Asset voting (in its lone mark version) is one of the few methods simple enough
to have a decent chance among lazy U.S. voters, and it would be the greatest
possible improvement consistent with the simple lone mark ballot.
In Asset voting you vote for the candidate that you think would represent you
best. Then this candidate represents you in a negotiation stage that I call
the Election Completion Convention. In this convention, your vote is an
"asset" that your representative controls. At the end of the negotiations the
candidate with the most assets is the winner of the election.
There are at least as many versions of asset voting as there are possible sets
of rules governing the Election Completion Convention.
For the voters the simplicity of the ballot and the drama of the Completion
Convention would be the big selling points.
Imagine the drama we would have had in the Perot, Bush, Clinton election that
was referred to recently by Rob Lanphier. Any one of the three would have had
enough assets to make either of the others the winner. That's a lot of
political leverage! No responsible representative should or would back down
until he had exacted enough real or symbolic concessions to take the edge off
any supposed "mandate" of the eventual victor.
The hokey "Presidential Debates" would be put in their place, and someone like
Nader would have a genuine chance to highlight the relative incompetence of
Dumb and Dumber.
The next best use of the lone mark ballot is as a way of specifying which
candidate's "how to vote" card you want replicated as your ballot. This can be
used in conjunction with any base method. Even the IRV version could be
justified as a zero cost improvement (no matter how minor) over plurality.
In my opinion the only other methods that are simple enough for the U.S. voters
are Approval and the various methods that make use of the three slot ballot
including Majority Choice Approval (MCA).
Jobst's way of applying the three slot ballot to Democratic Fair Choice can be
adapted to any other method that would normally use ordinal ballots (with or
without approval cutoffs):
As in MCA one slot designates favored status, the next designates "also
approved," while no mark at all represents "disapproved." However, the
approval order on each ballot is extended according to the expressed
preferences of the favored candidates.
For example, if I mark A and B as favored, and C, D, E, as also approved,
while leaving F, G, and H unmarked, then initially my ballot looks like
A=B>C=D=E>>F=G=H .
However, if my favorite candidates A and B both agree that E>C, E>D, F>H, and
G>H, my ballot becomes
A=B>E>C=D>>F=G>H .
But any of their common preferences that (like F>E) contradicted my approval
order would be ignored.
If I just vote A as favored, and leave all other blanks blank, then A's entire
ballot is replicated for me. It's an easy way of copying a candidate's "how to
vote" card.
We've got to keep it simple or it will never pass muster with US lazy voters
... yes, I mean like me :-)
Forest
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