On 8/15/2011 1:42 PM, Jonathan Lundell wrote:
It's true that I might agree to a statement if all it said were "We believe that approval is marginally superior to plurality" (thought to the extent that I agreed, I don't think it's enough better to merit any energy in advocating it).
I haven't been following discussions on this list at all closely for a long time, but I'm astonished to read someone assert that approval is only marginally superior to plurality. Does anyone else agree?
Approval will pretty reliably overcome or at least greatly diminish plurality's worst weakness: the "spoiler problem" (as it is known and pretty well understood by most people who are experienced in voting in plurality elections). To me, that makes approval a great deal better (not merely marginally better) than plurality, notwithstanding the strategy issue, which I strongly doubt is nearly as problematic as Jonathan suggests it is. (Haven't Steven Brams and other well-informed advocates of approval persuasively addressed strategy concerns?)
As a related question (I'm asking this as one of the less expert and engaged readers of this list): Have variations on approval voting been discussed that might have advantages over it, such as disapproval voting or favorites plus disapproval (i.e., vote for one or more most favored candidates and against any number of disapproved candidates)?
One other important consideration: Approval voting is surely the single best method for making quick tentative or non-critical decisions during meetings. It is AS or NEARLY AS simple as plurality and doesn't even require that all the options be listed at the start of voting. For example, suppose a group is trying to decide where to hold its next meeting. Three different possible locations are selected. An approval vote is held, but none of the options get a lot of support. After that vote, additional options can be suggested and voted on and their support compared with support for the first three options.
The reason this is important is that approval voting could be promoted as a very simple and practical improvement over plurality voting for making tentative or uncritical decisions in meetings and decisions among informal groups of people wanting to quickly make one or a few collective choices (e.g., a group wanting to agree on a restaurant or movie or something else to visit or participate in together). Even those concerned about approval's strategy problems can probably agree that because of the tentativeness or relative unimportance of such decisions, the strategy issue is much less of a concern.
The point is that promoting approval as a simple, practical means for making many kinds of group decisions would, at the same time, be a good way of promoting the idea that there are practical alternative voting methods that are clearly superior to plurality voting for at least some purposes, possibly including formal elections. Furthermore, if a result of efforts to promote approval voting was that it became much more commonly used in meetings and by informal groups, the idea that serious consideration needs to be given to replacing plurality voting in formal elections should also become much easier to promote.
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