[EM] Voting by selecting a published "approval" list

[Steve Eppley]

Here's another simple voting method:

    Prior to the election, each candidate publishes
    a list of "approved" candidates.

    On election day, each voter selects a candidate.

    Each vote is tallied as if the voter had "approved"
    each candidate listed by the selected candidate.
    The candidate "approved" by the most voters
    is elected.

I'm not a fan of Approval, for several reasons.  One reason is that 
voters can't be relied on to "approve" compromise alternatives. 
(People don't want to compromise unnecessarily and may lack the info 
to know when it's necessary.)  Another is that since the elite actors 
(parties, donors, etc.) will not rely on the voters to "approve" 
compromise candidates, they will respond by restricting the 
nominations, similarly to how they've restricted us under current 
voting methods to two somewhat polarized choices in each election. 
The simple method above would appear to deal nicely with these concerns.

I have another reason for preferring preference order methods over 
Approval.  I think Approval is based on, and would perpetuate, a 
flawed, polarizing model of individual preferences.  Nearly every word 
in human languages is part of a dichotomous pair of antonyms. 
Big/small, light/heavy, good/evil, approved/disapproved, ... (The same 
can be said of most verbs.)  These dichotomies are shorthands useful 
for hinting at the spectrum actually involved, but are misleading and 
polarizing oversimplifications.  Where's the threshold between big and 
not big?  Perhaps the threshold is "bigger than my breadbox."  Perhaps 
it's "bigger than my house."  Relative terms like "bigger than" make 
clear sense to me, but absolute terms like "big" don't.  "Better than" 
makes sense, "good" doesn't.  "Preferred over" makes sense, "approved" 
doesn't.  Terminology has consequences.

--Steve