I’d take RCV over nothing, but STAR and approval are significantly better like the other user said.
Some reasons for approval
- Addition is the only math involved. So it is extremely easy to get live results during counting. It makes auditing votes extremely easy.
- It is dead simple to understand, so the least amount of voters will be confused by it.
A longer form explanation of some of the other stuff:
Approval voting sounds good.
One issue I see with the star system is that people tend to have preconceptions about star ratings. E.g. some people never rate 5 stars on principle or will rate something 3 stars without realizing that is a 60% rating. My point is I think you might see some weird skew in the results based on this.
I can see that happening, which is why I think approval is the best of them all.
And with that said, so long as not all the votes are given equal scores, their votes would still matter even if they don’t believe in 5 star perfection.
And IIRC, there is nothing actually stopping a STAR system from using a 1 to 10 point scale instead of 5, which would further help with that issue.
Let’s ne honest though, that’s not the real issue. The real issue is low info voters aren’t going to have a nuanced opinion like. It will be 0 or 10. All of the votes coming in like this will invalidate any consideration you spent some time working out to decide a 7.5 is the perfect representation of how you feel.
Even more big picture. We are wasting our efforts arguing over the details of a voting system when voting reform isn’t even on the table.
I love how this video explains the differences between the voting methods. It’s what made me prefer STAR over RCV.
