Ranked choice voting (RCV) — also known as instant runoff voting (IRV) — makes our elections better by allowing voters to rank candidates in order of preference.
RCV is straightforward: Voters have the option to rank candidates in order of preference: first, second, third and so forth. If your first choice doesn’t have a chance to win, your ballot counts for your next choice.
RCV works in all types of elections and supports more representative outcomes. RCV means better choices, better campaigns, and better representation.
Originally Posted By u/Albany50501 At 2025-04-22 02:51:32 PM | Source
The single transferable vote is way better:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote
Seems like STV is an extension of ranked choice voting for the special case of multiple-winner elections.
And slightly fancier than approval voting for multiple winner elections.
I like that. I'm still going to support any improvement to the system, though, even if it's not my preferred solution. Even, if we just got ranked-choice voting, we'd still have more influence on further improvements to the system, like moving to STV.
Not sure about this: the same argument applies here.
Consider
Who wins according to single transferable vote for 1 available seat? C. Who wins against every opponent 1-on-1? B.
I think there are more mathematically sound methods.
It's my understanding they all have an issue such as this where choosing a second pick still can spoil your first or such that some other candidate wins which was not the top choice due to ranking spoilers.
Unsure what that means.
This example shows a violation of the Condorcet winner criterion, and the articles I linked to identify methods that lack this issue, so not all methods have that issue. Some articles on those methods include a nice comparison table of methods over a range of criteria: they vary.
While ranked voting methods in general have some unavoidable issues, this isn't one of them.
Basically exactly what I was alluding to, they all have some issue so it's not so simple, but not as severe as fptp.
I think that defect pointed out is a pretty bad one.
When we have research, we shouldn't ignore it. It doesn't take that long to review readily found information & make an informed decision.
Changing a voting system is a significant undertaking. We got FPTP without adequate research: I would not like a repeat of that mistake with the first non-garbage idea that pops into people's heads when we have readily available information to make a better choice.