<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div>On Nov 10, 2009, at 6:48 AM, Matthew Welland wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="font-family: 'DejaVu Sans'; font-size: 8pt; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; ">Thanks all for the discussion and pointers. I still can't concretely conclude anything yet but here are some rambling and random thoughts based on what was said and my prior experiences.<br><br><span style="font-weight: 600; ">Plurality</span><br><ol><li style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-weight: 600; "><span style="font-weight: 400; ">Leads to two lowest common denominator parties which are not accountable to the voters. This conclusion supported by real world observation.</span></li></ol></div></span></blockquote>Use of single winner districts has this tendency in general. The other single winner methods below give some more space to third parties but if you want to get rid of favouring the major parties and get proportional representation of all the parties/interest groups then some proportional multi winner methods method could be used.</div><div><br><blockquote type="cite"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="font-family: 'DejaVu Sans'; font-size: 8pt; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; "><ol start="2"><li style="white-space: pre-wrap; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; text-indent: 0px; ">Feels right to the non-critical mind, "one man, one vote"</li><li style="white-space: pre-wrap; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; text-indent: 0px; ">Very fast at the polls</li></ol><span style="font-weight: 600; ">Approval</span><br><ol><li style="white-space: pre-wrap; margin-top: 12px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; text-indent: 0px; ">Encourages participation of minor parties and thus should keep the big guys paying attention to a wider base.</li><li style="white-space: pre-wrap; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; text-indent: 0px; ">Almost zero marginal implementation cost. Hanging chads count just fine :)</li><li style="white-space: pre-wrap; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; text-indent: 0px; ">Understandable by anyone but feels wrong at first "not fair, you get more than one vote".</li><li style="white-space: pre-wrap; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; text-indent: 0px; ">Apparently has a terrible flaw but no one seems to be able to articulate it in layman terms. No real world experience available to illustrate the problem. Here is where I need to learn more. Data provided to date is unconvincing to me.</li></ol></div></span></blockquote><div>Here's one example. We have left and right wings with approximately 50%-50% support. Left wing has two candidates (L1, L2). Most right wing voters approve only the right wing candidate (R). Some left wing candidates approve both leftist candidates but some approve only one of them. Right wing candidate wins.</div><div><br></div><div>In order to avoid this problem left wing might recommend all its supporters to approve both left wing candidates. If they do so left wing will not have the above mentioned problem of vote splitting but on the other hand L1 and L2 will get the same number of votes since nobody can indicate if L1 is better than L2 or the other way around. Choice between L1 and L2 is quite random since the decision will be left to those left wing voters who don't follow the recommended strategy and to those right wing voters who approve also one of the left wing candidates.</div><div><br></div><div>In this example the problem thus is that voters can not express at the same time both that left/right wing is better and that one of the candidates of that wing is better than some others of them. This problem may lead to interest within the left wing to nominate only one candidate (=no spoilers, no leftist third parties) and we might be close to the plurality related problems again. Approval may work in this case quite well as long as the third party is small and all its voters understand that they should approve also one of the major parties (left), but when the support of that third candidate grows things become more complicated.</div><div><br></div><blockquote type="cite"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="font-family: 'DejaVu Sans'; font-size: 8pt; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; "><ol start="5"><li style="white-space: pre-wrap; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; text-indent: 0px; ">Does not meet the desire of some to be able to differentiate between "I like", "I like a lot" etc. (note: this seems like perfectionism to me. Large numbers of voters and opinions all over the bell curve should make individual expression at the greater level of granularity irrelevant.)</li></ol></div></span></blockquote><div>Out of the discussed methods Range is the only one that can express "like"/"like a lot". But it has its own problems (partly due to this property).</div><div><br></div><div>The example above tries to demonstrate that while large number of sincere Approval votes might statistically lead to a good result there is the risk that the votes will be not as well in balance (for strategy and candidate positioning related reasons). I think it is a general assumption that in Approval voters would not vote sincerely in th sense that they would approve those candidates that they consider "approvable" but they would follow strategy "approve part of the leaders (likely winners) and candidates that you prefer to them".