Re: [EM] Kristofer: The Approval poll
Many thoughts catch my eye here - I will not attempt to respond to all.
On Mar 22, 2012, at 4:09 PM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:
On 03/22/2012 07:57 PM, MIKE OSSIPOFF wrote:
There are plenty of voters who report having to "hold their nose" and
vote only for someone they don't like. They'd all like to be able to
vote for better candidates to, including their favorites. Even if one
only counts the Democrat voters who say that they're strategically
forced
to vote only for someone they don't really like, amounts to a lot of
people who'd see the improvement brought by Approval.
If there is no one acceptable to vote for, the voters have not done
their job:
. Could happen occasionally such as failures in doing
nominations. Write-ins can help recover for this.
.. If it happens often, time to improve how nominations are done -
perhaps by voters getting more involved in nominating; perhaps by
improving related laws.
"strategically forced" should not be doable for how a particular voter
voted (but no one voted for the supposedly forced choice - why force
such a hated choice? the forcers should not be so demanding).
Especially since it would no longer be necessary to try to guess who
one's necessary compromise is (because you can vote for all the
candidates
you might need as compromise). No more split vote, since it isn't
necessary
for candidate Worst's opponents to all vote for the same
candidates--They'd
easily be able to vote for the same _set_ of candidates, without
all agreeing
on one candidate to unite on. These things answer the complaint of
someone who
says that they had to hold their nose to vote for the Democrat.
With Approval
they can approve the Democrat if they think they need to, and also
everyone
better, including their favorite. Such voters will no longer be
resigned to pure
giveaway.
Yes, that could work for Democrats and those who don't want to vote
for the lesser evil. The poll does seem to have a rather large
number of people who go "this is a liberal plot to swindle the
election from us", though. Could a primary argument work as a
response? Something like... "okay, you feel free to watch your party
use oodles of money to find out who's most electable in the primary,
when they could have used Approval and saved that money to use
against the Democrats in the general election"? I'm not very
familiar with what Jameson calls "tribal counting coup" as politics
here is a lot more issue-based than American politics, so I don't
know if it'd work.
Plurality is the method that needs primaries to recover when a party
has nominated clones (because, in plurality the clones would divvy up
the available votes - in most other methods voters could see clones as
equally attractive and vote for both). Of course there is no escape
in plurality for multiple parties could nominate clones and primaries
are done within parties.
Then there are method centric arguments. Some are just confused about
what the thing means, as one can see by the "oh, and let the voters
vote
for a single candidate many times" type of posts. Others think it
violates one-man one-vote. How can we clear that up? Perhaps by
rephrasing it in terms of thumbs-up/thumbs-down? If each voter gets
ten
options to either do thumbs-up (approve) or not (don't approve), then
the voting power is the same for each.
[endquote]
OMOV may inspire some - many of us have to argue against it having
value because we back, as better, methods this thought argues about -
such as Condorcet, Score, and even IRV.
Yes, if you give thumbs-down to nearly all of the candidates,
you're giving just
as many ratings as the person who gives thumbs-up to nearly all of
the candidates.
S/he doesn't have more voting power than you do. As I said, you can
cancel out
any other voter, by an opposite ballot, no matter how many
candidates s/he gives
thumbs-up to.
With N candidates, each voter has the power to rate N candidates,
up or down.
True. I know that, you know that. How do we easily show the people
that? I think it's a matter of framing. If cast in terms of being
"you can give as many votes as there are candidates", then Approval
feels like it violates OMOV. If cast in terms of "for each
candidate, you determine if you approve/not" or "if your thumbs will
be up or down", then it's more clear that it doesn't, because every
voter has that choice for every candidate.
But, if you approve every candidate, you might as well have stayed
home - because the same count is received by every candidate you vote
for.
My preference for what to call approval is entirely pragmatic. The
term "approval" has precedence (it's called Approval voting after
all). The term "thumbs-up vs thumbs-down" might be easier to
understand for someone who's never heard of Approval before. I don't
know which phrasing would be stronger.
("In better set" vs "in worse set", i
Re: [EM] Kristofer: The Approval poll
On 03/22/2012 07:57 PM, MIKE OSSIPOFF wrote:
There are plenty of voters who report having to "hold their nose" and
vote only for someone they don't like. They'd all like to be able to
vote for better candidates to, including their favorites. Even if one
only counts the Democrat voters who say that they're strategically forced
to vote only for someone they don't really like, amounts to a lot of
people who'd see the improvement brought by Approval.
