Which of these options are you favorites? Rank up to 5 options:

https://www.rcv123.org/ballot/9T1G8AJZDeRPZiWJwWaKsB

You may also answer and discuss here, but only the votes in the link is counted for the purposes of this survey.

Why am I doing this? Because I missed the polls from [the website that shall not be named], so I wanted to experiment a bit here. And what better way to do polls than the best way! I hereby present you to the Ranked Choice Ballot! Ta-da! (Please go vote, I spent a lot of time on this)

Edit: If you don’t want to vote, here are the results from all the votes so far:

https://www.rcv123.org/results/9T1G8AJZDeRPZiWJwWaKsB

10 points

Ranked choice is probably the worst option for a poll like this…

I’m betting if you ran this exact poll under different rules, say multiple choice allowing unlimited selection, you’d get a vastly different answer.

This is because Ranked Choice is a horrible voting system. If First Past the Post wasn’t so bad, RCV would have the title of worst system ever created.

Hell, the site you linked even has a “pros and cons” section where they even admit to the massive problems with the system but then hand wave them away.

Ballot exhaustion alone is a showstopper. They pretend that the voter “just didn’t choose someone popular enough to win” when the reality is much more insidious. The most common form of ballot exhaustion is when your 2nd or 3rd choice is eliminated in the first round, and then your 1st choice is eliminated in a later round.

And because of how votes are counted, if you had put your 2nd choice in the 1st slot, they could have won the election, even if they were not your literal favorite.

Up to 20% of ballots cast in RCV elections are thrown out due to ballot exhaustion. That’s enough votes to massively shift who wins or loses.


The basic truth here is that RCV is good at one thing. Preventing fringe candidates from spoiling an election between two front-runners. It can prevent another Bush v Gore, but that’s it.

Also, in real world use, it’s fucked up several elections.

Due to the need for centralized counting, the 2021 NYC mayoral race had 130,000 extra votes that turned out to have been test ballots that should never have been in the same location as the actual election ballots.

https://www.thecity.nyc/2021/6/29/22556830/nyc-board-of-election-pulls-preliminary-mayoral-results

Centralize counting and an overly complex system also resulted in the wrong winner being chosen in California. The wrong winner was sworn in and served in the position for a full month before the error was found.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Alameda-County-admits-tallying-error-in-17682520.php


There are vastly better options than RCV.

You can read up on them here. https://www.starvoting.org/

And here, https://electionscience.org/

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2 points

I’m trying to figure out the pros and cons of the STAR Voting method versus the pros and cons of the STV method. Can anyone help fill me in?

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0 points

Do you have 3 hours?

This live stream explains it all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-dzK3YIAf8

The TLDR, or TLDW here;

The difference between RCV (also called IRV) and STAR is the difference between an Ordinal system and a Cardinal system.

An Ordinal system is a ranked system. Chose one or the other, but never both. A vote for A means you cannot also support B. This lead to some math shit that actually gives preferential treatment to two party systems.

RCV claims to support third parties and solve the spoiler effect. The truth is the opposite in every way. It eliminates fringe parties that would spoil elections, but also falls prey to spoiler effects when you have very similar candidates. It’s actually a mess.


STAR on the other hand is a Cardinal voting system. A vote for A is a vote for A and a Vote for B has no impact on A. A good example is saying that I give Chocolate Milkshakes 5 out of 5 stars and New Coke 1 out of 5. But here’s the main difference to an Ordinal system, I can also give a Banana Smoothies 5 out of 5 stars. Because I’m rating them as individuals, not in comparison to each other.

STAR is literally a 5-star review of the candidates, and the two with the highest average (or just highest scores) are then put head to head. Each ballot is then looked at, if Chocolate Milkshakes are rated higher on any given ballot than Banana Smoothies, Milkshakes get the vote of that person. If they’re the same, a vote of No Preference is logged, and the No Preference votes are also made public at the end.

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1 point

No no, I was asking about the differences between Single Transferable Vote and STAR - not RCV/IRV.

