[EM] Voting reform statement - new draft, please give opinions

[Jameson Quinn]

I have done a significant rewrite to the voting reform statement on Google
Docs<https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oyJLxI9dciXBbowM5mougnbGHzkL3Ue1QkD8nnMwWLg/edit?hl=en_US>.
The new draft is pasted below. Please, go to the
doc<https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oyJLxI9dciXBbowM5mougnbGHzkL3Ue1QkD8nnMwWLg/edit?hl=en_US>,
make any comments or
suggestions<https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oyJLxI9dciXBbowM5mougnbGHzkL3Ue1QkD8nnMwWLg/edit?hl=en_US>,
and write your tentative "signature" (just name, spamproofed contact, and
credentials for now) at the bottom. Even if you can't sign on to the
statement<https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oyJLxI9dciXBbowM5mougnbGHzkL3Ue1QkD8nnMwWLg/edit?hl=en_US>in
its current form, you can say
what changes you'd
want<https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oyJLxI9dciXBbowM5mougnbGHzkL3Ue1QkD8nnMwWLg/edit?hl=en_US>before
signing. (Yes, all those links go to the same place. Subtle, no?)

The significant changes to this draft are:

* Does not talk about the EM list. I hope to get signatures from off-list
academics, *and you can help*.
* Does not discuss single-winner criteria, except to say that plurality
generally does poorly on all of them.
* Does not state that we agree that IRV is worse than the systems listed,
simply that some find it better than plurality and some do not.
* Includes a section on PR.

The new draft is below. Again, your direct edits and suggestions are
welcome<https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oyJLxI9dciXBbowM5mougnbGHzkL3Ue1QkD8nnMwWLg/edit?hl=en_US>
.
JQ

-----
The study of voting systems has made significant progress over the last
decade. Yet understanding of that progress by members of society, and even
by policy-makers, has lagged. Partly, that is because there has been no full
consensus by theorists on a single best voting system. However, there is
consensus on one thing: the two most common voting arrangements in the
English-speaking world, single-round plurality voting (also termed First
Past the Post, FPTP) and single-member districts (aka seats, ridings, or
electorates), are two of the worst voting systems known.

We believe that reforming these systems would provide huge societal
benefits, with insignificant downside. We may disagree about which specific
reforms might provide the absolutely optimum results, but we can
nevertheless agree that there are a number of options which would represent
worthwhile improvements.

Single-winner reform

There are various ways that different people evaluate single-winner election
systems. Systems can be evaluated by the results they give with honest
voters; by their resistance or lack of incentive for strategic manipulation;
by the kind of behavior they encourage from parties and candidates; or by
the simplicity or fraud-resistance of the counting process.

By almost any of these measures, plurality is among the worst single-winner
systems. Honest voting can split votes among similar candidates, "spoiling"
the election and leading opposing candidates to win. Voters respond by
strategically choosing the "lesser evil" among the two major candidates,
which can lead to complacent candidates because even corrupt,
widely-disliked candidates can win. The system discourages candidates from
entering the race, and encourages negative advertising. Although plurality
has good simplicity and fraud-resistance, other systems are competitive in
those regards, without sharing Plurality’s many flaws..

A number of proposed single-winner replacements for plurality exist.
Although theorists can not find consensus about which of these systems is
best, we can agree that many of them are clearly head-and-shoulders above
plurality. Systems advanced as as best by some of us, and accepted as good
by all of us, include (in categorical and alphabetical order):

   - Approval Voting
   - Various Bucklin or median-based systems such as Majority Judgment
   - Various Condorcet systems, including Condorcet//Approval, various
   Condorcet//IRV hybrids, Ranked Pairs, and Schulze.
   - Range Voting (aka Score Voting)
   - SODA voting



Some of the signatories to this statement consider Instant Runoff
Voting(IRV, aka Alternative Vote or "Ranked Choice Voting") an
improvement over
Plurality which would merit inclusion in the list above. IRV even has some
advocates who feel that its property of "Later-no-harm", a
strategy-resistance criterion, make it the only good reform proposal.
However, IRV still suffers from other strategic concerns; in some cases, it
can lead to similar “spoiled” elections and incentive to choose the “lesser
evil” as plurality voting. This problem is not merely theoretical; it has
occurred in real-world elections. This and similar objections, along with
concerns about IRV’s complex and centralized counting process, means that
some of us feel that IRV is actually worse than Plurality. Out of respect to
this group, IRV is not included in the list.

