At 12:43 AM 9/16/2005, Rob Lanphier wrote:
It's a matter of degrees. Under Approval, the voter is saying that both
Kerry and Nader are equally acceptable. For that matter, they may even
have to say McCain or Giuliani is just as acceptable if it means beating
Bush.
Something like this is often said. It is not accurate.
First of all, when I want to say something, I used words and
language. And I think I'm typical in that respect. Voting is only
metaphorically saying something. Rather, to be exact, voting is an
action, a movement in the world that has effects. The meaning of the
action is the intended effect. A semantic difference, but it can be
surprising how important semantics can be.
In Approval, if we want to attribute a "statement" to the vote, a
vote for a candidate is saying that the election of that candidate is
approved, in comparison to other choices present. If more than one
are approved, there is *no* statement made about their relative merits.
The clear statement is that any one of the set of approved candidates
is preferable to the voter than any one of the set of the remaining
candidates. I'd think that is pretty simple, and there is nothing at
all "insincere" about it. It is not "Favorite Betrayal." The Favorite
is included in the set.
I have argued that, if it is practically possible, an option should
be included on the ballot to indicate Favorite. However, this would
not be Range Voting, for the option would not be used to determine
the winner (unless there was an approval tie). Rather, it's normal
effect would be to politically inform and to determine, if
applicable, some kinds of funding.
If it turns out that, due to political miscalculation, the true
preference of a majority of voters, who would have clearly won if not
for Approval voting, loses to another candidate because people
thought this other candidate was a frontrunner when it was actually
the majority favorite, then, because of this ballot option, we would
know. It would not be guesswork. It would not be based on unreliable polling.
This outcome is not likely in the near future, but if Approval or
other changes in the political scene produce a more healthy
multiplicity of parties, it becomes much more possible.
And then (or perhaps as we see this approaching) we could proceed
with further reform. As I've stated before, there are better methods;
but when I have described one of them, it has happened that my posts
have been rejected as not being relevant to "Condorcet." We'll see if
this one gets through.....
The relevance here is that, in my understanding, Approval is being
considered as one of the options to be presented for possible implementation.
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