[EM] Approval Voting and Long-term effects of voting systems

[Daniel LaLiberte]

On Wed, Nov 23, 2016 at 10:58 AM, Michael Ossipoff <email9648742 at gmail.com>
wrote:

In EM discussion, and probably at the Center for Election Science too,
> people have talked about why Approval will soon (if not immediately) home
> in on the voter-median and then stay there.
>

I believe this is very significant, so I would like to see this
discussion.  I'll go digging in the archives, unless someone has some
references or summary pages.

If it is agreed by most people that Approval Voting will home in quickly on
the median voter and then stay there, and if we also agree that this is a
good long-term goal, then I believe we should be able to skip most of the
rest of the arguments.

Is there any other voting system that does this?   Or any that does it so
simply and verifiably, with ease and stability?

Why should homing in on the voter median be considered a good goal?
 Simply because the median is the most fair way to represent most of the
people.

Alternatives that result in representing the views of barely half of the
voters at best (with two dominant parties) can be no better than half as
good, and often far worse because of flip-flopping from one election to the
next (so maybe they are all good, but only half the time) with deadlocking
between uncooperative polarizing parties all the rest of the time.  But two
dominating parties are even worse when they both polarize around the
middle, while squeezing out the middle and thus rarely if ever settling on
the middle.   Such a system would seem to be designed around actively
discouraging cooperation.

Alternatives that result in many smaller parties might result in workable
coalitions between multiple parties, but still with substantial
flip-flopping instability and/or deadlocking.   To the extent that the
coalitions work, they will more likely be representative of the median.

Alternatives, such as the above, that discourage extreme positions from
having much voice or representation at all should be concerned about an
accumulation of corruption that comes from repeated applications of
lesser-evil voting.  But homing in on the voter median can also have this
problem, as discussed below.


Here are a couple potential problems with representing the median that I
can think of:

* For some policies, it may not make much sense to compromise on a median
solution, and so a representative of the median might be an indecisive
do-nothing, unable to move one way or another.  But most issues have a
range of solutions and many reasonable ways to compromise.

* Extreme positions held by a small percentage of voters will tend to be
ignored.  This might be considered a good thing, but sometimes, the
extremes are where we need to go.  E.g. 100% renewable energy and 100%
recycling is rather extreme, but I claim it is exactly where we need to be
going as fast as possible.  However, we should find ways to encourage
voters with more convincing extreme positions to express their views and
thus have some impact on the rest of the voters and representatives by
shifting opinions gradually in the direction of those extremes.  Also
possible is that the opposite extremes may have a neutralizing effect,
resulting in almost no motion away from the median.  But is our current
flip-flopping really better than this?

* As a consequence of ignoring extremes over a long time, a government
dominated by the median will tend toward tyranny of the overwhelmingly
"vast majority", if it is not kept in check.  This could potentially
devolve into a mediocracy instead of a meritocracy if we are not careful.
I believe we shouldn't consider the problem as being with the "vast
majority" but with the tyranny that could set in.

I have a plan for avoiding these problems, which in short, involves a House
of Delegates selected in exact proportional representation of the voters,
in addition to the House of Representatives elected by Approval Voting.
More in another message.


In contrast to the potential problems, the advantages of representing the
median are huge:

* A Congress composed of members who each represent the median of the
congressional districts, for Representatives, and whole states, for the
at-large Senators, will still cover a range of positions reflective of each
geographic region.

* It will be much easier to find agreement among members of Congress who
are all closer to the median.  No deadlocking.  No flip-flopping.  And a
President who represents the median of the entire country would be able to
work very effectively which such a Congress.

* Gerrymandering would be quickly obsoleted.  No matter where boundaries
are drawn between congressional districts, and no matter where state
boundaries happen to have been laid permanently, all the voters in a region
will be effectively factored into this median calculation.  There would be
no benefit in arranging that slightly more than half the voters will likely
vote for one party in an attempt to exclude as many of the non-supporters
of that party as possible.  This is because the more likely winner would be
a candidate who is approved of by more people regardless of party
affiliation.  Black and white mixed populations would tend to elect
representatives who are sensitive to the needs of both blacks and whites.

