[bena]

Beating everyone head to head is not beating the field. He came in third against the field. He only wins when you eliminate all other choices except one opponent. Peltola beat the field. In a FPTP system, she would have just won.

Democratic second choice votes for Begich only exist because Democrats would prefer him to Palin. They don't want him so much as don't want her. And if they can't get Peltola, they much rather have Begich.

The only reason there's noise about Peltola's win and RCV is because she's a Democrat. Look at all the hubbub being thrown about trying to say Begich should have won. You'd rather the person who came in third in the general win. And don't think people wouldn't complain about that.

STAR is RCV/IRV with extra steps that doesn't scale.

There was a time, not too long ago, that both parties could accept losing an election. I'd like to see that come back.

[supreme_loquat]

You're just repeating the same points without engaging with anything I wrote. You're still making the assumption that the first choice votes are the most important, and ignoring the fact that people have other preferences that they marked as well.

> Peltola beat the field. In a FPTP system, she would have just won.

FPTP sucks and does not elect representative winners, that's exactly why we need to get rid of it. RCV is just iterated FPTP and as such, carries a lot of the same baggage and problems (while adding a lot of complexity and other new problems).

> He only wins when you eliminate all other choices except one opponent

No, this is exactly backwards. Begich is the only one in this race that can win without artificially eliminating someone (which is what RCV does by ignoring lots of information on the ballots). Peltota can only win by eliminating Begich as Begich wins in the head to head, in order to get this win lots of votes that voters expressed have to be discarded.

> Democratic second choice votes for Begich only exist because Democrats would prefer him to Palin. They don't want him so much as don't want her. And if they can't get Peltola, they much rather have Begich.

That's exactly the point, the voters farthest to the right prefer Begich to Peltota, the voters farthest to the left prefer Begich to Palin, and there's a few people in the middle who prefer Begich to both. Begich was the best candidate considering the whole field of preferences - admittedly a weak compromise candidate for some, but a strong compromise candidate for others and the first choice for many (and as I mentioned before, we can't know how many consider Begich a weak compromise vs a strong compromise candidate, anything you say about the sizes of those groups is just your personal speculation).

> The only reason there's noise about Peltola's win and RCV is because she's a Democrat. Look at all the hubbub being thrown about trying to say Begich should have won.

For some people, sure, but for those of us actually trying to push for positive change this has nothing to do with democrats or republicans. This has to do with RCV not electing the condorcet winner and having a non-monotonic election.

> You'd rather the person who came in third in the general win. And don't think people wouldn't complain about that.

Yes I would, if they win the head to head vs everyone else. You're still treating FPTP like some kind of gold standard. Sorry but that's not a good metric.

> STAR is RCV/IRV with extra steps that doesn't scale.

STAR has exactly 2 steps, a summation step and then a step to compare the top two winners. RCV is a whole iteration process and thus a lot more complex and a lot less scalable. STAR is also precinct summable, whereas RCV requires tallying in a central location which is another thing which makes RCV much less scalable.

[bena]

What you don't get the field is everyone. It's not a series of one-on-one competitions, it's a race with everyone in it.

You are trying to redefine "the field" to make it mean something not quite the same.

I'm not disagreeing that FPTP is bad. It forces us into these consolidated party situations. But the field is EVERYONE. At the same time. And you ask the voters, "Which one you like the most?" And that answer, in this case was Peltola. So Peltola beats the field. With a plurality, yes, but no one has a better plurality.

I'm not defending FPTP or treating it like a gold standard. But at the very least, the person who came in last in the general should not win the election. He's people's most second choice because for both groups where he is the second the second choice, it's only because they absolutely do not want the last person.

It's less, "He's a moderate I can live with" and more "At least he's not X". Where X is either a Democrat or Palin.

Republicans wanted a have your cake and eat it too moment. They were the ones who went with this process every step of the way until the second it gave them a result they didn't like. They kinda know that crazy wins primaries. But crazy also loses the general. So they tried to bank on getting Democrats to do the work for them. But the plan failed, because there were enough people that just like Peltola on her own.

RCV/IRV is fine. It's not perfect, but it's far better than FPTP and the results are rarely counter-intuitive.

STAR requires you to give a 0 to 5 to every candidate. The end result of the scores look a lot like RCV but with ties. Not to mention, every 0-n scale system devolves into essentially Y/N as people quickly glom onto the notion that they're the values that matter the most.

You can call STAR "two step" if you ignore the actual voting portion. That's the part that makes people work harder just to essentially rank their preferences.