Tactical Voting

[Jotari]

So it's election season once more, the real important election, Fire Emblem Heroes Choose Your Legends. Which gives me motivation to open up a conversation about tactical voting. What is tactical voting I hear you ask? Well it's basically voting against the person you want to lose more than the person you want to win. IE I don't want Gate Keeper to win CYL so I'm voting for Male Byleth instead, even though who I really want to win is Lucas (and yeah, I'm talking about Fire Emblem stuff to make this light hearted, but this is a genuine Serious Discussion topic I want to broach and I don't want to make the really obvious direct parallels which might seem more inflammatory).

So personally I find this to be a completely undemocratic way of approaching things and borderline abhorrent. Yet it seems to be the logic almost everyone serious about the democratic process works upon. But the whole point of democracy is to express the will of the public. If almost everyone who votes for Byleth does so because they don't want gatekeeper to win, and almost everyone who votes for Gatekeeper does so because they don't want Byleth to win, then Lucas, the actual candidate that most people prefer ends up losing. This isn't a method of doing things that encourages parties to put the best candidate forward, it encourages them to put the least bad one. Personally I would not vote for a party or candidate that I'm not actually in favor of out of fear of opposition. And if I don't like any of the options then I outright will not vote at all. If I'm in a situation where the two leading parties are the fascists and the communists (that's not a hyperbole of the USA's current situation, it's the situation 1930s Germany was pretty much in) then no one is getting my vote at all. Course that's the extremist situation but all the way up the ladder to the minuscule (even CYL) I think the same principals should hold. Vote for what you actually believe in rather than against who you're more afraid of. Because fear mongering is what leads to most radicalization.

Ultimately there's no way we can ever stop tactical voting, (you'd have to basically quiz people on how sincere they are which, yeah, that ain't happening in any actually democratic system. Though removing stuff like First Passed the Post and using a representative parliamentary system will reduce the effects of it, I'm not sure if anyone's ever tried it but allowing people to directly vote against candidates they don't like with negative votes seems like it could be a way to express the same sentiment without propping up someone you don't believe in, though that's something I'm tossing out of my head right now so there's probably some weakness there I'm not foreseeing, otherwise people would be doing it, though I guess Single Transferable Vote is something akin to that), but personally I'd like to discourage it as much as I can. But I reckon I'm probably in the minority in that regard, so that's my two cents. How do you feel about it?

Edited April 13, 2022 by Jotari

[ping]

20 minutes ago, Jotari said:

If I'm in a situation where the two leading parties are the fascists and the communists (that's not a hyperbole of the USA's current situation, it's the situation 1930s Germany was pretty much in) then no one is getting my vote at all.

That's... not really accurate. Like, at all. The last free election in the Weimar Republic resulted in seven factions with at least 10 seats in parliament, with the Social Democrats being the second-strongest after the Nazis. What helped Hitler's rise to power (not on its own, of course) was that in total, the anti-parliamentary factions (nazis, communists, monarchists) had the majority, but there never was an election where nazis and commies were the only, or only realistic, option.

[Jotari]

1 minute ago, ping said:

That's... not really accurate. Like, at all. The last free election in the Weimar Republic resulted in seven factions with at least 10 seats in parliament, with the Social Democrats being the second-strongest after the Nazis. What helped Hitler's rise to power (not on its own, of course) was that in total, the anti-parliamentary factions (nazis, communists, monarchists) had the majority, but there never was an election where nazis and commies were the only, or only realistic, option.

Well I wasn't trying to suggest a case of a single election, but fascism being encouraged as an alternative to communism and vice versa was an element as far as I've been informed. There was a lot of fear mongering basically.

[Sooks]

I would say it’s unfortunate people feel like they’re in that situation, and they shouldn’t be in that situation, but I wouldn’t call it undemocratic. People feel like the choice is A or B and that’s the scenario they’re given because using your vote on C or D or Z is “throwing away your vote” (yes we’re going here) so when you make people feel like only 2 of them matter, they don’t feel like they have a choice, so voting for the lesser of two evils is the will of the people because that’s the only way they feel they have to not get the worse of the two in office. It isn’t the voting principle that’s undemocratic; it’s the system.

