[EM] RE: Approval strategy in close three-way race?

[Abd ulRahman Lomax]

At 05:05 PM 8/15/2005, Simmons, Forest wrote:
>Unsophisticated voters might have to rely on the advice of their favorite 
>candidate or some other trusted advisor when they don't have a strong 
>feeling for approval and disapproval.

So, in 1992, had the voting method been Approval, Ross Perot might have 
said, to Bush "If you will recommend that your voters also approve me, I 
will recommend that my voters also approve you."

And if Bush had said, "No, thanks," it would have been his responsibility 
that he lost....

Perot might still have made a recommendation just before the election, if, 
indeed, he had a personal preference for Bush over Clinton. Or he might 
have offered the same deal to Clinton....

Any of this would have strengthened the position of the third party. The 
claim that Approval will strengthen the two-party system is just bosh. It 
won't kill that system, at least not immediately, but it is difficult to 
see how it could make things worse. After all, Approval *is* Plurality, 
only simplified, a point that is worth repeating. It is simpler to count 
Approval ballots than to count so-called Plurality ballots. (Though this 
depends somewhat on ballot type and actual counting procedure. Approval 
does require something more complex than separating ballots into piles, but 
no more complex than is necessary for any multiwinner election, or, indeed, 
than any election where ballots have more than one race on them, i.e., most 
elections.)

(And I'd say the same for IRV, by the way. IRV is not going to 
automatically change election outcomes, not initially -- except in the 
relatively few elections where a swing vote makes the decision, common 
recently but not so common historically -- but in the long run, it should 
help third parties. A little.)