Breaking News: Preferential Voting is Unconstitutional

[Jake]

I certainly oppose a change to our current preferential system, because if we go back to casting a single vote, our winners will either not have a majority, or we'll have to spend time on a runoff, which could have already been settled by PV.

Preferential voting also ensures that a candidate cannot win simply with a small base of very committed supporters; they must appeal to a broader range of voters in order to win.

Which is precisely what the VP dislikes about it.

What I dislike is that a person with an even smaller base to start out with can win. It's unfair and should be done away with.

It's unfair that a person rejected by 63% of the voters should win.

That's what happens here.

Can A 5 36%
Can B 4 28%
Can C 3 22%
Can D 2 14%

Here Candidate A wins with 64% rejecting him.

Say Can D's votes go to Can B & Can C's votes go 1 to A and 2 to B.

Can A 5/6  43%
Can B 4/8  57%

Now Can B wins, but 72% now rejected him.

[Jake]

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A very polarizing person can still win with the Preferential voting system. In ways, it can actually help win them the election...

Candidate A - 25%
Candidate B - 49%
Candidate C - 26%

Candidate A is now gone

Candidate B - 49%
Candidate C - 51%

Candidat C seems pretty polarizing but thanks to this system, he just won the election. Still seem unfair?

If were polarizing he wouldn't have gotten all of A's second preferences.

True. I guess my example wasn't that good 

However, Jake provided an example earlier. Maybe you can address his point.

By rejecting, I mean placing last or not placing at all. In Jake's first example, 64% may not have voted for Can A 1st pref, but they may have voted for him 2nd pref. The candidates he has winning wouldn't win if they got preferenced last, as I mean by rejection.

They still rejected him. If they wanted him, they would've voted for him.

[Jake]

They still rejected him. If they wanted him, they would've voted for him.

Placing someone as your second preference isn't "rejecting" that person.  It's just saying that you don't quite like that candidate enough to place him first.

You're rejecting him for the job by not placing him first.

[Jake]

Well, here's the way both systems essentially work:

First past the post:

Whoever is most popular among the largest group wins, regardless of how much support the others had.

Example:

A: 35%
B: 33%
C: 32%

A wins even though 65% of the population didn't support him the highest.

Preferential Voting:

Whoever has the broadest support among the entire populace wins, even if the candidate wasn't the most popular among any one group.

Example:

First round:

A: 35%
B: 33%
C: 32%

But C's ideology was very close to B's, so all of C's voters put down B as their second choice.

Second round:

A: 35%
B: 65%

B wins even though he wasn't the most popular candidate among a single group.

It's not really true to say that, in the second example, 67% of voters rejected B.  Since 33% of voters voted for him and 32% of voters liked him enough to make him their second preference, he really did have the 65% support that he got in the second round - it just wasn't as strong as A's 35% support, since 32% of that 65% were second-preference votes.  In both cases, 65% of voters rejected candidate A one way or another; it just didn't propel A to victory due to vote-splitting in the latter example as it did in the former example.

What about if all the C-B and B-C voters put A 3rd. By your logic, all candidates wre approved by 100%.

[Jake]

Well if you want to use that type of example, what are the losing candidates rewarded with?

I'm not sure what you mean.

He means the silver/bronze medalists get medals, what do the losing candidates get?

What about if all the C-B and B-C voters put A 3rd. By your logic, all candidates wre approved by 100%.

Well, if you only have three candidates, putting one in third place has basically the same effect as not listing a third-place vote at all, so that wouldn't effect the outcome in any way.

At any rate, I see what you're saying, but I still stand by my assertion that preferential voting lets the person with the broadest range of support win, even though that person may have not received the most first-preference votes.

Now, whether or not that's the best method of electing people is in debate, but that's its effect.

Maybe we're both making differant points. A candidate elected by preferential voting will have more people who like him, but less that like him more than others. A candidate elected by 1st past the post might be less liked than the first guy, but everyone who votes for him likes him the best.

IMO, preferential voting isn't a bad idea if applied to American congressional elections, but as long as we have the electoral college, we can't have preferential voting. As far as Atlasia, we have a real need for it with as many parties as we have.

[Jake]

Maybe we're both making differant points. A candidate elected by preferential voting will have more people who like him, but less that like him more than others. A candidate elected by 1st past the post might be less liked than the first guy, but everyone who votes for him likes him the best.

IMO, preferential voting isn't a bad idea if applied to American congressional elections, but as long as we have the electoral college, we can't have preferential voting. As far as Atlasia, we have a real need for it with as many parties as we have.

What are the points you're making?  I was under the impression that you weren't in favor of preferential voting in Atlasia; now I'm confused.

I don't like it in Atlasia, but it is necessary because there are only a few voters and ties are commonplace.