[EM] Approval and "1 person/1 vote"

[Adam Tarr]

Recently, there have been a few people on the list making the erroneous 
claim that approval voting violates the principle of "one person, one 
vote".  I just wanted to share what I consider the simplest argument to 
refute this:

*** You can only vote at most once for the winning candidate. ***

That's really it.  Once you internalize that fact, you will realize that 
claiming approval violates 1P1V is just smoke in mirrors.

To elaborate, here's a thought experiment: imagine everyone else has 
already voted, and you're the last person in the booth.  You can either 
vote for the frontrunner and not vote for the closest comeptitor, vote for 
the closest competitor and not vote for the frontrunner, vote for both, or 
vote for neither.  If you do either of the first two, you have the same 
power as you would have if you had voted in plurality.  If you do either of 
the last two, you have the same voting power as someone who casts a vote 
for a third party candidate does in current plurality elections.

The beauty of approval voting is that it makes it more likely that you will 
have a chance to cast a vote in the deciding contest of the race, even if 
you feel strongly about other candidates.  Approval actually brings us 
CLOSER to 1P1V, where plurality often effectively leaves you with 1P0V (one 
person, zero votes).

-Adam


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