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

[Daniel LaLiberte]

On Thu, Nov 24, 2016 at 6:34 PM, Michael Ossipoff <email9648742 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Daniel--
>
> I would expect that repeated applications of Approval Voting will result
>> in having more candidates run who will appeal to many more voters.  We're
>> not used to thinking in terms of the broad appeal, such as what Bernie has
>> gotten, and he had a huge struggle just getting noticed, at first.
>>
>
> Not for any reason other than a media blackout. Emails between the DNC and
> the Hillary campaign established a common goal to, by whatever dirty tricks
> necessary, make sure that Bernie doesn't win the nomination.
>

I mentioned Bernie as an example of someone with broad appeal who would
likely win with Approval Voting, and the huge struggle and near success is
evidence of how strong that broad appeal is.  But also, responding to your
reasons why he had this struggle, you are correct that the media blackout
is a major reason, along with the various dirty tricks.  But going deeper,
we should ask why did those things arise? And I would claim they are side
effects of 1)  the concentration of the power of money, i.e. the banks, 2)
the concentration of power of the media, owned directly or indirectly by
big money, and 3) the dominance of two major parties, both of which have
become subservient to the power of big money.

The third point, the two dominant parties becoming subservient to big
money, I would attribute to our relatively weak democracy which has allowed
the power of money to grow unchecked and now dominate the government and
the media. So I would go back to the weakness of the government and blame a
lot of it on the weakness of the two dominant parties, and blame that
primarily on plurality voting.

We're not going to solve the money problem here, but regarding the
domination of two parties and the corruption of them by money, we can
address, at least in part. Avoiding the disproportionate concentration of
power in a few large political parties can help make it more difficult for
them to become corrupted. Or a system that
encourages many parties or no parties might also help avoid the corruption.


Could Approval Voting make the problem of money even worse because it
results in quickly homing in on the median voter and then staying there?
The elected representatives would be able to stay in office much longer, if
otherwise allowed. We wouldn't be able to rely on clearing out the status
quo ideas by the periodic flip-flopping of control between the two major
parties, throwing out a substantial portion of the representatives each
time.

I believe we currently rely on instability to avoid some of the corruption,
but the instability can also be taken advantage of by the powerful to
increase their power, perhaps even faster.

One relatively easy solution to many problems is term limits.  But I
wouldn't want to rely on term limits as the main remedy for the
concentration and corruption of power.



>
> Bernie's media access & support was a tiny fraction of Hillary's.
>
> And it would be naive to believe that that the effort didn't include
> count-fraud.
>

I agree there was a huge amount of election fraud, partly including the
party registration hacking, enough to tip the balance with a margin of
safety.

Anything that makes manual verification of the election harder is probably
not the right direction to go in.  Approval Voting is almost as easy to
count and verify as Plurality, and everything else is much harder, from
what I understand.


> Most likely Bernie won the primary. It's pretty much agreed all-around
> that Bernie was the candidate who was popular enough to easily beat Donald
> in an honest count, and that Hillary was the only person who could lose to
> Donald in an honest count.
>
> So why would the Democrats nominate Hillary, the despised likely loser?
> There's no reason to call that an "error" or "mistake". Our rulers main
> purpose in an election is to avoid the election of someone honest, ethical
> and unbought. That's incomparably more important to ruling interest, than
> the matter of whether the winner is a Democrat or a Republican. Therefore,
> the nomination of likely-loser Hillary was the best strategy for the
> regime, whose only risk to continued rule would be the election of someone
> honest.
>
> Why would the regime have any intention of letting itself be voted out of
> power?
>
> Why should it leave that to chance, or to us, the voters?
>
> As for the Hillary-Donald election, who knows whether or not it was
> honestly-counted. It wouldn't & doesn't matter.
>

I'm hoping enough comes out that both sides claim fraud and the election is
declared invalid, and then we can start again with a new election cycle.
But maybe enough people will want to make some more significant changes
first.


> I expect more like Bernie will come out of the woodwork if they were
>> rewarded for doing so.
>>
>
> Yes, admittedly there isn't much reason for progressives to run now. And
> people know very well that they can't win   ...but not for the reason that
> they might think. Bernie or Jill could get 100% of the votes, and wouldn't
> "win"
>

If one of them got 100% of the vote, and it was publicly known that they
did, it would be difficult to deny them the win.  A publicly countable
voting system does seem to be key to avoiding such a level of corruption as
we have now got.  It might be the best way out of the corruption as well,
barring revolution.


>
>> Anyway, the result of having more candidates that most voters like is
>> that it won't matter so much that there are three candidates who are close
>> enough in popularity to possibly result in a surprising win by the slightly
>> less popular candidate.
>>
>
> It would be "harder" to choose, when there are no bad candidates, and so
> many good ones. That wouldn't be a bad thing.
>

It would be a great thing, unless what appears to be good candidates are
actually bad.



>> Then again, the chicken dilemma might be a motivation for cooperating
>> between similar candidates to pick one of them rather than letting all
>> run.  I.e. parties.
>>
>
> Sure, maybe there'd be come negotiation between the parties & factions, a
> sort of people's primary. But of course that wouldn't be nearly as
> necessary with Approval as it would be with Plurailty.
>
> If the count were honest, and the voting-system is Plurality, then the
> progressives' best strategy would be to all vote for the most popular &
> best-known progressive candidate.  That's Jill Stein. (Bernie has proved to
> be really a Hillary-promoter).
>
> This posting is already long, so I'll post it now, as Part 2.
>
> Part 3 will be along no later than tomorrow morning (Friday, November
> 25th).
>
> (I don't have a way to delete texts. All of my replies in this posting are
> above this point.)
>
> Michael Ossipoff
>



-- 
Daniel LaLiberte
daniel.laliberte at gmail.com
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