Hi all, As you've seen, I've been having trouble with the whole concept of "approval". I think I've come to the gist of my problem, which discusses some matters we discussed really early on in the history of this list.
For voters, "approving" a candidate is cheap, and in the context of an election, has little to do with any sort of absolute approval/disapproval of the candidate, and much more to do with increasing/decreasing the relative strength of that candidate to the rest of the field. In other words, Approval asks voters to assign an absolute property when the question is all relative. I would have many fewer problems with Approval if there were an absolute question being asked. For example, rather than always awarding the winner of an approval election a full-length, full-power term, we could make the length and nature of their term depend on their approval score. For U.S. president, we currently give four year terms to the winner. Under this proposal, a candidate with an approval score under 50% only gets an "interim" 12 month term, and cannot fire the current cabinet without approval from Congress, though would be able to fill any vacancies. A candidate with over 50% approval would get a standard four year term (still eligible for re-election to a second four year term), and would have the standard privileges of appointing a new cabinet. A candidate with over 65% approval would get a six year term, and be eligible for another four year term after that. It's only under conditions such as these that approval makes sense as a standalone question. "Do you trust this candidate enough to give him/her as many as six years in office, should he/she win the election?" That has tangible meaning to voters, and would force them to make hard decisions as to who they give or don't give approval to. If there are two or three years of interim presidents, the voters would hopefully get tired of having elections, and would be more liberal with approvals. One or two bad presidents who get six year terms would cause voters to get more conservative. In the end, it would equalize pretty quickly. More importantly, the question of "approval" would have real meaning as an absolute number, and wouldn't be a purely relative concept. I'd be more inclined to treat it as a meaningful measure of something real, than as a purely abstract number with no moral standing. As it is, whenever we talk about favoring a candidate with higher approval or range score over a candidate preferred by a majority (or even a mere plurality), I can't see /any/ basis for choosing the former. Rob ---- Election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
