Talk:Ranked‐choice voting

Paid employee contributions

@Efbrazil See here; it's not clear at all how much this has affected the article, but better safe than sorry while we work that out and go over it. (Notices have been added to FairVote and other related articles.) –Maximum Limelihood Estimator 22:02, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

Thanks! I just didn't see a basis for the issue being posted, that wikilink is what I was looking for. Efbrazil (talk) 15:00, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

I don't agree whatsoever that this article deserves an undisclosed paid tag (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Ranked-choice_voting_in_the_United_States#c-Lcdrovers-20240811044800-Thiesen-20240612184000), and your followup comment (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Conflict_of_interest/Noticeboard/Archive_207#c-Closed_Limelike_Curves-20240502204500-JPxG-20240502140600) regarding IRV's status among social choice theorists indicates that your application of this tag is politically motivated. Anyone re-adding this template should provide a link to a well-reasoned argument on the talk page for how this edit harms the article, in the specific sections affected, instead of casting doubt upon the entire article without any accountability. Lcdrovers (talk) 04:59, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

There's plenty of accountability, e.g. this talk page. Regardless, there's a lot of criticism of IRV in the social choice literature, and until very recently (when I started incorporating more academic discussion), this has been almost completely absent. Most of the discussion of IRV in social choice has centered on major issues with it, like perverse response, eliminating majority-preferred candidates, spoiler effects, and center squeeze. It definitely is unusual how little attention this has received, and after reviewing the page history, it seems clear to me that in many cases this was because of clear COI editors like @RRichie and @Tbouricius editing the article to remove this information. So far I've been busy with other things, but I do think there's a need to substantially clarify the scientific consensus on this issue. Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 19:27, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for being on the lookout for these COI editors. I see that RRichie is down to ~3% of authorship. Do not see Tbouricius there. I see a few IP addresses around 1% as well.
What are the major issues we need to address? Superb Owl (talk) 21:47, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

Interestingly enough, the tag was mostly there because of what those authors removed rather than what they inserted. The earliest versions of this page were frequently edited by COI-editors in order to remove references to IRV pathologies. I've removed the tag after including further discussion of IRV pathologies in the lead. – Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 17:31, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

The term pathology does not seem very NPOV so maybe there is a better term that we could use? Superb Owl (talk) 17:43, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

Pathology is the standard term for this in the literature—I'm actually in the process of trying to rewrite most of the "voting criteria" articles as "pathology" articles, since I've found people tend to have an easier time understanding them when they're written out this way.

That said, people might not recognize it's a term of art, so maybe "paradox" would be a bit less charged? – Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 18:01, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

and let me know if you run into any more COI editors - happy to help try and get them banned from this article Superb Owl (talk) 17:44, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

RCV term in Australia

@David Eppstein when you said this isn't unique to the US, did you mean conflating ranked voting and IRV isn't unique to the US? Or that the term "Ranked-choice voting" in particular is common in Australia? I was under the impression that the term "Ranked-choice voting" for IRV was limited to North America, with Australians making the similar mistake of calling it "preferential voting". Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 01:14, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

I meant that using the term "ranked choice voting" (incorrectly) to refer to instant-runoff voting isn't unique to the US. See e.g. this example by an Australian academic researcher. Here's another example in the Sydney Morning Herald and in the Brisbane Times using the term but calling it an Americanism. They do not point out that the correct use of the term means something different, saying only that it is a term used for IRV. I only checked for Australia but I suspect other English-speaking countries would show similar patterns. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:42, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

THis AUstralian never heard of Ranked Choice Voting before reding about it on Wikipedia. HiLo48 (talk) 05:09, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

Despite using it? The proper use of the terminology is: ranked choice voting = how you fill in your ballot. IRV = how the winner gets determined from the ballots. The issue we are discussing, though, is that many sources don't make a distinction between those two stages (regardless of what they call them). I think the main term used in Australia is "preferential voting"? But I'm less sure which of those two stages should be the main meaning for that term. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:34, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

