substack discussion on electoral reform shows evidence of the need for clear referendum questions when voters get chance to vote on electoral reform. (not that referendums are always necessary - in the past some governments have shown they have right to change election systems.)
Steven Hill (https://substack.com/@democracysos/note/c-92060971?utm_source=feed-email-digest) gives cases where a vote for instant-runoff voting was mis-used - or attempted to be mis-used - as a vote for Condorcet voting or STAR voting.
Redondo Beach
Recently [circa 2023?] in Redondo Beach, The STAR proponents tried to say “we rank candidates too, and our system has a similar runoff.” It created mass confusion, allowing the anti-reformers to nearly stop the implementation of IRV in its tracks.
San Diego
A similar situation happened a couple of years ago in San Diego, where an attempt to pass single-winner ranked choice voting was detoured into an effort to instead pass Condorcet voting.
Again, the usurpers tried to say “our system has rankings too, it is 'ranked choice' too.” The San Diego effort wasted precious time for many months sorting that out, and in the end the effort died.
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So these names and definitions actually matter, and if too much fuzziness creeps into their use during the advocacy, it will create confusion that undermines the public’s understanding of what IRV/RCV is.
Steven Hill goes on to explain:
In my article
Birth of the RCV movement https://substack.com/home/post/p-156627887),
I explained where the exact terms “instant runoff voting” and “ranked choice voting” came from -- from those of us at the Center for Voting and Democracy (now FairVote). There was no prior use of those terms before we started using them (believe me, we researched it). Those particular names describe the exact same system. There is no other system of instant runoff voting other than the one that FairVote/Center for Voting and Democracy has advocated for. And there is no other system of ranked choice voting other than the one that FairVote/Center for Voting and Democracy has advocated for. And IRV and RCV are the exact same thing.
Certainly that doesn’t mean that for other ranked ballot systems out there they can’t come up with a new name that has the word “rank” in it in some fashion, such as “ranked pairs” as Charles Munger has adopted for his Condorcet method. But if those advocates are being ethical, respectful and sincere, they will not use the words “ranked choice voting” together, or the words “instant runoff voting” together because it will contribute to confusion.
See Greg Dennis’s post in this discussion, in which he provides some excellent examples of how advocates could misuse the name “approval voting” to describe “plurality at-large” [Block Voting], because both of those systems have many features in common, such as allowing voters to pick as many candidates as they like.
But approval voting is a single-winner system,
[Block Voting] is multi-seat,
a pretty major difference in terms of how that method functions. I’m sure that approval voting advocates would not like it if some people started calling plurality at-large "another form of approval voting."
I have encouraged FairVote to trademark the names instant runoff voting and ranked choice voting. I think it would be good for the movement, and for future efforts, to have clarity and to clear up this kind of confusion.
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see "timeline of electoral reform 1972-present" for more info.
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