And that’s on the two party system.

[Jotari]

31 minutes ago, Sooks said:

I would say it’s unfortunate people feel like they’re in that situation, and they shouldn’t be in that situation, but I wouldn’t call it undemocratic. People feel like the choice is A or B and that’s the scenario they’re given because using your vote on C or D or Z is “throwing away your vote” (yes we’re going here) so when you make people feel like only 2 of them matter, they don’t feel like they have a choice, so voting for the lesser of two evils is the will of the people because that’s the only way they feel they have to not get the worse of the two in office. It isn’t the voting principle that’s undemocratic; it’s the system.

And that’s on the two party system.

While it's going to be exacerbated in a two party system, it's not something that's entirely absent in a broader parliamentary system. And I guess my main point is that is better to throw away your vote than to vote for something your not actually on board with out of fear or hatred for an opposition. Because the way I see it the only reason people see voting for smaller parties as throwing away your vote (it isn't, because it all contributes to the data, even not voting at all) is precisely because so many people assume smaller parties don't stand a chance.

[Sooks]

1 minute ago, Jotari said:

precisely because so many people assume smaller parties don't stand a chance.

Because we, if we keep talking about the U.S., we have a two party system! I understand this still exists in broader parliamentary systems, as you point out, BUT I don’t know enough about those to comment, however I will say that it’s a less issue if the candidates get big because of “the will of the people”. If that happens, that is.

4 minutes ago, Jotari said:

And I guess my main point is that is better to throw away your vote than to vote for something your not actually on board with out of fear or hatred for an opposition.

I disagree, as there is a much more major impact on your life will people that will be horrible governing getting elected than the data not exactly reflecting who people liked. And a broad implementation of this mindset would just cause the smaller guy to barely get any votes, but to that I say a broad mindset of “throwing away your vote” could cause the really horrible candidates to get in.

4 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Because the way I see it the only reason people see voting for smaller parties as throwing away your vote (it isn't, because it all contributes to the data, even not voting at all) is precisely because so many people assume smaller parties don't stand a chance.

That’s true, because they don’t (assuming U.S.). The big two are automatically poised to be on the ballots in most states and third party candidates need quite a bit of support to get that far, which individually not many people will want to get behind, so they end up not making it. That’s not even on actually winning a national election.

[Jotari]

17 minutes ago, Sooks said:

Because we, if we keep talking about the U.S., we have a two party system! I understand this still exists in broader parliamentary systems, as you point out, BUT I don’t know enough about those to comment, however I will say that it’s a less issue if the candidates get big because of “the will of the people”. If that happens, that is.

I disagree, as there is a much more major impact on your life will people that will be horrible governing getting elected than the data not exactly reflecting who people liked. And a broad implementation of this mindset would just cause the smaller guy to barely get any votes, but to that I say a broad mindset of “throwing away your vote” could cause the really horrible candidates to get in.

That’s true, because they don’t (assuming U.S.). The big two are automatically poised to be on the ballots in most states and third party candidates need quite a bit of support to get that far, which individually not many people will want to get behind, so they end up not making it. That’s not even on actually winning a national election.

But that's largely because so many people accept that as the only way it can' be and don't support outlying parties even as the man parties become far more partisan.

[Sooks]

1 hour ago, Jotari said:

But that's largely because so many people accept that as the only way it can' be and don't support outlying parties even as the man parties become far more partisan.

Yes but with every election their best bet at not getting the party they fear in is to vote for the only other one that has a realistic chance of winning. People can’t just uproot and say “okay group, we’re all going to this party now,” because not everyone is going to leave the other bigger party and that’s basically handing the first one a victory, so as long as people remain at least okay with one of the big two, your votes are getting wasted going to anyone else when realistically, the choice is just between the big two.

