Approval Voting as a Workable Compromise
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@toby-pereira it surely makes sense. Hopefully it will gather enough support from the bulk of the voting theory and reform community. Maybe we can show somehow that Approval would have avoided the unfortunate slip up of IRV in Alaska. We can plot the Approval winner for each choice of rank cutoff, and hopefully it will be stable for reasonable choices of cutoff. I wouldn’t be surprised if this has already been done.
Obviously there's this: https://fairvote.org/resources/electoral-systems/ranked_choice_voting_vs_approval_voting/
I haven't looked into whether they compared results for that election, but that would be great. It's a hot topic.Just for context for others who may be following the discussion:
https://alaskapublic.org/2023/09/19/north-to-the-future-alaskas-ranked-choice-voting-system-is-praised-and-criticized-nationally/ -
I agree as well.
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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.
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@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.
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@lime I think unfortunately that changing the voting system at all is squeezing a lot. It might not do well to try something more complex to start. Even minor peculiarities can be difficult to overcome when political forces get involved.
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@jack-waugh said in Approval Voting as a Workable Compromise:
In that case, I hope the default is -1.
Agreed
@cfrank said in Approval Voting as a Workable Compromise:
@lime I think unfortunately that changing the voting system at all is squeezing a lot. It might not do well to try something more complex to start. Even minor peculiarities can be difficult to overcome in the face of the political status quo.
I actually mention this mostly for public approval reasons; empirically, people tend to prefer scales with more options unless they're badly-presented (e.g. people get annoyed if they're given 20 separate bubbles and forced to look through them to find the one they prefer. People also prefer buttons to sliders).
More categories doesn't mean a system is more complicated, though. (If it did, people wouldn't be able to comprehend numbers bigger than 10!)
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@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?
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@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.
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@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.
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@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?
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@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.
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@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.
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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).
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@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.
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@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.
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"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.
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@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.
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@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.