Yes, it's known as preferential voting here. `HiLo48 (talk) 08:38, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

Right, so I think "Ranked-choice voting" is mostly limited to North America, albeit not completely exclusive. Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 15:54, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

Neither of you have answered whether "preferential voting" means ranked-choice balloting or instant-runoff winner selection. And the geographic distribution of the use of the term "ranked-choice voting" is not particularly relevant to this article except as it concerns the more specific issue of who is likely to confuse RCV and IRV, to which the correct answer is probably "everyone". —David Eppstein (talk) 17:49, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

"Preferential voting" is in the same boat as RCV of being a popular misnomer. Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 18:23, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

Here is a link to an Australian explanation of "preferential voting". HiLo48 (talk) 01:39, 29 June 2024 (UTC)

Lead

@Closed Limelike Curves, IRV is not my favorite form of voting either and is overhyped but I still think the article should not take such a strong stance against it when there are reliable sources that clearly dispute many of your points. This is not the first article where this has been an issue. Let me know if you have any questions on the flags that were added Superb Owl (talk) 05:16, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

Hi,

sadly have to agree. Statements like "The method has had little academic support in social choice theory since the field's inception" or "Modern research into voting systems has instead tended to focus on majority-choice and rated voting systems" just do not seem like correct statements about modern social choice theory. I decided to delete that paragraph for now, as I think it is too far removed from being neutral or even true. Jannikp97 (talk) 09:16, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

If you disagree, I'd be happy to see citations to sources showing strong support for IRV among social choice theorists. I've added the Laslier 2012 poll showing a majority of polled academics in the field disapproving of IRV.

I'm struggling to think of a single social choice theorist who considers IRV better than both Condorcet and cardinal methods. Sure, there's plenty of disagreement in the field about the relative value of these two classes, but I don't think I've ever seen someone with substantial experience in the field who thinks IRV is better than both sets of rules. – Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 19:10, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

You consistently try to equate IRV with plurality and refuse to add any context that considers that IRV could be an improvement upon plurality (very well sourced). It is true that condorcet and cardinal methods probably are an improvement to IRV, but that does not justify scrubbing its advantages over plurality using imprecise language to inflate or distort conclusions from the articles you cite Superb Owl (talk) 19:12, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

I'm not particularly interested in trying to "equate" IRV with plurality or "scrubbing" anything off of any page. Describing two voting rules as being similar isn't violating NPOV if they're similar – both rules share a similar philosophy (based on counting how a single vote travels across candidates, with FPP being the case of a single round, 2RS two rounds, and IRV infinitely many). Both have similar end results (e.g. center squeeze). I'm still in the process of editing this and spoiler effect, which is why I'd agree with you that they're lacking some nuance right now. In particular, the similarity between FPP and IRV depends strongly on assumptions about voting behavior:

• If you have fully honest voting and a many-party system (like in the United Kingdom), the two rules behave very differently, and IRV substantially reduces the rate of spoiled elections and bias towards extreme candidates.
• If voters act strategically, or if you have a two-party system, IRV and FPP behave very similarly. This is because IRV simulates the effect of strategic voting on the outcome. A reasonable/basic model of FPP strategic voting would be "If I see a candidate in last place, I abandon them and support someone else to avoid wasting my vote." This produces the same end result as IRV.
• If there is already a first round of winnowing, e.g. by parties, the differences become substantially smaller, because the number of candidates shrinks so there's less opportunities for clones to crop up.

I think all of these details should be reflected in the article, and I'm in the process of trying to integrate these. You're completely right that these articles are imperfect and don't reflect every nuance I've laid out above the way I'd like them to.

If you have disagreements with the phrasing of this article or how precise it is, that's perfectly fine. I've leaned more towards WP:EVENTUALISM here, adding information I think is important and relevant before focusing on phrasing it perfectly.

