(I was searching to try to find out if upvotes on here are anonymous. 😬)
Jonathan B
Karma: 34
Actually, real name accounts produce comments of lower quality than those made by pseudonyms:
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/01/real-names-dont-make-for-better-commenters-but-pseudonyms-do/251240/
https://web.archive.org/web/20160516101013/https://disqus.com/research/pseudonyms/
Note that there are other organizations promoting consensus voting systems, too, with the same proposed benefits:
Better Choices for Democracy advocates Consensus Choice Voting, a Condorcet-compliant form of ranked-choice voting.
STAR Voting Action advocates STAR Voting, a hybrid of cardinal and ranked systems.
Equal Vote Coalition is an umbrella that advocates all of the above.
caveat: there’s a disparity between intrinsic and instrumental preferences, in other words voters don’t actually know what they want.
There’s a disparity between “utility” in the context of a voting system vs “utility” in the context of EA. In other words, what voters want is not necessarily what best improves their actual wellbeing. Is that the same disparity you’re talking about, or something different?
quadratic voting has been pretty deeply debunked.
What do you mean by this? What specific claims have been “debunked” and in what way?
Ranked Choice Voting is a good way to reduce polarization in politics, elect more popular (and less extreme) candidates, and increase competition. It would also reduce the power of Trump over the Republican Party, which could lead to more Congressional pushback.
Since the form of RCV used in the US eliminates candidates bases on plurality tallies of first-choice votes in each round, it arguably does none of the above and just perpetuates the problems of our current system. It does not fix vote-splitting or the spoiler effect, despite the claims of its proponents.
Ranked-choice systems that actually count all voter preferences (“Condorcet-compliant”) would actually improve these things, as would cardinal systems like Approval Voting, STAR Voting, Balanced Approval, etc. that allow voters to evaluate each candidate independently.
Yeah, the decision to select the top three candidates and divide funds between them is pretty arbitrary (and unlike a standard political election) but I think most people would agree that counting all voter preferences in that process is better than counting some voters’ preferences while discarding others’.
If you count all voter preferences, instead of only first-choice rankings, the set of top three winners is the same, but in a different order and with different proportions:
SWP (33.7%) > EAAWF (33.1%) > RP (33.2%)
In the future can you add these orgs? They are similar to Center for Election Science:
Better Choices for Democracy advocates Consensus Choice Voting, a Condorcet-compliant form of ranked-choice voting.
STAR Voting Action advocates STAR Voting, a hybrid of cardinal and ranked systems.
Equal Vote Coalition is an umbrella that advocates all of the above.
OK I ran the numbers on the raw data. IRV happened to select the correct top 3 candidates, so that worked out OK, but it did not select them in the correct order or proportions (but it’s pretty close, so it doesn’t make much difference in this particular election).
The official results are:RP: 37.0% = $9484
EAAWF: 32.3% = $8271
SWP: 30.6% = $7844
But when considering all preferences, not just first choices:
SWP was actually the true winner, preferred by 50.3% majority of voters over RP, by 50.9% over EAAWF, by 56.4% over WAI, etc.
EAAWF is runner-up, preferred by 50.2% over RP, by 57.2% over WAI, by 59.8% over THL, etc.
RP is third, preferred by 54.9% over WAI, by 59.2% over THL, etc.
I don’t know of an established way to translate this to proportional winnings, but you might choose to break it up by pairwise margins between the top three, like this:
SWP: (50.9+50.3)/3 = 33.7% = $8636
EAAWF: (49.1+50.2)/3 = 33.1% = $8473
RP: (49.8+49.7)/3 = 33.2% = $8490
The majority preferences between the top three are pretty close to even, so something that evenly distributes money between them seems intuitively correct.
I put voting method reform first, because it has the greatest overall downstream impact, then charities that directly help people, then charities that help animals, then left things unranked that I don’t support or think are actually harmful.
