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[bryant]

I’m not a Democrat; nor am I a Republican. I fall somewhere more or less on the left side of the spectrum, if you insist on a single axis. I prefer a minimalistic government, but I believe that enlightened self-interest calls for more voluntary intervention than your average libertarian advocates. I’m a capitalist. I think the optimal size of self-governed political units is fairly small.

So how do you get my vote in 2004? Easy. Come out in favor of approval voting.

The current majority vote system tends to reinforce the two major parties. In some ways, voting for a third party reduces the chances that a candidate you can stand will get elected. (That doesn’t make it the wrong thing to do; it just describes the practical effects of voting for a third party.) This disenfranchises those who could tolerate, say, a Democrat in office but who would prefer a Green President.

It’s pretty easy to see the problem here. Flip the situation around; say that we’d always had the Green Party and the Republican Party as our main political parties. You’re a liberal who vehemently disagrees with eliminating nuclear power plants or withdrawing from the WTO — but if you don’t vote Green, you’re helping the Republicans win. You aren’t well-represented, even though the Green platform is closer to your beliefs than the Republicans.

If there were no other way to run an election, maybe it’d be OK to grin and bear it. But there are other ways. I don’t particularly expect either the Democrats or Republicans to adopt them, because the net effect is to create an opening for other parties; however, that’s what it would take.

Approval voting is pretty simple. You vote for each candidate who you wouldn’t mind seeing elected. The candidate with the most votes wins. If you’d be OK with Perot or McCain, you vote yes for both of ‘em. There’s no need to let strategic voting obscure your preferences, and you can send a clearer message.

There are some quirky results possible with this system. If 60% of the voters prefer candidate A to any other candidate, but 70% of the voters find candidate B acceptable and only 65% of the voters find candidate A acceptable, then candidate B will win. It would be reasonable to feel that candidate A was getting a raw deal. However, candidate B is still clearly acceptable — so the maximum number of voters are happy.

Condorcet voting fixes that problem, but it’s a fair bit more difficult to describe, and being a realist I’m willing to take things one step at a time. Some improvement is better than no improvement.

Somehow, I expect that neither of the major party candidates will show any real interest in making it possible for third parties to accurately register the degree of their support. Funny, that.

Comments

[robotnik.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure how much this would change things. It's still a winner take all system, right? So the big two parties still probably retain a lock on power. With this system Gore might have gotten elected in 2000, and Bush Sr. might have beat Clinton in 1992, but Ralph Nader and Ross Perot don't actually gain anything. (Unlike in a parliamentary system with some kind of proportional representation.) You might even say that the only thing this system would do is to reduce the chance of 3rd party spoilers.

[bryant]

I don't think it has much short term effect, but I think the long term effect is more significant, because it removes the barriers to third party growth. Right now, the perception of the Greens (since I'm picking on them) is that they're a fringe party. However, let's say they get 15% of the votes in an approval election. Boom, that's newsworthy.

Contrast to the current situation, where people don't want to waste their votes to register support of a party that can't win.

This is particularly important when considering federal matching funds.

[editswlonghair.livejournal.com]

But the problem is, even if a third party garners 15% of the vote in a Presidential election, or hell they make a strong showing and get 49% of the vote, they still don't get any representation in gov't. And the one who wins does not have to do a damn thing to appease the losers. Even though Bush won with 49% of the pop vote, he hasn't done anything during his term to prove he gives a crap- he acts like he had a mandate from the people to enact big changes-even before 9/11 he was doing that.

The real strength of this system would be in electing state reps. Maybe instead of districts, you can vote for the entire delegation. If your state gets 5 reps in the House, you vote for all five of them- would make for a crowded ballot, but this might get closer to a proportional representation instead of winner take all...

But this is all pie in the sky because it ain't never going to happen. Too much money and status quo influence at stake...

[bryant]

Oh yeah. Make no mistake, I'm fairly anarchistic at heart; the problems with a winner-take-all Presidential election seem evident to me. Approval voting is just a first step.

You're right in that approval voting has more effect on the local and state level. I can easily see it leading to a Congress with significant (read: coalition building) third party representation.

[eyelessgame.livejournal.com]

I like it a lot. (I've ranted against voting for third-party candidates, but you should understand that's only because the plurality-takes-all vote system has the effect it does; I'd welcome and work for any voting system that improves on it.) I've liked the idea of instant-runoff, myself, but approval voting has much of the same benefit and is much simpler to understand (which is an additional important benefit; anytime you introduce complexity to any public policy, some number of people will assume the complexity is there just to screw them over.)

Okay, let's go for it. I'm not sure it's quite as important as reducing the influence of bribe money on politics, but this is an easier one to sell on just about everybody.

[gconnor.livejournal.com]

What is the practical difference in effect between approval voting and instant runoff voting?

The way I understand IRV, you mark a first choice, and if your first choice cannot win, your vote is reapplied to your second choice.

Or something similar: I think it really goes something like, if you have >50% of the vote in round one, you win, because no combination of changes in the remaining votes will make them total 50%. If no one candidate has >50%, take the lowest-ranking guy and reapply those votes using their second choice, and repeat until someone has >50% or you have run out of second votes, in which case you would have needed another runoff election anyway.

I like the idea of being able to specify my first choice vs. my second choice, even if it has no practical effect on the outcome, it makes me feel like my voice is "more heard".

There is also the question of being able to tally who had the most 1st choice (1st round) votes vs. the final outcome (runoff). This may actually have a more targetted effect on matching funds and the like, because it is easier to say definitively how much of the vote (1st round) you got -- voting for two equally blurs that end of the statistics for the reasons you said.

If it comes down to a contest between my first choice and my second choice, I would want my vote to apply to my first choice and NOT my second choice. I really only want to invoke my second choice if my first choice clearly won't win, and there is a contest between my second choice and some other asshat.

I agree with the previous comment that this is still winner-take-all, not proportional, so when applied across a large number of districts you still get really no chance for third parties apart from a freak occurence. The Brand D and Brand R labels are still huge juggernauts, it is hard to get enough people pointed in the same direction to have any kind of showing for Brand X. I would really like to see something a bit more proportional than carving up each state according to "districts".

Not that I want a new government everytime a coalition dissolves, mind you. I like the idea of forming a coalition for certain (most) issues... that might cut down on the voting-it-down-to-make-the-other-guys-look-bad strategic crap... but I don't like the idea of a new Prime Minister up to bat whenever one party falls out of love with the other. So I guess I would let the President be from (one of) the larger parties, as long as I get somewhat proportional representation in Congress.

Hmm