Adrian: I don’t have your e-mail address yet, and so I’m posting this to the election-methods mailing list.
This is an introduction to Approval. I define Plurality, speak of its problems, and the cause of its problems, and the easiest, minimal, solution to those problems. If I may reveal it prematurely now, Approval is the easy, simple minimal change that will fix Plurality’s problem. Then I’ll describe an objection that we sometimes hear, and will answer that objection. Then I’ll say a few words about Approval’s advantages, and then about its strategy (the simplest there is). I suggest this as an article in your publication. If it’s too long, then I’d suggest keeping the part about Plurality’s problems, their cause, and their solution (Approval). If something must be dropped, then I’d suggest to drop something that comes after those parts. Here is my suggested Approval-introduction article: Our current voting system, of course, is the vote-for-1 method. Also called "Plurality", or the "Single Mark Method". In our Plurality elections, we often hear people saying that they're going to vote for someone they don't really like, because he/she is the "lesser-of-2-evils". Note that they're voting for someone they don't like, and often not voting for the people they really do like, because they're perceived as unwinnable. What do we get when we vote for people we don't really like? We get something that we don't like. Everyone complains about how all the viable politicians are corrupt and bought. Does it really make sense to believe corrupt and un-liked candidates to be more "viable"? So how does this strange situation come about? What causes it? When you compromise in Plurality, for a "lesser-evil", you're saying, with your vote-support, that s/he is better than your favorite. Plurality can be regarded as a point-rating system, but a funny one in which you're only allowed to give a point to one candidate. You're required to give 0 points to everyone else. Top rating to one, bottom to everyone else. Those zeros that you give to all but one are materially real, in the sense that you're thereby voting for those candidates to lose. Note that it isn't that Plurality only lets you rate one candidate. You're rating them all. But you're required to rate all but one of them at_ bottom_, voted to lose. That's why I referred to Plurality as a _funny_ point-rating system. Someone at the forum said that Plurality doesn't count enough information. But that isn't true. Plurality counts plenty of information, but it's mostly false information. All those compulsory zero ratings. When you say something because you have to, even if you don't feel it, that's falsity. It's no exaggeration to say that Plurality forces falsification. It should hardly be surprising that this results in a lot of dissatisfaction with "the politicians", the “lesser-evils” whom we're choosing with our compulsorily falsified ballots. Forced falsification has no place in a democracy's voting. We're told that in Plurality we vote for our favorite. But the millions who have to "hold their nose" when they insincerely help someone they don't like, over someone they do like, might not agree. How to avoid this problem? Why not repeal the rule that makes Plurality so funny? Let people rate _every_ candidate with a 1 or a 0. Rate every candidate as "Approved" or "Unapproved". The candidate with the most "Approved" ratings wins. The result? Well, we'd be electing the most approved candidate, wouldn't we. Who can criticize that? When everyone can support the candidate(s) they really like, instead of just a "lesser-evil", that can only mean that we elect someone more liked. That voting system, the minimal improvement on Plurality to fix its ridiculous problem, is called "Approval voting", or just "Approval". Occasionally we hear a claim that Approval violates “1-person-1-vote” (1p1v). But Approval is a points rating system. Every voter has the equal power to rate each candidate as approved or unapproved. If you approve more candidates, does that give you more power? Hardly. Say you approve all of the candidates. You thereby have zero influence on the election. Say there are 20 candidates. You approve 19 of them. I disagree with you, and, in fact I believe oppositely to you. I like the one you didn't approve, and not the ones you did approve. So I marked oppositely to you, approving the one candidate you didn't approve. My ballot exactly and completely cancels yours out. Obviously any ballot can be cancelled out by an oppositely-marked ballot. The ballot approving all but one candidate is can be cancelled out by a ballot marking only the one that the first ballot didn’t mark. Together, those two ballots give approvals to all of the candidates. You approved 19 candidates, and I've approved only 1, but I've cancelled you out. People who approve more candidates don't have more voting power than people who vote for fewer candidates. Approval is one of the few voting systems that meets the Favorite-Betrayal-Criterion (FBC). In other words, Approval never gives anyone incentive to vote someone over his/her favorite. With Approval, for the first time, no one would have a reason to not fully support all of the candidates they like, including their favorites. Condordet doesn’t meet FBC. IRV quite flagrantly fails FBC. The public are so conditioned to resignedly give it all away to a “lesser-evil”, that many will bury their favorite, even with Condorcet. I’ve personally obsesrved it, in a Condorcet straw-poll. Approval is, as I said, the minimal change that gets rid of Plurality’s ridiculous problem. When anything more complicated than Approval is proposed , opponents, media pundits and commentators, magazine writers, politicians, and some academic authorities will point out that it could have unforeseen and undesired consequences. They’ll take advantage of the fact that the public can’t predict all of the method’s consequences. They’ll point out that the method could cause disaster, because we don’t know what it would do. Now, we voting system reform advocates all agree that Condorcet is better than Plurality. But the public won’t know that. Authorities and pundits will say “It needs a lot more study”, and It will never happen. Approval has a unique optimization. All of the Approval strategies (which I’ll get to in a minute) amount to approving all of the candidates who are better than what you expect from the election. That means that the winner will be the candidate who is better-than-expectation for the most voters. That’s the candidate whose win will pleasantly surprise the most voters. Anyway, it’s obvious that electing the candidate to whom the most people have given approval is, itself, a valuable optimization. Approval strategy: First, you can just approve the candidate you’d vote for if it were Plurality, and also for everyone who is better (including your favorite). That would be good enough. But Approval has strategy instructions that aren’t available for Plurality, because they’d be too complicated to fully describe, and much more difficult to implement. So don’t let these suggestions make you think that Approval is more complicated. Approval’s strategy is incomparably simpler than that of Plurality. If there are unacceptable candidates who could win, then approve all of the acceptables, and none of the unacceptables. If there are no unacceptable candidates who could win, and if you have no predictive information or feel about winnability, then vote for all of the above-mean (above average) candidates. If neither of the above 2 paragraphs applies,then vote for all of the candidates who are better than what you expect from the election. To judge that directly, ask yourself: “Would I rather appoint him/her to office than hold the election?” If so, then approve him/her. Why does that maximize your expectation? Because, when you improve (by approving him/her) the win-probability of someone who is better than your expectation, that will raise your expectation. _All_ of the Approval strategy suggestions are special cases of the rule just given. For example, maybe you have a feel for who the top-two votegetters will be. Then, of course, approve the better of those two, and everyone who is better. But I hasten to emphasize that the candidates who you might expect to be frontrunners in Plurality are very unlikely to be the frontrunners in Approval. Never let anyone tell you who the frontrunners will be. Mike Ossipoff
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