Same as before

Posted Oct 28, 2025 16:14 UTC (Tue) by marcH (subscriber, #57642)
In reply to: Same as before by josh
Parent article: Python Software Foundation withdraws security-related grant proposal

To be fair, it can be depressing to choose for the lesser of two evils when there is never more than two choices, no matter the gap between the two evils. This is due to the "winner takes all" voting system which is pervasive across all the USA[*]. Absolutely pointless to have a 3rd or 4th option when votes for them have a near 100% chance to be discarded every single time.

Unfortunately, voting systems and other too abstract topics will never make a good story / TikTok video. So we're screwed. There are actually excellent articles and videos about this. But too few clicks.

Gerrymandering has been all over the news recently because the non-mathematical aspects became too big to ignore. Gerrymandering is also 100% dependent on the "winner takes all" system; it's a necessary condition. Yet most articles about Gerrymandering do not say a single word about the voting system that it completely relies on... We're screwed.

So numbers and other abstract topics put people off. I used to think it was the only reason. Now I started to think there could be more to it. Maybe "winner takes all" is actually a good match for some cultures. Maybe it reflects what people want in general. More openly on one side, but not just on one side.

[*] there are rare exceptions; it's a very big country.

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Same as before

Posted Oct 28, 2025 19:30 UTC (Tue) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link] (2 responses)

> Absolutely pointless to have a 3rd or 4th option when votes for them have a near 100% chance to be discarded every single time.

There is some point: if a party gains some vote threshold (5%?), they are entitled to some federal funds for their party in the next election. The Reform party met it once, but then squabbled over it and threw it away. See this series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqqaW1LrMTY

Same as before

Posted Oct 28, 2025 20:15 UTC (Tue) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link] (1 responses)

That's a good funding rule (whatever the voting system is) and it's not nothing.

But I doubt "We won't have any seat any time soon but vote for us so we can survive" is compelling enough to win voters compared to: either choosing the lesser of two evils that do have some chance to get some seat(s), or just staying home and watching TV.

Also, campaign billions are now protected as free speech thanks to "Citizens United vs FEC". How many orders of magnitude smaller are these federal funds? Just curious.

Same as before

Posted Oct 29, 2025 3:29 UTC (Wed) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]

> But I doubt "We won't have any seat any time soon but vote for us so we can survive" is compelling enough to win voters compared to: either choosing the lesser of two evils that do have some chance to get some seat(s), or just staying home and watching TV.

Given the Electoral College, votes for the "other" party in a given state (for the President) are essentially "wasted" anyways, so if you're passionate about it and live in, say, Alaska, and would vote for the "D" party, why not toss a vote to a third party instead? Also in more "purple" states, many candidates are registered under multiple parties. For example, one can vote for candidate A as a Democrat or Working Families or candidate B as a Republican or Constitution.

Same as before

Posted Oct 28, 2025 22:04 UTC (Tue) by brunowolff (guest, #71160) [Link] (19 responses)

> Absolutely pointless to have a 3rd or 4th option when votes for them have a near 100% chance to be discarded every single time.

If you treat elections as multi-round games instead of one shot games, you can vote for 3rd and 4th ranked options as a way to signal to the top two options to modify their positions in order to get you vote for them in future rounds. This might end up trading short term pain for long term benefits.

Same as before

Posted Oct 29, 2025 0:11 UTC (Wed) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link] (17 responses)

Pretty much any known alternative to the "winner takes all" system is better, which is both a blessing and a curse.

Any alternative is better because you really can't be worse than discarding votes on the first and single turn.

It's a blessing because you can't go wrong. It's a curse because there's no perfect voting system, so the few people who care start comparing the alternatives and soon enough everyone else has left the room, back to watching TikTok and other echo chamber algorithms. Back to: democracy is screwed.

Or, maybe the mere idea of voting is flawed? https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/645360/against-e...
I didn't read that book, it was a reference from somewhere else. The summary is interesting.

> If you treat elections as multi-round games instead of one shot games

The problem with multiple rounds is: you may choose someone more consensual but you're still electing a single person. That's OK for one president because there's only one slot to fill anyway. but you can do a much more representative job when you need to pick 600 people. It's not theoretical, many countries do a much better job already.

Same as before

Posted Oct 29, 2025 7:41 UTC (Wed) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (5 responses)

> Or, maybe the mere idea of voting is flawed? https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/645360/against-e...
I didn't read that book, it was a reference from somewhere else. The summary is interesting.