</div><div><br></div><blockquote type="cite"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="font-family: 'DejaVu Sans'; font-size: 8pt; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; "><ol start="6"><li style="white-space: pre-wrap; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; text-indent: 0px; ">Very fast at the polls. Pick yer favorites and head home for beer and telly.</li></ol><span style="font-weight: 600; ">Range</span><br><ol><li style="white-space: pre-wrap; margin-top: 12px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; text-indent: 0px; ">Can break the vicious cycle of plurality</li></ol></div></span></blockquote><div>I didn't understand this. (If this is about the two party dominance I commented already above.)</div><br><blockquote type="cite"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="font-family: 'DejaVu Sans'; font-size: 8pt; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; "><ol start="2"><li style="white-space: pre-wrap; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; text-indent: 0px; ">Not voting for someone at all can have a strong influence on election outcome. This is very non-intuitive and would take some getting used to. </li><li style="white-space: pre-wrap; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; text-indent: 0px; ">Allows for nuanced voting. </li></ol></div></span></blockquote><div>This is the benefit of Range. The related problem is that while this works well in non-competitive elections (e.g. polls, olympics with neutral judges) in competitive ones (e.g. political elections) voters have an incentive to exaggerate. This may lead to Approval-like behaviour where most voters give min and max points to most candidates. In that case Range would be very much like Approval.)</div><br><blockquote type="cite"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="font-family: 'DejaVu Sans'; font-size: 8pt; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; "><ol start="4"><li style="white-space: pre-wrap; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; text-indent: 0px; ">Pain in the ass at the polls (relatively speaking). You can't safely disregard the candidates you don't care about so you *have* to assign everyone a ranking, possibly addressable by defaulting to zero for all candidates? This is considered a feature and I agree it has merit. But in reality it is a deal breaker for joe six pack and co. (and for lazy sobs like me).</li></ol></div></span></blockquote><div>It is a good practice to consider unmarked candidates to be "raked last" in all methods. This is because otherwise the most unknown candidates would benefit (and might win) while known strong candidates could get lots ow negative (lower than default) votes. (This comment maybe covers also point 2 above.)</div><br><blockquote type="cite"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="font-family: 'DejaVu Sans'; font-size: 8pt; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; "><span style="font-weight: 600; ">IRV</span><br><ol><li style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-weight: 600; "><span style="font-weight: 400; ">Demonstrably broken. 'nuff said.</span></li></ol></div></span></blockquote><div>Yes, IRV has its flaws. All the others above have their faults too, so I wouldn't say IRV is in its own class in this respect.</div><br><blockquote type="cite"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="font-family: 'DejaVu Sans'; font-size: 8pt; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; "><span style="font-weight: 600; ">Suite of complicated systems that strive to reach "Condorcet" ideals.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><br><ol><li style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-weight: 600; "><span style="font-weight: 400; ">No regular bloke would ever trust 'em because you can't explain how they work in one or two sentences.</span></li></ol></div></span></blockquote><div>I don't think they are too complex. Most election methods are complex enough so that average voters can not describe the tabulation mechanisms in detail. It s enough if they understand the overall principle and have some trust on experts that tell them that the system works ok. (Condorcet methods may be complex in the sense that they require computers to be used in the vote counting process (while Approval and IRV may still be hand countable), but that's another story.)</div><br><blockquote type="cite"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="font-family: 'DejaVu Sans'; font-size: 8pt; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; "><ol start="2"><li style="white-space: pre-wrap; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; text-indent: 0px; ">Technically superior to other systems.</li></ol></div></span></blockquote><div>In the sense that in most cases voters can quite safely express their sincere opinions in the ballots. Also in the sense that the best candidate will be elected (if you think the Condorcet winner should be elected).</div><div><br></div><div>The basic idea of Condorcet methods is quite easy to understand. If there is a candidate that would beat any of the others, then that candiate should be elected. In most elections there is such a candidate. If there is no such candidate then additional rules are needed to determine the winner. Voting is as in IRV, and that seems to be easy enough for the voters (already in use in many places).