6 Comments

Awesome piece, Jared! I think this could convince some folks to take a deeper dive into voting science and reform!

One thing I'd love to highlight is that voters can score any candidate with any number of stars from 0 to 5! Your description of stars was effectively correct, but it's a good thing for voters to be aware that there's no limit to the *total* number of stars that can be "given". That automatic runoff in the end is the most important bit, so voters are always better off giving a spread of ratings (scores) to ensure that their one full vote will go to the finalist they prefer instead of being counted as "No preference" if they happened to score both finalists the same on their ballot.

Again, this is fantastic and I'm glad you wrote this piece!

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STAR voting is definitely the future. I'm much more well-designed system that takes advantage of modern political science research and game theory. It just has to break ground and its first municipal elections to serve as a proof point for a skeptical public.

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Nice work, Jared, thanks. I, for one, am definitely interested in giving STAR Voting a go. One quibble: I believe STAR Voting has indeed already been used in an Oregon public government election, albeit not in a very noticeable way (yet). Per this link, the Independent party used it in a 2020 primary election: https://www.starvoting.us/has_star_voting_been_tried_before

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I prefer STAR voting because most voters can't reliably rank 5 or more candidates but usually know their 1st and 2nd choice and who they dislike. However, I promote RCV because it's better known and vastly superior to single choice plurality voting.

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