Hello
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I’ve been promoting #NegativeVote since 2003. I was invited to present the concept at the World Forum for Democracy, Nov. 2017.
https://youtu.be/b6tauXJgLoM
Organized a citizens’ initiative in Taiwan in 2017 and was blocked by the government. Am in the process of organizing another similar initiative. I also organized an initiative in El Cerrito, CA in 2020 to implement the concept, unfortunately signature collection was blocked by COVID-19. Plan to renew that effort in 2022. -
@Sam-Chang said in Hello:
I’ve been promoting #NegativeVote since 2003
Why would you promote Negative Vote over Approval or STAR? I cannot see any possible advantage.
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I like the idea of negative voting, but I think it is a terrible name from a marketing perspective. ("negative" is not exactly a positive term....)
I have also considered "For and against" voting as an option, where you can vote for one candidate and against one candidate for each office. (in negative voting, you can vote for one candidate OR against one candidate, but not both)
The nice thing about both of these is that they very elegantly balance out vote splitting... "ideologically similar" candidates split both the positive and the negative vote, so there is far less incentive to cluster into parties, and therefore less of the polarizing effect that vote splitting has under FPTP.
I like that these methods are easier to explain than STAR or Approval. Remember, it's not just about explaining how they are tabulated, but explaining why it is an improvement. These methods are more directly comparable to FPTP, while eliminating the main downside. I also think people would have a lot easier time using them than STAR or Approval, since they map better to how people actually think.
I'm glad you made a video, but I think you'd do well to make one that is shorter and less dry. I also think it is a mistake to concentrate too much on actual elections (such as Clinton vs Trump) since you will automatically distance a good portion of your audience. If you must, maybe show elections like Bill Clinton, George Bush Sr, and Ross Perot. That was long enough ago that present day divisiveness might not distort people's view of your proposed election method.
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@Keith-Edmonds I can say at least one advantage over Approval or STAR: it is far less mentally taxing to vote. You only put one mark on the ballot (per office), and it aligns well with how people naturally think about elections, especially people with limited ability to learn about every candidate.
It doesn't put people in the weird position of saying "what do these numbers actually mean?" or "what does it mean to approve a candidate?" It better captures how people feel emotionally about an election -- typically one candidate jumps out as one they like the most, or one candidate jumps out as one they dislike. Instead of having to vote for the "lesser of two evils", they can just go ahead and say who is the most evil, if that is how they feel.
Meanwhile it is very easy to explain how it reduces or even eliminates the negative effects of vote splitting.
Approval and STAR may well have mathematical advantages, but those advantages mean absolutely nothing if you can't sell them to a wider group than the dozen or so who regularly come to forums like these. And I'd argue that even if every single voter is a math genius that thoroughly understands STAR and Approval, that doesn't mean it will be all that easy to vote with them. Ballots quickly become overwhelming when there are lots of offices, and lots of candidates for each office. Keeping it at "one check mark per office" is most definitely an advantage.
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I can say at least one advantage over Approval or STAR: it is far less mentally taxing to vote. You only put one mark on the ballot (per office)
They did a study on that an the cognitive load for single mark ballots were higher than score ballots. It is less effort to make the mark but more work mentally to decide what to do. This makes sense if you the strategic decisions which need to be made.
It doesn't put people in the weird position of saying "what do these numbers actually mean?" or "what does it mean to approve a candidate?" It better captures how people feel emotionally about an election -- typically one candidate jumps out as one they like the most, or one candidate jumps out as one they dislike. Instead of having to vote for the "lesser of two evils", they can just go ahead and say who is the most evil, if that is how they feel.
I just do not think that is true. Do you have any evidence people think this way?
Meanwhile it is very easy to explain how it reduces or even eliminates the negative effects of vote splitting.
I dont think it does. Can you explain how if there are two candidates I like and two I do not like how I express this?
Approval and STAR may well have mathematical advantages, but those advantages mean absolutely nothing if you can't sell them to a wider group than the dozen or so who regularly come to forums like these.
They are being implemented in real elections with thousands of voters. I do not think this is true for Negative Voting.
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Do you have any evidence people think this way?
I'm not going to debate that with you. I know you think about candidates in absolute terms while I think relatively. I'll leave it at that.
Can you explain how if there are two candidates I like and two I do not like how I express this?
I'm not sure I understand your question (or what that has to do with it eliminating the negative effects of vote splitting, which to me is a completely different issue than how you resolve one particular scenario).
You seem to have described a voter who, had he used an approval ballot, would have approved candidate A and B, but not C and D....
That's obviously perfectly reasonable. What's not reasonable is to assume that said approval ballot represents the entire extent of how the voter actually feels about the four candidates. For instance, if he "approves" both A and B, that doesn't mean he has no preference between the two. Even if he does consider them exactly equal, it's possible one is more likely to seem to be a front runner than the other, so that candidate might be the better one to give a plus vote to. And then, even if those are equal, another option is to give a negative vote to either C or D, if one or the other is preferred or seen as more likely to be a front runner.
There are a whole lot of reasons a voter can choose one or another candidate to select for either a positive or negative vote. The strategy is very similar to strategy in FPTP, but you've got more options. I think it is common for voters to only have a strong opinion about a single candidate (especially in "downballot" elections), and often that opinion is negative. I think many people would find it refreshing that they are more likely to be able to directly express that simple opinion in "negative voting." But again, I don't need to justify my intuition on that.
Negative voting has the voter supply a tiny bit more information than a FPTP voter does -- technically one additional bit per ballot ("ballot" meaning for a single office, of course). Some people would see that as good and some would see it as bad. My current view is that it is more good than bad, especially when considering marketing. Personally, I would love to fully rate or rank a dozen presidential candidates.... but not so much with regard to some local office where I've barely heard of any of them.
I strongly suspect that, compared to any other method I've seen that attempts to address vote splitting, voting with negative voting would take the least amount of learning or re-learning compared to FPTP.
I'm highly skeptical that various studies (that by necessity seek to answer very generalized questions) prove anything one way or the other, but I don't really care to debate that at this point.
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I know you think about candidates in absolute terms while I think relatively.
Not sure what you mean by thinking of candidates in absolute terms. I have always been emphatic that voters should score RELATIVE to the others on the ballot.
I'm not sure I understand your question (or what that has to do with it eliminating the negative effects of vote splitting, which to me is a completely different issue than how you resolve one particular scenario).
Proof by counter example is a perfectly rigorous method for mathematical proof. I pointed out a scenario where negative voting could not encode enough expression to resolve both vote splitting instances on the ballot. You reply by stating that Approval Voting (which I did not mention) will not encode all the information needed to resolve an issue unrelated to vote splitting.
The strategy is very similar to strategy in FPTP, but you've got more options.
Agreed. Vote splitting still exists but it is better than plurality voting.
I think it is common for voters to only have a strong opinion about a single candidate
This is what I was doubting in the last email. I would need some real evidence before I endorsed a system that baked that assumption into it.
I'm highly skeptical that various studies (that by necessity seek to answer very generalized questions) prove anything one way or the other, but I don't really care to debate that at this point.
I agree that it is hard to get a definitive answer. In the absense of a knowing I would stay away from restricting the expression of voters. This comes with a trade off in complexity where the spectrum is something like
plurality - Negative voting -IRV - Approval - Score - STAR
You need to be to the right of IRV to not have vote splitting and that is what I think is the most important.
