Approval Voting, etc.: Alternatives to the Horse Race

[BurtWorm]

Has anyone here heard of it? It's totally news to me. It's like a simpler version of Instant Run-Off Voting. You don't rank your preferences, you just check all and any of the candidates you approve of. The winner is the person who accumulates the most checks for approval. Proponents claim this would eliminate strategic or defensive voting, the tendency to vote for the lesser of two evils rather than the preferred candidate. I'm not at all convinced. What is to keep a party from making it a point to tell members not to check anyone but their own candidate?

I'm wondering what others think of this. Here are a couple of interesting sites on the subject:


http://approvalvoting.org/ballots.html

http://www.electionmethods.org/links.htm

[Sephirstein]

1. My two favourite systems...

I like full representative democracy using Condorcet's Method, or Proportional Squared using vote for one candidate.

Proportional Squared means that instead of small costituencies, you have regional consituencies with multiple seats distributed based on the popular vote in the entire region.

In Ontario, for instance, could have the regions as South-Eastern Ontario (East of the 905 belt and South of Pettawawa), Northern Ontario (North of Pettawawa), Toronto (duh), the 905 Belt (the area surrounding Toronto that's in the 905 Area Code), and South-Western Ontario, (South-West of the 905 Area Code)

[BurtWorm]

3. Does anyone use that system in the real world?

Shouldn't states and provinces be experimenting with these?

[BurtWorm]

2. I know this is not about Rush, O'Reilly or other important matters....

should I post it in the Lounge maybe?

[Spazito]

4. LOL and Bingo!

Who cares about voting procedures, treason, or any of that fluff stuff when you can talk about Rush and Kobe!

(one has to wonder sometimes if they are living in the alternate universe!)

[BurtWorm]

5. This is one of the hazards of having an honest subject line

See how fast substance sinks! ;)

How come only Canadians are responding to this anyway? Are any of these election reforms being discussed or experimented with up north?

[rucky]

6. This Is The Paper-Ballot Solution

that the ACLU and the LWV need to address. They've invested so much effort into trashing the paper ballot, that they're unwilling to fight against touch-screens.

This is a simple solution to most of the arguements against paper ballots as it relates to mis-voting.

http://approvalvoting.org/spoilage.html
(snip)Anyone who was paying attention to the news out of Florida after election day during the 2000 election learned about the terms "undervote" and "overvote". An undervote is a ballot with no candidates selected and an overvote has more than one selected. In plurality voting these ballots are spoiled and discarded.

In Approval Voting there is no such spoilage since every possible combinations of votes (including no votes) is allowed. Furthermore, practically every possible combination has a useful meaning. For example, in a four way race you can:

Vote for nobody meaning you dislike all of the candidates;
Vote for one candidate indicating your only approved choice;
Vote for two candidates that are both acceptable;
Vote for three candidates meaning that you prefer all candidates other than one that you really don't like;
Vote for all four candidates meaning that you think that all of the candidates are acceptable.
It turns out that you have 16 different possible voting combinations in a 4-way race which means that you have much more room for expressing your political viewpoint than you would in a plurality election.