For a quick overview of most topics there are worse places to start than wikipedia:

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

My personal favorite system for single-winner elections is approval voting (basically just vote for as many people as you want). There are systems that are mathematically much better, but they are all considerably more complicated, and I'm of the opinion that if voters don't understand the voting system, it will damage their confidence in the electoral process.

Also, as a fun fact: note I said "deterministic" systems can't eliminate strategic voting, but the most simple voting system of all completely eliminates it: pick one ballot at random, and what/whomever was voted for on that ballot wins. Obviously you would never have a reason to vote for anything but what you want to win, but it has oodles of problems in practice.

Not the internet, that's for sure. There's so much misinformation out there. From the Instant Runoff people claiming "ranked voting" as their moniker (ranked ballots are GOOD, but IRV is a bad counting method for single-winner elections), to wikipedia improperly describing Condorcet voting but rejecting efforts to modify it, to the various arguments that speak glowingly about "top-two" primaries, it's a mess.

I've gotten very into this whole subject in the past - I'm generally in favor of a "Condorcet Winner Interstate Compact", sort of like the national popular vote compact except for Condorcet Winners, but I basically stopped when I realized that even if you had a perfect voting method that perfectly captured the public will, it doesn't matter if the voters are poorly educated. Better to have even a flawed voting method that encourages voters to self-educate, than a perfect voting method that encourages people to stay ignorant.

I am not sure how many third-party voters realize that Trump wins if no one reaches 270 EVs.

Anyway, I am not sure how to find a voting method that encourages people to self-educate, but in general that's part of a wider subject on how to reduce willful ignorance in the world, which is pretty fascinating to think about.

Aw man, when first I read the actual algorithm for IRV, my first thought was "This has got to be the worst way of managing ranked-ballots that preserves some semblance of enforcing voter will.

[edit]

Okay it's not actually that bad, but it's poor, particularly since the mid-90s we've had the technology to cheaply run as many simulated elections as we want given machine readable ranked-ballots.

I would be highly in favor of a state adopting ranked ballots without changing their counting method - just continue to count the top choice as your vote, like before. But then we'd have some amazing data sets. That's the dream.

Wouldn't this nullify the primary advantage of range ballots, if I understand you correctly? Namely, you'd still have to rank one of the two main candidates as first so that the other doesn't win.

Yes, there wouldn't be any additional benefit in terms of vote-counting at first. Our current "vote for one candidate" approach is the same as picking your top choice in a ranked ballot.

But the benefit would be that we'd actually have data on being able to say, "Here's who would have won if we had used IRV, here's who would have won if we had used Condorcet", etc. And then later pick the actual counting method that proves effective.

I mostly like the idea is because I think the debate over counting method gets in the way of the debate over using ranked ballots.

A risk would be someone picking a different first-choice candidate than they otherwise would, out of improperly believing that their preferences would be counted.

That risk is sorta what I was bringing up: if it only counts the top person then people have to vote strategically and hence will not be voting in the same manner as in IRV so we still wouldn't know who would have won by IRV.

It would be best if they picked their plurality vote, and then could optionally rank candidates; we could then tally up how many people vote for their non-favorite as a big stick to wield.

If preferences beyond the first don't mean anything to election results, the data sets produced will be garbage because people won't spend any thought on them for the most part.

Yeah, I think you're right - your comment and aidenn0's below have convinced me you pretty much have to pick the counting method at the same time as introducing ranked ballots. Darn, because the IRV people have a clear marketing advantage at this point.

EDIT as promised downthread:

Oh, nevermind

It's absolutely the case, if you look up how the 12th amendment actually works, the representative breakdowns by state, and cross-reference by the public statements that the various Republican representatives have made - not to mention many of them being actual Trump delegates. Trump has the House locked up with a lot of room to spare.

Did you know that the House of Reps absolutely has to limit their choices to the top three EV recipients? There's absolutely no scenario where Romney or Ryan wins.

> Did you know that the House of Reps absolutely has to limit their choices to the top three EV recipients?

Well, yes, but for some reason it slipped my mind when I posted the response, and I would have deleted it if you hadn't responded first. So, I'm just going to edit it down to an "Oh, nevermind" and be done with that whole line.

There's actually some imaginable scenarios where Trump wouldn't win (and where other options would be available), but it requires electors realizing before casting their votes that their won't be an electoral majority if votes are cast normally, and then colluding to vote "faithlessly" in order to give the House different options [0]. But, while imaginable and legally possible, this is quite improbable (but then, so is no candidate getting 270 EVs.)

[0] In principle, this could happen even if there was an apparent electoral majority, but its even less plausible in that case. It really only makes any kind of political sense as a response to the condition where a lack of an electoral majority means that there is going to be an unclear mandate for whomever is elected.

Yeah, I generally categorize those kinds of outcomes as hoping that your enemies will act in your interests. Like, people who prefer differently than you somehow voting for an outcome you want - so I generally disregard them and lump them in with "impossible" just for the sake of convenience. :)

The main problem I have with third-party voting is that it actually increases the probability - however remotely - that the House of Reps scenario happens. (Plenty of caveats apply.)

> The main problem I have with third-party voting is that it actually increases the probability - however remotely - that the House of Reps scenario happens.

Well, clearly third party voting is required for it to happen (barring, for the moment, faithless electors or bizarre vote tabulation errors where people who get no actual votes are certified as the winners of state-level elections, rejection of electoral votes in the Congressional count, electors simply not voting at all, or interference by state legislature to assign electors other than those that would be chosen based on the popular vote); if all popular votes are cast for one of the two major-party candidates then all electoral votes will go to one of the two major-party candidates and one of the two major party candidates will, of necessity, get a majority of EVs.

OTOH, third party voting is more likely to change which major party candidate wins certain electoral votes than it is to actually give EVs to minor candidates (and even if it does the latter, its pretty unlikely to contribute to a sub-270 situation.)

269-269 is actually possible but seems very unlikely this year. But yeah, I agree that third party voting is more likely to yield spoiler effects than EVs.

> Where could one learn more about these?

Instant Runoff Voting is pretty terrible, but is still far better than plurality. (Its multiseat generalization, is a reasonably good method for multiseat elections.)

(IRV -- or STV -- can be made better by simply dropping the loser-elimination step and still proceeding until a candidate reaches the quota, and I think there is actually a name for this method, but I don't know it off the top of my head.)

There's a lot of mathematically better (e.g., always pick the Condorcet winner) ranked-ballot methods for single winner elections, but I'm not sure that they are better all around. While I think the Condorcet criteria is very attractive, there are merits to simplicity and ease of implementation (particularly, in ease of tabulation, including manual tabulation) that may militate in favor of something more like IRV-without-loser-elimination.

CGP Grey has a nice series of videos "Politics in the Animal Kingdom" [1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7679C7ACE93A5638