Really bugs me how americans talk about “ranked choice voting” because you guys seem to mean STV, which is a form of proportional representation with multi-member districts.
But in Canada, “ranked ballots” meant IRV, which was basically FPTP with a ranked ballot, and ironically exacerbated the worst parts of FPTP like the trend to a two party system.
Stick with the real names of electoral systems!
This is in the context of US State Legislations, Ranked-Choice Voting is what most laws refer to them as.
In most contexts, we’re mostly talking about Single-Winner elections.
Sometimes, the same concept has different names to different people, there isn’t a name that’s more “real” than others.
Zagorath@aussie.zone 5 weeks ago
Umm. Hi, Australia here. We’ve used IRV for our House of Representatives since 1918. IRV is definitely flawed, and I’ve said in the past it’s the “worst acceptable system”*. But it’s better in every way than FPTP, and definitely doesn’t exacerbate a trend towards two parties. It doesn’t create a proportional result that truly helps break the two-party system like STV (most notably used by Australia’s Senate or Ireland’s Dáil) or MMP (notably used in New Zealand and Germany) would, but it doesn’t entrench it any more than FPTP. In fact, as of today, Australia’s crossbench consists of only 1 fewer person than its Opposition, because independents and third parties have been rising considerably over the past 15 years or so, particularly at the 2022 and 2025 elections.
You’re right that people should be clear about whether they mean IRV, STV, or another ordinal system, though.
* the intent being to highlight that FPTP is an entirely undemocratic and unacceptable system to ever use.
yucandu@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
We studied it in Canada, including how it was used in Australia, and it was the only electoral systems out of all the ones listed that actually widened the gap between voter intention and seat distribution from FPTP.
www.ourcommons.ca/documentviewer/en/…/page-174#49
Specifically here, where it is called “Alternative Vote”:
www.ourcommons.ca/content/…/image002.gif
I’m mostly just frustrated about how it keeps getting renamed.
But it is entirely possible to invent an electoral system that is worse than what we have now, and it seems politicians might have done that with IRV.
Zagorath@aussie.zone 5 weeks ago
Yeah that seems to be a very common alternative name. I’m especially not a fan of that name, since all it tells you is that it’s “not FPTP”. At least “Preferential voting” or “ranked choice voting” tells you something of the ballot.