It seems like every voting system has pros and cons, but I’ve become interested in STAR voting as it seems to have a nice blend of positive characteristics without the worst flaws of other systems.
It’s effectively a mix of score voting and instant runoff (ranked choice).
You can read more here: https://www.starvoting.org/
It hasn’t been tested much, mainly because it’s relatively unknown, so I’d like to see more real-world testing before I say it’s the best, but it’s definitely intriguing.
We have a similar system in California called the jungle primary—basically there are no party specific primaries (except for president because this system is incompatible with other state’s elections), and the top two advance to the general election.
There are a few issues though. If a candidate wins more than 50% of all votes in the primary, they win the election and don’t appear on the ballot in the general election along with the president. Since there is generally higher turnout for the general election rather than the primary, you can sometimes have a generally unpopular candidate win in the primary with 50+% of the small number of primary voters.
We also have issues with spoilers—if a bunch of similar candidates run, and all split the votes between them, it’s possible they don’t make the final ballot, even if any of them individually would have won the final election. This seems like a fringe issue until you realize that parties have actually supported lots of minor candidates on the opposing side in order to eliminate an otherwise dangerous challenger.
So overall it is somewhat better than first past the post but it still has significant issues. In general I think elections that select a single candidate are somewhat undemocratic by nature and we should think about ways to give the minority a voice but not the ability to shut things down. This may be a difficult balance to achieve but it’s still worth aiming for.
Awesome tool, thanks for sharing. I wish they included STAR voting since I’ve become interested in that one.
Well I like birds too but I’m not really a birdwatcher. Are you going out and birdwatching at that hour? Not much bird activity in the afternoon from what I’ve seen.
Birds are cool and I generally like birdwatchers but those people get up entirely too early. It is not natural.
If it was secure and safe being the key words there. I’m not sure how that could be demonstrated to a high enough degree for me to feel comfortable with it.
Did you read the abstract? This doesn’t seem to be what they’re saying at all.
First good thing Musk has ever done?
I guess when the people being drafted have a higher likelihood of being killed by an invading army without the draft than with it. Tough to assess though.