On the other hand, I'm not happy with the way this thread has devolved into personal attacks and accusations of bias, on the basis of an edit I think is a reasonable summary of the sources. If you disagree, that's ok, but focus on these specific disagreements. – Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 20:11, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

Now the elephant in the room becomes more visible. If you are viewing everything only in terms of how it relates to a British parliamentary system where every district elects one representative from one party, then any distortions caused by the choice of voting system are going to be dwarfed by the choice of that political system. All systems have distortions; I am not saying the British parliamentary system is a bad choice, only that it is a specific application of voting that leads to specific desiderata. If you are going to use IRV in a very different context, for instance to determine the winner of a major annual artistic award, then the desiderata are going to be different. For instance, for the artistic award, a polarizing candidate might be a better choice (as judged by later historians of the subject) than a safe choice that nobody is excited by. For political leadership, the opposite might be true. What our article needs to do is, neutrally and based on good sources, to describe how different systems affect the outcome in different ways, without interpolating our own value judgements or parochial political concerns about those effects.—David Eppstein (talk) 20:50, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

Not really interested into turning this into a "petty" fight :D Support for rules or "rankings" of rules is not really the output of research. While I agree that several people would probably prefer Condorcet rules to IRV, I know that this is (i) not true for all and (ii) not really something measurable or citeable one can or should put into the lead of this article. Further, in the paper you mentioned here, IRV is actually the second most approved rule, ahead of Copeland or range voting. (not that this is really relevant) Jannikp97 (talk) 19:39, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

I reverted another round of edits in the lead which do not seem to have been more objective than yesterday's. We might need to take this to arbitration Superb Owl (talk) 18:03, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

It is also my strong impression that CLC's edits on voting systems in general are in violation of WP:NPOV. See also Template:Did you know nominations/Highest averages method. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:08, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

David: If you think I was being biased in that thread, I'd like to know what apportionment rule I was showing bias in favor of. – Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 19:14, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

If after that long discussion you still do not understand my repeated comments there about how you should not describe a rounding method as being a bad method because (like all rounding methods) it results in rounding inaccuracies, then there is no hope that saying the same thing here will lead to a constructive outcome. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:16, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

Where did I describe any rounding method as being a bad method? – Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 19:18, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

We could start with the phrasing "failure to use the correct rounding procedure" in one of the initially proposed hooks. Note the loaded words "failure" and "correct". —David Eppstein (talk) 19:28, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

And as I repeatedly clarified, "correct" meant "the one enshrined into the law". I quickly edited it to remove that once you pointed out I'd made a mistake, and it was Hamilton's rule (rather than Webster's) that had been enshrined in law. – Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 20:13, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

I have not seen an openness to learning and evolving Superb Owl (talk) 19:20, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

I continue to see sweeping edits that do not attempt to moderate language or address flags raised and no interest in working up from the body to the lead or in a more moderated or collaborative approach Superb Owl (talk) 17:08, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

@Closed Limelike Curves I did an exhaustive cleanup of the body of the text - anything with a flag on it will be removed in a week if still there. If you want to help improve this article we really need consensus in the body before we touch the lead. I agree the lead needs to explain the downsides but also the upsides and we can't know how much weight to give each until the body has reliable sourcing and has been worked on by multiple editors Superb Owl (talk) 17:41, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

The material I've added to the lead is a summary of already-present material in the article's body. – Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 17:41, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

Mention of mathematical properties in article

(cc @Jannikp97, @Jasavina, and @CRGreathouse for comment as regular electoral systems article contributors)

I understand there's some questions about the precise phrasing, but I think my most recent attempt at the lead provided a decent, well-sourced summary of mathematical properties and research covered in this article. There's certainly some room for improvement, but I doubt this merited a complete reversion. WP:SUMMARYSTYLE mandates a lead should cover all the major topics of the article, and a discussion of the mathematical properties of RCV-IRV is definitely a major part of this article and important enough to get coverage. The properties I discussed here are the same ones discussed in basically every Wiki article on voting systems. These include IIA, independence of clones, monotonicity, participation, and Condorcet.