I read it. The title is very provocative, and people often assume that it's some nonsense about restoring aristocracy. Not so. This book makes a very persuasive argument that some measure random selection ("sortition") is needed to preserve the democracy itself.

I'm not totally sold on it because I don't entirely _want_ powerful interests to be ignored in favor of immediate popular demand.

Same as before

Posted Oct 29, 2025 12:17 UTC (Wed) by taladar (subscriber, #68407) [Link]

From the summary

> A group of people were chosen by lot, educated in the subject at hand, and then were able to decide what was best,

This seems to me a recipe to make the fight about who gets to 'educate them on the subject' instead, especially when it comes to controversial topics.

Same as before

Posted Oct 29, 2025 15:18 UTC (Wed) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (3 responses)

> I read it. The title is very provocative, and people often assume that it's some nonsense about restoring aristocracy. Not so. This book makes a very persuasive argument that some measure random selection ("sortition") is needed to preserve the democracy itself.

This is why I think gutting the House of Lords is/was a disaster.

Certainly the hereditary seats were pretty much a random selection of society. The appointed seats less so, but still fairly random. And as a place with little hard power, but who took their revising role seriously, they did a good job. Unfortunately, "this ain't going to work" doesn't make waves, so they've been gutted and the quality of general legislation has gone down ...

If we introduce real voting, expect the quality of legislation to go down the pan ...

Cheers,
Wol

Same as before

Posted Oct 29, 2025 15:21 UTC (Wed) by jzb (editor, #7867) [Link] (2 responses)

I modded this through as it's not impolite or objectionable or anything like that, but we've gone well off topic. National electoral systems and hereditary seats are, perhaps, interesting but far off topic.

This is, as we apparently must say, not directed solely at Wol but I'm placing the comment here in hopes of it being seen before folks hit the reply button. Let's just end the thread here. Thanks.

Same as before

Posted Oct 29, 2025 16:41 UTC (Wed) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (1 responses)

Apologies, but I hit the reply button before seeing the "please close the topic" post. I've been off-line for a couple of days and was wading through unread posts.

Cheers,
Wol

Same as before

Posted Oct 29, 2025 16:42 UTC (Wed) by jzb (editor, #7867) [Link]

Not the end of the world by any means, no apology necessary. Thanks, though.

Same as before

Posted Oct 29, 2025 7:41 UTC (Wed) by brunowolff (guest, #71160) [Link] (10 responses)

>> If you treat elections as multi-round games instead of one shot games

> The problem with multiple rounds is: you may choose someone more consensual but you're still electing a single person. That's OK for one president because there's only one slot to fill anyway. but you can do a much more representative job when you need to pick 600 people. It's not theoretical, many countries do a much better job already.

That comment was narrowly directed why voting for candidates expected to finish 3rd or lower makes sense under the current winner take all system.

I think having some sort of proportional voting system for assemblies would be an improvement. But I think you also want local representation as well as party representation, so it's going to be messy. (Things would probably work better if there weren't parties, but that isn't happening.)

Even without that change, I'd like to see approval voting combined with eliminating primaries. I think it would be hard to get that change as I have discussed this with smart friends on mine in different groups and they thought that that was crazy. Most of them knew about ranked voting systems, but didn't seem to be aware that there were significantly different versions of them and that all of them have issues where some property you'd normally like for a voting sysem to have are missing.

Same as before

Posted Oct 29, 2025 12:17 UTC (Wed) by kleptog (subscriber, #1183) [Link] (2 responses)

> I think having some sort of proportional voting system for assemblies would be an improvement. But I think you also want local representation as well as party representation, so it's going to be messy. (Things would probably work better if there weren't parties, but that isn't happening.)

Actually, I think for countries using FPTP (like the US/UK) there is an easy step: do Multi-Member Representation at city level. So instead of dividing a city like New York into districts that each elect one person, combine them all into one multi-member district with the same number of members for the whole city, but within the city it's proportional. Since city boundaries are already defined elsewhere you solve the gerrymandering problem entirely. Similarly, rural counties can be combined with similar surrounding counties.

There's no requirement that all regions have the same size.

The effect on the politics would be dramatic though. Adding just a few seats for smaller parties can significantly affect the balance of power. The whole current setup in the US is dependent on division and exclusion, and that becomes quite different if minor parties have a chance.

