What's the best way to vote?

What's the best way to vote? Well, last month, several of YOU voted for the best way to vote, using four different voting systems. Here are the results.

Correction:
09:25 *Instead of averaging the scores, the sum of all scores could also be tallied alternatively

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#voting #rankedchoicevoting #government

Here in the United States we mostly have plurality voting for elections, even though most Americans agree that it’s absolutely not the best way to do elections. (turns) Wait, what’s that, you don’t remember what plurality voting is?

Plurality voting is when a citizen only gets to vote for ONE candidate, and the candidate who gets the most votes, aka a plurality, wins the election. EVEN IF THEY DON’T GET THE MAJORITY OF VOTES.

If you want to learn more about why I think plurality voting sucks, check out this video here. I swear, all I do anymore is promote my own videos in my own videos. What is happening to me.

Anyway, organizations like The Center for Election Science, Fairvote, and The Equal Vote Coalition have been promoting better ways to vote for years. While all three organizations have talked trash about plurality voting, they all favor different solutions. The Center for Election Science tends to favor approval or score voting, Fairvote tends to favor ranked choice voting, and The Equal Vote Coalition is all about STAR voting.

Chapters:
0:00 Intro
1:54 YouGov
2:48 Approval voting
4:42 Score voting
6:38 Ranked-choice voting
8:50 STAR voting
11:57 How YOU voted
15:31 Outro

[iammrbeat]

What's your favorite type of voting?

[PhilHug]

Although we might disagree on what is the best voting system, there's one thing we can all agree on: Mr. Beat ranks first in our heart

[peterlyon]

I really like Rank Choice Voting for primaries. A recent-ish example in my state. The Republican primary for Secretary of Agriculture in Iowa in 2018 had 5 different candidates and the winner prevailed with only 34.7% of the vote. It is hard to argue that plurality voting resulted in any type of consensus in that election.

[amayasasaki]

I had heard of Star voting, but didn't actually understand how it worked, so thank you for this video. Having seen how that works, I would tend to agree that Star voting is the best choice. There is a movement in Oregon to make that the voting method for the state. I will definitely be supporting that going forward.

[vici]

Hi, I'm from Germany where you've got 20+ parties to vote between. For that matter I find ranked-choice voting too complex. I prefer score or STAR voting so the results for smaller parties are more accurate.

(Also I think the scores should be ranging from -2 to +2 instead of 1-5 because it is easier to understand that 0 means indifferent instead of 3)

[tdawgmaster]

I had never heard of STAR voting, so going into it I was thinking ranked-choice was the way to go, but the way you explained STAR voting makes me think I might prefer it over ranked choice. I'll have to do some research, though

[SamiOldChannel]

Great video! I agree that plurality voting is awful and it should be replaced with either ranked choice or STAR.

[mkaltreider]

I like that all of these options seem to place focus on the candidate and not their party. 'Red or Blue' is binary which seems easy - but just makes us more polarized and not really focused on the best candidate; their experience, integrity and how well they listen and communicate to all constituents, etc.  
I think a lot of the country is shades of purple and not as extreme as the two parties would like us to believe. Also candidates would have to have their own platform of issues, not just copy a political party stump speech (which often aren't relevant to the county, district or state.)
Thank you @Mr.Beat!

[MinunRobotnik]

I think if nothing else, the election shows that ranked choice voting is probably the most well-known of alternative voting systems, at least among your base.

[AHumbleReviewer]

Good work getting the word out there about STAR voting! You're a real supernova for that.

[henryhawthorn]

I prefer the Buclin Voting system where candidates are ranked, but unlike the Instant Runoff voting, no candidate’s votes are ever eliminated. Instead, if no candidate in the first vote tally receives an absolute majority of votes, then the second choices among the voters are added to the first choices; if after the second tally there is still no candidate with an absolute majority, then the third choices are added to the first and second choices. This process would repeat itself until there is a candidate that reaches the required threshold. Theoretically, it’s possible under the Buclin system for a candidate to win an election even if a/he was in last place in the first round of vote tally.

[ChapterCertified]

The results are most likely due to ranked choice being the most well known alternative system as it is championed in a few places online

[jacklazzaro]

0:11 plurality voting

0:57 better voting methods

2:48 approval voting
3:43 benefits
4:08 drawbacks

4:39 score voting
5:38 benefits
6:02 drawbacks

6:37 ranked-choice voting
7:50 benefits
8:17 drawbacks

8:48 STAR voting
3:58 benefits
10:21 drawbacks

10:45 common benefits

11:26 which is best?

15:31 what’s your favorite?

[SyntekkTeam]

I like STAR Voting as well. I like being able to show my preference between candidates, and I like that STAR Voting adds up all the data. I like the ballot on Ranked choice, but it sometimes gives weird results in competitive elections with 3 or more people. Examples include center squeeze, and favorite betrayal issues.

[vianabdullah]

My personal preference is using approval voting for primaries. Then after you've narrowed down the field, you use a condorcet method like ranked pairs to find the consensus candidate.

[EthOrlen]

The Approval winner being different than the other voting methods isn’t a bug; it’s a feature. Approval is the one system among those you mentioned that leans hard into a consensus candidate rather than a majoritarian candidate.

More discussion needs to happen on which voting systems are better for what context. Majoritarian systems are more likely to have a larger number of disenfranchised (i.e. “my candidate didn’t win”) voters than consensus systems, which lends itself to polarization. But a much smaller group of disenfranchised voters has much less power, potentially being completely disenfranchised, while a larger group has enough coalition power to advocate for themselves even if they lose the election.

[alejandrolim]

First of all, thank you so much for another great video! My problem with ranked choice voting is that by putting so much emphasis on "first place" votes, a lot of centrists who would be many voters' second choice would be at a disadvantage. In this sense, I think RCV still has a problem with potential strategic gimmicking. Primer has a great video on the math (and drawbacks) behind RCV and approval voting, but what really bugs me is when voters have strong opinions on RCV being the best alternative without considering the math behind the wide variety of non-plurality systems. Often times, such strong opinion is itself motivated by partisan incentive as well.

[HikariMagic]

Before today, I liked the idea of ranked choice voting. Now that I've heard of Star Voting, I'm going to have to look further into that since it sounds intriguing.

[element]

You forgot about my favorite, 3-2-1 voting! Every voter can give as many candidates as they like an "approval, " "neutral, " or "disapproval" rating. Three semifinalists are chosen, with the most "approval" votes. Out of those, two finalists are chosen, with the least "disapproval" votes. The winner is then whichever finalist more people choose over the other.

[lordofduct]

Huh, I've read and watched a lot about voting methods and this is the first time I'm hearing of STAR voting.

I was always for ranked-choice for well over a decade now... but now that I have heard of STAR, I'm on the STAR wagon and Ranked-Choice is my clear 2nd place.

Thank you Mr Beat!