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   Dgar (dgar@aus.social)'s status on Wednesday, 05-Mar-2025 14:22:58 JST Dgar

   Preferential voting is Australia is actually really cool. It lets you list the candidates on your ballot in the order of your preference.

   So you can, for example, have The Pirate Party as number 1, The Greens as number 2, Labor as second last, and LNP as last, with any other candidates in between.

   You are in control of who your vote goes to. The candidates and parties have no say in it at all. Don’t let the media tell you otherwise.

   • clacke likes this.
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     Bill Zaumen (bzdev@fosstodon.org)'s status on Monday, 10-Mar-2025 00:01:12 JST Bill Zaumen

     in reply to

     @dgar Unfortunately, preferential voting will occasionally elect the wrong candidate. For an explanation of why, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow's_impossibility_theorem (don't feel bad if this is not obvious - the work resulted in Kenneth Arrow receiving a Nobel prize).

     Fish of Rage likes this.
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     Fish of Rage (sun@shitposter.world)'s status on Monday, 10-Mar-2025 00:02:49 JST Fish of Rage

     in reply to

     • clacke
     • Chad Baker
     @clacke @dgar @calbaker if you have a lot of division on an issue doesn't it make it so that people strongly for one candidate and strongly against one candidate end up canceling each other out and you just elect the person nobody really wants
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     Chad Baker (calbaker@fosstodon.org)'s status on Monday, 10-Mar-2025 00:02:52 JST Chad Baker

     in reply to

     @dgar

     Is this the same thing as ranked choice voting? It sounds like it is, and if yes, the USA desperately needs this broadly!

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     clacke (clacke@libranet.de)'s status on Monday, 10-Mar-2025 00:02:52 JST clacke

     in reply to

     • Chad Baker

     @calbaker @dgar It is built on the same desire to break up the issues with first-past-the-post and single-seat constituencies.

     There's a lot of details going into a voting system. Single Transferable Vote is made for a proportional appointment of seats, and basically becomes Instant Runoff Voting if there's only one seat.

     I think what US activists mean when they propose Ranked Choice Voting depends on the activist. Some of them are proposing IRV.