In a message dated 1/10/05, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Pseudomajority methods: Plurality, approval, range voting, > Borda
It seems to me that you are substituting rhetoric for analysis here. "Pseudo" means false, and approval simply does not deserve to be lumped in with plurality as a method that falsely purports to produce a majority winner. In actual practice, approval is far more likely to produce a majority winner than either plurality or Borda. (I'm not sure about range.) I understand why you don't like approval, but voting methods need to assessed not only according to a set of ideal standards but also according to their practicality. A few basic facts about approval need to be taken into account before it is dismissed out of hand as an inferior or inadequate voting method: * Despite its inexactness and the difficulties approval presents to strategic voters, the fact that it makes strategic voting decisions difficult is a strength as well as a weakness and is one of the reasons it does a pretty good job of ensuring a majority winner. * Approval is very easy to use -- almost as easy as plurality. It can be used in meetings and informal groups to decide among three or more options (e.g., who to chair a meeting or where to hold the next meeting) without either computers or time consuming hand tabulation of votes. * For this reason, even though approval may not be the best method for conducting elections of public officials, it is such a good method for making quick decisions at meetings that it should be an integral part of all "rules of order." The fact that Robert's and other parliamentary rules don't even mention much less encourage the use of approval voting is a serious weakness that may be as responsible for bad political decisions as the use of plurality voting in elections of public officials. * Given the widespread problems affecting elections in the U.S., including the current near universal lack of election administration and voting equipment adequate to conduct elections using more sophisticated voting methods, approval probably is -- at this time in the U.S. -- the method most likely to produce a majority winner. Only after election problems are fixed and better voting equipment is obtained will the methods you prefer be viable for U.S. elections. So in the U.S. at this time, approval is less deserving of being called a "pseudomajority" method than ANY other method. * Approval voting would be a good way of introducing the problem of single winner election methods to students and other election method novices, because it is very easy to explain and to compare with plurality. If the Center for Voting and Democracy had developed an election methods instruction program directed at schools and included approval voting in the program, chances are CVD would have had far more success than it has had in building popular support for alternatives to plurality. Election method educational programs could even be developed for elementary schools. The subject needn't wait until high school civics, thanks in part to the simplicity of approval voting. Students could then explain it to their parents, who in turn would begin demanding election method reforms from politicians. -Ralph Suter ---- Election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
