[EM] Score Voting and Approval Voting not practically substantially different from Plurality?

[Benjamin Grant]

On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 3:06 PM, Kathy Dopp <kathy.dopp at gmail.com> wrote:

> Bejamin,
>
> I think we fundamentally agree about most things except for one statement
> you made (I think you're seeing some disagreement where there is none),
> which is why I'll only respond to this.
>
> You said "Since this isn't fixed, tell me what the benefit of Approval is
> in the real world over Plurality?  I want to be CLEAR about this, so please
> let me: I am not asking how the what supporters of Approval voting promise
> will happen, nor what Approval voting's creators intentions are - I am ONLY
> asking about pragmatic and real-world RESULTS."
>
> Me:   E.g. If people see that the number of votes for Nader are virtually
> equal to those for Gore, and investigation (undistorted polling) shows that
> 9 out of ten of those voters preferred Nader first, and the "least favorite
> candidate" was more than 10% behind,  then in the next election
> mathematically, only 5% of those voters have to switch to Nader for Nader
> to win and still beat the least favorite.
>

Yes, that is the best case scenario, and what we all hope would happen.
 What if the scenario I described happened instead?  It's actually
virtually guaranteed on the *way* to gettting to the scenario you painted.


> I.e. People are influenced by perceived public opinion and as well since
> your scenario was counterfactual, it may be less likely than  cases that
> are possible where approval voting ends up making it possible for small
> parties to grow large and beat currently large parties.
>
> You have no basis for claiming your counterfactual is more likely to occur
> than any other and yet you want to cut off clear opportunity for building
> support for smaller parties based on it?  People, or at least some people
> may be able to figure out how and when to use approval voting to boost
> currently smaller parties.
>

I have yet to see any demonstration of any counterfactuality, so at this
point I am not granting that claim. Unless I just plain don't understand
what you mean when you say "counterfactual" - which is quite possible.

In any case, among the things I seek in a voting system is a system where
one doesn't have to choose between stopping your least preferred candidate
and supporting your most preferred one. And so far as I can see, that will
happen realistically in Approval voting when a minority group gets too
optimistic.
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