Peltola defeats Palin

[lpetrich]

Get Rid of First Past the Post Voting System on Reddit

Some discussion of this election at

• 2022 Alaska Special General - vote breakdown, pairwise preferences, and observations : EndFPTP
• Ballots are in for Alaska special election : EndFPTP

Courtesy of u/robertjbrown, the second one has this stripped-down vote file: https://www.karmatics.com/voting/alaskaspecial.txt

I analyzed it with my preference-voting software, and I found:

• First past the post: Peltola > Palin > Begich
• IRV: Peltola > Palin > Begich
• Borda count: Begich > Peltola > Palin
• Condorcet sequence: Begich > Peltola > Palin

 

[TomC]

The ballot data is out and Begich should have won.

There's decades of other ballot data out there.

Gore won in 2000. Clinton won in 2016. The usual explanation for the results is "But that's how we do things." There hasn't been a non-incumbent Republican president elected since the 80s. And that was the Vice president of 8 years prior.

Leave out incumbent candidates and a Republican presidential candidate hasn't gotten elected since Nixon.

Republicans can't win national elections. "You can fool some of the people all the time. You can fool all the people some of the time. But you can't fool all the people all the time."

Tom

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

I don't get Cotton's point. Is he saying Republican voters tend to be stupid?

I think he's actually demonstrating that point.

 

[Jayjay]

So it is official. The ballot data is out and Begich should have won.

I think it's not fair to say assert that Begich "should have won"... because it implies "if only people had voted differently" or "if the rules were different". You can say that about any election or imaginary result. Trump "should have won" if people voted for him instead of Biden for example, or that he should've won if the results were decided by republican state legislatures and not voters.

What Alaska results show is that Palin couldn't have won even with FPTP, and tactically Palin voters who prefer Begich over Peltola should vote against their preferences, to get the desired result. Palin is the spoiler under IRV, and she's the one who should've stepped down. In fact she still can.

 

[Blahface]

So it is official. The ballot data is out and Begich should have won.

I think it's not fair to say assert that Begich "should have won"... because it implies "if only people had voted differently" or "if the rules were different". You can say that about any election or imaginary result. Trump "should have won" if people voted for him instead of Biden for example, or that he should've won if the results were decided by republican state legislatures and not voters.

What Alaska results show is that Palin couldn't have won even with FPTP, and tactically Palin voters who prefer Begich over Peltola should vote against their preferences, to get the desired result. Palin is the spoiler under IRV, and she's the one who should've stepped down. In fact she still can.

When I say should, I'm implying that the candidate most preferred by the voters should win.

 

[bilby]

So it is official. The ballot data is out and Begich should have won.

I think it's not fair to say assert that Begich "should have won"... because it implies "if only people had voted differently" or "if the rules were different". You can say that about any election or imaginary result. Trump "should have won" if people voted for him instead of Biden for example, or that he should've won if the results were decided by republican state legislatures and not voters.

What Alaska results show is that Palin couldn't have won even with FPTP, and tactically Palin voters who prefer Begich over Peltola should vote against their preferences, to get the desired result. Palin is the spoiler under IRV, and she's the one who should've stepped down. In fact she still can.

When I say should, I'm implying that the candidate most preferred by the voters should win.

Why?

I don't think any democratic nation of the last century has made this their criterion for selecting candidates.

They all use 'the candidate who comes out on top in the system we chose as a compromise between simplicity and preference should win' instead.

FPTP is nice and simple, but quite poor at selecting by voter preference.

IRV is a bit more complicated, but a bit better at selecting by preference.

Condorcet and Borda are both better at reflecting preference, but most systems reject them as too complex and hard for voters to understand.

It's arguable that votes in a complex system will increasingly fail to reflect voter opinion, as the voters will tend to make more mistakes in casting their ballots, or may choose not to participate at all.

And people who don't understand the electoral system are likely to feel cheated when they lose, regardless of the actual fairness with which the system is implemented, which can lead to civil unrest and even the overthrowing of the system.

There's no universally recognised 'best' system.

 

[Blahface]

So it is official. The ballot data is out and Begich should have won.

I think it's not fair to say assert that Begich "should have won"... because it implies "if only people had voted differently" or "if the rules were different". You can say that about any election or imaginary result. Trump "should have won" if people voted for him instead of Biden for example, or that he should've won if the results were decided by republican state legislatures and not voters.

What Alaska results show is that Palin couldn't have won even with FPTP, and tactically Palin voters who prefer Begich over Peltola should vote against their preferences, to get the desired result. Palin is the spoiler under IRV, and she's the one who should've stepped down. In fact she still can.

When I say should, I'm implying that the candidate most preferred by the voters should win.

Why?

I don't think any democratic nation of the last century has made this their criterion for selecting candidates.

They all use 'the candidate who comes out on top in the system we chose as a compromise between simplicity and preference should win' instead.

FPTP is nice and simple, but quite poor at selecting by voter preference.

IRV is a bit more complicated, but a bit better at selecting by preference.

Condorcet and Borda are both better at reflecting preference, but most systems reject them as too complex and hard for voters to understand.

It's arguable that votes in a complex system will increasingly fail to reflect voter opinion, as the voters will tend to make more mistakes in casting their ballots, or may choose not to participate at all.

And people who don't understand the electoral system are likely to feel cheated when they lose, regardless of the actual fairness with which the system is implemented, which can lead to civil unrest and even the overthrowing of the system.

There's no universally recognised 'best' system.

It can be argued that a Condorcet method is more complicated than IRV, but I think Borda count is way easier to understand than IRV. This is just anecdotal, but know a bunch of people who assumed "rank choice voting" worked like the Borda count.

I agree with your overall point. I actually support a top two primary that uses approval voting to get the top two. It seems more likely than IRV to give a Condorcet winner and it provides a competitive general election. It is also very easy to understand and puts a lot of power into endorsements from advocacy groups so it is easier to organize around issues.

I don't think a Condorcet method is too complicated though. The real problem would be if there is a cycle, but I think that would be very, very rare. I think after a few elections, most people would get the hang of it.