While this complaint is technically true for SPAV, the likelihood that a popular candidate would fail to win a seat because everyone thought they were too popular is just… Not gonna happen. We already know from real-world AV elections that voters largely prefer to vote honestly, there’s no reason to think they would get more strategic when it gets harder to figure out the optimal strategy.
This is a problem inherit to nearly all systems designed to produce proportional results. I honestly can’t think of a worthwhile system that doesn’t have this problem. Anyway, the goal is not to make the parties take turns. It’s to make it possible for minor parties to win seats in the legislature. In the end, no single party would ever have a controlling majority, and they would be forced to form coalitions to pass legislation.
We already know from real-world AV elections that voters largely prefer to vote honestly, there’s no reason to think they would get more strategic when it gets harder to figure out the optimal strategy.
In plain AV, voting honestly is the optimal strategy - there’s no incentive to vote any other way. It’s not for SPAV. And yes, strategic voting in SPAV is harder to figure out than strategic voting in FPTP, but it’s far from impossible - basically you don’t vote for a popular candidate you support so your vote for other candidates counts for more, relying on the assumption that enough other people will vote for the popular candidate you support to allow them to win anyways.
While this complaint is technically true for SPAV, the likelihood that a popular candidate would fail to win a seat because everyone thought they were too popular is just… Not gonna happen. We already know from real-world AV elections that voters largely prefer to vote honestly, there’s no reason to think they would get more strategic when it gets harder to figure out the optimal strategy.
This is a problem inherit to nearly all systems designed to produce proportional results. I honestly can’t think of a worthwhile system that doesn’t have this problem. Anyway, the goal is not to make the parties take turns. It’s to make it possible for minor parties to win seats in the legislature. In the end, no single party would ever have a controlling majority, and they would be forced to form coalitions to pass legislation.
In plain AV, voting honestly is the optimal strategy - there’s no incentive to vote any other way. It’s not for SPAV. And yes, strategic voting in SPAV is harder to figure out than strategic voting in FPTP, but it’s far from impossible - basically you don’t vote for a popular candidate you support so your vote for other candidates counts for more, relying on the assumption that enough other people will vote for the popular candidate you support to allow them to win anyways.