* Parties would tend to be weakened to the point of obsolescence.   This is
mostly because the winning candidates will almost always be close to the
median regardless of party, so everyone would be a member of the one median
party if there were such a thing.  But there are other ways that parties
can be encouraged, and it is important to acknowledge they will tend to
arise even if actively discouraged because we want and need to gather with
like-minded people.   It is not the parties I object to so much as the
disproportionate power they tend to accumulate.  And so I believe we should
always be on guard to strongly discourage any disproportionate
concentration of power under the control of part of the population that is
exclusive of everyone else.

Are people who oppose Approval Voting in disagreement about any of these
advantages of homing in on the median voter?  Or do you disagree that these
are advantages, or that Approval Voting will home in on the median voter?


Also, in the long-term, the chicken-dilemma problem is less, because the
> Tit-For-Tat strategy is available, and because, in any case, defection will
> obviously have undesirable consequences for a faction that might later need
> the other faction's help.
>
>
>
>> Let me broaden this a bit to understanding how a voting system works
>> within the context of the rest of the constitution and the society as a
>> whole as they co-evolve.
>>
>
> That covers a lot of territory, and any number of things could be said.
>
> In the bottom-up system of government, the elections take place in
> meeting-rooms, and so count-fraud isn't the problem that it could otherwise
> be if there one big national election.
>

With a House of Delegates, where each delegate is selected by voters to
best represent their views, we could let the delegates vote on behalf of
the voters, weighted by the number of voters they represent, so there would
be far fewer individual counts to worry about.



> (But the problem isn't insoluble in an  at-top national election. Public
> ballot-imaging solves the problem.)
>
> Also, each local or intermediate regional assembly could use whatever
> voting system it wants to. It wouldn't be necessary for any national
> agreement on a voting-system, or any agreement on a voting system other
> than within any particular local or intermediate regional assemblly.
>
> Of course, if desired, there could be a national agreement on a
> voting-system.
>
> In fact the voting could (but of course needn't) be by show of hands.
>

A show of hands is a good example of how votes tend to be binary, all or
nothing.  We could show 2 hands, or show a number of fingers for more
fine-grained votes, but I've never seen either done.   A show of hands
could be used for plurality or approval voting since both involve the
simple binary indicators.  Any other voting systems make sense for this?



>
>
>
>>   And to do this, starting from the relatively simple criteria for
>> evaluating voting systems that we still seem to have lots of disagreements
>> about, can we somehow leap beyond that narrow view to say much at all about
>> how the voters, candidates, and society as a whole will change in response
>> to the constraints imposed by the voting system?  We need to try to do
>> this, right?
>>
>
> The existence of democracy at all would make a much bigger difference than
> the matter of which good voting-system is used. A good voting-system is
> part of democracy, but the crucial requirements are verifiable, and thereby
> honest, vote-counting, and an honest, open, participatory, and agenda-free
> media system.
>

I can't agree with that.  While a verifiable voting system is essential, it
is not enough, even with the other things.  A verifiable voting system that
essentially helps maintains and rationalize the oligarchy (see, they voted
for us), even with a fair media, etc, is still dominated by the oligarchy,
and is not much of a democracy.  It becomes harder and harder to maintain
the illusion of democracy, but it persists as the minority in power
increases their power.  It may eventually self-correct if it doesn't
self-destruct, but not without huge changes necessary to clean up the
corruption.  That's what we are now up against.

This is a good time to not only ensure we have a verifiable voting system
but one that helps elect fair representatives of the "vast majority" of
people, and other good things.


> Other than saying that the country would be incomparably better if we had
> democracy, there's little that can be predicted.
>
> I suspect that there would soon no longer be any such thing as a strong
> bottom-set. I suggest that the strong bottom-set is an artifact of a phony
> political system. Progressives' strong bottom-set candidates & parties
> would no longer be at all winnable, and would therefore no longer be in the
> elections.
>
>>
>>
>> Maybe consider an analogy with weather and climate.  Weather is what
>> happens in each election.  Climate is what happens over many elections.
>>
>> I imagine even plurality was expected to be a good enough voting system,
>> but despite the intention by at least some of the framers of the US
>> constitution to avoid political parties, they emerged as a dominant force
>> anyway.  Should they have known this was likely to happen?  Could they have
>> known with a little study?  Can we do better now?
>>
>
> There's no need to get rid of political parties.A party consists of a
> section of the population that summarizes its proposals in a platform.
> There's nothing wrong with that. It simplifies voting, with relatively few
> platforms to choose from. But there'd be nothing preventing one individual
> from running as an independent, with hir own platform.
>

