this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2023
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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

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[–] [email protected] 38 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Having two different smoothies but lumping together every single alcoholic beverage is certainly a survey design... choice.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

Also two colas but only one non-cola soda. That should've been categories like "lemon-lime soda," "orange soda," "cola," "root beer," etc.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 years ago (3 children)

'any alcoholic beverage' is quite a lumpy category.

[–] fubo 6 points 2 years ago

A more typical breakdown would be beer/wine/spirits, possibly with a separation between spirits alone vs. cocktails.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago

IKR? You can have any alcohol but our choices of soda are just coke and orange fanta? 😩

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

and and then a few specific sodas are listed but no generic? seems like it should be cola flavored sodar, citrus flavored soda, other flavored soda or something.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 years ago (1 children)

For being so specific, is missing a lot of options. MtDew, rockstar/monster/red bull, squirt/fresca, etc.

I think it should be more generalized, like orange soda, cola, etc, or just sodas, energy drinks, etc.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago
[–] jiji 9 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Milk but no “non-dairy milk” option?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 years ago (5 children)

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.)

[–] Zoldyck 9 points 2 years ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

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

Edit: USA

[–] jiji 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Yea I meant plant-based “milks” (I know they’re now called “beverages” but I haven’t come around to it just yet).

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

They've been called plant milk for centuries. The whole "beverage" thing is from labeling laws lobbied for by the dairy industry. It doesn't reflect how people have speak today nor how they have for centuries (you can find medieval recipes for almond milk that call it almond milk)

[–] jiji 1 points 2 years ago

Yeah, I’m also not a fan of the dairy lobby coming for my “plant milk” label. I’m in the US, where AFAIK nothing has stuck. But I believe in the EU they’ve now officially had to implement the “beverage” label (please correct me if I’m wrong!), which kinda sucks imo but whatever. Despite what the dairy industry thinks, it’s not going to stop people buying plant milks.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago (3 children)

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/

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago (2 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (4 children)

Absolute best would be STAR.

https://www.starvoting.org/

A good runner-up would be Approval.

https://electionscience.org/

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

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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[–] Risk 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

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

[–] Risk 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Risk 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

RCV is the single winner version of STV.

Every single fault of RCV is present in STV, but because it's a multi-winner format, the complexity and lack of transparency in the counting process are far worse.

If you really want proportional or multi-winner elections, then a better option is this.

It's based off of Score the same way that STAR is, but tweaked to be multi-winner.

[–] Risk 1 points 2 years ago

Ah, okay - thanks for the explanation.

I do like the idea of multi-winner elections because of the increased chance of having a representative for your specific issues taken to a national assembly. In the UK things are split up into boroughs, which seems illogical for cities and aside from being grandfathered in likely only persists because it enables gerrymandering.

[–] BitSound 7 points 2 years ago (1 children)

You forgot about soda water

[–] mysoulishome 5 points 2 years ago

Yep give me any flavored sparkly water and that would be mine

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago

If it wasn't specific sodas and instead generics like cola vs root beer vs fruity flavored, I would have voted for a soda over an alcoholic beverage.

[–] dhruv 6 points 2 years ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago
[–] DelvianSeek 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Milk, milk tea, and 2 different smoothies, but no milkshakes? Bah!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

I enjoy a good old fashioned chocolate malt.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

It's too hard to compare water, flavored drinks, and smoothies. Those are all different things

[–] simple 4 points 2 years ago

No Schweppes? For shame.

Also, cheers to my milk tea brethren.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

Huh, that is interesting

[–] son_named_bort 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Ahh forgot... 🤷‍♂️

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

I WILL be a caffeine addicted green tea purist and drink nothing else

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

Just voted! Looks like water and coffee are going strong so far, which I also ended up voting for on top too. Lots of super sugary stuff, honestly having an herbal tea, coffee, or sparkling water I feel much better after vs a soda or juice.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

my favorite drinks are

coffee -> kratom -> kava -> water -> tea

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