Not a fan of SPAV, in part for the same reasons I’m not a fan of STAR:
It doesn’t eliminate strategic voting. For example, imagine you support two candidates for a multi-seat election. Under straight AV you vote for both of them because there’s literally no incentive to do otherwise. Under SPAV, you might decide that since one of those candidates is much more popular and thus a foregone conclusion to win that you should avoid voting for them so the value of your vote for the other isn’t reduced. Too many doing this can cause negative effects, like strategic voting in other methods.
You can’t tell me how my vote will actually be counted until every other vote is counted, because how the ballot will be measured in the end depends on every other ballot as depending on how everyone else voted your votes for some candidates may be worth less than your votes for other candidates. Straight AV doesn’t have this problem, your vote is exactly what is says on the ballot and is counted exactly as it is on the ballot. The extra math also makes it more complicated to explain to voters en masse, which is a problem with other systems that have transferable votes.
I get that the goal is apparently to make every state elect a split legislature/congressmen by making so that if any seats are even vaguely competitive the parties will essentially be forced to take turns.
While this complaint is technically true for SPAV, the likelihood that a popular candidate would fail to win a seat because everyone thought they were too popular is just… Not gonna happen. We already know from real-world AV elections that voters largely prefer to vote honestly, there’s no reason to think they would get more strategic when it gets harder to figure out the optimal strategy.
This is a problem inherit to nearly all systems designed to produce proportional results. I honestly can’t think of a worthwhile system that doesn’t have this problem. Anyway, the goal is not to make the parties take turns. It’s to make it possible for minor parties to win seats in the legislature. In the end, no single party would ever have a controlling majority, and they would be forced to form coalitions to pass legislation.
We already know from real-world AV elections that voters largely prefer to vote honestly, there’s no reason to think they would get more strategic when it gets harder to figure out the optimal strategy.
In plain AV, voting honestly is the optimal strategy - there’s no incentive to vote any other way. It’s not for SPAV. And yes, strategic voting in SPAV is harder to figure out than strategic voting in FPTP, but it’s far from impossible - basically you don’t vote for a popular candidate you support so your vote for other candidates counts for more, relying on the assumption that enough other people will vote for the popular candidate you support to allow them to win anyways.
Strategic voting can be an optional strategy under ordinary approval voting. If I don’t like either of the top two candidates, it’s still in my best interest to vote for the runner-up, if I hate them less than I hate the front-runner.
And look man, I’m honestly not interested in picking over the details. Any proportional system is better than single-winner. By miles.
Not a fan of SPAV, in part for the same reasons I’m not a fan of STAR:
I get that the goal is apparently to make every state elect a split legislature/congressmen by making so that if any seats are even vaguely competitive the parties will essentially be forced to take turns.
While this complaint is technically true for SPAV, the likelihood that a popular candidate would fail to win a seat because everyone thought they were too popular is just… Not gonna happen. We already know from real-world AV elections that voters largely prefer to vote honestly, there’s no reason to think they would get more strategic when it gets harder to figure out the optimal strategy.
This is a problem inherit to nearly all systems designed to produce proportional results. I honestly can’t think of a worthwhile system that doesn’t have this problem. Anyway, the goal is not to make the parties take turns. It’s to make it possible for minor parties to win seats in the legislature. In the end, no single party would ever have a controlling majority, and they would be forced to form coalitions to pass legislation.
In plain AV, voting honestly is the optimal strategy - there’s no incentive to vote any other way. It’s not for SPAV. And yes, strategic voting in SPAV is harder to figure out than strategic voting in FPTP, but it’s far from impossible - basically you don’t vote for a popular candidate you support so your vote for other candidates counts for more, relying on the assumption that enough other people will vote for the popular candidate you support to allow them to win anyways.
Strategic voting can be an optional strategy under ordinary approval voting. If I don’t like either of the top two candidates, it’s still in my best interest to vote for the runner-up, if I hate them less than I hate the front-runner.
And look man, I’m honestly not interested in picking over the details. Any proportional system is better than single-winner. By miles.