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<pre>While the poll has comments of low quality, and the users seem to be
against Approval at the moment, I do think even those low-quality
comments can be useful.
Namely, they give us insight into the objections, fair or not, to
Approval itself. There are partisan arguments ("this is a liberal plot
to deny conservatives their voting power"), what can be done about them?
Can we point out places where conservatives are being hurt by
vote-splitting? Can we point at Ron Paul when responding to a libertarian?
<br>[endquote]<br><br>There are plenty of voters who report having to "hold their nose" and<br>vote only for someone they don't like. They'd all like to be able to<br>vote for better candidates to, including their favorites. Even if one<br>only counts the Democrat voters who say that they're strategically forced<br>to vote only for someone they don't really like, amounts to a lot of <br>people who'd see the improvement brought by Approval.<br><br>Especially since it would no longer be necessary to try to guess who<br>one's necessary compromise is (because you can vote for all the candidates<br>you might need as compromise). No more split vote, since it isn't necessary<br>for candidate Worst's opponents to all vote for the same candidates--They'd<br>easily be able to vote for the same _set_ of candidates, without all agreeing<br>on one candidate to unite on. These things answer the complaint of someone who<br>says that they had to hold their nose to vote for the Democrat. With Approval<br>they can approve the Democrat if they think they need to, and also everyone<br>better, including their favorite. Such voters will no longer be resigned to pure<br>giveaway.<br><br>Then there are method centric arguments. Some are just confused about
what the thing means, as one can see by the "oh, and let the voters vote
for a single candidate many times" type of posts. Others think it
violates one-man one-vote. How can we clear that up? Perhaps by
rephrasing it in terms of thumbs-up/thumbs-down? If each voter gets ten
options to either do thumbs-up (approve) or not (don't approve), then
the voting power is the same for each. <br><br>[endquote]<br><br>Yes, if you give thumbs-down to nearly all of the candidates, you're giving just<br>as many ratings as the person who gives thumbs-up to nearly all of the candidates.<br>S/he doesn't have more voting power than you do. As I said, you can cancel out<br>any other voter, by an opposite ballot, no matter how many candidates s/he gives<br>thumbs-up to.<br><br>With N candidates, each voter has the power to rate N candidates, up or down.<br><br>You continued:<br><br>Maybe that is a better phrasing
than approve/not in any case<br><br>[endquote]<br><br>I like "approve", because it's a good way of saying what you're doing. ...as long<br>as it's well-understood that no approval is counted as a disapproval. You rate each<br>candidate as approved or not approved. It's important that people understand that.<br><br>If "thumbs-up" vs "thumbs-down" is easier for people to understand, then that would be fine.<br><br>The ballot could require the person to mark an "approve" box or a "disapprove" box, where<br>it's understood that "disapprove" is the default assumption. Or it could be "thumbs-up" vs<br>"thumbs-down", or "accept for compromise" vs "reject", or "in better set" vs "in worse set".<br><br>Of all those, I like "approve" vs "disapprove". As I said, we don't mean "approve" in the<br>psychological sense. We mean it in the procedural sense. The operational sense. The business<br>sense, as when one businessman says to another, "Yes, I'll approve that proposal."<br><br>Approving is an action, not a feeling. And its opposite is disapproving. With either, you're<br>rating the candidate, up or down.<br><br><br>You continued:<br> I do note that there are very few arguments about chicken dilemma
situations. If there are barriers to Approval being adopted, that isn't
it - at least not yet. Though one could of course say that the reason
nobody objects using the chicken dilemma is that they haven't studied
the thing enough to know there actually *is* a chicken dilemma problem.
<br>[endquote]<br><br>The chicken dilemma isn't, and can't be, an objection to switching from Plurality<br>to Approval, because Plurality has it, at least as bad. "We won't vote for your candidate,<br>so you'd better vote for ours if you want one of {yours,ours} to win." That chicken<br>dilemma is worse than Approval's, because, to co-operate requires actually abandoning<br>your favorite, and not even acknowledging that s/he is acceptable. It requires voting the<br>other candidate over yours, and saying, in your ballot that s/he is better than yours.<br><br>Ask people: <br><br>"What problem does Approval have that Plurality doesn't have? What undesirable<br>result do you think Approval will have that Plurality doesn't have?"<br><br>When millions of people report having to hold their nose and vote only for someone whom<br>they don't like, with no mention or support for anyone better,<br>in order to defeat someone worse, something is very wrong with the voting<br>system. One shouldn't expect a healthy society, with such a sick voting system.<br><br>Mike Ossipoff<br><br></pre> </div></body>
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