Especially since it would no longer be necessary to try to guess who
one's necessary compromise is (because you can vote for all the candidates
you might need as compromise). No more split vote, since it isn't necessary
for candidate Worst's opponents to all vote for the same candidates--They'd
easily be able to vote for the same _set_ of candidates, without all agreeing
on one candidate to unite on. These things answer the complaint of someone who
says that they had to hold their nose to vote for the Democrat. With Approval
they can approve the Democrat if they think they need to, and also everyone
better, including their favorite. Such voters will no longer be resigned to pure
giveaway.
Yes, that could work for Democrats and those who don't want to vote for
the lesser evil. The poll does seem to have a rather large number of
people who go "this is a liberal plot to swindle the election from us",
though. Could a primary argument work as a response? Something like...
"okay, you feel free to watch your party use oodles of money to find out
who's most electable in the primary, when they could have used Approval
and saved that money to use against the Democrats in the general
election"? I'm not very familiar with what Jameson calls "tribal
counting coup" as politics here is a lot more issue-based than American
politics, so I don't know if it'd work.
Then there are method centric arguments. Some are just confused about
what the thing means, as one can see by the "oh, and let the voters vote
for a single candidate many times" type of posts. Others think it
violates one-man one-vote. How can we clear that up? Perhaps by
rephrasing it in terms of thumbs-up/thumbs-down? If each voter gets ten
options to either do thumbs-up (approve) or not (don't approve), then
the voting power is the same for each.
[endquote]
Yes, if you give thumbs-down to nearly all of the candidates, you're giving just
as many ratings as the person who gives thumbs-up to nearly all of the
candidates.
S/he doesn't have more voting power than you do. As I said, you can cancel out
any other voter, by an opposite ballot, no matter how many candidates s/he gives
thumbs-up to.
With N candidates, each voter has the power to rate N candidates, up or down.
True. I know that, you know that. How do we easily show the people that?
I think it's a matter of framing. If cast in terms of being "you can
give as many votes as there are candidates", then Approval feels like it
violates OMOV. If cast in terms of "for each candidate, you determine if
you approve/not" or "if your thumbs will be up or down", then it's more
clear that it doesn't, because every voter has that choice for every
candidate.
My preference for what to call approval is entirely pragmatic. The term
"approval" has precedence (it's called Approval voting after all). The
term "thumbs-up vs thumbs-down" might be easier to understand for
someone who's never heard of Approval before. I don't know which
phrasing would be stronger.
("In better set" vs "in worse set", is probably not it :-) )
You continued:
I do note that there are very few arguments about chicken dilemma
situations. If there are barriers to Approval being adopted, that isn't
it - at least not yet. Though one could of course say that the reason
nobody objects using the chicken dilemma is that they haven't studied
the thing enough to know there actually *is* a chicken dilemma problem.
[endquote]
The chicken dilemma isn't, and can't be, an objection to switching from
Plurality
to Approval, because Plurality has it, at least as bad. "We won't vote for your
candidate,
so you'd better vote for ours if you want one of {yours,ours} to win." That
chicken
dilemma is worse than Approval's, because, to co-operate requires actually
abandoning
your favorite, and not even acknowledging that s/he is acceptable. It requires
voting the
other candidate over yours, and saying, in your ballot that s/he is better than
yours.
Again, that's true. I suppose I just expected the "tribalist counting
coup" guys who are going "okay, I know Approval is a Democrat plot, now
what can I say to discredit Approval" to at least refer to it. But
perhaps "my tribe doesn't like it" is good enough to a tribalist, so
they don't see the reason in investigating further.
Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Approval strategy introduction improvement
When I suggested things to say about Approval strategy yesterday, I should have given different emphasis: 1. Approval strategy is simpler than that of any other voting system. It's much simpler than Plurality strategy. Plurality strategy is a horrendously complicated and difficult guessing-game. 2. In Approval, just vote for your favorite, and also for whomever you think you likely need as a compromise. In Plurality, you now vote for whom you think you need as a compromise. Do so in Approval too, by giving them an approval--but now you can also approve everyone better as well, including your favorite. Note that if you don't know exactly which candidate you need for compromise, or which one the other voters like you will vote for, you can approve a whole set of candidates for compromise, &/or because they're favorites. 3. What was said above is sufficient, but, if you want more detail regarding how far to compromise (detail that would be pretty much impossible to feasibly have in Plurality), then consider the _optional_ simple strategy suggestions listed below. You wouldn't use them all. If you use one, you'd use only one of them--the one appropriate for the information or feel that you have about the election. Again, note that this doesn't amount to a complication added by Approval voting. What was said in paragraphs 1 and 2 corresponds to, and replaces, what you now do in Plurality. The interesting but simple strategies below are optional strategies for guiding your choice of how far you compromise. The only reason you don't hear about such strategy suggestions for Plurality is that they'd be humungously , prohibitively, complicated for Plurality. [Then would be listed the Approval strategy suggestions that I listed yesterday] Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Kristofer: The Approval poll
While the poll has comments of low quality, and the users seem to be
against Approval at the moment, I do think even those low-quality
comments can be useful.
