[lalaland1125]

Very nice work!

Do you think there is a need to educate voters on how to tactically vote in ranked choice voting? Every voting system has strategies to use it effectively and most voters are not used to the tactics necessary for ranked choice voting.

We see a lot of education in how to use the ballot simply, but very little education on "advanced tactics".

In particular, a lot of NYC voters aren't ranking either Wiley or Adams, which is a huge mistake as those are very likely to be in the final round.

[tadmilbourn]

Thanks! The idea is to use software to promote this reform (as well as Final-Five Voting...which is Open Primaries + RCV)

As for advanced tactics, if you're really into it, Rob Richie, the CEO of FairVote (leading national advocacy org) put this in the New York Times over the weekend. It spells out a bunch of scenarios (e.g. "I want Garcia to win and Stringer to lose.") and how to tactically vote for each.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/18/opinion/nyc-mayoral-elect...

BUT the point I'd want to drive home is that ranked-choice allows you to be FAR more able to "vote for who you believe is best" than in the more common most votes wins approach (where you have to be strategic the moment a 3rd candidate enters).

[ClayShentrup]

IRV has the same problem. Democrats in next year's Alaska senate race want to strategically rank Murkowksi (R) 1st to stop Tshibaka (Q).

https://twitter.com/Beyond2Parties/status/140537245401753600...

Score voting or approval voting actually solve this and are much simpler.

[lalaland1125]

Yeah, that article is exactly what I was thinking about, but I think it would be better if it mentioned more general tactics (such as the inherent advantage of making sure to rank front runners since they will last longer).

Once this NYC election is over we should look at the voting records and see how many votes were lost due to poor tactics (forgetting to rank front runners).

[saurik]

Huh... yeah, so this pizza ballot (which I'm just going to have to assume is similar to the real ballot, as otherwise I'm not sure why they are doing this ;P) definitely isn't at all what I was expecting, as I was at least expecting to get to rank all the candidates; I can definitely see some weird effects happening with a ballot like this if people have to decide to use up ranking slots on people they dislike just so they can provide comparative rankings between them as maybe they'd end up in the final round. I mean, wasn't the entire point of this that I'm supposed to get to just vote for the people I like in the order I like them, rather than having to second guess stuff like "well, I hate both of these people, but since I hate this one less than that one and I bet a lot of people like both of them I'd better rank at least one of them above a candidate I prefer"? (And yes: I appreciate the trilemma that says that no voting system is perfect, but truncating the rank mechanism is seeming to leave some of the goal sitting on the table.)

[singhrac]

> Every voting system has strategies to use it effectively and most voters are not used to the tactics necessary for ranked choice voting.

Just to respond to this one small point, but I think the most common mathematical definition of "fairness" in market designs (including voting mechanisms) is that your utility-maximizing action should be identical to your true ranked preferences (this is called "strategy-proof"). In the case of voting, Gibbard-Satterthwaite says that there's no strictly strategy-proof mechanism (under a few restrictions) but I think the instant-runoff voting which NYC is using is mostly strategy proof (i.e. strategies only exist in rare circumstances).

Fwiw the burden of learning about all these candidates seems high to me, but apparently New Yorkers don't ind.

[dllthomas]

> I think the instant-runoff voting which NYC is using is mostly strategy proof (i.e. strategies only exist in rare circumstances)

The very comment you are replying to pointed out that "a lot of NYC voters aren't ranking either Wiley or Adams" which is a failure to apply strategy where it manifestly exists. "There are front runners" doesn't seem to be a rare circumstance.

[singhrac]

Well, you're right, but we mean different things. These voters are failing to rank their true preferences (you and I believe), which is going to lead to a less optimal outcome than if they had. But if they did rank their true preferences (i.e. they are ok with Wiley or Adams, but just at the bottom of their list), then it would be fine.

This is a valid communication problem with ranked lists, but it's not that there exists a "strategy" per se besides ranking all of your acceptable outcomes.

[dllthomas]

> These voters are failing to rank their true preferences (you and I believe)

I expect they are being honest about their preference order, but that this has less of an impact on the outcome (in whatever direction they desire) than if they had been dishonest about their preference order.

This does assume that they actually prefer one of the front-runners to the other by a more-than-negligible margin; perhaps that isn't the case.

> This is a valid communication problem with ranked lists, but it's not that there exists a "strategy" per se besides ranking all of your acceptable outcomes.

There were more than six candidates, and voters could only rank their top five. Voters with more than 5 "acceptable outcomes" need to vote strategically when they get near the bottom of that list.

Alternatively, there is also no such thing as "strategy" in FPTP - "you just vote for one of your acceptable outcomes". That's... not a useful definition of the words involved.

Edited to add: It occurs to me that perhaps you weren't aware of the cutoff in the NYC case and were speaking of IRV with a full list? In that case I agree that strategy being necessary is substantially more rare, leaving aside for the moment whether it is sufficiently rare.