administrators

@jack-waugh I'd like to find an explicit example eventually if possible. I haven't fully formalized the criterion as I imagine it yet. In terms of the loose "mere existence" criterion, there are definitely examples, since the modification can be applied to any voting system, and if you consider any voting system non-additive, then we can use that one.
For the updated concept, I think both the concept itself and the concept of what it means for a system to be additive need improved formalization. Do you think you can suggest what it means for a system to be additive mathematically?

@robla The feedback I've heard from various stakeholders and reformers across the landscape is that many people oppose narrowing the field too much, which can prevent minor parties from having a meaningful voice in the general or being seen as viable. Being on the general ballot is an important part of the path to becoming viable for a third party.

For that reason, I think there's more consensus around advancing a set number of candidates to the general (instead of setting an approval threshold). Given that the voting method does fine with multiple viable candidates, I think advancing the top 4, 5 or 6 is totally reasonable. The upper limit is set by voter fatigue.

I think two stage Approval is generally the way to go for Approval elections. Approval Top-Two makes a lot of sense for jurisdictions that already have Top-Two, but all other things being equal I'd recommend Approval Top-5 or Top-4. I'm not sure if an even number is better or not, but that's something that should be studied and modeled for each system.

For STAR I generally recommend having a conditional primary, where the top 5 (or 4) advance. And, if less candidates than that register you just skip the primary all together, which saves a bunch of money.

@jack-waugh I was reflecting on the balance criterion, and considered a direction for formalization of it that might protect against the adversarial construct I described some years ago.

The idea is to enforce not just existence of “opposite” ballots, which can be too weak, but to demand something like, “There is a public, computationally-tractable ‘reversal’ operation on ballots, induced by the ballot semantics (in some way…), such that every ballot and its reversal cancel under the outcome rule.”

Certain symmetry operations such as permuting/relabeling candidates should commute with the reversal. The above would prohibit the “password attack” mechanism I described, because the ballot reversal operation in that case is neither public nor generally computable.

I’m refraining from demanding additivity in the score-like sense to see whether the property of direct interest can be formalized in some way without it.

Just food for thought.

@robla that's a fair point, thank you for your response. In terms of the two-stage aspect in the US, I feel it is more of a de facto party-driven apparatus on top of the actual formal system, in contrast to France for instance where the two stages are the formally recognized method. You're probably also right that ranking more than a handful of candidates is generally pretty unpleasant. In any case I could be wrong about the difficulty of the sell, which would be good.

Approval top-two primary seems like it might be a decent option for single winner, although I figure it doesn't satisfy clone independence, which is pretty unfortunate.
For the fixed approval threshold, you're suggesting that if no candidate obtains the threshold, then the top two proceed?

"...under such a system, they might hire large analytics teams to ensure that both parties advance a sea of clones to drown out the other parties." Yes, exactly.
I was also thinking if there is a threshold, 50% should be imposed, since that guarantees some weak level of majoritarianism which seems important and that ordinary approval can lack.

In terms of single-winner, I'm on board with 50% approval threshold followed by a final round approval. I think that's really simple and seems to solve many problems.
In principle, it even could let people be lazy and not even bother with the second round if they decide that their first approval ballot is satisfactory enough for them.

Youtube Video

Proportional representation in districts, elimination of partisan gerrymandering, and rank-based voting were mentioned.

https://apnews.com/article/fargo-north-dakota-voting-democracy-bdda17efb891a5f910423394d554c41e

Status quo arguments need to be dismantled.

For example, the argument by Rep. Koppelman (R) is that approval voting produces “vanilla” winners. As in, he argues that polarizing or more ideologically extreme candidates (his word was “principled”) are preferable. To whom? And by what measure? Laid bare: therefore, cities should not even be allowed to vote using anything other than (ostensibly?) a polarizing system like choose-one. Koppelman and others making this kind of argument must be pressed to define exactly what they mean by “principled.”

This is not a neutral administrative argument. It is a value judgment imposed upon the voters of Fargo by their state lawmakers, despite Fargo voters having adopted approval voting by ballot initiative, and despite that voluntary change having no impact whatsoever on any other districts.

Taken seriously, this argument treats broad voter acceptability as a defect rather than a democratic virtue. But suppose even this were true—still, approval voting does not prevent voters from approving a polarizing candidate. What it prevents is a polarizing factional candidate winning merely because the rest of the electorate is split among more broadly acceptable alternatives.

Apparently, some supporters of the ban even stated that approval voting was “confusing.” This cannot be taken as a serious objection in context: the basic instruction is simply to vote for every candidate one approves of, and the count is simple addition.

The remaining argument is state uniformity. Gov. Armstrong (R) later stated, arguing against approval voting in Fargo:

• “Now more than ever, we need a consistent, efficient and easy-to-understand voter experience across our entire state to maintain trust in our election system.”

This does not actually show approval voting is inefficient or hard to understand. Approval voting is counted by simple addition, and its basic instruction is straightforward. The only remaining argument is statewide uniformity. But that is an insufficient justification when the local variation is voter-approved and affects no other jurisdiction. Uniformity is not a self-justifying principle. The purported function of uniformity must be interrogated.

The stated concerns for voter experience and trust are especially hollow, as they were used to nullify a voting system Fargo voters adopted for themselves.

These arguments are not neutral logical objections. They are contemptible rationalizations for state preemption: “uniformity” used to nullify local democracy, “confusion” asserted against one of the simplest possible voting rules, and “principled candidates” used as a euphemism for protecting factional advantage. State representatives should not be able to unjustly override a voter-approved local election system while disguising factional preferences as neutral administrative concerns.

ADMIN REMINDER:
If your comments on a post changes topics substantively from the original post, please create your own post so we can stay on topic.

Clarifying questions about terminology are on topic, but this thread is about the Maine Supreme Court ruling so advocacy to change voting system's names is off topic here.

@wolftune Individual people going off and creating their own terms is not going to result in a larger movement wide change.

If that's a quest you care about then you'd need to get consensus from CES, CA Approves, Fargo Approves, Utah Approves, SL Approves, etc. -- which is not going to happen, imo.

I also don't think it should happen. Approval voting already has a solid one word self explanatory name that people know, and that's used in both academic and voter level contexts. That's a huge advantage!

Changing that is not worth it for questionable gains at best. I think it would do a lot of damage to try, and I think the failed efforts to market "pick all that you like" voting illustrate that.

@cfrank Yes, but "choose-any" was selected on the basis of being clear (it rolls off the tongue less well than "approval" I'd say), so it really needs to do that job perfectly before we get on to how well it rolls off the tongue.

Edit - I'd say "choose any number" is a little bit less clunky than "choose however many", but neither are great in that respect.