@Superb Owl's most recent edit went substantially further:

1. In some cases, removing claims because one of several sources was less-than-perfect (e.g. newspaper articles or press releases by social choice theorists), despite the same claim also being sourced by stronger citations to scholarly journals. Citations that are not "load bearing" (i.e. included only for additional explanation or clarification) do not weaken the overall strength of sourcing for the claim. If a claim has multiple citations (some good and some bad), you can arguably remove the less-solid citations, but not the claim itself.
2. The summary of empirical research by political scientists, including the comprehensive report of the Electoral Reform Research Group that got no pushback when it was only in the body and not the lead, has been deleted.

The combined effect of these changes is to push any on the pros and cons of IRV deep into the bottom of the article, where readers won't find it. – Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 17:40, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

My issues are 1) You do not write in a way that is easily understood by a lay reader. It is too technical and makes things more confusing. Maybe some other editors can help explain what you are trying to do in a more accessible way. You also have 25% authorship of this article and it could really use fresh eyes and perspectives to make it understandable to a wider audience. 2) You seem to be cherry-picking studies and conclusions by primary sources for the lead are also disputed by reliable secondary sources in the body. You also make claims that are not WP:Verifiable or are WP:Synthesis. There needs to be nuance even if your positions against IRV are most likely to be the most common among experts. 3) The body of the article was a complete disaster and I spent an hour or two cleaning it up just now. The best way to know what to put in the lead is to have a body that is well-developed with solid sourcing. Superb Owl (talk) 17:47, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

I'm not seeing any cases where the material in the lead is contradicted by a reliable secondary source in the body.

1. There seem to be a few situations where the material in the lead contradicts commentary by non-reliable or partisan sources in the body (e.g. FairVote), but in this case the body should be edited to remove material supported only by unreliable sources. Published scholarly articles are substantially more reliable than press releases put out by advocacy groups for a particular policy.
2. The lead relies heavily on secondary sources, including review articles (e.g. the ERRG report summarizing all the empirical research on this topic) and review/summary sections taken from papers in social choice.
3. In cases where individual studies are cited, I make sure to include multiple such studies to show I'm not cherry-picking. You can read the summary sections of these articles if you'd like, which include an overview of the whole topic; there's no substantial dispute about any of the mathematical or statistical properties I'm bringing up.
4. I'm happy to add any positive findings you can find by social choice theorists in peer-reviewed social choice journals. If you think there's positive aspects or studies on IRV that I'm not discussing, you're free to look those up and show it, but excluding all discussion of pros and cons simply because the majority of research has found isn't nuance, it's WP:FALSEBALANCE and failing to give WP:DUE weight. So far as I can tell, the properties I've surveyed are widely-studied, discussed in many papers, and are discussed in every Wikipedia article on voting systems (including this one).

– Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 18:24, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

Let's hear what others have to say. Your edits have been controversial to say the least on a number of related articles Superb Owl (talk) 18:43, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

A few thoughts, though admittedly I haven't done a close read of everything yet (and I'm just looking at the current state, not actually examining the changes). I also haven't evaluated what is sourced or evaluated whether the sources or adequate.

1. Language is too technical in some places. "Pathology" "Partial results exist" are a few that jumped out right away.
2. There seems to be a good bit of redundancy.
   • The "Comparison to other voting systems" section seems to be better placed on a different page, such as ranked voting since only one row is actually about IRV.
   • The information in the IRV row of "Comparisons to other voting systems" seems to be redundant with the "Voting Methods Criteria". Perhaps just keep the IRV row of the table, and get rid of the Criteria section? Anything from the criteria section that needs to stay could probably be folded into the Properties, Advantages, Disadvantages section.
   • It seemed weird to have a Criteria section separate from a Properties. It also seems weird to have a Comparison to other systems section and a Similar Methods section.
3. The last two paragraphs of the "Process" section seem to be criticisms and belong in a different section.

