Quick(ish) take: Ranked choice voting is the Wile E. Coyote solution to electoral mechanics

 I loved Looney Tunes.  Didn't you?  The best?  Road Runner & Wile E. Coyote.  They were every scientist's favorite for the elaborate violations of basic physics contained in their dances of improbability.  Classic.  In the simplest form, though, the iconic sequences are those in which Wile E. Coyote runs off a cliff, and fails to fall by not looking down.

At the moment, the New York mayoral race has brought some attention to "ranked choice" voting.  Ranked choice voting is a Wile E. Coyote solution.  Don't look down.  That way, you won't fall.  Eventually, you will.  But not until you look down.  In this brief post, I force you to look down.  Me-meep!

So what are the problems that supposedly need to be solved by ranked choice voting?  We normally use plurality rule voting, which creates several "issues."  It reduces the number of effective choices to two, by Duverger's law.  In so doing, the plurality rule creates strategic problems.  It creates disincentives to vote for your first choice, and forces you to consider how others vote.  Horror of horrors, it makes you think about... compromise!  Anything but that!  Your vote is supposed to be a sacred representation of your true inner self, right?  Right?  No, but idiots think that.  And then there are the people who just kinda think that more choices on the ballot would be kinda nice, in the same way that a nice, long wine list at a restaurant is nice, even if it means you need the sommelier to tell you what to order because you know fuck-all about wine.  (And don't get me started about how much bullshit there is in wine snobbery!)

So let's have a new voting system!  Right?

No.

Quick refresher.  Three voters, 1, 2 and 3.  They each have the following preference rankings over three choices, A, B and C.

1:  A, then B, then C.

2:  B, then C, then A.

3:  C, then A, then B.

Let's review their preferences.  Not how they'd vote, but their preferences.  By not saying jack shit about their votes, I will make statements that you cannot get around by devising any clever voting rule.

Collectively, this group prefers A to B, because 1 and 3 prefer A to B.

Collectively, this group prefers B to C, because 1 and 2 prefer B to C.

Collectively, this group prefers C to A, because 2 and 3 prefer C to A.

Got that?  They prefer A to B, they prefer B to C, and they prefer C to A.  That's a violation of transitivity.  Their collective preferences make no fucking sense.

Almost all groups have preferences that look like this when there are more than two choices.  And the dirty secret is that there are always more than two choices.  It's just that we sometimes suppress some choices through things like a two-party system.

All electoral outcomes are merely the result of the voting rule.  That's it.  "Democracy" is bullshit.  There is no such thing as the will of the people.  Perhaps I should say that democracy is a collective illusion.

I just made you look down.

All of this stupid shit about designing voting rules?  This is Looney Tunes.  As in, it is both crazy, and done in violation of basic mathematics.  What happens when you create a new voting rule?  You potentially affect who wins.  Do you make the process more "democratic?"

No.  'Cuz there ain't no such fucking thing.

Look down.  There's no ground there.  This is all bullshit.  There is no such thing as the will of the people, and all of these games, messing with voting rules?  It's all a joke.

Me-meep!