If I’m honest, it sounds like a mess. More and more, I’m thinking that STAR is a better system.
That is an incredibly long and wordy article to basically say “IRV is doing what it’s supposed to do”. Some voters choosing to skip their first preference is…weird, and probably should have just meant their second preference was counted as their first, and the fact that they don’t do a full distribution of preferences all the time is strange for the sake of having the complete data, but fundamentally this isn’t really messy at all, from what I can see.
A ballot that contains 1 skipped ranking before its highest continuing ranking is interesting. I suppose that means a voter is expressing “I only want to participate in an election for an office elected by ranked-choice voting: if there aren’t 3 or more candidates I don’t want to participate”. Such a ballot is not necessarily an “Exhausted ballot”:
Note that there are more resources I found at https://www.legislature.maine.gov/lawlibrary/ranked-choice-voting-in-maine/9509
It’s interesting that the text of Washington, D.C., Initiative 83, Ranked-Choice Voting Initiative (November 2024) is similar to the Maine statutes, but specifically says that voters should be informed that they should not skip a ranking:
“Inactive ballot” means a ballot on which no active candidate is ranked, contains an overvote at the highest ranking of active candidates, or contains 2 or more sequential skipped rankings before its highest-ranked active candidate.
Each ballot shall contain instructions informing the voter of the following, […] That the voter should not give more than one candidate the same ranking, rank a candidate more than once, or skip a ranking.
As a Mainer - STAR would be preferable but if this gets folks in the state to stop trying to kill progressive voting systems entirely then I’m fine with it. I’d rather get them on board and then work to improve on it than having the same fight year after year
Why do you think that STAR is a better system than Ranked Choice Voting?
If you just need a more general term to describe your desired electoral reform(s), “proportional representation” is probably suitable:
I like STAR because:
- More understandable. It’s almost as simple as, whoever gets the most stars wins. There’s still an algorithm involved but the explanation doesn’t start with the algorithm.
- Voters can more accurately represent their preference. 5 star / 4 star / 1 star is different from 5 star / 1 star / 1 star and those are both common things to want in a three-way election.
- Simpler tabulation, no shipping ballots around and recomputing everything in a central location.
- No weird Condorcet situations where the wrong person wins.
Proportional representation is something different. I think that would be excellent in the United States, but unfortunately we’re going back to having a king at this point, so big reforms to the voting system might have to wait until that gets sorted out which might take a few years or decades and maybe a civil war. Hope everyone brought their helmets.
