Approval Voting as a Workable Compromise
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First, I'll point out that Fargo is raw Approval and St. Louis is Approval-into-Runoff. These behave very differently. (Hint: the latter is way better, and is basically STAR's twin brother.)
Second, I am in complete agreement that the best path forward is simple improvements to IRV.
But you can do even simplier and better than BTR. You just slap a Condorcet check on it, the end.
Your ballots are now precinct summable and monotonic outside of cycles. The results are incredibly straightforward, ("Here's how much the winner beats everyone else by:") yet it also produces a complete pairwise matrix for any campaigns or political scientists who want it. It's 100% Condorcet efficient; no more center-squeeze, maximimally resistant to polarization. It's fully cloneproof.
And best of all, it exhibits the highest strategy resistance of any method. (Only Baldwin's comes close.)
BTR is good, but it should be regarded as strictly inferior to the more straightforward Condorcet//Hare alternatives unless you are somehow at a loss for computational speed.
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@jack-waugh said in Approval Voting as a Workable Compromise:
Maybe our best marketing strategy is to try slide B2R IRV rating-ballots into the place of Hare IRV RCV in popular mindshare as a solution with the same flash but without the disappointing and counterintuitive results that Hare often delivers.
People have been trying this for as long as IRV has been proposed. The answer to "why does IRV keep gianing ground" is "because billionaires keep pouring money into FairVote and FairVote keeps lying about IRV".
There's nothing really wrong with approval, score, or STAR except that people heard about IRV first. As I've mentioned before, the easiest way to deal with that is to get a case to the Supreme Court that strikes down any nonmonotonic system as unconstitutional (a strategy that's already been used successfully in Germany).
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@chocopi said in Approval Voting as a Workable Compromise:
First, I'll point out that Fargo is raw Approval and St. Louis is Approval-into-Runoff. These behave very differently. (Hint: the latter is way better, and is basically STAR's twin brother.)
Meanwhile, I'm extremely skeptical. The average number of approvals per ballot in St. Louis is way lower than in Fargo, and the approval curve is much less sharply-peaked. That suggests to me that some voters are turkey-raising. Though luckily, not enough are doing it for it something to have gone wrong… yet.
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@chocopi said in Approval Voting as a Workable Compromise:
But you can do even simpler and better than BTR. You just slap a Condorcet check on it, the end.
Please lay this out as a separate topic.
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@lime said in Approval Voting as a Workable Compromise:
There's nothing really wrong with approval,
I suggest that Approval makes it more work than necessary to vote responsibly as one has to resort to a stochastic technique.
score,
I suggest that Score makes it more work than necessary to vote responsibly as one has to exaggerate support for ones compromise candidate.
or STAR
Same as Score except that the candidates will come in pairs of near-clones.
except that people heard about IRV first. As I've mentioned before, the easiest way to deal with that is to get a case to the Supreme Court that strikes down any nonmonotonic system as unconstitutional (a strategy that's already been used successfully in Germany).
Then there goes Score-B2R.
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@jack-waugh said in Approval Voting as a Workable Compromise:
I suggest that Approval makes it more work than necessary to vote responsibly as one has to resort to a stochastic technique.
Mixed strategies can be optimal in any electoral system.
@jack-waugh said in Approval Voting as a Workable Compromise:
I suggest that Score makes it more work than necessary to vote responsibly as one has to exaggerate support for ones compromise candidate.
…except, ironically, score makes randomization less important by letting you give partial scores instead of requiring you to vote at random.
@jack-waugh said in Approval Voting as a Workable Compromise:
Then there goes Score-B2R.
That's fine. STAR, Smith//Score, ranked pairs, etc. are all probably good enough. IRV isn't.
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@cfrank said in Approval Voting as a Workable Compromise:
I’m also considering what @SaraWolk suggests, namely that another method like RCV (IRV) might be a more practical conduit for change, even though it is significantly less ideal.
I'm not recommending RCV (IRV). I think it's oversold, broken, and extremely damaging to the voting reform movement.
I recommend STAR, Approval, and Condorcet, and support a number of others.
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@jack-waugh @ChocoPi in BTR, it is already impossible for a Condorcet winner to be eliminated, yes?
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@sarawolk I see, I misunderstood your position and took my own cynicism too far. I agree that RCV(IRV) is damaging to reform efforts.
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@cfrank said in Approval Voting as a Workable Compromise:
@jack-waugh @ChocoPi in BTR, it is already impossible for a Condorcet winner to be eliminated, yes?
That's what I thought, so sticking a Condorcet check on should make no difference.
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Approval voting constantly gets attacked by Fairvote people who outright lie about it.
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@isocratia yeah that kind of thing really seems counterproductive, and strange.
