[FreelanceX]

There is a much simpler system with a proven track record, used in many democratic countries: two-rounds voting [1]. Just vote a second time for one of the two top candidates if no candidate reached 50% of more.

I'm convinced this would deeply, radically change the US.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-round_system

[epage]

We have run offs in Texas but get extremely low turnout partially because they are not advertised, either by the government or the candidates. I can't imagine its cheap either, for the government, candidates, or the voters.

This is why I prefer calling the version of Ranked Choice Voting I seeing being pushed as Instant Runoff because it makes how it works and the advantages clear.

[paulgb]

These do exist in some states, under the name runoff elections. They cost campaigns and taxpayers a lot of money, and election turnout in the US is already bad enough without having people return to the polls a second time.

https://www.thirdway.org/memo/high-costs-and-low-turnout-for...

[jstx1]

It's not that different, two rounds is approximately equivalent to ranked-choice with one round of preference distributions. With the added uncertainty of different voting attendance, and people changing their preference between rounds.

[soneca]

That's the system we have in Brazil and we don't have a less polarized political situation currently, neither a stronger democracy, I believe.

[vslira]

Hey, I recently wrote a post about an idea on this: https://blog.vslira.net/2022/05/negative-voting.html?m=1

What do you think? Basically second round stays the same, but on 1st you can either vote for or against a candidate, “against” votes simply deduct from their “for” votes

[soneca]

My first reaction is a sum of “stick with the devil you know” and “the simpler the better”. So I would be against changing.

I like what we have in Brazil (for executive elections), and I think it is better than what they have in the US. But I don’t think changing the US system to two rounds will make things better there. That might sound contradictory, but I think sticking with a voting system has benefits for democracy, even if, in isolation, that system is subpar. Predictability is voting system is very desirable in a democracy, I think. Same with trust.

I think we have to improve democracy by other means, not a simple “fix” through a voting system. I don’t know what those other means are. It is a complex system. But I am skeptical that changing voting systems is part of the solution.

[vslira]

I agree, there’s no single tweak that would “fix democracy”. I’m just assuming that something like this could improve voting expressiveness in exchange for just a little bit of complexity.

[noirbot]

This is actually a thing for US Congress races in a number of states, including Georgia and California, I believe. The issue that comes up is that it consistently rewards a stronger party - for instance, if the population is, let's say, 30% hardcore party A, 30% hardcore party B, and 40% who could go either way, what often happens is if party A runs 2 candidates only, and party B runs 5 with a diversity of ideas, party B could end up winning 60% of the vote overall, but at 12% per candidate, and party A could win just 40% spread across 2 candidates, but have both of their candidates easily make the runoff.

It may be better in a world where there's 5+ real parties who will never back down from each other, but even in that case, it seems like it rewards parliamentary-style coalitions where if you're polling at 5% or so, you just tell your supporters to support a stronger candidate you mostly agree with so that you don't get locked out of the final vote entirely, and you're back to essentially either a two-party system, or a two-party system with minor parties that mostly play spoiler to the main party by pulling off votes.

One of the biggest issues I tend to find with a lot of voting proposals is that they seem to assume that the parties and candidates will act only to serve their party/candidate directly, and not strategically run/withdraw in order to help/hurt other candidates, or collude with each other to game the system.

[astura]

The American South already has two-round voting.

[yupper32]

We can barely get people to vote once. Why do you think we could get people to vote twice?

[s1artibartfast]

That is essentially the primary and election we already have