[EM] One vote per voter

[Anthony Simmons]

>> From: "Tom Ruen" <tomruen at itascacg.com>
>> Subject: [EM] Unranked-IRV

>> I've been interested recently in using
>> approval voting to end the spoiler effect of
>> plurality elections, but I get objections to
>> the approval process, most strongly from Don
>> Davison, that everyone only should get one
>> vote, and he's right that is how our current
>> system works. For Don's sake, I considered
>> split-vote tied-ranks within IRV. Tied ranks
>> in IRV is completely reasonable and can be
>> supported by dividing a vote by the number of
>> candidates in the tie.

Tom,

I've enjoyed reading your report on your test
election, and the idea of instant runoff approval
is intriguing.  But there is one thing we won't
have to worry about, which is the notion that
approval allows voters more than one vote, or
that some voters (those who approve more
candidates) get more votes than those who approve
fewer candidates.

The first objection, that voters are allowed to
vote more than once, is easy to dismiss.  It is
merely confusion over the meaning of words.  In
primitive elections using Plurality, one mark on
the ballot constitutes one vote.  "One man one
vote" (using the appropriately primitive gender-
specific slogan) thus equates "one man one
ballot" with "one man one mark".  What the slogan
actually means is that each person should get one
ballot.

Do we object to a voter getting to vote twice --
once for President and once for Senator?  Of
course not.  Were we to do so, it would simply be
another example of thinking derailed by devotion
to loose use of language.

The number of marks on the ballot has nothing to
do with whether the election method is fair.  And
that is, after all, what "one man one vote" is
actually about.  An election fair is not fair
because each voter is restricted to making a
single mark on the ballot.  What makes the
election fair is that everyone has the same
ballot and marks it according to the same rules.

The second objection is equally specious.  If we
think about each mark on the ballot as a vote,
that is one way to think about it.  Another is
that every voter votes for or against every
candidate.  Which way we think about it is
arbitrary, and any argument based on such an
arbitrary conceptualization is specious.

If that isn't convincing, here's another way of
looking at it.  An approval election could also
be held by requiring voters to mark all of the
candidates they *disapprove* of.  Then, voters
who approve of more candidates would supposedly
have fewer votes than those who approve of fewer
candidates -- the exact opposite of the usual
approval election, even though they are logically
equivalent.