[pessimizer]

Australia has ranked choice voting and it has not resulted in Australia making better decisions. I'd argue that in muddling the level of preference between options by overquantizing things, it biases elections towards the status quo and a complete lack of change, and motivates the two main parties to minimize (or eliminate) their differences.

It can be better to pick the one you like most rather than to sort a bunch of candidates, some of which will be inauthentic and strategic, evenly along a continuum. In a field of nine, that transforms the number one candidate from being preferred over the number nine candidate to being nine times better than the number one candidate.

I think there's a reason that Australia requires that you rank all choices. If you don't, it spoils your vote. If you intentionally spoil your vote, that's actually a crime in Australia (don't listen to people who tell you that the least Australia requires is that you turn in a blank ballot; Australia disagrees.) You're not even allowed to ask people not to rank certain candidates. It is a jailable offense:

> In 1986 Albert Langer wrote a conference paper entitled Don't Vote, examining possible electoral strategy for the left, aiming to bring down the Labor government and to target ALP candidates in marginal seats. In 1987 and 1990 there were instances where Victorian voters were urged to take advantage of section 270 of the Commonwealth Electoral Act and give less preferred parties equal last preferences (now known as a Langer vote), so as not to express a choice for either major party.

> As a result of his imprisonment, Amnesty International declared him the first Australian prisoner of conscience for over 20 years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Langer

Ranked choice (and obligatory) voting inflates the support for status quo parties. It's also a way to make that pesky 40% who don't vote because they hate both parties disappear.

[defrost]

> If you intentionally spoil your vote, that's actually a crime in Australia

Incorrect.

Spoilt votes are legal and non criminal - spoil your own vote as much as you like.

> Albert Langer

wasn't convicted of spoiling his vote.

He advocated everybody spoil their votes, and handed out "how to not vote" flyers

He was asked not to, there was a court case, an appeal, an injunction against Langer, a deliberate violation of that injunction, an arrest for violating that injunction, a sentence, that sentence halved, a review of the law created to mess with Langer, and then that law was tossed out.

So ..

Never a crime to spoil a vote in Australia.

Briefly "illegal" to advocate others do so (during one election).

That's no longer the case.

> I think there's a reason that Australia requires that you rank all choices.

Only in the House of Representatives - where you order a small number of choices to choose a candidate to represent your local district.

https://www.aec.gov.au/Voting/How_to_Vote/Voting_HOR.htm

Senate votes (the other House) only require to rank six parties (out of a field of potentially many) OR rank 12 individuals (out of potentially many more)

https://www.aec.gov.au/Voting/How_to_Vote/Voting_Senate.htm

You really don't appear to know much about the Australian Electoral system.

[pessimizer]

>> If you intentionally spoil your vote, that's actually a crime in Australia

> Incorrect.

I warned you not to listen to Australians about this. It's some kind of folk rebel legend that they're not required to vote completely. They are. Beware of "corrections" without references.

-----

> The Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918, under section 245(1), states: "It shall be the duty of every elector to vote at each election".

> Under the Electoral Act, the actual duty of the elector is to attend a polling place, have their name marked off the certified list, receive a ballot paper and take it to an individual voting booth, mark it, fold the ballot paper and place it in the ballot box.

> It is not the case, as some people have claimed, that it is only compulsory to attend the polling place and have your name marked off, and this has been upheld by a number of legal decisions:

    High Court 1926 – Judd v McKeon (1926) 38 CLR 380
    Supreme Court of Victoria 1970 – Lubcke v Little [1970] VR 807
    High Court 1971 – Faderson v Bridger (1971) 126 CLR 271
    Supreme Court of Queensland 1974 – Krosch v Springbell; ex parte
    Krosch [1974] QdR 107
    ACT Supreme Court 1981 – O'Brien v Warden (1981) 37 ACTR 13

> Because of the secrecy of the ballot, it is not possible to determine whether a person has completed their ballot paper prior to placing it in the ballot box. It is therefore not possible to determine whether all electors have met their legislated duty to vote. It is, however, possible to determine that an elector has attended a polling place or mobile polling team (or applied for a postal vote, pre-poll vote or absent vote) and been issued with a ballot paper.

https://aec.gov.au/About_AEC/Publications/voting/index.htm

-----

>> Albert Langer

> wasn't convicted of spoiling his vote.

