[whatupmd]

I guess this is mainly about Ranked Choice voting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting

"The Fair Representation Act (HR 3057) gives voters of all backgrounds and all political stripes the power to elect House Members who reflect their views and will work constructively with others in Congress."

What incentive is there to "work constructively with others" in this system?

[brianolson]

Instant Runoff Voting is severely flawed. It can solve basic problems like the Bush-Gore-Nader election where Nader voters probably would have preferred Gore, but it can also get the wrong answer and has in a real world election in 2009 in Burlington, VT: http://bolson.org/~bolson/2009/20090303_burlington_vt_mayor....

[matthewowen]

I find this example kinda 'eh'. FPTP also elects a 'wrong' winner, and it's not clear to me that the IRV is substantially wronger.

I agree that there's probably a better way, but I fear that it could be at the cost of either ease of use or methodological clarity. Ranking candidates is relatively intuitive, and so is sequential elimination with votes reassigned to the next preference.

I recognize that you could transform the rankings people provide into head to head match up, but if the methodology is too opaque to the layperson, it's going to breed distrust in the system, and I fear that that would be overall worse (if it discourages participation) than having a minority of elections be won by the 'wrong' candidate versus better approaches.

I recognize that this could also be an argument in favor of FPTP. I do think there's a continuum here of conceptual difficulty, and I think finding the sweet spot of correctness vs intuitiveness is tricky.

[brianolson]

IRV is less wrong than pick-one; but more wrong than a dozen other election algorithms. If you want to read about one, read about Condorcet.

[jdavis703]

It's a bit more than just ranked choice. Since you have multiple congresspeople per district you can in theory have one extreme liberal, a centrist liberal, and a moderate conservative (I'm taking an example of a left leaning state, but the opposite could happen in a right leaning state). This eliminates the winner take all district which encourages partisanship and removes accountability.

[whatupmd]

I don't really understand that 2nd bit. How are you going to end up with the same number of congress people? And if you are dividing up seats by party doesn't that incentives you to cater to the base more?

[moultano]

You aren't dividing up seats by party. You make big districts with at least 5 representatives. Anyone with 1/n of first place votes is elected. The candidate with the fewest first place votes is removed, and you repeat until all the seats are filled.

[slaymaker1907]

Removing winner takes all is more powerful than ranked choice. In Utah, Republicans would still likely take all seats, but this new system would practically ensure that at least one Democrat was elected.