On 8/28/2010 10:01 PM, robert bristow-johnson wrote:
On Aug 28, 2010, at 12:11 PM, Michael Rouse wrote:
The "degenerate to plurality voting" concern is easy to disprove --
even plurality doesn't degenerate to pure plurality voting, because
in every plurality election there are overvotes.
so up is down, black is white, and plurality isn't plurality?
No, pure plurality *in theory* is not the same as plurality in actual
use. Even after a couple of centuries of telling people not to vote for
more than one person, in a typical election between two and three
percent of all ballots are spoiled because of overvoting. With Approval
voting, that same two to three percent would* not *be spoiled, so even
if everyone else bullet-voted for a single candidate (like they do now),
the result would still be more representative of the electorate than the
current system, because votes that were previously ignored would now be
counted. If you take the same ballots with the same votes but get a
better result, it's hard to claim that Approval would be the same thing
as Plurality.
And I have yet to see a convincing argument that some people wouldn't
actively (rather than merely accidentally) take advantage of the change
from "vote for one" to "vote for one or more." People already vote for
more than one candidate for things like city councils. There are several
elections where I would have liked to pick more than one candidate
(though granted, that number is dwarfed by elections where I didn't want
to vote for /any/ candidate!), and I have no doubt that candidates will
start aiming their message to take advantage of Approval voting if it
were enacted into law.
As a side note, I actually prefer Condorcet-type methods to Approval for
single-winner seats, but Approval is simpler to explain and to count (no
more complicated than Plurality), and not subject to as many serious
voting paradoxes as IRV.
In fact, in the infamous Florida debacle of 2000, there were more
overvotes than people who voted for Ralph Nader -- 111,251 overvotes
versus about 97,000 for Nader (it's sadly amusing to see people
complain about Nader being in the race while ignoring an even bigger
issue). In other words, people accidentally cast an Approval ballot
more often than they purposely voted for the "spoiler." I can't
imagine any scenario where there would be fewer Approval ballots,
if they were counted instead of being tossed out.
Here's a USAToday link of Florida overvotes in 2000:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/2001-05-10-overvotetable.htm
i am very aware of the overvote thing in the Florida 2000 election.
the overvotes that i am concerned about are those where the voter
marked the box for a candidate and then wrote in the very same
candidate's name in the Write-In slot. according to Florida law that
vote should be counted upon manual recount (and a manual recount
should ensue when the margin is less than 0.25% and 537 votes out of 5
million easily satisfies that) because the intent of the voter is
clear, and then Al Gore won that election by 170 (according to the
media recount) and history would be far different (and better). i am
still convinced that that election was stolen, particularly after the
Bush v. Gore decision of 12/12/2000.
all this has nothing to do with the fact that voters don't like
forsaking their favorite candidate and will be less likely to mark a
ballot in such a way as to harm their favorite candidate. with either
score or approval vote, you may harm you favorite candidate by
non-zero scoring (or approving) any other candidate.
I am concerned about ballots where the intent was clear as well, but I'm
concerned about all 111,251 overvotes, not just the ones where the same
candidate was marked off and written in. The very simplest voting reform
would be to allow Approval voting for single-member seats. All you have
to do is add "or more" to the "Vote for one" sentence at the top, and
count every ballot. If you are going to introduce the complexity of
rank-order ballots, better to use Condorcet than IRV.
Michael Rouse
--
r b-j [email protected]
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
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