chaogomu @ chaogomu @kbin.social

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2 yr. ago

Ranked Choice is literally a series of plurality elections on the same ballot.

So it's exactly as bad as plurality, but worse because it's also confusing to count, and has inherent security issues from needing to be counted in a centralized location.

You cannot fix the problems of plurality by iterating plurality.

Arrow's Theorem only really applies to Ordinal voting systems like RCV and Plurality.

Cardinal systems like STAR, Score, and Approval are all immune, but have other quirks, but seem to better represent the desires of an aggregate population.

I like STAR.

It has far fewer flaws than any other system I've seen.

For the voter. It's dead simple. Rate each candidate on a scale of 0-5. Multiple candidates can be rated the same.

To count, you just add up the ratings for each candidate. Take the top two and then look at each ballot. If A is rated higher than B on that ballot, then the vote goes to A.

That's it.

The fact that each candidate's vote doesn't detract from any other vote means there's literally no way for a spoiler candidate to exist. They're just another option on the ballot.

The automatic runoff in the end encourages voters to rate on a scale and not just bullet vote. But even if they bullet vote, the system is still spoiler free.

A cardinal voting system is truly spoiler free.

I currently like STAR.

starvoting.org

I'll make it simple. RCV is broken and bad, and in some ways worse than the broken and bad system we already have.

There are better systems that are not broken. My current favorite is STAR.

Ranked Choice has some fundamental flaws that make it a very poor replacement for the broken system that is First Past the Post.

I'll list the flaws in no particular order, but each one is enough of an issue that RCV should never be used in a real election.

First is election security. All ballots cast in an RCV election must be tabulated in a central location. This means that a malicious actor could introduce extra ballots, and those ballots would likely be counted.

This has happened before. There was no malice in the 2021 NYC Mayoral race, but there were extra ballots that were counted.

The next issue is one of counting procedure. It's confusing as hell. I know it is because in Alameda County, the wrong candidate was actually sworn in before anyone noticed the issue.

Then there was Burlington in 2009. The Condorcet winner was eliminated in the second round. For anyone who doesn't know, the Condorcet winner is also called the Pairwise Winner, in that if you were to take all candidates and pair them off, the Condorcet winner should win every matchup.

This leads to a discussion of Monotonicity. RCV is one of the only voting systems ever designed that fails monotonicity.

An election method is monotonic if it is neither possible to prevent the election of a candidate by ranking them higher on some of the ballots, nor possible to elect an otherwise unelected candidate by ranking them lower on some of the ballots (while nothing else is altered on any ballot).

I'll spell this out a bit because it's fucking amazing, in RCV it's possible to make a candidate lose by ranking them higher on a ballot.

Then there are issues of ballot spoilage (incorrectly filled ballots) at rates about twice that of simple Plurality. These rates tend to be higher in low income or marginalized areas.

The next issue is Ballot exhaustion. Say you only get 5 choices on a ballot that has 6 or 7 candidates. You rank your 5 and the first round sees your second choice eliminated. Then your third, then your fourth, then your fifth, and finally your first.

Your ballot is thrown out and is not counted at all. Now, RCV rules say that the winner must have 50% of the vote, but that's 50% of the final vote. Your ballot doesn't count anymore.

There are studies that say that ballot exhaustion rates can be up to 18% of the initial votes cast. So the final winner can be liked by just 41.1% of the initial voters.

There's also the issue of those eliminated candidates. Say your first choice was eliminated early. Then your second might have had that extra vote to stay in, and eventually win. But no, your ballot was gutted down the middle before being thrown out.

There are still more issues with RCV, but this is already an essay, so I'll leave it at that.

There is a better option. A few actually, but the one I currently prefer is called STAR. It's simple and it's actually good at all the things RCV claims to be good at.

From the article, Fuentes said it on a livestream, not at the Trump dinner last year.

Various media keep calling Fuentes a "Trump dinner guest" because he was.

I knew the word Perfidious from its best use, Perfidious Albion.

That's one use of the word that was fucking earned. Don't trust the word of the British Empire.

It's also the only use that should really exist anymore. Anyone who uses perfidious in a sentence that is not criticizing the British needs to just stop. And if they're a Nazi jackass, they need to take a thesaurus and slam it repeatedly against their own head until they stop being a Nazi.

Most countries don't send people to prison for the rest of their lives.

If Tate had never bragged about the corruption in the first place, then he might have gotten off with some bribes, but now. No. No one will accept bribes here because there's too much attention on this case.

He's no longer under house arrest, but cannot leave Romania before the trial.

He has been indicted on charges of rape, human trafficking, and forming an organized crime group to sexually exploit women.

I can't find a trial date, but it's in the works. Some sources are saying that the entire process could take years, and at the end, it will be about a 10-year sentence for both brothers, and two other accomplices.

Since flat earth nonsense is just rebranded creationism, the only being who really needs to be part of the conspiracy is satan.

Then anyone who tells you that the earth is round is either deceived by satan, or is a satan worshiper.

This makes it super easy to dismiss anything that would hint at reality, like ships sailing over the horizon.

Thieves cant could be a dialect of undercommon. After all, not everyone would know that cant, even if they know undercommon.

The main problem with colonizing places is the displacement of the people already living there. You'll notice that space is notorious for not having people. It's one of the defining traits of space, really.

As to staying where we are, well. That comes with all sorts of issues. The first of which are big rocks. Then there's gamma ray bursts, and coronal mass ejections, and a host of other potentially life ending things that could hit our planet at any time.

We have all of our eggs in one basket. This is the height of stupidity when we could do something about it.

As to fixing our own planet? Why the fuck do you think we can't also work on that? There are billions of humans, we can surely multitask. Especially since actually living on the moon or Mars or whatnot will be a monumentally hard task in and of itself.

The first moon base will need to be 100% science to figure out some pretty important biology, like is it even possible to maintain a population at 1/6 Earth gravity.

That's a huge question that we don't actually have an answer for.

Brother is the go to because their stuff is basic and functional.

All the other companies have "innovated" to the point where their shit is unusable for daily use.

They look around first and then slightly giggle as they use racist slurs of all stripes.

Hamas was voted in 20 years ago, and ran as moderates.

They now rule Gaza through violence and fear.

They exist because Israel helped found them, but they still exist because Israel is still propping them up.

I don't think he cares about his own right to vote...

I think the only time he's ever voted were when he was performatively voting for himself.

They've put warning labels on the lemonade now (there were none before), and have also removed it from their unlimited refills club.

They've also lowered the amount of caffeine to a somewhat safer dose.

400mg of caffeine is the daily maximum dose recommended by several health organizations. And that's for healthy adults. Keep in mind that one charged lemonade had more caffeine than a full can of Red Bull, and a full can of Monster combined. It also contained a lot of taurine which increases the effect of caffeine.

The charged lemonade does not taste caffeinated, and there were basically no warnings about it in store. The marketing and in store branding made it seem like a sort of Gatorade, i.e. an electrolyte drink.

It was also sold next to the fruit juices and such. Which would imply less caffeine.

It was also part of the unlimited sips program, providing free refills. Drinking two or three would cause a healthy adult to start having heart palpitations, and those who are at risk would go into cardiac arrest after one (which is what happened with the first death)

Since the first death, Panera has reduced the amount of caffeine in the lemonade, and many stores have started putting it behind the counter rather than out in the open. They've also added warnings about the caffeine content of the drinks, but still don't warn about the compounding effects of taurine.

These lawsuits are likely going to be settled out of court, because Panera did fuck up here, and they also don't want the bad press of multiple deaths linked to their overly caffeinated drink.