[eclipse]

I believe there's a state that's rolling out ranked voting.  Hope it goes well - it's not an absolute solution, but it's better than what we have now.

[Benice]

One way to sorta help the smaller parties would be to implement proportional representation, although I'd doubt that most people would see it as an option. Still, most states seemed to have abut 2-3% voting for an independant, so those independants could ultimately end up actually holdning 2-3% of the house.

 

[Armchair General]

26 minutes ago, Benice said:

One way to sorta help the smaller parties would be to implement proportional representation, although I'd doubt that most people would see it as an option. Still, most states seemed to have abut 2-3% voting for an independant, so those independants could ultimately end up actually holdning 2-3% of the house.

 

I'm not entirely sure if it works that way.

[Benice]

Just now, Armchair General said:

I'm not entirely sure if it works that way.

Well, unless I am mistaken, (which I very well could be) I think that's at least how it's supposed to.

[Sooks]

32 minutes ago, Benice said:

One way to sorta help the smaller parties would be to implement proportional representation, although I'd doubt that most people would see it as an option. Still, most states seemed to have abut 2-3% voting for an independant, so those independants could ultimately end up actually holdning 2-3% of the house.

On a national scale putting votes by party together that could help but our current system sees each state voting for their own representatives, and only ONE state has enough reps for 2-3% of them to be a number greater than one (California).

Edited January 26, 2021 by Sooks

[Benice]

7 minutes ago, Sooks said:

On a national scale putting votes by party together that could help but our current system sees each state voting for their own representatives, and only ONE state has enough reps for 2-3% of them to be a number greater than one (California).

Hm.

Still, I don't actually really see a problem with completely overhauling the electoral system so that more people actually get properly represented, but I'm not American, so what do I know?

[Sooks]

5 minutes ago, Benice said:

Hm.

Still, I don't actually really see a problem with completely overhauling the electoral system so that more people actually get properly represented, but I'm not American, so what do I know?

That’s because there isn’t one. Respecting the constitution if it isn’t working really isn’t that important, and that’s the only argument I’ve seen saying we shouldn’t. The system doesn’t work. It’s undemocratic. You don’t need to be American to know that. The electoral college is how we got stuck with four years of Trump.

Edit: Wait wrong system. The house is fine, since it’s actually about representation, kinda.

Edited January 26, 2021 by Sooks

[AnonymousSpeed]

7 hours ago, Jotari said:

So personally I find this to be a completely undemocratic way of approaching things and borderline abhorrent.

Well, there's a severe difference in how this works in video games and in real life.

Real life doesn't have a lot of zero sum games whereas Choose Your Legends is quite a bit more rigid. While it is true that only one person can be the president of the United States, the issue facing the country is one of overcentralization. Too many different mutually exclusive interests are attempting to make the rules they want standardized for all, which would put a lot of people under rules they don't like. However, if control is held more at the local level, each region can get rules better suited to its own interests. You can't federalize Choose Your Legends, at least not in a way that I'm aware of, so that solution doesn't really apply. Two dudes win and there really isn't a way to compromise, because the system is entirely synthetic. As far as I'm aware though, people are voting Gatekeeper because they like him. Maybe they just like him because of memes or to agitate people, but that isn't really an invalid reason to want someone in Heroes.

That said, if the US wanted to switch to approval voting and retroactively declare Kanye the President of the United States, I'd be down for it.

28 minutes ago, Sooks said:

Edit: Wait wrong system. The house is fine, since it’s actually about representation, kinda.

The Senate and Electoral College are counterbalances to popular representation by design. Correct me if I'm wrong, but more than half the population of the United States lives in five highly urbanized counties or so. Is it right that we should ignore the interests of everyone else in favor of the interests of city dwellers? Should the people who live in the country, who live near the natural resources and depend on them for their livelihood, be strictly subject to the whims of one element of the population?

Now, you may think the answer to that is "yes" and that a tyranny of the 51% is a paranoid concept. You may think the Senate and Electoral College are bad systems, but they are there for a reason which is worth being aware of.

