Oh, no, if I would vote for more than one person, I'd probably vote for him, Biden, and whoever happens to be the green party candidate (hello Approval Voting). But as it stands right now, I can only pick one, and Biden offers the fewest compromises in the least damaging areas, in my opinion. Well, maybe whoever is leading the Greens, but my state is somewhat competitive so I'm forced to be strategic and pick between the two front-runners.

I mean, yeah, I agree on pretty much all counts. But, you know, typically you renovate a shitty house instead of punching holes in the walls.

Start at the bottom and work your way up. It will take a long time. Meaningful change always will. But we got Fargo and St. Louis using Approval Voting and proved a small group of motivated individuals can change their government.

Yeah but Chase wants to completely get rid of all tariffs, so, I mean, some of his policies aren't the greatest. He's also got absolutely no idea how healthcare works, wants to completely abandon all our military bases, and he doesn't even mention global warming in his policies.

Guns? Great. Drugs? Great. Crime and punishment? Great. Privacy? Great.

But most of his power and economics policies would completely dog-fuck the US economy and our ability to negotiate on the international stage.

"okay, we're not gonna have political parties, right guys?"

Immediately form federalist and anti-federalist factions

It's only federal numbers and I think they might be a few years out of date but I'm too lazy to check.

If we had god-damn Approval Voting you could literally just vote for everyone but the evil candidate and that would actually help everyone else and hurt them. "Anybody but Dr. Evil" would be a legit PAC interest group.

I like Approval Voting for single-winner elections and Sequential Proportional Approval Voting. Approval is way easier than RCV in every sense (RCV is complex enough to disenfranchise minorities) and it gets more accurate results because it doesn't have spoilers (RCV actually does, they're just different than what you're used to).

Approval is great for third parties because their full support in the final results, which RCV doesn't always do. Those results are important because they influence voters in the next election, helping little parties build up legitimacy even when they lose.

It's currently in use in Fargo and St. Louis, and of course they're very happy with it.

If you're referring to the House of Representatives, single-member districts is a federal law, not a constitutional requirement. Congress could simply pass another law changing the old one, no constitutional amendment required. The method of representation in the Senate is codified fairly narrowly into the Constitution, but the House requirements are more lax and doesn't forbid multi-seat representation. Technically the federal law allows for it too, but only if your state is grandfathered in. I'm not sure when the bill was passed or why that specific exception was put in.

If you're talking about lower levels, multi-seat representation happens at the local level all the time. There's a few states that have at-large districts in their legislatures, but single-member is way more common.

That's fine if you don't want to respond, I just want to make sure people reading have an opportunity to follow these links and realize that we do have plenty of multi-winner elections in the US.

As far as the other comment suggests, it wasn't so much a case of choosing to die or choosing a ridiculous "treatment" but just getting unlucky with having step go real bad in a hurry.

The entire theory depends on ignoring the actual ideology on the ground and assuming Palin voters would just as soon vote for a Democrat.

It literally says the opposite, and there's no assumption, it's right there in the voting data. Begich beats Palin and Peltola one-on-one. I'm sorry that you've heard other people talk about this particular election in bad faith, but that's not what I'm doing. We can talk about other particular RCV elections that had spoilers, if you like.

And you haven't mentioned any other type of approval voting until now so yes that's what was assumed.

I mentioned both regular approval and SPAV in my first comment. Maybe that's where some of this confusion is coming from.

STV is also a multiple winner election system. Which is also incompatible with our Constitution.

Can you quote the section that prohibits multi-winner elections? At this point some of the things you've said have me believing you might an inauthentic account, unfortunately. I apologize if you're an earnest American, but I have now have my doubts.

The entire theory depends on ignoring the actual ideology on the ground and assuming Palin voters would just as soon vote for a Democrat.

It literally says the opposite, and there's no assumption, it's right there in the voting data. Begich beats Palin and Peltola one-on-one. I'm sorry that you've heard other people talk about this particular election in bad faith, but that's not what I'm doing. We can talk about other particular RCV elections that had spoilers, if you like.

And you haven't mentioned any other type of approval voting until now so yes that's what was assumed.

I mentioned both regular approval and SPAV in my first comment. Maybe that's where some of this confusion is coming from.

STV is also a multiple winner election system. Which is also incompatible with our Constitution.

Can you quote the section that prohibits multi-winner elections? At this point some of the things you've said have me believing you might an inauthentic account, unfortunately. I apologize if you're an earnest American, but I have now have my doubts.

The entire theory depends on ignoring the actual ideology on the ground and assuming Palin voters would just as soon vote for a Democrat.

