02/09/02 - Approval favors certain candidates: Dear Adam, You wrote: "Perhaps it was best to let Mark's flippant response to your flippant post stand alone..."
Donald: I don't recall reading Mark's response to my post. I must not be getting all my email, or most likely I deleted his post my mistake along with some commercial posts. Anyway Adam, I was not being flippant. Approval has only limited honest uses. Adam: "I've seen your post (and copy) informative material when speaking on the subject of multi-winner elections. But so far your posts on the subject of single winner elections have essentially consisted of talking down to those who support methods other than IRV." Donald: There is a difference. In multi-seat election methods the corruption lies in which rules are used, in single-seat methods the corruption lies in which method is used. The ABC methods are corrupt methods. So, it follows that I would object to corrupt methods with the same vigor that I object to corrupt rules in STV. Adam: "You say....approval is essentially good for nothing." Donald: That's about the size of it. Approval should not be used in any serious election because it favors certain candidates (the lower ones). Adam: "If you please, give an example of an election where approval will fail to produce a fair result." Donald: Let's use the last Florida Presidential election. The numbers were about: 44 Bush, 44 Gore, 8 Nader, and 4 Others. Now, what do you consider to be fair results? Do you want a method that somehow, by hook or by crook, will raise Nader's vote total up to be in the same range as that of Bush or Gore? If so, you have the same agenda as MikeO. The ABC Methods serve that agenda and Approval Voting will be the best of the three at serving that agenda. It is the most corrupt of the three, so it is understandable that MikeO is promoting Approval Voting, he wants a method that will do the most to elect a Nader type candidate even if 92 % of the voters want someone else. If Approval Voting was the method of choice in the last Florida election, Nader would have had a good chance of winning, provided at least fifty percent of the Bush and Gore voters made the mistake of foolishly giving Nader a vote too. In order for the election of Nader to become more of a certainty, the Nader voters should only vote for Nader, no other candidate. Let the Bush and Gore voters be foolish (the Bush and Gore Voters are not going to be that foolish). Adam: "Or show some other strategic pitfall of approval voting." Donald: Approval Voting is a method that can be easily foiled, to the extent that the method disappears. Take some example that is like your example of three near equal candidates, say 1010 A, 1005 B, and 1000 C. In politics there is a rule that could be written; "If a ploy exists, someone will find it and we can be sure it will be used to win an election." Now, the question is: "When using the Approval Voting method, what ploy could be used by one faction to win the above election?" Answer: Your faction should only vote for one candidate. (your candidate of course) If the supporters of any one of these three candidates were to only vote for their candidate, that candidate would have a very good chance of winning. Of course, the supporters of the other two candidates may do the same, then the method of Approval Voting disappears and we are left with merely Plurality. This truth alone should make any sensible person reject Approval Voting, but Approval is also deceptive. Approval itself is a ploy to win the election for one of the lower candidates. The success of Approval Voting depends on deceiving most of the voters into believing that it is safe to vote for more than one candidate. The supporters of Approval are not being honest with the people when they implies to them, "Vote for Bush or Gore if you must, but also give one of your votes to Nader." Or, "Of course, you want to vote for Bush or Gore, but you have plenty of votes, give one to Nader." By replacing ranked preferences with actual votes, MikeO hopes that with more votes in the hot hands of the voters that enough of these excess votes will fall on his third party candidate so that Nader will win. He is willing to have Nader win through the back door. It's a con game MikeO is playing and you have yet to realize it. The Lower Choices are the back door. The lower choices are not netural, they are the reverse of the first choices. If the first choices would have been: 60 A, 30 B, and 10 C, the lower choices are 40 A, 70 B, and 90 C. If all the lower choices are added to the first choices we end up with all candidates being equal at 100 A, 100 B, and 100 C. While this most likely will not happen in a real election, this does point up the policy of Approval Voting to help the lower candidates to become equal in votes to the higher candidates. The more lower choices a method uses, the more the lower candidates are favored, the more corrupt that method is. Approval Voting uses all the lower choices, so it is the most corrupt. Approval supporters want a method that uses more of the lower choices because the lower choices contain a ratio of votes that favors the lowest candidates. The ABC methods are for people who believe that one of the lower vote gathers should win the election. This push for single-seat reform is not just for the Presidential election, it is for all single-seat elections in the country, including all the single-seat districts of the most important multi-seat elections, so there is a lot at stake. Candidates that cannot get enough votes need some ploy like Approval to give them a leg up. Donald