If parties were only about summarizing their proposals in platforms, that
would be great.  I think that could be a good thing.  But parties have
become much more than that for several reasons.  They will naturally try to
grow as much as they can by including multiple factions with mutually
exclusive disagreements which are then sacrificed for the benefit of the
party.  By defining what a party represents, they are drawing boundaries
around themselves to exclude others, and some positions may not fit in any
dominant party and will be excluded.  So parties can be both over-inclusive
and over-exclusive.  When the voting system strongly encourages very few
parties, such as the two dominant parties of plurality, then the abuses can
grow quickly, concentrating power in those few parties.  They will tend to
impose legal procedures such as primary elections and debate rules that
further exacerbate the problems, becoming self-serving as they suppress all
alternatives.

Forcing all primaries for all parties to be on one ballot per state would
avoid some of the abuses, but not all of them.  Maybe most of the problems
with parties can be addressed in various ways, but I think we need to make
a much bigger leap beyond parties in any usual sense.  We don't need to
think in terms of parties to organize our proposals if we have some better
alternatives.



> If people want to elect an independent in some election(s), then they
> will.
>
>>
>> I'd like to claim, and help other people understand, that Approval Voting
>> is not just one of the best voting systems but unquestionably far and away
>> the best, at least for current society and technology, both of which are
>> still surprisingly, um, easily confused.  But I say this not just because
>> of the characteristics voting systems in each single election, but also
>> because I am projecting how the repeated application of voting systems
>> changes things.  And I like where Approval Voting appears likely take us.
>>
>> And this leads to the second main point that I believe needs some more
>> discussion, which is the context for deciding on which voting system we
>> want to use based on where it is likely to take us and, moreover, where we
>> *want* to go.
>>
>
> I don't think that it's possible to predict the details of where society
> would go if there were democracy, or to plan those details in advance. One
> thing for certain is that it would become a society of, by, and for the
> 99%, instead of the 1%.
>

That sounds good, but it is blurring what is going on among the 99% such
that they might actually acting as one entity, rather than what we have
now, two dominant entities that are set against each other in constant
futile battles over the few scraps thrown at us by the 1%.

How the democracy functions is critical, not just that it appears to be a
democracy, even one that we believe truly represents us.  Even if it really
does start out representing us pretty well, if it grows into a fractured,
divisive, schizophrenic blob ruled by sociopaths, well it didn't work, and
we need to understand why, how it happened, and how we can avoid it.



>
>
>> I believe the voting system is not a small matter, not just a fine detail
>> that can be addressed later when considering how a constitution may play
>> out, but it is a fundamental building block
>>
>
> Things would go more smoothly with a method free of chicken-dilemma. A
> method that has chicken-dilemma could sometimes have a bit of confrontation
> and non-cooperation between factions that need each other's help, though
> that would be just in temporary instances.
>

If the chicken-dilemma only arises in such relatively rare cases, and is
not too severe and is temporary, I am not too worried.  If it means that
non-cooperating older siblings may be usurped by the younger sibling, maybe
that is actually a good thing to shake things up a bit.


> But I don't call chicken-dilemma a "problem" for Approval--only a nuisance.
>
> Obviously a method that meets FBC will elicit more sincere ballots, and
> will progress faster toward what people want.
>
> So I suggest that the best voting-systems are those that meet FBC & don't
> have a chicken-dilemma problem.
>

I don't seem to care much about the chicken-dilemma, though whether it is a
serious problem probably depends on the voting system.  FBC seems like the
right thing to require, mostly because the consequence of not having FBC is
either two-party dominance, instability, or both.  I don't know enough
about the other voting systems to say for sure, so correct me if that is
over-simplified.


