[EM] Anyone got a good analysis on limitations of approval andrange voting? (long)

[Matthew Welland]

Thanks all for the discussion and pointers. I still can't concretely 
conclude anything yet but here are some rambling and random thoughts based 
on what was said and my prior experiences.

Plurality
Leads to two lowest common denominator parties which are not accountable to 
the voters. This conclusion supported by real world observation.
Feels right to the non-critical mind, "one man, one vote"
Very fast at the polls
Approval
Encourages participation of minor parties and thus should keep the big guys 
paying attention to a wider base.
Almost zero marginal implementation cost. Hanging chads count just fine :)
Understandable by anyone but feels wrong at first "not fair, you get more 
than one vote".
Apparently has a terrible flaw but no one seems to be able to articulate it 
in layman terms. No real world experience available to illustrate the 
problem. Here is where I need to learn more. Data provided to date is 
unconvincing to me.
Does not meet the desire of some to be able to differentiate between "I 
like", "I like a lot" etc.  (note: this seems like perfectionism to me. 
Large numbers of  voters and opinions all over the bell curve should make 
individual expression at the greater level of granularity irrelevant.)
Very fast at the polls. Pick yer favorites and head home for beer and telly.
Range
Can break the vicious cycle of plurality
Not voting for someone at all can have a strong influence on election 
outcome. This is very non-intuitive and would take some getting used to. 
Allows for nuanced voting. 
Pain in the ass at the polls (relatively speaking). You can't safely 
disregard the candidates you don't care about so you *have* to assign 
everyone a ranking, possibly addressable by defaulting to zero for all 
candidates? This is considered a feature and I agree it has merit. But in 
reality it is a deal breaker for joe six pack and co. (and for lazy sobs 
like me).
IRV
Demonstrably broken. 'nuff said.
Suite of complicated systems that strive to reach "Condorcet" ideals. 
No regular bloke would ever trust 'em because you can't explain how they 
work in one or two sentences.
Technically superior to other systems.
Not clear what problem with approval they would solve. Unless you are a 
perfectionist and insist that individuals express nuances of opinion... 
Some time ago I put together a site (primitive and unfinished[i]) to promote 
approval voting and in the process I spent a lot of time trying different 
systems on the web and repeatedly testing my own site. I noticed some 
interesting things from all that playing around.
It was very uncomfortable to go back to plurality after trying other 
systems. It "feels" unfair and broken.
It was very tedious voting in any of the ranking systems.
Approval felt boring but good. 
I have checked in on this list now and then and I admit I don't have the 
time or skills to follow all the arguments but it strikes me that approval  
voting is good enough to break the deadlock, at least in US politics and 
that it doesn't have any major flaws. The very understandable desire to be 
able to articulate in a finer grained way in your vote is perfectionism. With 
millions of voters, for every person on the fence about a particular 
candidate there will be some to either side who will essentially make or 
break the vote. If you are on the fence, approve or disapprove, it won't 
matter.
So, to re-frame my question. What is the fatal flaw with approval? I'm not 
interested in subtle flaws that result in imperfect results. I'm interested 
in flaws that result in big problems such as those we see with plurality and 
IRV.

[i] www.approvalvote.org

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