Same as before

Posted Oct 29, 2025 19:52 UTC (Wed) by rgmoore (✭ supporter ✭, #75) [Link] (1 responses)

To make this work in the USA, you would need to do it at the state level rather than city, because representatives are assigned at the state level. You would also need to do it for all states simultaneously rather than letting each state do it if they wanted to, because having some states with proportional representation and others with (potentially gerrymandered) districts would make a mess of Congress.

Same as before

Posted Oct 30, 2025 13:32 UTC (Thu) by taladar (subscriber, #68407) [Link]

Isn't e.g. the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Inter... already based on the ability to use different systems per state for the federal election systems?

Same as before

Posted Oct 29, 2025 12:17 UTC (Wed) by taladar (subscriber, #68407) [Link]

> But I think you also want local representation as well as party representation

I am not so sure about that. What makes geographic proximity to a candidate a good proxy for quality as a representative? Sure, a small subset of political issues are related to local concerns. However, many of those are very much topics where the local interests are split into several groups too, e.g. the rich factory owner who wants to pollute and the local residents who want a clean coastline.

Same as before

Posted Oct 29, 2025 12:18 UTC (Wed) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] (5 responses)

> But I think you also want local representation as well as party representation, so it's going to be messy.

In the likes of the Scottish Parliament elections, you have 2 ballots. One where you have a list of candidates for the local constituency, and a second "party" list of regional candidates. The local constituency vote is first-past-the-post, the regional/party list is D'Hondt.

To be honest I think it's tedious and over-complex, and somewhat the product of the UK's sentimental love for FPTP. I think the Irish system of just having 2 to 5 candidates per constituency (changes according to population distribution) and just having one ballot for them voting by PR-STV is much simpler and better.

I also like the fact Ireland's count is entirely manual pencil and paper, conducted in sports halls (school, GAA, whatever) all across the country, where anyone can go watch and with independent "tally men" watching over the tables and keeping their own scores as the count goes on - which is generally done in half a day.

Same as before

Posted Oct 29, 2025 13:46 UTC (Wed) by jzb (editor, #7867) [Link] (4 responses)

Obligatory "this is not aimed at any specific person" editorial comment. This has strayed well far away from the topic at hand at this point. In the interest of keeping the comment stream related to LWN topics, let's stop here with discussions on currency, electoral systems, etc.

Same as before

Posted Oct 29, 2025 14:44 UTC (Wed) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] (1 responses)

So let's get back to DEI and the US culture wars?

/me ducks ;)

(Direction otherwise taken FWIW - just couldn't resist this joke).

Same as before

Posted Oct 29, 2025 14:50 UTC (Wed) by jzb (editor, #7867) [Link]

That's not quite what I meant...

We all, or at least most of us, no doubt have opinions about those things. But they're certainly not going to be solved here, and it's exceedingly unlikely that any minds will be changed one way or the other.

I am happy to have those conversations over beers at any conferences that I attend, though. And, should that person or persons be at our "maniacal supporter" level, I'll even buy the first beer (or beverage of their choice).

Same as before

Posted Oct 29, 2025 16:42 UTC (Wed) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link] (1 responses)

> let's stop here with discussions on currency, electoral systems, etc.

Just for the record: comparing electoral systems is off-topic and I tried to avoid getting into the weeds. But the current, "winner takes all" voting system does play a major role in the current DEI and culture wars. "Win, win, win!" Discarding votes is an essential element in the culture of not listening to each other, rejecting compromise, living in echo chambers, etc. If that was ever needed, the recent, "extreme Gerrymandering" efforts clearly demonstrate that connection. Who cares what you think? The next election will let us ignore you anyway! Let's tweak the voting system and make it even more broken to make sure.

Beyond voting systems, ignoring or cherry-picking numbers and data in general is also a major element of every DEI debate and culture war. It is required to have an alternate reality. More on one side but not just one side.

Maybe I'm getting senile and nostalgic, but I feel like: people never found data fun, but there used to be some respect for science and some vague desire to share a common reality. Not anymore, at least not on the most popular mob media. The engineers around here should at least take notice.

Same as before

Posted Oct 29, 2025 16:47 UTC (Wed) by jzb (editor, #7867) [Link]

Understood, thanks for the explanation. At any rate, we can wind it up here and move on to more relevant ~~arguments~~ topics.

Same as before

Posted Oct 29, 2025 12:18 UTC (Wed) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

Multi-round voting sounds tedious. "Yay, let's have weeks, perhaps months of voting" - no thanks. Just use PR-STV and vote your order of preference in one ballot sheet, in one go.