kryptonianCodeMonkey , 8 months ago

It’s not a “con” per se, but because ranked choice/instant runoff eliminates a candidate in each round, it can result in a similar effect where a new candidate further to the left or right of the otherwise most popular candidate can actually result in them being eliminated and the least popular candidate winning as a result. It’s called the “center squeeze” effect. It’s issue that already exists with plurality voting, “the spoiler effect”, but to a lesser capacity, so it’s definitely an improvement. But it’s still a problem when two similar candidates run at once.

I prefer approval voting because so long as everyone votes honestly, no candidate entering the race can spoil the results for the other candidates except to be more popular and win. With approval, you cast one vote to every candidate who you would approve of at all for the office, and rhe winner is the one who is approved by the most. There is the potentiality for issues there too, but only from some voters being being overly strategic and harming their own interests as a result. There’s no downside to voting honestly in approval voting systems.

Regardless, both systems are objectively better than plurality. What’s more, the absolute worse case scenario for overly strategic voting both systems is that everyone only votes for one candidate… which is just plurality voting. That means the absolute shittiest outcome for either system is… the system nearly everyone already uses now.

youtu.be/yhO6jfHPFQU?si=bclD7t8BqWzlz1Ne