Approval Voting as a Workable Compromise
-
@lime said in Approval Voting as a Workable Compromise:
I basically agree, but I think we should probably try to squeeze out at least a "Combined approval voting" (-1, 0, 1) option to make Burr candidates a bit less harmful.
Would -1, 0, 1 lose the Majority Criterion? If so would that make much difference in compliance with state constitutions?
-
@gregw said in Approval Voting as a Workable Compromise:
@lime said in Approval Voting as a Workable Compromise:
I basically agree, but I think we should probably try to squeeze out at least a "Combined approval voting" (-1, 0, 1) option to make Burr candidates a bit less harmful.
Would -1, 0, 1 lose the Majority Criterion? If so would that make much difference in compliance with state constitutions?
I don't really think of Woodall's majority-favorite property as being applicable to cardinal systems, since it's based on comparisons of candidates. I also doubt it's written into any state constitutions.
-
@lime the point of this post isn’t to argue that approval voting is superior to other methods or that modifications wouldn’t improve approval voting, it’s to point out that despite other methods being potentially superior, standard approval voting is probably the most realistic target for near future steps toward substantially reformed voting.
Unfortunately, more choices does mean the system is more complicated. You can observe that the addition of even a very simple, marginal modification as you suggest already raises questions. Every question about a method is an opportunity for distrust to be exploited, even if the method is ultimately better. Plurality is terrible, but almost nobody had questions about it, and that’s why it’s stuck around for so long. Do you see what I mean? I may be a bit jaded, but I’m hoping to be realistic.
I don’t mean to be a downer, but my point is a bit sad: in terms of what people would prefer, such as more choices or buttons, what we have to deal with is exactly the fact that people are having a hard time getting what they prefer. The political status quo is strongly opposed to voting reform, it will have to relinquish substantial power and accountability to the people under an effective voting system. There’s a reason only flawed tokenisms like IRV have passed through legislature in recent times. In fact, there is a history of voting reforms being enacted and then reversed.
-
@jack-waugh said in Approval Voting as a Workable Compromise:
@lime said in Approval Voting as a Workable Compromise:
I basically agree, but I think we should probably try to squeeze out at least a "Combined approval voting" (-1, 0, 1) option to make Burr candidates a bit less harmful.
In that case, I hope the default is -1.
Why should the default choice be opposition rather than neutrality?
-
@k98kurz An unknown candidate could be a nightmare relative to the voter's values.
There is no "neutrality" toward an individual candidate. The significance of the score awarded to a candidate lies in its relation to those awarded to each other candidate. The significance operates pairwise. Giving A a higher score than B gives A an advantage over B for reaching the finish line.
-
@jack-waugh I still do not see the rationale for assuming opposition to unknown candidates. If I cast a negative vote for a candidate I despise, that means I want that candidate to do worse than a candidate for whom I have not expressed an opinion. Making the default value a negative vote undermines the negative vote entirely and makes it a meaningless expression.
-
The labeling of +1/-1 is arbitrary. You could just as easily call them 0, .5, 1 instead.
Another is it gives write-ins an unfair advantage (they can win just by not being on the ballot, which keeps them from attracting too much attention).
-
This post is deleted! -
-
@k98kurz, @cfrank put it succinctly. "I think any advantage conferred to one candidate over any other in an election should be granted on an opt-in basis." Giving a candidate the middle score gives them an advantage over candidates who receive the lowest score, either from the voter in question or from other voters.
-
@jack-waugh so then you are philosophically against the concept of a negative vote because you believe it gives an unfair advantage to someone that nobody opposes over someone who a majority of people oppose. The entire purpose of a negative vote is to disadvantage a candidate on an opt-in basis compared to the baseline -- if you make the baseline negative, you are removing that expressive ability entirely.
-
"removing that expressive ability entirely." -- that's incorrect. I'm not removing any voter's expressive ability. Voters are free to use any of the three possible scores with any candidates they know about.
"someone that nobody opposes" -- I don't agree with that framing. Support and opposition are matters of degree. A candidate that nobody opposes would be one whose score as awarded by each voter is at least the average of the other scores awarded by that voter. Let's suppose that Mohandas, Martin, and Benito are on the ballot and Adolf is a write-in about whom I don't know. Say I give Mohandas and Martin the maximum score and Benito the minimum. Then under the negative vote, my ballot will be misinterpreted as giving Adolph the middle score. Under that interpretation, it is giving him partial opposition, because it lowers his score relative to the average of Mohandas, Martin, and Benito. So, for that whole election, Adolf is not a candidate whom no one opposed. My ballot gives him partial opposition. If I had known he was in the election and what he stood for, it would have given him full opposition.
-
@jack-waugh I am not sure that I agree with the framing of opposition as simply anything less than the average support for candidates. Positive sentiment and negative sentiment are qualitatively different experiences -- given a set of 5 friends, I do not necessarily dislike the one who I like less than the others on average; given a set of 5 enemies, I do not necessarily like the one who I dislike less than the others on average.
-
@k98kurz the qualitative experience of a voter has only little to do with the tactics they will employ to get what they want most. We also have to consider what can be easily implemented. While I don’t disagree with you about the suggestion that certain improvements could be made, I do believe (in agreement now with @SaraWolk) that this kind of argument is actually counterproductive to getting voting reform off the ground in the current phase. Adjustments can be made later. Right now we need to get something decent through to replace choose one voting, and that should be urgent priority #1. I strongly believe that the best way we can do that is by pushing with a concerted effort for basic, ordinary approval voting. My opinion is that we need to shift away from the “anything other than choose one” attitude and toward a specific replacement, and my estimation is that approval voting—while definitely not perfect—is the least contentiously agreed upon improvement.
-
@cfrank approval voting would be the simplest, though it might be easier to convince judges who hold to the simplistic "one person, one vote" mantra that combined approval voting allows any one vote to exactly counteract another, not giving any one voter an unfair advantage.
-
@k98kurz What you mean "combined"?
-
@cfrank said in Approval Voting as a Workable Compromise:
my estimation is that approval voting—while definitely not perfect—is the least contentiously agreed upon improvement.
Why doesn't a granule size of 10% instead of 100% qualify as least-contentiously agreed-upon improvement? At least one informant tells me that Approval looks insufficiently expressive for assigning a score to a compromise candidate.
-
I agree that Approval is a workable compromise and I think it should be the default voting method (as opposed to Choose One Plurality.)
On whether it should be the one reform we all work to implement, I don't agree. I don't think Approval is persuasive, and I don't think it's competitive against RCV, the status quo in voting reform. I wish it was.
I absolutely encourage advocates to continue to advocate, and I'll keep advocating for it, but I'm more persuaded now than ever that we need a reform that is scaleable, viable, and that delivers on the goals set out by RCV advocates while addressing it's serious pitfalls.
Approval voting tells inspired voting reformers to stop caring about the things they think they want, to change their priorities, and to trust the simulations over their intuition. That's not a winning pitch. The many benefits of Approval are neither transparent or self-evident to lay people and it appears to violate one person one vote, even though it should be the gold standard.
-
@sarawolk said in Approval Voting as a Workable Compromise:
competitive against RCV
In this connection, I refer you to the thread on Score // Llull.
-
@sarawolk that’s unfortunate, I understand your view. I was not pro approval until recently. In terms of RCV, I assume you mean IRV. I wish at least Tideman’s bottom two runoff were pushed instead. More ideally this would help avoid monotonicity failures but is probably too complicated: https://www.votingtheory.org/forum/topic/316/tideman-s-bottom-n-runoff?_=1716877581500