Hopefully this "drive by commentary" is more helpful than annoying. meamemg (talk) 19:47, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

Center Squeeze

There seems to be some controversy about whether an old version of the "Instant-runoff voting" article that @Closed Limelike Curves restored (rev 1246893366) or if the current revision (rev 1247569260 as of this writing) is fine. Since I came to understand the center squeeze effect many years ago, it completely changed my perception of IRV. It seems we do a disservice to readers by not even mentioning the term in this article, and it seems to me that not only should it be mentioned, but it deserves at least a small WP:SUMMARY-style section of the article with a hatnote link to "Center squeeze". I may come around in a week or two and add said section, but given that the 2009 Burlington mayoral election seems to be a prime real-world example of center squeeze (not to mention the semi-fictional Tennessee example used in many electoral system articles), it seems difficult to justify a failure to mention "center squeeze" in this article and provide an example that helps explain it. It seems funny that neither version of the article uses the term "center squeeze", though the older version has the examples that help describe the phenomenon. -- RobLa (talk) 22:58, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

problems with IRV article

IRV is not pluralitarian - its whole goal is to see majority choice elected, even if tht majorty choice has to based on vote tallies after votes are transferred from first choices.

it should not be lumped into same family of systems as FPTP. for one thing in FPTP votes are never transferred so the article is clearly wrong when it says that FPTP is like IRV for that reason.

not all IRV vote counts proceed to where there are only two candidates. they do proceed to point where one candidate has amasssed majority of votes (or majoierty of vots still in play at that point) no matter how many other candidates are still in running. therefore IRV is majoritarian, not pluralitarian.

yes eliminations are based on relative vote tallies - the least-popular, no matter how many votes he or she, has is eliminated, but that hardly makes it same as FPTP.

the imporatance of the elimination of the least-popular is that their votes are transferred but that is not mentioned in first paragraph when eliminations are introduced.

edits (quickly reverted) performed on October 16 tried to make these changes.

68.150.205.46 (talk) 05:10, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

Unfortunately, that line of reasoning has a problem because it can be reduced to absurdity. Consider a version of IRV where the process stops if anybody has more than 67% of the first preference votes, or otherwise keeps going until every candidate but one has been eliminated, at which point the remaining candidate has 100% of the first preferences. The threshold for that method is a 2/3 supermajority. But it seems absurd to say that the method ensures a 2/3 supermajority winner. 2A01:799:1511:E300:D6E9:1083:E302:8CF3 (talk) 11:39, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

You just described why it is not majoritarian and why pluralitarian is a correct word for it.

-What is the elimination based on? plurality (imagine every round as a snapshot of single non transferable vote - yes votes are transfered in between, but that is still first-preference plurality since you don't look at the excluded candidate)

-It doesn't matter if it doesn't go until there are two candidates. That is just making counting quicker. It's a simplification by maths. The 50% is not a meaningful quota like in STV. If it was 40%, that would be another case, but then it would even more so not be majoritarian

-IRV does not fulfil the majority rule of social choice theory

-the fact that it goes to 2 candidates only means it won't elect a majority loser, but that is not the same as electing a majority winner

-it is based on later-no-harm, therefore primacy of first-preferences. This also makes it closer to simple plurality than many other systems.

-nobody said it is the same as FPTP

+the word majoritarian is misleading anyway - people incorrectly use it for plurality, winner-take-all and single winner district based systems. Rankedchoicevoter (talk) 13:24, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

RFC: Title Change

I feel like the title change from Instant-Runoff to Ranked-Choice is very US-centric. I propose we revert it and have a discussion about what the title should be.

