Voting theory got started earlier and got further. Bentham, Condorcet, and Borda all talked more, and more publicly. By the time of the founding fathers of the United States of America, better voting methods than plurality were known, and known more fully. Democracy in the USA is set up with a better voting method, and this becomes the template for better methods in other democracies around the world.
The USA never develops a two-party system, instead developing a multi-party system which represents many viewpoints. Politics is overall more sane, as it depends less on us-vs-them mentality.
As a result of saner and better politics, all manner of better policies get implemented. When economics gets good at giving advice, governments get good at listening.
(Perhaps a bit optimistic. And not nearly enough detail.)
ETA:
Public education develops along a different path, which keeps certification authorities separate from educators. This means it’s rarely necessary to take a class if you could already pass the final exam. There’s still a rat-race for certification (employers still look at certification as a sign of employee capability, so, you still get the general public competing for who can get more certification, even when it’s unrelated to the jobs they eventually get); but, smart people can much more easily skip past a bunch of stuff, study on their own, etc rather than wasting time sitting in classes that aren’t doing them any good.
What voting method in your opinion is superior to single-member district plurality election with one vote per voter? Ranked Choice Voting, Approval Voting, Score Voting?
I don’t have very much to say that’s not been said already by Jameson Quinn (lesswrong; medium).
My opinion about single-winner elections is mostly summarized by this chart. (See also this page, which includes a similar chart but with more voting techniques compared.) Instant runoff is markedly better than plurality, but both methods tend to result in two-party systems (for different reasons), so instant runoff isn’t sufficiently better for my fantasy here.
(Quinn complains that “ranked choice voting” is a poor term for instant-runoff, since it makes it sound as if all voting methods in which you rank the choices are instant-runoff.)
For the sake of the fantasy, score voting seems like a realistic choice: if Bentham and Borda talked more, they might have invented it to respond to Condorcet’s critique of Borda’s method. And score voting is pretty great.
STAR voting or 3-2-1 voting would be even better, but probably would not be invented by an early cabal of voting theorists.
It would be even better if improved multi-winner election methods were invented and used, optimizing the legislature to be representative, rather than merely optimizing each individual legislator to represent their individual base well.
For presidential elections, and other single-winner elections, it’s a bit of a toss-up between 3-2-1 and STAR voting. I am partial to STAR, personally, because (as you can see in the graph) it outperforms 3-2-1 by quite a bit in the 100% honesty case, while only slightly underperforming 3-2-1 in the worst voter model. Quinn argues that 3-2-1 is better because its efficiency depends less on the voter model; it squeezes the different scenarios together more, making for more reliable quality.
It’s also important to consider which is less confusing. Again, I personally find STAR pretty intuitive, but Quinn tends to think 3-2-1 is simpler, so “more research is needed” I guess.
Here’s how STAR works: everyone gives a ‘star rating’ to each candidate, from 0 to 5 or 0 to 10 (whatever granularity you like), much like score voting (aka range voting). (If you leave someone blank they get 0.) The top two candidates are chosen by total score. Then, these two candidates are compared in a virtual runoff election (a lot like instant runoff): each candidate gets a “vote” for each time they are rated higher than the other candidate on a ballot. (This ensures that everyone gets a strong voice in the choice between the final two candidates, so long as they rated them any differently on their ballot.)
Here’s how 3-2-1 works: a voter rates each candidate “approve/neutral/disapprove”. Take the three candidates who each have highest approval. Then eliminate the one candidate out of these with highest disapproval. Then compare the remaining two candidates in a virtual runoff, like in STAR, where people are assumed to vote for candidates who they rated higher.
For multi-winner elections, IE legislative elections, it would be great to use methods which aim for proportional representation; but, I don’t really have anything to say about what differentiates those methods from each other. I have the impression that they’re all pretty good. If you made me choose right now, I’d go with Allocated Score (AKA proportional STAR voting). If STAR voting is already in use for single-winner elections, this has the advantage of presenting voters with a familiar ballot. (That’s not my reason for picking it—my reason is (a) it’s the simplest to understand out of the options I just now looked over, (b) it avoids center-squeeze-like problems associated with the more popular single-transferable-vote.)
We have had a multi-winner election system in Tasmania since 1896. It is called the Hare-Clark system and has its drawbacks. 1. Candidates compete mainly with members of their own party. 2. Urban areas are favoured over rural areas in the same electorate because that is where the votes are. 3. There are no bi-elections. 4. The parties are usually very evenly balanced in numbers leading to hung parliaments. 5. The balance of power is often held by extremist groups or eccentric individuals. 6. Electorates can be very large geographically making campaigning difficult and with little commonality of interest between remote areas.
Yeah, I haven’t looked at any statistics, but anecdotally it seems like I can’t support the claim that better voting methods are that much better in practical terms. Many places have systems which seem better than that of the USA, without markedly better political results.
However, in my country, where we use FPTP, we have frequently got extremist parties in power. If seats had been given proportionally, they might not have got power, or would have to operate in Big Tent coalitions.
In the last general election, 486(!) parties fielded candidates. Of course, most of them would not reach the threshold for representation in PR. But some of them will. That would almost always cause hung parliaments.
Upside is, minorities like Muslims will get better representation. They are heavily underrepresented in legislatures due to their dispersal.
IRV has the problem that (a) many votes would get exhausted. However, if to control for that you impose a minimum number of choices, you would get a higher number of invalid votes. Or even donkey voting—just filling out at random.
Score voting, in my opinion, better captures the reality of human preference.