It literally says the opposite, and there's no assumption, it's right there in the voting data. Begich beats Palin and Peltola one-on-one. I'm sorry that you've heard other people talk about this particular election in bad faith, but that's not what I'm doing. We can talk about other particular RCV elections that had spoilers, if you like.

And you haven't mentioned any other type of approval voting until now so yes that's what was assumed.

I mentioned both regular approval and SPAV in my first comment. Maybe that's where some of this confusion is coming from.

STV is also a multiple winner election system. Which is also incompatible with our Constitution.

Can you quote the section that prohibits multi-winner elections? At this point some of the things you've said have me believing you might an inauthentic account, unfortunately. I apologize if you're an earnest American, but I have now have my doubts.

I dunno why you're bringing back SPAV into this, the discussion has had very little to do with it. There are local races that use STV, which is a bigger change to the voting and representation system than SPAV is.

You should just skip down to the part that explains that yes, Palin was a spoiler. You don't seem to be particularly interested in actually having a discussion, I'm not here to score wins or attack one system or another. I'm here to provide and receive a better understanding of how voting and representation systems work. You don't seem to be particularly interested in that.

I didn't tell you to trust Wikipedia, I told you to follow through to the linked sources in that section. Also, that talk page suffers from the same problem you're having, which is assuming that the RCV results are the same thing as the public opinion. The entire point of analysing the data is to look past the voting system used and try to understand what people's preferences are. Here's another (very long) source that summarizes the full ballot data and explains that, yes, Palin was a spoiler. Justifying this as acceptable by saying that RCV followed its own rules (which it must do, by definition) is the same as saying Ralph Nader spoiling the 2000 election was the correct outcome because those people had Nader as their favorite.

Look I don't hate RCV. It's certainly better than FPTP. I just don't want people to have false ideas about its function. Spoilers can and do happen, they just behave differently than FPTP. And, I will add, they behave in a much more acceptable way, with RCV spoilers being much more likely to be competitive candidates compared to FPTP. Plus, RCV has less center-squeeze than FPTP. Mathematically, Approval doesn't have spoilers nor does it have a center-squeeze effect, and I would argue that it's better than both RCV and FPTP for this and other reasons, but I do want to re-confirm that FPTP is the worst.

Really, just stop subsidizing the shit out of it.

Most make next to nothing and give up quickly. I don't see the option to give up on being under surveillance.

Everything alive today is the pinnacle of evolution.

Dio can you hear me, I am lost and so alone.
I'm asking for your guidance, won't you come down from your throne?

SPAV is specifically constructed to work with proportional representation. It iterates until all seats are filled.

Yes, that's how it works. The first round is functionally identical to regular approval which is why I like using the two. Approval for single-winner, SPAV for multi-winner.

But in the US, by Constitutional law, it's one seat per geographical district.

I'm pretty sure it's just federal law, but I would have to double check. Not like Congress would change it anyway.

A traditional party primary would have nominated Palin, not Begich, and she would have lost anyways.

That's pure speculation. But using the voting data from the general, we Begich was preferred to both Palin and Peltola in head-to-head matchups. Palin pulled enough votes from Begich to eliminate him in the first round and he lost to Peltola in the second. If Palin hadn't run Begich would have won.

You can read more about it from the linked sources here.

Here's the most relevant section:

Some social choice and election scientists criticized the election in published opinion pieces, saying it had several perceived flaws, which they technically term pathologies. They cited Begich's elimination as an example of a center squeeze, a scenario in which the candidate closest to the center of public opinion is eliminated due to failing to receive enough first choice votes. More voters ranked Begich above Peltola, but Palin played the role of spoiler by knocking Begich out of contention in the first round of the run-off. Specialists also said the election was notable as a negative vote weight event, as those who voted for Palin first and Begich second instead helped Peltola win by pushing Palin ahead of Begich in the first round.

Elections scientists were careful to note that such flaws (which in technical terms they call pathologies) likely would have occurred under Alaska's previous primary system as well. In that binary system, winners of each party primary run against each other in the general election. Several suggested alternative systems that could replace either of these systems.

You have to be careful analysing RCV results, because people tend to only look at what the election did, and fail to look at what it didn't do. One of the good things about RCV is that it collects a fair bit of information, but then it usually ignores a fair bit of it. When trying to understand whether a candidate was a spoiler or not, you have to ask what would have happened if they didn't run at all, which requires considering collected information the "unaltered" election didn't take into account. If removing them from the election changes the winner of the race, then they were a spoiler. We know that removing Palin would have resulted in a Begich win over Peltola, so that makes Palin a spoiler. She's a losing candidate that changed the winner of the race simply by entering, assuming voter preferences are stable.