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

[Juho Laatu]

On 25.6.2013, at 1.06, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:

> So there are really three stages to a prospective new party or candidate (like the Greens or Nader):
> 
> 1. the candidate is not competitive (e.g. fringe candidate).
> 2. the candidate is competitive but either not strong enough to win, or there's been a miscalculation by the voters.
> 3. the candidate has taken over the position that would belong to a competitor (e.g. Nader becomes the new Gore).
> 
> I think Approval advocates argue that the relative share of approvals will inform the voters of where they are. So the progression goes something like:
> 
> In stage one, everybody who approves of Nader also approves of Gore.
> In stage three, the tables are turned: everybody who approves of Gore also approves of Nader, but Nader still wins.
> 
> Stage two and the transition to three is the tricky part. ... ... ...

One more approach to the problems of Approval is that it works fine as long as there are two potential winners. Then it is easy to approve the better one of those, and any additional candidates that one wants to promote.

It is much more difficult for individual voters to find a working voting strategy when there are three or more possible winners. One classical example is the one where one wing has two candidates that have about equal chances to win, and the other wing has just one candidate.

Juho