</div><br><blockquote type="cite"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="font-family: 'DejaVu Sans'; font-size: 8pt; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; "><ol start="3"><li style="white-space: pre-wrap; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; text-indent: 0px; ">Not clear what problem with approval they would solve. Unless you are a perfectionist and insist that individuals express nuances of opinion... </li></ol></div></span></blockquote><div>See comments in Approval above. In Condorcet (and IRV) voters may quite reliably indicate their preference between all candidates. In Condorcet voters can not express as detailed nuances as in Range (but they can express maximum support to both A>B and B>C at the same time, and risk of loss of nuances due to exaggeration is smaller).</div><div><br></div><div>Condorcet methods have also their own strategic problems (e.g. burial) but the one can expect/hope that strategic voting would not be feasible and common in practical elections (not even competitive ones).</div><div><br></div><br><blockquote type="cite"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="font-family: 'DejaVu Sans'; font-size: 8pt; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; ">Some time ago I put together a site (primitive and unfinished[i]) to promote approval voting and in the process I spent a lot of time trying different systems on the web and repeatedly testing my own site. I noticed some interesting things from all that playing around.<br><ol><li style="white-space: pre-wrap; margin-top: 12px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; text-indent: 0px; ">It was very uncomfortable to go back to plurality after trying other systems. It "feels" unfair and broken.</li><li style="white-space: pre-wrap; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; text-indent: 0px; ">It was very tedious voting in any of the ranking systems.</li><li style="white-space: pre-wrap; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; text-indent: 0px; ">Approval felt boring but good. </li></ol><p style="white-space: pre-wrap; margin-top: 12px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; text-indent: 0px; ">I have checked in on this list now and then and I admit I don't have the time or skills to follow all the arguments but it strikes me that approval voting is good enough to break the deadlock, at least in US politics and that it doesn't have any major flaws.</p></div></span></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Yes, it is a step forward from Plurality (unless you want to keep the two party system). I think there are also better methods (more complex though, and longer / more difficult steps from the current state). Also PR (proportional representation) based methods are worth considering (not only single winner methods).</div><br><blockquote type="cite"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="font-family: 'DejaVu Sans'; font-size: 8pt; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; "><p style="white-space: pre-wrap; margin-top: 12px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; text-indent: 0px; "> The very understandable desire to be able to articulate in a finer grained way in your vote is perfectionism. With millions of voters, for every person on the fence about a particular candidate there will be some to either side who will essentially make or break the vote. If you are on the fence, approve or disapprove, it won't matter.</p><p style="white-space: pre-wrap; margin-top: 12px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; text-indent: 0px; ">So, to re-frame my question. What is the fatal flaw with approval? I'm not interested in subtle flaws that result in imperfect results. I'm interested in flaws that result in big problems such as those we see with plurality and IRV.</p></div></span></blockquote><div><br></div>I tried to address shortly the Approval related problems above. Maybe there are no "fatal" problems but I'd expect some (maybe less than fatal) problems to emerge, at least after the third parties grow in size and become serious contenders of the current two giants.</div><div><br></div><div>If you think the dominance of two (or few) major parties and lack of representation of smaller groups is one of the "big problems" then also PR (and typically associated multi winner districts) could be considered. The improved single winner methods (when used in single winner districts to form a larger representative body) are one step in this direction but they will not offer fill proportionality. Maybe this is good enough or one step in the right direction, or maybe exactly what you want.</div><div><br></div><div>Just my 2 cents,</div><div>Juho</div><div><br></div><div><br><blockquote type="cite"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="font-family: 'DejaVu Sans'; font-size: 8pt; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; "><p style="white-space: pre-wrap; margin-top: 12px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; text-indent: 0px; "><br></p><p style="white-space: pre-wrap; margin-top: 12px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; text-indent: 0px; ">[i] <a href="http://www.approvalvote.org">www.approvalvote.org</a></p><div style="white-space: pre-wrap; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; text-indent: 0px; "><br></div>----<br>Election-Methods mailing list - see<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://electorama.com/em">http://electorama.com/em</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>for list info<br></div></span></blockquote></div><br></body></html>