in Burlington 2009 would have this 3-way race as it was. All the media and voters and everyone (candidates included) would have come to some pre-election idea of Montroll or Kiss as the primary non-Republican and the other as dangerous spoiler. They would have had that argument. And the result would be likely Montroll winning but maybe Kiss or even the Republican and then all the spoiler-blame fall-out. There's NO chance it would have avoided all those well-known dynamics.