[Sooks]

1 minute ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

The Senate and Electoral College are counterbalances to popular representation by design. Correct me if I'm wrong, but more than half the population of the United States lives in five highly urbanized counties or so. Is it right that we should ignore the interests of everyone else in favor of the interests of city dwellers? Should the people who live in the country, who live near the natural resources and depend on them for their livelihood, be strictly subject to the whims of one element of the population?

Now, you may think the answer to that is "yes" and that a tyranny of the 51% is a paranoid concept. You may think the Senate and Electoral College are bad systems, but they are there for a reason which is worth being aware of.

This is where the edit I made comes in, I was confusing systems because I hopped on what Benice said about the system, including the word electoral, and confused myself.

The problem is that dividing up power in a way that several smaller bodies can over power a bigger one even if the sum of their populations or the sum of the votes who voted one way isn’t as much as the other body (states) is that it doesn’t actually stop anyone being entirely subject to the whims of one portion of the population, it just switches who is getting subjected to who’s whims. I’m not saying we should ignore them, but rather that the current system doesn’t help much, just switches things around.**

*things aren’t always that extreme, presidential elections (aka the elections that use the electoral college) don’t always result in one section of the population being completely foresaken, but just for the purpose of following with the example.

*I’m also ignoring the winner-takes-all system, which is akin to the electoral college shooting itself in the foot if the point is not to subject one bit of the population entirely to the whims of the other.

[AnonymousSpeed]

1 minute ago, Sooks said:

The problem is that dividing up power in a way that several smaller bodies can over power a bigger one even if the sum of their populations or the sum of the votes who voted one way isn’t as much as the other body (states) is that it doesn’t actually stop anyone being entirely subject to the whims of one portion of the population, it just switches who is getting subjected to who’s whims. I’m not saying we should ignore them, but rather that the current system doesn’t help much, just switches things around.

There's a contradiction there though. If several smaller bodies are overpowering a bigger one, then there are several smaller elements of the population in a coalition against the largest element. While it can be easy to see things in terms of red states and blue states, there is more ideological diversity between Utah and South Carolina than we tend to give credit for, and that's not even taking into account Florida or other swing states which are a necessary part of these anti-city coalitions. That's only looking at states as population elements, you can break it down much further if you wanted.

1 minute ago, Sooks said:

*things aren’t always that extreme, presidential elections (aka the elections that use the electoral college) don’t always result in one section of the population being completely foresaken, but just for the purpose of following with the example.

Well, depending on you define "section" that might actually be the case but you know, that's life.

1 minute ago, Sooks said:

*I’m also ignoring the winner-takes-all system, which is akin to the electoral college shooting itself in the foot if the point is not to subject one bit of the population entirely to the whims of the other.

Re: Decentralization, but the idea is that you have to garner support from multiple sections of the population. I consider New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Philadelphia to more ideologically unified than the entire rest of the country, but I'm also not a city slicker.

Anyway, this is maybe a bit off topic from the question of tactical voting specifically.

Tactical voting isn't a problem, it's just what happens. You cannot divorce systems from strategic considerations, it's a fools errand to try quite honestly. The attempt to make a system which cannot be gamed is more likely to result in a broken, exploitable system than if you had created a restricted system with greater indifference to the issue.

[Sooks]

1 hour ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

Anyway, this is maybe a bit off topic from the question of tactical voting specifically.

Yes I was thinking that as well.

My point was that I think certain electoral system in the U.S. make it much more necessary than it has to be, and that it itself is not a problem, but it can still be diminished.

[indigoasis]

People a lot smarter than me about politics have already contributed their thoughts, and I'd never realized that tactical voting was a term. Now that I (think I) understand tactical voting, it does remind me of the concept of choosing between the lesser of two (or multiple) evils (which is probably exactly what it is). I think that it's a flawed thought process since it's forcing the view that there is only those options, when in reality everyone has the option to just... not choose the presented options (a video game comparison to help understand would be the route split in Fates, where Corrin can ditch both presented sides and make his own path, or whatever word fluff that they used). 

