[EM] advocacy: Approval is premature compromise

[Jameson Quinn]

I certainly sympathize with the desire to avoid premature compromise. Brian
gave the example of universal healthcare versus the Obama plan. As someone
who phonebanked for Obama in 2008 (from Guatemala) but now thinks he's a
decidedly worse-than-average president, I agree with your example.

But I don't think that the voting reform situation is comparable. With
healthcare, it is clear that Obamacare is a compromise; that the more
radical option is single payer; and that going further still would take you
to single provider. With voting reform, the next step after approval is not
so clear. Is it Condorcet, Majority Judgment, SODA, or Range? Any one of us
could answer that question; but we cannot agree on a common answer.

Also, approval is clearly a step towards any of those other systems.
Obamacare is an unholy Frankenstein of ad-hoc adjustments.

I am not suggesting that we all redirect all our energies to passing
approval. Obviously we are all free to make our own evaluations of where our
reform energy is best-spent. I am simply arguing that ... well, if we were
voting on voting systems, correct strategy would be to all put our "approval
threshold" just below approval.

Jameson

2011/10/3 robert bristow-johnson <rbj at audioimagination.com>

> On 10/3/11 4:54 PM, Brian Olson wrote:
>
>> I know that Approval is technically better than a lot of things, and I
>> think it's better than IRV, but I want to argue that it's not good enough
>> and we shouldn't aim low or advocate it too strongly.
>>
>> I've always been personally unsatisfied with the prospect of filling out
>> an Approval ballot. Sure I can say that either Al Gore or Ralph Nader would
>> be fine choices for President, but I don't get to say which one I like
>> better. I think this psychological aspect is important. In my mind it might
>> drive me to misjudge my proper approval threshold, and I think I'd be likely
>> to approve too few candidates and tend toward pick-one.
>>
>> I also today see Approval as fitting the pattern of premature compromise
>> in politics. Afraid that we might not be able to get the awesome thing, we
>> start off only trying for the mediocre thing. We could have real universal
>> healthcare or Obama-Romney-care. We could try for a budget that makes sense,
>> or we could have a budget half full of cruft and with tax tweaks that make
>> no sense because someone whined for it.
>>
>> If we're going to do this, we should do it right. Go all the way. Go for
>> the best thing possible. Isn't that one thing that frustrates us so much
>> with the IRV advocates? They recognize that election method reform is
>> important, but then they go all-in on a mediocre reform.
>>
>> Anyway, that's my random afternoon strategy opinion, I could be wrong.
>>
>> Brian Olson
>> http://bolson.org/
>>
>
> Brian, i have posted much the same sentiments on August 22 and August 4.  i
> really don't see why so much energy goes into promoting the approval ballot
> over the ranked-choice ballot as a reform of FPTP.
>
> --
>
> r b-j                  rbj at audioimagination.com
>
> "Imagination is more important than knowledge."
>
>
>
>
> ----
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>
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