I assume you mean that all the candidates run against each other simultaneously, and the top 5 all win a seat? I don't think that has the properties you are claiming. At least not with approval voting.
Let's spherical cow this for a second and say that 51% of the population would like candidates from the Foo party, and 49% would like candidates from the Bar party. What prevents the 51% from electing five Foo candidates? When a "fair" split would be three Foo candidates and two Bar candidates.
In Approval voting, one would expect five Foo candidates with 51% votes, and five Bar candidates with 49% vote.
Ranked choice might fix this, but the actual results would depend entirely on the vote resolution mechanism.
I'm a fan of STAR (Score Then Automatic Runoff) though I'm not sure the details on how that looks with multiple positions up for grabs. https://www.starvoting.us/
Instant runoff is listed as Hare, and it has some very... interesting results. I don't think it fixes any of the issues people have with first-to-the-post voting, and sometimes makes those issues even worse.
I'm confused. I haven't actually brought up any issues except those raised in the link I provided, where IRV has some serious issues. So allow me to remedy it by providing specifics.
Your link clearly says, in heading: "RCV for Single-Winner Offices (also known as Instant Runoff Voting / IRV)". So unless they are not actually using IRV, then the link I supplied is relevant. It's specifically this part which is broken, quoted from your link:
The candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated, and voters who picked that candidate as ‘number 1’ will have their votes count for their next choice.
So unless a candidate gets a good-enough first-vote showing to not be last, they have zero chance of winning. Even if 100% of the population picks them as their second candidate, and the remaining first-pick votes are spread over 100 other candidates, it doesn't matter they will lose without first-pick votes. And that's what results in graphs like the "square" graph in my link, where a centrist population ends up with a candidate that doesn't make sense.
The heart of the matter is that part of the vote information is ignored until other events happen. But by the time that triggering event happens, the information may no longer be used. In my example, the fact that 100% of people pick a candidate as their second choice is flat-out ignored until candidates start being eliminated. By the time that second choice is looked at, the relevant candidate is no longer in the running.
I have not seen similar multi-candidate simulations, but STV seems to have the same issue regarding ignoring information. Unpopular first vote candidates will be eliminated, even if they're extremely popular second vote candidates.
For single-winner elections, approval voting is both simpler to administer (because there's no ranking) and has better outcomes (because all information is taken into account at the beginning). However, a more complicated method would need to be used for multi-candidate races if "fairness" of representation is a target.
Hi, I'm from Australia, where we actually use IRV and STV. I dislike IRV's lack of monotonicity too, but for STV, which is the top-of-chain proposal, your objection
> Unpopular first vote candidates will be eliminated, even if they're extremely popular second vote candidates.
doesn't seem to be a major problem. Groups do well on second and subsequent choices from a combination of being popular in their own right and more-popular groups saying "put us first and then them second".
Our federal electoral commission publishes every ballot ordering for our Senate elections now. A guy named David Bahry has a "preference explorer" which lets you get a high-level overview for yourself: https://pappubahry.com/pseph/aus_2019/
There is a lot more to the Fair Representation Act than just RCV. Lots and lots of detail on the site, including some mathematics on multi winner elections.
Personally, I think fully proportional meaning getting rid of districts is the best idea. The entire state is one district, parties publish a ranked list well before the election, and based on the votes everyone got, the top n people from the party's list get elected.
We still have a problem though: how many seats does each state get? Do we still continue to apportion seats each state gets every ten years on a census?
> We still have a problem though: how many seats does each state get? Do we still continue to apportion seats each state gets every ten years on a census?
This seems to work and nobody has an issue with the high-level apportionment.
The only criticism I've heard of it is the 435 cap, which is kind of arbitrary, and now one rep represents way too many people.
What would the number of representatives look like if it was fluid and we said the unit is the smallest state that only gets one representative is the yard stick?
A quick search shows Wyoming is the smallest state by population with 578,759 so if we decreased the apportionment from seven hundred thousand something to that 578,759, how many more seats would we need?
If a state with a population of 578,759 gets one seat does a state with population of 578,759 * 2 - 1 get two seats or one seat?
round up or down as needed. 330 million / 578000 is 570 representatives, give or take. To put this in perspective, the current French National Assembly is 577 members, the Italian Chamber of Deputies is 630 members, the UK House of Commons is 650 members, and the German Bundestag is 709 members.
I see others have replied to you, correctly; but, to throw in my two cents: multimember districts use some form of ranked choice or quadratic or sortition system. What you’re talking about are called “multimember at large” districts and are both illegal (falling awry of the VRA), in addition to being unconstitutional.
Let's spherical cow this for a second and say that 51% of the population would like candidates from the Foo party, and 49% would like candidates from the Bar party. What prevents the 51% from electing five Foo candidates? When a "fair" split would be three Foo candidates and two Bar candidates.
In Approval voting, one would expect five Foo candidates with 51% votes, and five Bar candidates with 49% vote.
Ranked choice might fix this, but the actual results would depend entirely on the vote resolution mechanism.