To me, I would think that, out of all active voters, seeing that there's a discrepancy between the total number of votes sent in versus the total number of active voters (so less total votes than total voters) would tell me that people chose not to vote or could not vote, and that the people who chose not to vote did so because the options available to them were not appealing choices (or just didn't feel like it).

The whole idea of voting being your civic duty forces the perspective that your life depends on you to vote (which sort of ties back into the lesser of two evils concept where it pronounces those choices as the only choices you can make, and that you have to vote for one of them), even though I think that not voting is a valid choice to make and could be considered a vote in it's own way. Of course... the only votes that are counted are the ones that are for choosing a candidate, which pretty much turns not voting into a non-valid option. (I do wonder what would happen if a majority of votes were from not voting, assuming that it's considered as an option?)

As for taking your vote elsewhere (as in choosing to go with third parties), the focus on the two major U.S. parties leaves third parties to cower in the shadows, and it doesn't give them nowhere near as much attention as they should get. A reason why voting for third parties is considered a "throwaway vote" is because they aren't given the chance.

My ramblings aside, I can understand the logic of tactical voting, though. "Other options are looked down upon or are not feasibly viable, and this one popular guy doesn't look like a good choice to me, so go with the other popular guy that has the best chance to beat the first popular guy so that the first popular guy doesn't win and therefore fulfill my civic duty of voting in the process."

Those are more or less my thoughts, I guess.

[Armchair General]

5 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but more than half the population of the United States lives in five highly urbanized counties or so. Is it right that we should ignore the interests of everyone else in favor of the interests of city dwellers? Should the people who live in the country, who live near the natural resources and depend on them for their livelihood, be strictly subject to the whims of one element of the population?

Now, you may think the answer to that is "yes" and that a tyranny of the 51% is a paranoid concept. You may think the Senate and Electoral College are bad systems, but they are there for a reason which is worth being aware of.

It's not five, and I'm not sure if it's ten, either. 

 

My point is, that you're excluding quite a few major cities that didn't make the top 10 list, especially if you never had the sense of how big the nation really is.

Edited January 27, 2021 by Armchair General

[AnonymousSpeed]

2 hours ago, indigoasis said:

To me, I would think that, out of all active voters, seeing that there's a discrepancy between the total number of votes sent in versus the total number of active voters (so less total votes than total voters) would tell me that people chose not to vote or could not vote, and that the people who chose not to vote did so because the options available to them were not appealing choices (or just didn't feel like it).

As for taking your vote elsewhere (as in choosing to go with third parties), the focus on the two major U.S. parties leaves third parties to cower in the shadows, and it doesn't give them nowhere near as much attention as they should get. A reason why voting for third parties is considered a "throwaway vote" is because they aren't given the chance.

In Soviet Russia, there was only one candidate, but they still had to receive enough votes to enter / remain in office. If they did not reach a certain threshold, another candidate would be put forward and the election would be repeated. That said, if you feel like throwing your vote away, doing it on a third party (if you're a Libertarian) is a good idea. The strategic benefit is that it might turn out a number of people agree with you.

1 hour ago, Armchair General said:

It's not five, and I'm not sure if it's ten, either.

Ah, my mistake. It's actually 146 counties.

Quite a bit off, but I'll stick by the general point, especially given that many of these counties contain portions of a few large metropolitan areas.

I think it's actually 18 counties necessary to win the electoral college. I've heard that used to argue the system doesn't actually protect rural interests but that doesn't seem to be how it works out in practice.

Note there is a fundamental flaw in using the current condition of the US as reasoning an institution designed over 200 years ago.

Edited January 27, 2021 by AnonymousSpeed

[Jotari]

11 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

 

Tactical voting isn't a problem, it's just what happens. You cannot divorce systems from strategic considerations, it's a fools errand to try quite honestly. The attempt to make a system which cannot be gamed is more likely to result in a broken, exploitable system than if you had created a restricted system with greater indifference to the issue.

