this post was submitted on 23 Apr 2025
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what? Why shouldn't the winner win?
Just because a person’s favorite choice isn’t the most popular, doesn’t mean the winning candidate is preferred by the majority of voters. Let’s say there are three candidates A, B, and C and their vote totals are below.
A: 20 votes
B: 18 votes
C: 15 votes
In First Past The Post A wins.
Now, let’s give voters the option to select their top two choices so they can safely pick their favorite option first and while still having a safe choice secondary pick. In this case the election results are the following:
A: 1st pick 20 votes; 2nd pick 4 votes
B: 1st pick 14 votes; 2nd pick 12 votes
C: 1st pick 19 votes; 2nd pick 10 votes
B got the least votes in this different voting system, and B gets eliminated first. Then we move onto the second round of voting to compare the total votes of A vs C. A has 24 total votes and C has 29 total votes. In this example, C wins the election as they are the candidate most preferred by a majority of the voters. The majority winner still wins as they have the votes of a plurality of the electorate.
My example is a simplified explanation for alternative voting systems, the exact mechanism for each of them differs though. I specifically support Ranked Robin, STAR, or score as the specific alternative voting systems I would prefer over FPTP, as I believe they are all more fair and have the best outcomes for the majority of people expressing their preferences.
If we want elections to be more representative of what the majority of people want, then taking in more preferences of the voters only makes sense. They have less incentive to vote strategically for the same reasons, at least under the systems I mentioned. So for a real world example, most people can safely pick a third party candidate without worrying about the spoiler effect. This would be huge for properly showing just how much true support third parties have out there, because currently they have to compete for people that vote similarly between two or more parties.
One person, one vote, whichever candidate has the most votes should win. Full stop.
Why? We’re talking about electing representatives to govern our country, not picking what movie a few people want to go watch. What do you want from a representative? You want them to reflect the consensus of the wider electorate that voted them in rather than just their smaller base. If 66.6% of the voting electorate didn’t vote for someone of a certain political spectrum in a election where that person won by getting 33.4% of the vote, then how are they the most representative option or how do they reflect the views of the majority? My example is a bit extreme, that’s what winner takes all is. The great thing about other systems is, if you personally only want to vote for one candidate, you still can. However, if you wanted to have a backup option in case your favorite lost the first round, then that’s okay too under other systems.
Even something as simple as ordering food with friends makes sense to use an alternative voting system such as approval voting. You and your friends pick all your favorite options, and you’re less likely to be upset at the results since you can show preference. Some options you might hate, some options others may hate, and other options you might all be okay with having.
Yes, so whoever has the most votes should win in each election for each position, because the majority of people want that person for that job
That’s a great argument in favor of an alternative voting system. Because we both agree that the most votes should win for each representative. Hence the added benefit of having the two rounds of voting since those additional vote preferences are taken into consideration. Through of one these alternative voting systems, we can truly say that the majority of people wanted that person for the job rather.
It’s also a great argument for score voting as well since that is only one round of voting, but you can give a score for each candidate and the candidate with the highest total score wins.
No, you came up with a bunch of crap that overcomplicates it and I want to keep it simple.
what I want is for the person with the most votes to win. What you want is not that
Yeah, I think what you'll really get with a wall of text like this is that people don't read it and you missed the chance to influence them at all. Case in point: I didn't read your response. Just skimmed it for the above paragraph.
If you feel the need to write a lecture, at least answer the why question first. Otherwise people really don't care about the mechanics of the damned thing.
“Just because a person’s favorite choice isn’t the most popular, doesn’t mean the winning candidate is preferred by the majority of voters.”
If we’re being specific, I am acknowledging the why from the very first sentence of my original comment. I needed the details to help elaborate my point though.
To clarify though, I am not trying to cater to everyone, I’m trying to have a dialogue. People that are interested will likely want to read more, those that don’t will skim.
If I was marketing or just cared about short points I wouldn’t be so detailed, but I believe in what I am saying matters beyond just a surface level glance. Sometimes the answers are not short and sweet, sometimes to make change we have to dig in and put in some more effort.
The why is answered in the explanation, how many professors give you the answer upfront before you solve a problem? Usually they want you to be presented with the whole problem and have you work your way to finding the answer. I could spoonfeed the answer, but that lacks nuance. I’m personally tired of things being designed just for short attention spans to give a dopamine hit and then they jump to the next source of dopamine. I feel this view has degraded my own mental facilities after looking for ‘efficiency’ in language for several years now.
If my comment was a post on its own I would have included a hook for why it matters at the start, but if someone is specifically asking me to explain it I’m going to frame it differently.