[EM] Approval voting election tomorrow in Fargo ND

[robert bristow-johnson]

Funny thing is that, while I live in Burlington Vermont now, I grew up 20 miles west of Fargo.  I used to know Fargo like the back of my hand.  Now I don't know it well at all.

About the one-person-one-vote thing, I think that the ND Supreme Court astutely framed the problem and I included the relevant passage from the opinion at the beginning of my RCV paper.

People have rights, marks on a ballot do not.  One of those rights is that you have a right to have your vote count no less than my vote.

So if at the end of the day, no matter what the method is, if more voters mark their ballots that A is preferred over B (it doesn't matter how much *more* preferred) than then number of voters marking their ballots to the contrary, then B should not be elected.  If, whatever the method is, somehow B *does* get elected, then we know that the voters supporting B over A cast votes that had more power than the votes coming from voters supporting A over B.

Problem with Approval is that it forces the voter to decide, tactically, if they are going to hide their preference of A over B (by approving both A and B) because they really hate Candidate C (and are worried that C might beat B), or if they decide that C doesn't really have a chance and they don't wanna throw away their preference for A (by not approving B).

Cardinal methods *inherently* suffer this problem of imposing tactical voting onto voters.

robert

> On 06/06/2022 8:47 PM Forest Simmons <forest.simmons21 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> Good News!
> 
> And pretty good explanation.
> 
> Some negative and confusion inducing comments from IRV advocates based on common misconceptions were responded to.
> 
> A voter said she was confused because she was not used to voting for more than one candidate and didn't know how it worked ... despite the simple instructions: "vote yes or no for each candidate; the one with the most yes votes will be elected."
> 
> IRV advocates contribute to that kind of confusion by claiming Approval violates "one person, one vote."
> 
> For that reason I think it would behoove us to distinguish between 'votes' and marks on the ballot. Instead of saying...
> 
> "Vote yes or no for each candidate; the one with the most yes votes will be elected."
> 
> ... say ...
> 
> "Mark yes or no for each candidate; the one with the most yes marks will be elected."
> 
> For additional clarification it might help to say, "For best results, mark 'yes' for the candidate that would get your 'vote' if you could only mark one, AND also mark 'yes' for all candidates (if any) that you like better than that candidate."
> 
> There was another confusion based the same "one person, one vote" phrase in supreme court rulings that became the law of the land in the sixties; Approval detractors in Fargo have been claiming that Approval election results should be counted fractionally; in other words they are intentionally confusing Approval Voting with Fractional Cumulative Voting.
> 
> Under that burden, if all voters marked yes for their top two favorite candidates, then the winner could not claim more than fifty percent support even if she were marked yes on 100 percent of the ballots.
> 
> So there is a big quarrel over how to report the results, if not over how to determine the winner.
> 
> For IRV supporters, no method satisfies "one person, one vote," unless each ballot boils down to a single vote for a single candidate.
> 
> To counter that claim, Approval supporters go back to the supreme court language as in the 1964 Wesberry v. Sanders (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wesberry_v._Sanders)decision,
> 
> "...the U.S. Supreme Court declared that equality of voting—one person, one vote—means that "the weight and worth of the citizens' votes as nearly as is practicable must be the same",[12] (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_man,_one_vote#cite_note-:0-13)and ruled that states must also draw federal congressional districts containing roughly equal represented populations." [from the one person one vote Wikipededia page]
> 
> However, I agree with Martin Harper ... that it is easier, more informative, and less contentious to humour superstitious detractors by specifying which of the marked candidates gets the (one and only) vote from that ballot:
> 
> "Mark yes or no for each candidate; your actual vote will go to the one (from among those that you marked 'yes') with the most yes marks from other voters."
> 
> This rule is equivalent to the standard Approval rule, but allows us to distinguish (in the post election analysis) the Approval Support percentages, and the percentage of 'votes' received.
> 
> It also highlights the importance of agreement with other voters: Approval Voting can be considered (primarily?) as a tool for helping like minded voters topool their votes conveniently, safely,efficiently, and effectively.
> 
> -Forest
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> El lun., 6 de jun. de 2022 1:54 p. m., KenB <kdbearman at gmail.com> escribió:
> > https://www.mprnews.org/story/2022/06/06/vote-for-everyone-you-like-fargo-tests-approval-voting
> >  ----
> >  Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for list info
> > 
> ----
> Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for list info

--

r b-j . _ . _ . _ . _ rbj at audioimagination.com

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."

.
.
.