[EM] Disapproval Voting as an alternative to Approval Voting

[Ralph Suter]

Disapproval Voting (DV) has practical implications that make it 
significantly different and possibly superior to Approval Voting (AV), 
especially if voters are also given the option to vote that they don't 
disapprove of any candidate, thereby making it clear they are not simply 
declining to vote. Ballots with neither that option nor any candidates 
selected would be disregarded.

(Note 1: The following comments assume that in a single-winner DV 
election, the winner would be the candidate who receives the fewest 
disapproval votes and is not disapproved by a majority of voters. 
Alternative versions, which I won’t comment on here, might require the 
winner to receive no more than some smaller percentage of disapproval 
votes, such as 45% or 40%, to ensure that the winner is not a candidate 
who barely escapes majority disapproval.)

(Note 2: Before writing this, I read the discussions of DV on Wikipedia 
and the Electorama wiki and didn’t find them very satisfying. If anyone 
knows of better discussions of DV, please point them out in a response 
to this post.)

1. One implication is that DV would give voters the option of voting 
"none of the above" (NOTA) without that option being on the ballot. That 
is, if every candidate received a disapproval vote from a majority of 
voters, that would be equivalent to a majority of voters choosing NOTA.

Provisions to avoid potential political chaos in the event of a NOTA 
outcome would need to be made prior to a DV election. For example, the 
current officeholder could be required to continue in office until a new 
election were held at some specified future date. In the case of a U.S. 
presidential election, the term of the current president could be 
extended for 6 months or a year or whatever other period of time was 
decided should precede the new election. Also, all candidates in the 
first election - or all candidates who received above a specified 
percentage of disapproval votes, such as 60% - could be barred from 
participating in the new election in order to make another NOTA outcome 
less likely.

2. Another implication is that DV would enable voters who didn't approve 
of any candidate (e.g., voters in the 2016 U.S. presidential election 
who didn't much like either Clinton or Trump or any other candidate) to 
express strong disapproval of candidates they especially disliked or 
believed were unqualified without having to express positive approval 
for any candidate. This would make DV far more psychologically and 
morally acceptable to many voters (myself included, I think) and could 
affect the outcome of an election as well as the percentage of eligible 
voters who decided to participate in an election (assuming voters are 
not required by law to vote).

It wouldn't surprise me to learn that DV as described here has major 
disadvantages that other people with more expertise than I do about 
evaluating alternative voting methods will be able to point out. If so, 
or if there are ways to improve on the form of DV described here, I’m 
very interested in learning about them.

(Final note: I'm very busy with another project and won't be able to 
participate much, if at all, in any discussions of DV that may result 
from this post. I'll try to keep up but may not weigh in further unless 
there is something I feel is especially important to respond to of if 
there is something I need to clarify.)

-Ralph Suter