Namely, they give us insight into the objections, fair or not, to
Approval itself. There are partisan arguments ("this is a liberal plot
to deny conservatives their voting power"), what can be done about them?
Can we point out places where conservatives are being hurt by
vote-splitting? Can we point at Ron Paul when responding to a libertarian?
[endquote]
There are plenty of voters who report having to "hold their nose" and
vote only for someone they don't like. They'd all like to be able to
vote for better candidates to, including their favorites. Even if one
only counts the Democrat voters who say that they're strategically forced
to vote only for someone they don't really like, amounts to a lot of
people who'd see the improvement brought by Approval.
Especially since it would no longer be necessary to try to guess who
one's necessary compromise is (because you can vote for all the candidates
you might need as compromise). No more split vote, since it isn't necessary
for candidate Worst's opponents to all vote for the same candidates--They'd
easily be able to vote for the same _set_ of candidates, without all agreeing
on one candidate to unite on. These things answer the complaint of someone who
says that they had to hold their nose to vote for the Democrat. With Approval
they can approve the Democrat if they think they need to, and also everyone
better, including their favorite. Such voters will no longer be resigned to pure
giveaway.
Then there are method centric arguments. Some are just confused about
what the thing means, as one can see by the "oh, and let the voters vote
for a single candidate many times" type of posts. Others think it
violates one-man one-vote. How can we clear that up? Perhaps by
rephrasing it in terms of thumbs-up/thumbs-down? If each voter gets ten
options to either do thumbs-up (approve) or not (don't approve), then
the voting power is the same for each.
[endquote]
Yes, if you give thumbs-down to nearly all of the candidates, you're giving just
as many ratings as the person who gives thumbs-up to nearly all of the
candidates.
S/he doesn't have more voting power than you do. As I said, you can cancel out
any other voter, by an opposite ballot, no matter how many candidates s/he gives
thumbs-up to.
With N candidates, each voter has the power to rate N candidates, up or down.
You continued:
Maybe that is a better phrasing
than approve/not in any case
[endquote]
I like "approve", because it's a good way of saying what you're doing. ...as
long
as it's well-understood that no approval is counted as a disapproval. You rate
each
candidate as approved or not approved. It's important that people understand
that.
If "thumbs-up" vs "thumbs-down" is easier for people to understand, then that
would be fine.
The ballot could require the person to mark an "approve" box or a "disapprove"
box, where
it's understood that "disapprove" is the default assumption. Or it could be
"thumbs-up" vs
"thumbs-down", or "accept for compromise" vs "reject", or "in better set" vs
"in worse set".
Of all those, I like "approve" vs "disapprove". As I said, we don't mean
"approve" in the
psychological sense. We mean it in the procedural sense. The operational sense.
The business
sense, as when one businessman says to another, "Yes, I'll approve that
proposal."
Approving is an action, not a feeling. And its opposite is disapproving. With
either, you're
rating the candidate, up or down.
You continued:
I do note that there are very few arguments about chicken dilemma
situations. If there are barriers to Approval being adopted, that isn't
it - at least not yet. Though one could of course say that the reason
nobody objects using the chicken dilemma is that they haven't studied
the thing enough to know there actually *is* a chicken dilemma problem.
[endquote]
The chicken dilemma isn't, and can't be, an objection to switching from
Plurality
to Approval, because Plurality has it, at least as bad. "We won't vote for your
candidate,
so you'd better vote for ours if you want one of {yours,ours} to win." That
chicken
dilemma is worse than Approval's, because, to co-operate requires actually
abandoning
your favorite, and not even acknowledging that s/he is acceptable. It requires
voting the
other candidate over yours, and saying, in your ballot that s/he is better than
yours.
Ask people:
"What problem does Approval have that Plurality doesn't have? What undesirable
result do you think Approval will have that Plurality doesn't have?"
When millions of people report having to hold their nose and vote only for
someone whom
they don't like, with no mention or support for anyone better,
in order to defeat someone worse, something is very wrong with the voting
system. One shouldn't expect a healthy society, with su