> He advocated everybody spoil their votes, and handed out "how to not vote" flyers

Which is somewhat true, although the conference paper was called "Don't Vote." It was a witty title, because it wasn't about not voting, but marking voting papers in such a way that you could avoid ranking the two biggest parties. I don't know why you think that it would be a crime to advocate for a legal act, but you do you.

But consider that what I said was "You're not even allowed to ask people not to rank certain candidates. It is a jailable offense."

> Never a crime to spoil a vote in Australia.

This is a falsehood. Currently a crime to intentionally spoil your vote in Australia, currently not ranking all choices with spoil your vote.

-----

>> I think there's a reason that Australia requires that you rank all choices.

> Only in the House of Representatives - where you order a small number of choices to choose a candidate to represent your local district.

You got me. I think there's a reason that the House of Representatives requires you to rank all choices, and that the Senate only requires you to rank what is likely to be all vaguely viable choices (as power rules go.)

-----

> You really don't appear to know much about the Australian Electoral system.

You seem to have gotten everything wrong about Australian voting except to point out that the Senate only requires you to rank the top six parties or twelve individuals out of a selection that could be larger. Seems like very little to be gloating about, but, again, you do you.

[lotsofpulp]

Thanks for the corrections!

[pessimizer]

Those were not corrections. They were misinformation. That comment may actually be a crime in Australia.

[lotsofpulp]

Thanks for the interesting context. I will have to read further on mandatory voting or mandatory ranking of all candidates, but as it is, first past the post in the USA always leads to voting for the lesser evil.

I never get to vote for the person representing the policies I want, but rather voting against the handful of policies I do not want.

[pessimizer]

My trouble with it is that I think it's a distraction that allows people to feel like their voice is heard, but actually makes status quo results more likely because it simply shifts your vote to one of the two status quo parties.

I'm deep into P2P collaboration in terms of implementing aids for deliberative assemblies, or even complete implementations of different kinds of deliberative assemblies. When you study this stuff, you find first that it's still a very loose and new field of study that hasn't quite come together yet. Next, you find that there's a split: some people are trying to figure out the practicalities of implementing traditional deliberative rules in new mediums, aided by all of our cool devices, and even to experiment with those rules when things assumed by them have changed due to technology, e.g. asynchronous deliberation, or instant recall of delegates, etc..

On the other side are the "deliberative polling" people. They present themselves as looking for some sort of innovation in randomly selected focus groups, and ultimately, as looking for ways to essentially split a citizenry into focus groups, and to use those combined focus groups to either wield power as a government, or, more often, to advise a government. It sounds laudable, like a Delphi Method (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delphi_method) for non-experts.

But this is until you read their papers, and notice that the way they evaluate the conclusions of their deliberative group experiments is by how well the conclusions the groups reach agree with their hand-picked experts. Then you notice that what they're actually doing is figuring out frameworks that can guide randomly selected groups of people into predetermined conclusions. It's literally manufacturing consent by maximizing the feeling of participation that people have in ratifying decisions already made. Then you finally realize why Cass Sunstein is interested in it. They want to build a nation of grand juries.

I see ranked-choice voting as a similar tactic. It allows people to express their feelings without any danger that those feelings will have any effect.

edit: I'd also like to point out that in the UK, which has a long recent history of complaining about their FPTP systems, has more viable parties than the US even with FPTP, such as the Liberals who have been around forever (although they've only been "Liberal Democrats" since the SDP split from Labour), the SNP, and even single issue Brexit parties. Even their major parties, such as Labour, are to a degree composites, including things like The Labour and Co-operative Party.

The reason the Democrats and Republicans are the only real choices is because they fixed the rules, like e.g. against "fusion," which makes it so parties like Labour and Co-operative can't even exist outside of New York. The insane requirements for qualifying to run, the absence of campaign finance regulations, the fact that the government hosts their internal primary elections and marks parties on the ballot sheet... there are obvious ways to keep these awful parties from a lock on power, and they will not be done because these awful parties make the rules.