(Duplicate comment)
To get the winners, we first look at everyone’s top-ranked candidates and eliminate the candidate ranked top on the least votes. All voters who had the eliminated candidate as their top-ranked candidate have all their votes moved up one for the next round (so in round 2, the candidate they ranked as a second choice will be treated as a top choice). This process is repeated until we are left with three candidates.
This is a popular way to count ranked ballots, but it really shouldn’t be. Counting only first-choice votes in each round means you are discarding many of the preferences that voters expressed on their ballots, which can incorrectly eliminate candidates through vote-splitting, even when a supermajority of voters preferred them over others.
Please set a good example and don’t use plurality-based systems like this.
Thanks, I’ll try to take a look at it.
Please don’t use instant-runoff voting. This is a well-known, but not well-designed, voting system.
Add up everyone’s 1st choice to get a count for each candidate.
If there are more than 3 candidates with any votes, eliminate the least popular, and redistribute those votes according to the voters’ next favourite choice.
Plurality-based systems like this suffer from vote-splitting, which can incorrectly eliminate the most-preferred candidates, especially in elections with many candidates (like this one).
Counting only first-choice preferences is a highly flawed and undemocratic way to count ranked ballots. You’re throwing away most of the preference data that voters expressed on their ballots. 😞
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/j6fmnYM5ZRu9fJyrq/donation-election-how-to-vote says that this is plurality-based voting system, not Condorcet. ☹️
But saying I prefer not to smoke helped me quit.
Now I’m simply not a smoker.
I’m trying to read Atomic Habits and it has a similar concept:
Imagine two people resisting a cigarette. When offered a smoke, the first person says, “No thanks. I’m trying to quit.” It sounds like a reasonable response, but this person still believes they are a smoker who is trying to be something else. They are hoping their behavior will change while carrying around the same beliefs.
The second person declines by saying, “No thanks. I’m not a smoker.” It’s a small difference, but this statement signals a shift in identity. Smoking was part of their former life, not their current one. They no longer identify as someone who smokes.
Most people don’t even consider identity change when they set out to improve. They just think, “I want to be skinny (outcome) and if I stick to this diet, then I’ll be skinny (process).” They set goals and determine the actions they should take to achieve those goals without considering the beliefs that drive their actions. They never shift the way they look at themselves, and they don’t realize that their old identity can sabotage their new plans for change.
Yes, the Instant-Runoff/Hare form of RCV is a broken system that elects candidates based on incomplete information, which means it can eliminate the most-preferred candidates through vote-splitting.
There are other ranked systems that are good, like Total Vote Runoff or Ranked Robin, but in an election like this with many candidates, it can be tedious to rank every one.
A score-based ballot is probably a better choice, with less cognitive burden. (Though STAR is specifically designed for single-winner elections, not 3-winner elections. I’m not sure how well it performs in strategy-resistance in the multi-winner case. They have a proportional multi-winner variant, too.)
The system for adding up the votes is very similar to the ranked choice/instant runoff system that is used in some political elections
Ugh, why?? This is an undemocratic voting system that suffers from vote-splitting. EAs should know better than to perpetuate this junk.
If you want to eliminate candidates one-by-one in rounds, then eliminate them based on their total ranking, rather than counting only first-choice rankings and choosing a winner based on incomplete information.
Alternatively, calculate a single-elimination bracket or round robin tournament.
Any of these will ensure that the most-preferred candidates don’t get eliminated through vote-splitting.
Please don’t give people the impression that IRV is a legitimate voting method. Election reform is supposed to be an EA cause area. Do good research and be a good example.
What’s allowed
Tactical voting: Your vote doesn’t have to represent your true preference order. Perhaps you see that the candidate that is currently in 3rd place seems a lot worse to you than the candidate that is in 4th. In that case, you are free to change your vote to put the 4th place candidate in 1st (even if they wouldn’t be your top choice).
You’re encouraging tactical voting? In an election with real money? Why?
OK, done.