It’s definitely a terrible system, and there are better ones out there like 10Groups. But astrology is completely meaningless. The PCT at least tells you a vague (terrible, yes), but somewhat meaningful direction in which you believe.

For example, I know that since I’m libertarian left on the PCT, that I’m going to disagree with 90% of the things somebody who’s authoritarian right on the PCT believes.

Astrology doesn’t have that ability to reliably compare, since it is literally and completely meaningless.

But again, shit like 10Groups is better and everybody should switch to measures that have more than 2 axis.

Again, 6x as many third party votes on the right. Spoiler effect ain’t shit to the left.

On its own that statistic is meaningless, as it doesn’t tell you how much overlap there is, and therefore how much spoiling there is. And regardless of which side, the spoiler effect is a symptom of a terrible voting system. The entrance of an irrelevant candidate should not sway the results of an election at all.

Additionally, everything is looking like it will be a very close race, in which case every bit of the spoiler effect matters, even if more of it is on the right, which you haven’t established.

The overlap exists yes but the DNC has not moved left much in 12 years leaving progressives pretty disenfranchised

I don’t like it either. But my point stands, there is an alternative choice.

The problem here is the spoiler effect, the system in which we elect representatives. It is in large part what allows the doupoly to remain uncompetitive.

The spoiler effect is at best a bad hypothesis

No, it’s well understood, and very clearly exists. Here is an example using randomly generated voters ans candidates:

Election report for election "Plurality 2 Candidates"
Total people: 1047

Kruger - 112 votes - WINNER
Sahl - 111 votes

Election report for election "Plurality 3 Candidates"
Total people: 1047

Sahl - 109 votes - WINNER
Kruger - 93 votes
Maikol - 91 votes

The problem is that these are in effect venn diagrams. There will always be overlap, and that’s the problem. That’s what leads to election results being changed by the entrance of an irrelevant candidate (the spoiler effect).

and has never been proven to effect actual votes.

That’s because the spoiler effect most easily happens in races that are already close, because we don’t do much actual real life testing with actual elections because of the uncountable number of variables, and because doing it the python data science way is significantly more meaningful because of the aforementioned number of variables problem.

People voting third party just would not vote if there was no third party option.

If that’s really true, then this whole idea about the democratic party trying to earn the votes of green voters is bunk. Either there is no overlap, in which case it’s bunk. Or there is overlap, in which case we have a spoiler effect.

I’m not seeing any non-voters in these types of threads.

But yeah, non voters are a bigger problem.

A vote for Green Party/PSL/etc. is better than the alternative for those voting third party: not voting at all.

That’s not the only alternative. There is overlap in the spheres of voters of the green party and democratic party.

IF the DNC actually wanted those votes it would court those votes.

The issue is the spoiler effect which is a result of the overlap.

An easier approach would be to turn every apartment building into a housing co-op.

That would also be a good idea. Not sure about the easier part though.

Capitalist for-profit housing simply should not exist.

Agreed

If you can build the political will to steamroll the NIMBYs, I’m all for it.

Any solution to the housing crisis necessarily would require the political will to do that. There’s no getting around it.

But yeah, I think we more or less reached a point of agreement. We need to change the culture, it must become more collectivist. We gotta finally start caring for one another.

And since taxing at higher rates would deter people from building more rental properties, the housing shortage would get worse.

Housing is a public good and should be funded as such.

I don’t have a problem with that either. But yeah, the number itself is semi arbitrary. It should be voted on really.

A land value tax would be a good idea as well, especially if its the main form of tax collection. Each successive property would automatically, drastically increase the cost.

It would become a defacto tax on the rich, while helping to prevent hoarding. Two birds one stone.

• Corps and foreign investors shouldn’t be able to own housing (multi unit should be co-op/market rate nonprofits)

• Individuals should not be able to own more than 5 homes. (The number is semi arbitrary, but at a certain point it is very clearly hoarding, and therefore shouldn’t be allowed)

• AirBNB and similar should be heavily regulated. (They turn permanent residences into short term, which reduces capacity, and drives up prices all around)

• Shift to a land value tax system as the primary means of tax collection. What few landlords/scalpers exist after the above changes will have even less room to breathe. And it would punish vacancy, which would put pressure to keep as much housing available as possible.

There may need to be some exceptions. But if changes like this were to occur, we wouldn’t have this problem.

the difference was smaller than the margin in California

That’s arbitrary. The same is probably true of Florida/Texas combined.

The whole point is that the power of a vote is independent of location.

This is exactly the thing I’ve been looking for. It saves everything as a sqlite db, and has csv export options. So you’re not fucked over if you need to switch to something else. It’s compatible for linux/windows.

And the import options seem pretty good too.

Congrats, you’ve made me spend the whole day switching everything over to that lol.

The only real issue is that one of my banks deals with more than one type of currency. So I’ve had to write a custom script to handle that. But all in all, this is a massive upgrade for me. Thank you for this recommendation.

If we don’t test for hurricanes, the problem will go away. Don’t look up.

I am a little disappointed that they didn’t include approval as one of the examples.

But still a fantastic video.

The real issue is low info voters aren’t going to have a nuanced opinion like. It will be 0 or 10.

Yeah. For the reason I think each candidate should be given one page to explain their policy. And that page should be printed out and available to all voters.

For mail in voters it should be included with their ballot.

Far too often I’ve voted in local elections and tried to research the candidate just to find no information on any of them. It’s infuriating trying to make a choice when it’s impossible to know anything.

We are wasting our efforts arguing over the details of a voting system when voting reform isn’t even on the table.

Agreed. But we can dream.

and replace it with the election being won based primarily on turnout in California

No, it would replace it with a majority FPTP country wide system. Californians are a minority of the country. They do not get sole control, nor would they under a popular vote system.

California was larger than their margin nationally.

But not all of that margin comes from California, and not all of Californians vote blue.

Where you live should have no effect on how much of a voice you have in the federal government. Everybody’s vote should be counted, and counted equally, because we’re all made equally. The current system completely fails at that.

I can see that happening, which is why I think approval is the best of them all.

And with that said, so long as not all the votes are given equal scores, their votes would still matter even if they don’t believe in 5 star perfection.

And IIRC, there is nothing actually stopping a STAR system from using a 1 to 10 point scale instead of 5, which would further help with that issue.

Yes and no.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact

The NPVIC may work to get around the electoral college without amending the constitution. It would still be FPTP which wouldn’t be great. But it would at a minimum be an improvement, because it would do away with swing states, red voters stuck in blue states, and blue voters stuck in red states.

I’d take RCV over nothing, but STAR and approval are significantly better like the other user said.

Some reasons for approval

• Addition is the only math involved. So it is extremely easy to get live results during counting. It makes auditing votes extremely easy.
• It is dead simple to understand, so the least amount of voters will be confused by it.

A longer form explanation of some of the other stuff:

https://dividedwefall.org/star-and-approval-voting/