[EM] majority rule criteria

[RLSuter at aol.com]

In a message dated 1/10/05, jarmyta at antioch-college.edu
wrote:

> Pseudomajority methods: Plurality, approval, range voting,
> Borda

It seems to me that you are substituting rhetoric for
analysis here. "Pseudo" means false, and approval simply
does not deserve to be lumped in with plurality as a
method that falsely purports to produce a majority winner.

In actual practice, approval is far more likely to produce
a majority winner than either plurality or Borda. (I'm
not sure about range.) I understand why you don't like
approval, but voting methods need to assessed not only
according to a set of ideal standards but also according
to their practicality. A few basic facts about approval
need to be taken into account before it is dismissed out
of hand as an inferior or inadequate voting method:

  * Despite its inexactness and the difficulties approval
presents to strategic voters, the fact that it makes
strategic voting decisions difficult is a strength as well
as a weakness and is one of the reasons it does a pretty
good job of ensuring a majority winner.

  * Approval is very easy to use -- almost as easy as
plurality. It can be used in meetings and informal groups
to decide among three or more options (e.g., who to chair
a meeting or where to hold the next meeting) without either
computers or time consuming hand tabulation of votes.

  * For this reason, even though approval may not be the
best method for conducting elections of public officials,
it is such a good method for making quick decisions at
meetings that it should be an integral part of all "rules
of order." The fact that Robert's and other parliamentary
rules don't even mention much less encourage the use of
approval voting is a serious weakness that may be as
responsible for bad political decisions as the use of
plurality voting in elections of public officials.

  * Given the widespread problems affecting elections in
the U.S., including the current near universal lack of
election administration and voting equipment adequate to
conduct elections using more sophisticated voting methods,
approval probably is -- at this time in the U.S. -- the
method most likely to produce a majority winner. Only after
election problems are fixed and better voting equipment
is obtained will the methods you prefer be viable for U.S.
elections. So in the U.S. at this time, approval is  less
deserving of being called a "pseudomajority" method than
ANY other method.

  * Approval voting would be a good way of introducing the
problem of single winner election methods to students and
other election method novices, because it is very easy to
explain and to compare with plurality. If the Center for
Voting and Democracy had developed an election methods
instruction program directed at schools and included
approval voting in the program, chances are CVD would have
had far more success than it has had in building popular
support for alternatives to plurality. Election method
educational programs could even be developed for elementary
schools. The subject needn't wait until high school
civics, thanks in part to the simplicity of approval
voting. Students could then explain it to their parents,
who in turn would begin demanding election method reforms
from politicians.

-Ralph Suter