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3 points

So if you were to choose the best system for multi-candidate voting that would work for most real-life elections or multiple-choice rankings, which one would it be?

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1 point

There’s also Single Transferable Vote.

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1 point

Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/l8XOZJkozfI

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.

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1 point

Absolute best would be STAR.

https://www.starvoting.org/

A good runner-up would be Approval.

https://electionscience.org/

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0 points

Thanks for the links. I’ve heard of star, but approval is new to me. I’ll read up on those

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2 points

Came here to take a silly poll about drinks, came away with some actual interesting reading about better election methods. Thanks man. A shame this will never change in the US but one can dream…

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3 points

i appreciate the strong passion and education about the poll on everyone’s favorite beverage

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6 points

Milk but no “non-dairy milk” option?

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10 points

Non dairy milk is still milk for the purposes of this poll.

(I didn’t even know there was such a thing, sorry for my ignorance.)

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0 points

Pretty sure it’s not actually milk when plant based. Like, there’s wheat extract, which tastes pretty much identical to skimmed milk and can be used as a substitute, but (as far as I’m aware) you can’t advertise it as milk in the EU.

Which, and I’m sorry, brings me to one of my pet peeves. Don’t label plant alternatives as “vegan meat”. It’s either vegan or meat/diary, not both! What’s even the point in making fake meat? To have some chum accidentally buy fake meat, only to find out and become annoyed and resistant towards plant based alternatives?

Make frigging original ideas. Like “wheat chocolate” where people have no preconceptions, instead of “non-milk milk chocolate that totally tastes the same as real milk chocolate, we swear you won’t be disappointed!”. And then you taste it, and it’s just barely off. It doesn’t taste bad, but it’s not what you expected when you though about milk, so you become disappointed and avoid other really good tasting alternatives which might have stood a chance if not being directly compared to an already established market standard and favorite.

And yes, that chum might just be me, and although I’ve been presented with some really good tasting alternatives that I’ve come to love, I still absolutely refuse to buy/try any “Vegan meats/diaries”.

Would much rather just have some ratatouille, grilled mushroom, or wheat chocolate instead.

Rant over.

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2 points

Almond milk has quite a long history of being called as such: https://historydollop.com/2016/11/09/almond-milk-the-medieval-way/

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1 point

Counter Rant

I don’t understand the insistence in the western Anglophone world that milk automatically means cow’s milk.

Coconut milk is a very normal word to say in my mother tongue (Bengali). What else are you even supposed to call it? Coconut “beverage” or “liquid” would be hella confusing because we wouldn’t know if one means the milk (the creamy liquid that comes from pressing the coconut pulp) or the water (the transparent liquid that resides in the pulp, and tastes and behaves completely differently). Are we supposed to go invent a new word every time we encounter a milky liquid?

Also, what about other mammalian milks? Do we need to invent a new name for goat milk? (Which is a fairly common drink in India, possibly thanks to Gandhi’s obsession with the stuff) What about sheep milk (not very common in India, but widely used in some parts of Europe). Or Yak’s Milk? (Pretty popular in specific pockets of India).

Milk is any white creamy liquid. That’s how it has always been used, in English and in other languages, going back centuries. The cow agriculture industry must have mounted one hell of a PR campaign to convince western consumes that milk automatically implies it must come from a cow. In India, you just look at the packaging. Does it have a picture of a cow on it? Well then it comes from a cow. Does it have a coconut on it? You guessed it, it comes from a coconut. Simple. I don’t see how that can ever be confusing to customers.

Rant over

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8 points

Out of curiousity, where do you live? Alternative milks (like oat-milk, soy-milk, almond-milk, etc) have become very popular the past few years.

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3 points
*

Oh shit I knew I was missing something. How could I forget soy milk lol. It’s hard to think with depression…

Edit: USA

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6 points
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Im a fan of energy drinks. I think you should have categorised the soft drinks into one category. There’s a lot more to be included.

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5 points

No horchata? :(

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2 points

Que rico!

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3 points

Lemmynade

/dadjoke

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