[EM] Most important/used election methods?

[Bohdan Andriyiv]

Richard, thank you for the detailed list of (as I understood) the best
/ the most fair / the most supported by this forum election methods.
It is very helpful and works for me as a good starting point to
explore the election methods. Thanks to the others who made their
inputs as well.

But my question is different. I guess it worked as a trick question
for this community and I should have explained better the context
behind it.

I am asking what election methods are the most important/popular in
the current world? Not, which ones are the best, the fairest. BTW, by
"important" I mean - the methods that might be not so popular, but are
important in the current world for some other reason (for example,
used in small, but important elections).

Why am I interested in this? I am designing a universal voting
platform where anyone will be able to create and conduct *any* kind of
voting (serious or not).

As this community knows much much better than I do, the voting can be
organized in the multitude of different ways. Hence it is too
difficult (complex and time consuming) to design a system that
supports all of the methods right from the start. So I want to
prioritise the implementation of the methods that are the most popular
or important.

In other words my question is the following.

What types of election methods are most likely to be used to organize
different votings on the universal voting platform in the current
world?
Also, what methods, although not so popular, but important in the
current world, should be supported by this platform?

Thank you,
-Bohdan

On Thu, Oct 14, 2021 at 8:22 PM Richard, the VoteFair guy
<electionmethods at votefair.org> wrote:
>
> On 10/13/2021 11:50 AM, Bohdan Andriyiv wrote:
> > ...
> > Is there a list that sorts election methods by popularity or importance?
> >
> > If there is none, could you please make one and enlighten me and the
> > planet Earth?
>
> Years ago we tried to enlighten the planet Earth by writing and signing
> the "Declaration of Election-Method Reform Advocates", a copy of which
> is at:
>
>    http://www.votefair.org/bansinglemarkballots/index.html
>
> We do not agree on any ranking by importance, but most of us did agree
> that we support the use of the following four categories:
>
> * Approval voting
>
> * most of the Condorcet methods
>
> * Majority Judgment
>
> * Range voting (now better known as Score voting)
>
> If we were to update the list it would probably include STAR voting --
> because it's based on Score voting, yet it's better than Score voting.
>
> And I believe it would include the version of Minimax that uses winning
> votes -- even though this variation does not always elect the Condorcet
> winner.
>
> And lately the Minimax variations can be thought of as growing in
> popularity -- especially because one of the Minimax variations is the
> default method at the very popular Condorcet Internet Voting Service.
>
> Personally I believe that Instant Pairwise Elimination (IPE) would be
> included because it comes very close to being a Condorcet method, but
> that's a personal bias. (Disclaimer: I created this method.)
>
> We did not approve instant-runoff voting (IRV).
>
> The Ranked Choice Including Pairwise Elimination (RCIPE) method (which I
> also created, but did not name) improves IRV by eliminating "Condorcet
> losers" (which has a different meaning from Condorcet used elsewhere)
> might be approved as a stepping-stone to better methods (similar to why
> some of us approved Approval voting). Again, this is a personal bias.
>
> Everyone here has a favorite method, and those methods are most often
> different for each person. So you are likely to get more responses
> saying that such-and-such is the best method.
>
> So we, as a group, cannot rate or rank the methods. The "declaration" is
> about the best we can offer at this time.
>
> In the declaration we agree that PR (proportional representation) is
> worth adopting, but we do not agree on which kind of PR is best. Yet we
> do agree that the most popular kind of PR -- Closed Party List -- is
> inferior to Open Party List. But there are better methods than party lists.
>
> Another point is that the best method depends on which election is being
> reformed. That affects which choice is "best." For example, in the U.S.
> any reform has to be compatible with the current political system. (For
> example, dual-member districts could work, but an STV-like method using
> more than two seats per district would not work as long as plurality
> voting dominates US elections.)
>
> I'm not claiming that everyone here will agree with what I'm saying
> here. I'm providing you with at least part of what you are requesting,
> and I'm making it easier for disagreements with my perspectives to arise
> as criticisms of what I'm saying here.
>
> If you want to be specific about which part of the planet Earth you most
> want reform, we can offer specific suggestions for that case.
>
> Thanks for asking!
>
> Richard Fobes
> The VoteFair guy