[EM] Voting reform statement

[Ralph Suter]

On 8/15/2011 1:42 PM, Jonathan Lundell wrote:

> It's true that I might agree to a statement if all it said were
> "We  believe that approval is marginally superior to plurality"
> (thought  to the extent that I agreed, I don't think it's enough
> better to merit  any energy in advocating it).

I haven't been following discussions on this list at all closely for a 
long time, but I'm astonished to read someone assert that approval is 
only marginally superior to plurality. Does anyone else agree?

Approval will pretty reliably overcome or at least greatly diminish 
plurality's worst weakness: the "spoiler problem" (as it is known and 
pretty well understood by most people who are experienced in voting in 
plurality elections). To me, that makes approval a great deal better 
(not merely marginally better) than plurality, notwithstanding the 
strategy issue, which I strongly doubt is nearly as problematic as 
Jonathan suggests it is. (Haven't Steven Brams and other well-informed 
advocates of approval persuasively addressed strategy concerns?)

As a related question (I'm asking this as one of the less expert and 
engaged readers of this list): Have variations on approval voting been 
discussed that might have advantages over it, such as disapproval voting 
or favorites plus disapproval (i.e., vote for one or more most favored 
candidates and against any number of disapproved candidates)?

One other important consideration: Approval voting is surely the single 
best method for making quick tentative or non-critical decisions during 
meetings. It is AS or NEARLY AS simple as plurality and doesn't even 
require that all the options be listed at the start of voting. For 
example, suppose a group is trying to decide where to hold its next 
meeting. Three different possible locations are selected. An approval 
vote is held, but none of the options get a lot of support. After that 
vote, additional options can be suggested and voted on and their support 
compared with support for the first three options.

The reason this is important is that approval voting could be promoted 
as a very simple and practical improvement over plurality voting for 
making tentative or uncritical decisions in meetings and decisions among 
informal groups of people wanting to quickly make one or a few 
collective choices (e.g., a group wanting to agree on a restaurant or 
movie or something else to visit or participate in together). Even those 
concerned about approval's strategy problems can probably agree that 
because of the tentativeness or relative unimportance of such decisions, 
the strategy issue is much less of a concern.

The point is that promoting approval as a simple, practical means for 
making many kinds of group decisions would, at the same time, be a good 
way of promoting the idea that there are practical alternative voting 
methods that are clearly superior to plurality voting for at least some 
purposes, possibly including formal elections. Furthermore, if a result 
of efforts to promote approval voting was that it became much more 
commonly used in meetings and by informal groups, the idea that serious 
consideration needs to be given to replacing plurality voting in formal 
elections should also become much easier to promote.

-RS