Still, even without IRV, the list above has too many options for the
average, unengaged voter to understand and choose between. Thus, our
advocacy for our various systems has had the tragically ironic result of
splitting the vote and ensuring Plurality voting's continued dominance. We
find this situation intolerable. Therefore, we make two commitments:

   - All of us will support any of the above, and any other system we see as
   an improvement, as practical reform.
      -  We will endeavor to emphasize the common advantages of these
      systems and the serious disadvantages of plurality when talking to the
      public.
   - All of us will also unite to support approval voting.
      - Approval is simple.
      - Almost none of us think it is the best possible system, but we agree
      that it is an improvement.
      - It is a step towards any of the better systems above. In fact, we
      see it as the most-simplified version of any one of the above-listed
      systems.
      - Experience with approval voting would improve understanding of the
      real-world effects of voting reform, for both ordinary voters and for
      theorists. This would help decide a direction when it came time
to move to
      an even better system.


Approval voting simply means that voters may vote for as many candidates as
they wish. It is a clear improvement over plurality. The ballot format is
just as simple. It would reduce mistakenly invalid or "spoiled" ballots. It
would allow minor parties to show a realistic level of support, while still
ensuring that the actual winner had the broadest support.

Some have criticized approval on the basis that it would lead to
nearly-universal bullet voting. This is a criticism that we find flatly
ridiculous. First, for a large part of the electorate — those whose favorite
candidate is one of the two frontrunners — a bullet vote is entirely
appropriate, being both strategically and expressively adequate. Second, the
large majority of voters have become accustomed to voting for a "lesser
evil" when their favorite candidate is not a frontrunner. It is simply not
credible that voters who can betray their favorite to vote for a “lesser
evil” frontrunner in plurality, would suddenly become such partisans that
they wouldn't add a backup vote for that “lesser evil” under approval.

Proportional representation

Single-member plurality districts are also a serious problem for true
democracy. Even in the best of cases, they lead to non-proportional results,
where a party’s share of the representatives is widely different from their
share of popular support. These distortions are intentionally made much
worse by gerrymandering, where, instead of voters choosing their candidates,
candidates choose their voters. Also, many districts have a clear party
leaning, making a “safe seat” where the incumbent is virtually certain to be
re-elected. As with the two-party monopoly caused by Plurality, this
effectively reduces or eliminates voters’ ability to remove corrupt or
complacent politicians.

All of these problems can be seen as symptoms of voters without
representation. In a single-winner race, only at most half of the votes are
necessary to win a seat. The other half are either useless overvotes, or,
worse, votes for the losing candidate. In practice, this means that over 40%
of voters end up without meaningful representation.

Proportional representation systems have the potential to fix all of these
problems almost completely. In a body like the U.S. house of
representatives, with 435 voting representatives elected from 50 states,
proportional representation could cut the voters without representation from
the aforementioned 40%, to around 3-5% overall, depending on the system
used.

While there are real trade-offs in choosing a proportional system, we find
the most-common arguments against proportional representation in general to
be utterly unconvincing. Some argue that proportional systems in general are
bad because they make it so no party has a majority. If small parties hold
the balance of power, such people argue, they will be able to extort too
many concessions to their special interests in return for support. This
argument seems to ignore the fact that individual representatives, MPs, or
senators already commonly get “pork” for their district in return for voting
with their party. Moreover, the single-winner voting systems listed above
encourage explicit alliances between parties in single-winner races such as
president or mayor, and these alliances would tend to carry over to
legislative bodies. Finally, we can see that in the United States, divided
government is common and even apparently favored by the voters, showing that
a system which relies on inter-party compromises in order for legislation to
pass can work.

Another argument sometimes brought against proportional representation is
that it is good for representatives to have a fixed, regional constituency
to which they are responsible. But proportional systems can include
geographic aspects if this is desired.

As with single-winner systems, there has been much progress recently in
developing good proportional systems. In fact, there are too many different
systems, differing in too many dimensions, to even attempt to draw an
exhaustive typology here. Therefore, we restrict ourselves to three simple
statements:

   - There are many good systems for proportional representation, any of
   which we would support as an important improvement over single-member
   plurality districts.
   - The only systems which do not merit further consideration are closed
   list systems, which allow parties too much power to insulate their powerful
   members from accountability to the voters. If party list systems are
   desired, open list systems should be used.
   - Given the variety of known proportional systems, it is possible to
   design a system which meets any desired balance in the trade offs between
   simplicity for the voters, regional representation, primacy of the voters’
   will over party insiders, and maximal representation.



Thus, while the signatories to this statement do not pledge to support any
given system, it is our sense that we would support most real-world
proposals, and that a satisfactory system for the various stakeholders in
the process is an attainable and highly desirable goal.
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