Cribbing from my answer to Top Time Travel Interventions,
Voting theory got started earlier and got further. Bentham, Condorcet, and Borda all talked more, and more publicly. By the time of the founding fathers of the United States of America, better voting methods than plurality were known, and known more fully. Democracy in the USA is set up with a better voting method, and this becomes the template for better methods in other democracies around the world.
The USA never develops a two-party system, instead developing a multi-party system which represents many viewpoints. Politics is overall more sane, as it depends less on us-vs-them mentality.
As a result of saner and better politics, all manner of better policies get implemented. When economics gets good at giving advice, governments get good at listening.
(Perhaps a bit optimistic. And not nearly enough detail.)
ETA:
Public education develops along a different path, which keeps certification authorities separate from educators. This means it’s rarely necessary to take a class if you could already pass the final exam. There’s still a rat-race for certification (employers still look at certification as a sign of employee capability, so, you still get the general public competing for who can get more certification, even when it’s unrelated to the jobs they eventually get); but, smart people can much more easily skip past a bunch of stuff, study on their own, etc rather than wasting time sitting in classes that aren’t doing them any good.
What voting method in your opinion is superior to single-member district plurality election with one vote per voter? Ranked Choice Voting, Approval Voting, Score Voting?
I don’t have very much to say that’s not been said already by Jameson Quinn (lesswrong; medium).
My opinion about single-winner elections is mostly summarized by this chart. (See also this page, which includes a similar chart but with more voting techniques compared.) Instant runoff is markedly better than plurality, but both methods tend to result in two-party systems (for different reasons), so instant runoff isn’t sufficiently better for my fantasy here.
(Quinn complains that “ranked choice voting” is a poor term for instant-runoff, since it makes it sound as if all voting methods in which you rank the choices are instant-runoff.)
For the sake of the fantasy, score voting seems like a realistic choice: if Bentham and Borda talked more, they might have invented it to respond to Condorcet’s critique of Borda’s method. And score voting is pretty great.
STAR voting or 3-2-1 voting would be even better, but probably would not be invented by an early cabal of voting theorists.
It would be even better if improved multi-winner election methods were invented and used, optimizing the legislature to be representative, rather than merely optimizing each individual legislator to represent their individual base well.
So, if you had to choose an election system for USA, what would you choose?
For presidential elections, and other single-winner elections, it’s a bit of a toss-up between 3-2-1 and STAR voting. I am partial to STAR, personally, because (as you can see in the graph) it outperforms 3-2-1 by quite a bit in the 100% honesty case, while only slightly underperforming 3-2-1 in the worst voter model. Quinn argues that 3-2-1 is better because its efficiency depends less on the voter model; it squeezes the different scenarios together more, making for more reliable quality.
It’s also important to consider which is less confusing. Again, I personally find STAR pretty intuitive, but Quinn tends to think 3-2-1 is simpler, so “more research is needed” I guess.
Here’s how STAR works: everyone gives a ‘star rating’ to each candidate, from 0 to 5 or 0 to 10 (whatever granularity you like), much like score voting (aka range voting). (If you leave someone blank they get 0.) The top two candidates are chosen by total score. Then, these two candidates are compared in a virtual runoff election (a lot like instant runoff): each candidate gets a “vote” for each time they are rated higher than the other candidate on a ballot. (This ensures that everyone gets a strong voice in the choice between the final two candidates, so long as they rated them any differently on their ballot.)
Here’s how 3-2-1 works: a voter rates each candidate “approve/neutral/disapprove”. Take the three candidates who each have highest approval. Then eliminate the one candidate out of these with highest disapproval. Then compare the remaining two candidates in a virtual runoff, like in STAR, where people are assumed to vote for candidates who they rated higher.
For multi-winner elections, IE legislative elections, it would be great to use methods which aim for proportional representation; but, I don’t really have anything to say about what differentiates those methods from each other. I have the impression that they’re all pretty good. If you made me choose right now, I’d go with Allocated Score (AKA proportional STAR voting). If STAR voting is already in use for single-winner elections, this has the advantage of presenting voters with a familiar ballot. (That’s not my reason for picking it—my reason is (a) it’s the simplest to understand out of the options I just now looked over, (b) it avoids center-squeeze-like problems associated with the more popular single-transferable-vote.)
We have had a multi-winner election system in Tasmania since 1896. It is called the Hare-Clark system and has its drawbacks. 1. Candidates compete mainly with members of their own party. 2. Urban areas are favoured over rural areas in the same electorate because that is where the votes are. 3. There are no bi-elections. 4. The parties are usually very evenly balanced in numbers leading to hung parliaments. 5. The balance of power is often held by extremist groups or eccentric individuals. 6. Electorates can be very large geographically making campaigning difficult and with little commonality of interest between remote areas.
Yeah, I haven’t looked at any statistics, but anecdotally it seems like I can’t support the claim that better voting methods are that much better in practical terms. Many places have systems which seem better than that of the USA, without markedly better political results.
However, in my country, where we use FPTP, we have frequently got extremist parties in power. If seats had been given proportionally, they might not have got power, or would have to operate in Big Tent coalitions. In the last general election, 486(!) parties fielded candidates. Of course, most of them would not reach the threshold for representation in PR. But some of them will. That would almost always cause hung parliaments. Upside is, minorities like Muslims will get better representation. They are heavily underrepresented in legislatures due to their dispersal.
IRV has the problem that (a) many votes would get exhausted. However, if to control for that you impose a minimum number of choices, you would get a higher number of invalid votes. Or even donkey voting—just filling out at random. Score voting, in my opinion, better captures the reality of human preference.