>
> I said that I agree that Approval is the best. When a
> chicken-dilemma-proof rank method is used, the best way for a voter to use
> it is to use it as Approval, at least when there are strong top & bottom
> sets.  ...ordinarily using only top & bottom rank.  ...but using 2nd-rank
> demotion for chicken-dilemma defection-deterrence.
>
> And when such a method is used in that way, it can be regarded as an
> Approval version, which means that it can still be said that Approval is
> the best.
>
> Without strong top & bottom sets, maybe it could be desirable to vote a
> full ranking.
>
>
>> , at the level of an atom, and what we can build out of it depends
>> critically on which atoms we have available to us.  So we need to consider
>> both extremes together, both the goal of what we want to build, and given
>> that, how do we expect to get there and what can we start with that will
>> allow us to get there.
>>
>>
> That's the subject of party platforms. Democracy Chronicles' 3rd-Party
> Central lists many parties, shows their logos, and links to their
> platforms. Click on the link below, and, when you get there, scroll down a
> few screens, past the articles, to The American Opposition. Then scroll
> down to section #2, Nonsocialist Progressive Parties. That's the first
> section that lists progressive parties.
>
> https://democracychronicles.com/third-party-central/
>

I am asking not about policy goals and how we get there, but the kind of
democracy we want and how we get there.  The extremes I am talking about
here are levels of the hierarchy of government.   At the lowest extreme,
the voting system and how voters make their decisions, and at the highestt
extreme is the resulting characteristics of the representatives of the
people, assuming we have a representative democracy, and how their
decisions reflect the collective will of the people, or whoever they
represent.



>
>
>> Perhaps this is too much to discuss in this list that is focused on
>> election methods.  Maybe we don't need to debate where we want to go, which
>> admittedly is a huge subject, but I think we should want to understand
>> where we are likely to go based on the voting system(s) we choose.
>>
>
> ...wherever we want to, if we ever get democracy. That's the best answer
> that can be given at present.
>
> Polls (honest ones) give us a hint about what people want. If you listen
> to NPR, or other corporate-rich propaganda outlets, you might believe that
> the population are about evenly divided between preferring the Democrats
> and preferring the Republicans :^)
>

Again, I am asking about the nature of the democracy.  Do people want to be
led by a meritocracy, or to be involved in varying degrees with more or
less direct democracy?  Or many other variations.

When we get to how policy decisions are made, rather than how
representatives are elected, we should have the same questions about the
voting system used to make decisions.  This needs to change.


> ...
>>>
>>

>
>> From the term, it sounds like "overcompromisers" are doing something
>> wrong.
>>
>
> I'm not saying that they're doing something immoral or unethical. They're
> doing something that's contrary to their own interest. They're doing
> something gullible. They're being led by the nose. They're being suckered.
> They're watching too much TV, or listening to too much NPR.
>

That's the sense of "something wrong" I meant, as opposed to the ideal
voter, like the ideal shopper, who would always vote the "right" way, to
maximize their value. Not only should we recognize that people will
sometimes do the less optimal thing, we should expect it.  And we shouldn't
expect that we can improve things much with sufficient education. Rather,
we should roll with it, and choose a voting system that makes it easier for
the better outcome to best represent the whole of society, assuming that is
the goal.


>
>
>>   Do you mean them to be just an element of society, one end of the
>> spectrum from over- to under- compromisers?
>>
>
> Sure, rival (similar) parties that would be unwilling to approve eachother
> could be called "undercompromisers."
>
> [Replying farther down] :
>
>
>
>> Acknowledging the reality that voters are not ideal shoppers will help us
>> move forward.
>>
>>
>>> Approval isn't the only method that meets FBC, but it's of course by far
>>> the most easily-implemented voting system that's any good.
>>>
>>
>> And that is very important.  Given the difficulty of even getting people
>> to understand Approval, I will be overjoyed when we are finally are using
>> it.
>>
>
> Yes.
>
> This concludes Part 1 of this reply. Part 2 will be along later today,
> tonight, or tomorrow morning at the latest.
>
> Michael Ossipoff
>
> (I don't have a way to delete text. All of my replies in this posting are
> above this point.)
>
>

deleting the rest of this text now...


-- 
Daniel LaLiberte
daniel.laliberte at gmail.com
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