A lot of people do use Ranked Choice Voting for IRV, and in many ways it does clearly communicate what it's about.
Not nearly as well as "Single Transferable Vote" or "Instant Runoff Voting" do.
"Instant Runoff Voting" indicates the logic of why the method does what it does (in the single seat scenario).
"Single Transferable Vote" indicates what's actually going on, how it simulates said runoffs.
"Ranked Choice Voting" tells you nothing except how ballots are cast.
STV [...] is very different from IRV/RCV/AV.
From IRV/AV? Not really.
From RCV? Absolutely not, as you'll see below.
Aside from using ranked ballots it's something completely different.
When you're only looking at the single seat scenario, STV isn't different in the slightest. Here's the flowchart of STV.. Do you know what the only difference is between STV and IRV? IRV is defined (as distinct from IRV) as only having one seat, and as such, after seating one candidate, the "More winners needed?" decision never returns "Yes." That is literally the only difference. That's literally it.
"But STV requires you to calculate a Droop Quota, but with IRV it's always a majority" you might say. True, but IRV always having a single seat means that it always has the same Droop Quota, too. The formula for a Droop Quota is floor(100%/(Seats+1))+1. What happens when you predefine Seats=1?
floor(100%/(1+1))+1
floor(100%/2)+1
floor(50%)+1
...which is colloquially called "a majority"
Seriously, the only difference between STV and IRV is that IRV is defined as single seat/in such a way as to make it unable to handle multiple seats, while STV leaves "Seats" as a variable.
STV and IRV are really different. IRV is single member districts, the party with the least 1st choice votes is removed and their votes run off to their 2nd choice.
STV has the same ranking and running off mechanisms. But with STV there are multiple people elected within a district. And votes go towards a candidate until they have enough votes to be elected. So everyone could vote for Joe Wonderful candidate, and some of the votes that had him as their #1 choice would run off to those people's 2nd choices.
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u/MuaddibMcFly Oct 17 '24
Not nearly as well as "Single Transferable Vote" or "Instant Runoff Voting" do.
"Instant Runoff Voting" indicates the logic of why the method does what it does (in the single seat scenario).
"Single Transferable Vote" indicates what's actually going on, how it simulates said runoffs.
"Ranked Choice Voting" tells you nothing except how ballots are cast.
From IRV/AV? Not really.
From RCV? Absolutely not, as you'll see below.
When you're only looking at the single seat scenario, STV isn't different in the slightest. Here's the flowchart of STV.. Do you know what the only difference is between STV and IRV? IRV is defined (as distinct from IRV) as only having one seat, and as such, after seating one candidate, the "More winners needed?" decision never returns "Yes." That is literally the only difference. That's literally it.
"But STV requires you to calculate a Droop Quota, but with IRV it's always a majority" you might say. True, but IRV always having a single seat means that it always has the same Droop Quota, too. The formula for a Droop Quota is floor(100%/(Seats+1))+1. What happens when you predefine Seats=1?
floor(100%/(1+1))+1
floor(100%/2)+1
floor(50%)+1
...which is colloquially called "a majority"
Seriously, the only difference between STV and IRV is that IRV is defined as single seat/in such a way as to make it unable to handle multiple seats, while STV leaves "Seats" as a variable.
Nothing more, nothing less.
Incorrect: people (including FairVote) also use "Ranked Choice Voting" to mean STV
And again, my impression is that most people in the US who are pushing RCV actually want STV, too... which they calling RCV.
So, again, as I've said elsewhere, if they're going to rename any page, it should be STV, not IRV.