How do you tag the request for comment thingy? I would imagine other people would want to have a say. Jasavina (talk) 19:46, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

you are correct. the title should not have been changed; this edit should certainly be reverted. Affinepplan (talk) 20:51, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

Hi Jasavina—I recognize the issues, and I originally opposed switching the name. I only changed my mind very recently. There's three big reasons for this.

1. Unfortunately, the old name (instant-runoff voting) is even more US-centric (which is also why this page is tagged as using American English, despite the mishmash of US+Commonwealth English in the text). Close to 100% of all searches for IRV come from the United States. In other countries, the rule is called STV (Ireland and India), preferential voting (Australia), or the alternative vote (UK), but it's never been called IRV. IRV has only ever been a popular term in the United States, where FairVote pushed the term up to 2015, but it hasn't stuck. IRV is therefore doubly-limited—it's specifically American, but it's also only used by a very small group of highly-educated millennials. RCV is more popular than IRV outside the US as well; it's now the dominant term in Canada and is occasionally used in Australia. In Commonwealth English overall, it's preferred over instant-runoff voting by a factor of 2:1.
2. WP:COMMONNAME demands it, because the term IRV is essentially as dead as "majority preferential voting" (old term from the US prior to the 1970s). Until very recently, I didn't realize just how much RCV outstrips IRV in terms of popularity, but Google says searches for RCV are >100× more common than searches for IRV worldwide. (Actually, IRV doesn't even show up on trends. It just gets rounded to 0.)
3. Many people conflate or confuse RCV with ranked voting, which is bad. I used to think we should "hold the line" on the name IRV because it's more descriptive and less confusing, and that the best way to do that would be to keep the title IRV. However, I've since changed my mind on this. I think the kind of people who are Googling or searching for "ranked-choice voting" are exactly the kind of people who need to read a Wikipedia article like this, which can explain the difference between RCV and ranked voting in general. I want people who look up RCV to land here, where it explains why RCV is better-called IRV and how there are ranked rules besides RCV; I don't want them to end up on lower-quality pages or advocacy groups that conflate the two. (Right now, the top results for RCV for me are from FairVote and RepresentUS. The Wikipedia article about ranked voting doesn't even appear on the first page of the results.)

– Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 22:17, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

An article with a title suggesting that it is about the many different ranked-choice voting systems should be about the many different ranked-choice voting systems. An article about a single system, instant-runoff voting, should have a title unambiguously specifying that it is about that single system. The recent move confuses this issue and should be reverted. The fact that many non-specialists are already confused about this issue should not be used as an excuse to make our articles and their titles equally confused. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:52, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

100% agree with reverting this move. One user who has a history of making controversial edits and ignoring any attempt to garner consensus doesn't get to decide on their own what this article is called. We don't name articles based on how they may or may not be ranked in search engines—that is clearly the cart before the horse. —Joeyconnick (talk) 00:38, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

Hi Dr. Eppstein—even specialists (political scientists, legal scholars, and social choice theorists) use the same terminology. When I check the first two pages of search results for "ranked choice voting" on Google Scholar, all 20 results use the term to refer specifically to Hare's method. That's not to say nobody ever interprets the term literally, or that I don't dislike it as a misnomer (which is why I've retained the term IRV throughout the article). But I think the vast majority of users interpret the phrase "ranked choice voting" to mean something entirely different from the phrase "ranked voting", just like how Australians use the term "preferential voting" to specifically mean Hare's method. – Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 03:18, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

The google trends results look very, very different the acronyms RCV, STV and IRV are actually included in the search. Doesn't seem like that is a solid basis. 180 Degree Open Angedre (talk) 02:40, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

The acronyms "RCV", "STV", and "IRV" are all highly ambiguous because of how short they are. – Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 03:05, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

I support reverting it back to instant run-off. The recent change in title just makes things more confusing. 180 Degree Open Angedre (talk) 02:27, 18 October 2024 (UTC)