This is true as I note in the OP. There's no way to measure sincerity so it's impossible to actually prevent it. Bit certain voting styles can definitely lessen it's effects. But it is definitely not an American centric issue. Tactical voting is a large part of every elector base (and while I can't say I'm super surprised this topic immediately went USA centric, I didn't want to steer it in that direction, which is why I chose CYL over more obvious American elections).

Also you could sort of federalize CYL if the votes were divided between games (with maybe a second election after every game has a number 1 candidate...or some kind of electorial college system were votes to games are worth more or less depending on either how many characters are in a given game or how well a given game sold).

[Armchair General]

13 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

In Soviet Russia, there was only one candidate, but they still had to receive enough votes to enter / remain in office. If they did not reach a certain threshold, another candidate would be put forward and the election would be repeated. That said, if you feel like throwing your vote away, doing it on a third party (if you're a Libertarian) is a good idea. The strategic benefit is that it might turn out a number of people agree with you.

Ah, my mistake. It's actually 146 counties.

Quite a bit off, but I'll stick by the general point, especially given that many of these counties contain portions of a few large metropolitan areas.

I think it's actually 18 counties necessary to win the electoral college. I've heard that used to argue the system doesn't actually protect rural interests but that doesn't seem to be how it works out in practice.

Note there is a fundamental flaw in using the current condition of the US as reasoning an institution designed over 200 years ago.

Sure, the people in the rural areas might get screwed over as far as federal and state elections goes; but is there any evidence of it actually happening? I mean, I haven't seen anyone complaining about that lack of aid their getting, but then again, I live in one of those counties.

[AnonymousSpeed]

12 hours ago, Jotari said:

This is true as I note in the OP. There's no way to measure sincerity so it's impossible to actually prevent it. Bit certain voting styles can definitely lessen it's effects. But it is definitely not an American centric issue. Tactical voting is a large part of every elector base (and while I can't say I'm super surprised this topic immediately went USA centric, I didn't want to steer it in that direction, which is why I chose CYL over more obvious American elections).

Also you could sort of federalize CYL if the votes were divided between games (with maybe a second election after every game has a number 1 candidate...or some kind of electorial college system were votes to games are worth more or less depending on either how many characters are in a given game or how well a given game sold).

To be fair, US politics are a heck of a lot more interesting than Fire Emblem: Waifu PNGs. It also goes back to my point about how video games screw up how we perceive reality. Voting in Heroes happens in a totally closed, arbitrary system, rather than a merely mostly arbitrary and theoretically flexible system. I have some objections to the objections people raise to the US voting system, but if we're trying to not specifically hone in on American elections, I'll save it for another time.

I do not agree that your proposal would amount to a federal solution. The idea of federalism is that each region gets to make its own decisions and is the primary bearer of the consequences. However, the unit pool in Heroes is the same for all users. Your voting patterns still affect people outside your "community." When you get to your electoral college suggestion, you can start to see that we begin jumping through hoops, trying to find weird qualifiers to account this discrepancy or that inequality. In my experience, that's when you know you've taken the totally wrong approach to addressing the issue. Elegance will serve as proof of your idea's merit.

Though you could just not play the game, that probably counts as a federal solution. Don't play Heroes, don't vote in Heroes, don't care if Heroes players don't like what they voted for.

3 hours ago, Armchair General said:

Sure, the people in the rural areas might get screwed over as far as federal and state elections goes; but is there any evidence of it actually happening? I mean, I haven't seen anyone complaining about that lack of aid their getting, but then again, I live in one of those counties.

Environmentalism and free trade are perceived by many rural voters as harmful to them. This includes rural union democrats, who legitimately are overshadowed by their urban counterparts. You can argue that these are in fact good policy goals, but in a democracy it is public sentiment that counts. There's also the fact that cities tend to dominate popular culture and steer the development of cultural attitudes, which is probably even worse than simply dictating policy decisions.