[EM] Most important/used election methods?

[Bohdan Andriyiv]

Kristofer, thank you for the extensive reply. I will now need quite
some time to digest all information provided in yours and Richard's
replies.

Kristofer, one thing I can say already though, is that the Plurality
method will have to be supported on the universal voting platform from
the very beginning as it is just so popular and it is the best in
meeting the KISS principle - the fundamental requirement for any mass
platform.

BTW, Kristofer, Richard or anyone in this community if you have a bit
/ some / a lot of  free time, I would like to invite you to review our
design for the "universal voting platform" in private (we are not yet
ready to make it public).  Please write to me directly if you are
interested. Disclaimer, this "universal voting platform" is going to
be a for profit platform, but with a free service for public
elections.

Thank you all,
-Bohdan

On Fri, Oct 15, 2021 at 7:10 PM Kristofer Munsterhjelm
<km_elmet at t-online.de> wrote:
>
> On 15.10.2021 14:24, Bohdan Andriyiv wrote:
> > 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).
>
> Plurality (FPTP), clearly, by sheer numbers, although the method is
> nothing to write home about.
>
> Probably also, if you're willing to bend the criteria of what counts as
> voting: Approval with no opinion (thumbs up/down on FB, YouTube, etc.),
> and Range (star ratings used on e.g. Amazon). I say "bend" because these
> are not elections - they do not designate a given winner, but rather
> they provide feedback on a per item (video, product, etc) basis.
>
> The most popular multiwinner election methods are (to my knowledge)
> party list, single member district Plurality, SNTV, and STV. They can be
> combined as in MMP. Perhaps you could also include cumulative voting and
> bloc voting, but they're not as common.
>
> The Schulze method seems to be favored among open-source organizations
> and pro open-source parties such as the Pirate Parties. See e.g.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulze_method#Users. It is also used in a
> few cities for referenda or as part of a liquid democracy/delegable
> proxy system.
>
> The Condorcet Internet Voting Service supports minmax, Schulze, MAM, and
> Condorcet-IRV: https://civs1.civs.us/rp.html
>
> Approval (with or without runoff) is also in current use in the US. See
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approval_voting#Current_use.
>
> FairVote is pushing IRV pretty hard, and it's used in some US states
> (see
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked-choice_voting_in_the_United_States
> ) but it's not a particularly good method IMHO.
>
> Finally, there's the meta-method "whatever election method, then the
> president leans on the electoral commission and stays in power
> regardless". This method is unfortunately all too common; I would not
> suggest implementing it.
>
> > 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?
>
> I would not suggest implementing Plurality even though it's popular,
> because it's just that bad. I'd probably say: Approval, Range, STAR, and
> a Condorcet method (Schulze if you're going by popularity, though I'd
> personally prefer Ranked Pairs for relative simplicity). This gives you
> both the ranked standard (according to many people on this list at least
> :), the cardinal standards (Approval and Range), and a compromise
> between the two (STAR).
>
> The only thing really missing is Majority Judgment; it's not used
> anywhere but it has an interface unlike either Range or Condorcet, using
> neither scores nor rankings but grades instead.
>
> If you're going to implement proportional representation multiwinner
> methods, then some form of STV. Probably also some kind of cardinal PR
> method (although none are used for political elections at the moment) to
> give the cardinal voters a multiwinner method too.
>
> There's a similar argument to the "include IRV or not?" about what kind
> of STV to use. Every form of STV used politically at the moment reduces
> to IRV in the single-winner case, which means that its results get worse
> the fewer winners you have. On the one hand, if you want to stick with
> what's used in political elections, you should pick IRV-based STV. On
> the other, if you want better outcomes, it would be better to pick a
> Condorcet-based multiwinner method (e.g. Schulze STV, CPO-STV or CIVS's
> PR method).
>
> -km