3-2-1 is by far the best from a “works in every situation” perspective, it’s literally just a better RCV without all the strategic voting concerns. STAR is second best but only because it’s more complicated and has possible worse outcomes, even though best case outcomes are far better. Most results say that STAR is better, but I find it significantly harder to understand and believe that most voters would believe the same, thus increasing the chance of it getting repealed. The best ‘new’ voting system is the system that lasts and never needs to be replaced. That is the main criteria we should be going for, because we have seen it all over the country where RCV was approved by voters, was either too confusing or caused ‘spoiled’ results, and then was immediately repealed back to plurality and those regions have never gone back to RCV.
Even Approval voting is better, and is simpler than all of these. I will point out that literally every RCV campaign states that Approval voting has problems that are actually much more prevalent in RCV, for example FairVote.org states that
Approval voting can be challenging for voters with strong preferences. A vote for a second choice counts exactly as much as a vote for a first choice, creating incentives to “bullet vote,” or choose only one candidate, even when voters have second- or third-choice preferences. Because voters can’t back compromise candidates without weakening their first choice, the use of strategic voting increases — especially in contested elections.
which is just outright incorrect. Voting for multiple candidates can never weaken any of your choices and it’s honestly insane a bunch of the claims that FairVote makes.
Honestly a bunch of the groups that are pushing for RCV just straight up lie about a lot of it. Aside from being removed from use in many locations in the US in just the past few years, they completely ignore how bad strategic voting is getting in the US, meaning we need to choose even stronger methods against strategic voting. Elon Musk is literally paying people to vote right now. They also ignore how confusing a ballot can be to many americans. I think this is a terrible reason, but it is a reason. The more chances you give someone to mess something up, the less they are going to like it and the more they’re going to be able to blame it for things they don’t like happening.
Here’s a simulator to show you how RCV can spoil the vote (like it did in Egypt and Burlington, VT) : https://howtofixtheelection.com/ballot/newer/
In any case, for me I do not want a repeat of Aspen, or Burlington, or any of the numerous other bans that are occurring or have occurred of RCV causing people to not want to even try new voting systems. https://news.ballotpedia.org/2024/07/16/more-states-banned-ranked-choice-voting-in-2024-than-any-other-year/
https://electionscience.github.io/vse-sim/ https://www.equal.vote/accuracy https://www.starvoting.org/star https://dmarron.com/2010/09/19/the-feud-over-the-2009-burlington-mayoral-election/ https://better-count-us.medium.com/no-instant-runoff-wouldnt-solve-spoiled-elections-7f6136f1d0ee https://fairvote.org/resources/electoral-systems/ranked_choice_voting_vs_approval_voting/ https://ballotpedia.org/Ranked-choice_voting_(RCV)#States_and_localities_that_stopped_using_RCV https://news.ballotpedia.org/2024/07/16/more-states-banned-ranked-choice-voting-in-2024-than-any-other-year/
edit: one last source: testimony from court where common RCV claims were disproven and alternatives were provided like STAR. https://olis.oregonlegislature.gov/liz/2021R1/Downloads/PublicTestimonyDocument/17728
you didn’t even bother reading enough to find out it was repealed in Aspen, CO the state this vote is occuring in in 2009, in Telluride, CO (once again the state this vote is occurring in) in 2019. It was repealed in Burlington, VT in 2009, in Virginia in 2023. Did you just randomly choose Yonkers from the middle of the list and completely ignore the first four entries? Come on. You’re better than that. It’s on the ballot right now in Alaska, did you ignore that link too? The one where Ballotpedia is saying it’s been banned in 5 states just in 2024 alone??? https://news.ballotpedia.org/2024/07/16/more-states-banned-ranked-choice-voting-in-2024-than-any-other-year/
dude. you’re literally just cherry picking data out of the links I provided. There was a list of locations that repealed it, just in the past decade alone. You’re ignoring it.
Alaska is on the ballot to repeal this year as well
40 bills just this year to repeal or ban RCV. https://news.ballotpedia.org/2024/04/02/rcv-bans-and-repeals-advancing-at-higher-rate-than-new-authorizations/
This is completely pointless to have this discussion then. Preemptively banning it is a great sign that you’re not going to have a strong enough market to retain the voting style after it’s implemented. If it’s already this difficult to get it implemented then having entire states that are hellbent on banning it is exactly the kind of thing you shouldn’t be trying to get past. You should choose a method that 1. doesn’t have any of the problems that republicans could even slightly pin on the voting method. 2. is easier to understand and therefore harder to convince citizens it’s a boogieman 3. doesn’t have an organization that is repeatedly lying about the problems with the method in order to convince voters. All it does is make it easier to attack.
they didn’t keep it. they repealed it for 14 years. It was brought back last year in a much smaller form, which you literally would have seen if you read the list of locations.
None of what you have said at all matters anyway. RCV not only has a bad name (as is evidenced by the GOP continually attacking it and implementing bans across the nation), but it’s just not a good voting method. It has sooooo many problems, the LEAST of which is it getting repealed. It’s confusing, results in strategic voters, lower Voter Satisfaction, harder to count, allows spoilers, has several organizations that lie about the problems with it, and it will prevent us from moving to a better system in the future.
All of this you would have known if you bothered to read anything I linked, which I know you didn’t because those links take hours to read. You didn’t even do a good job scanning one of them.
Your bullshit o-meter is miscalibrated. Maybe look at other sources besides FairVote (here’s a nice little article covering just one of fairvote’s complete misrepresentations https://www.rangevoting.org/LNH.html) and then come back to the conversation. I was trying to be completely non-adversarial here and just explain my reasoning, and then you come in with ‘bullshit alarms’ and then reveal you didn’t even bother to read the sources I provided. Not a good look, especially not with other members of the community acting like this.