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> easy to explain I used to think this, and then I tried describing it to a room full of educated people -- some with advanced degrees -- and persuading them i
by wwweston 7y ago
> easy to explain
I used to think this, and then I tried describing it to a room full of educated people -- some with advanced degrees -- and persuading them it was better than plurality for the system we were setting up for a nonprofit board.
It's certainly possible I was the point of failure, but everyone kept getting concerned about each person having multiple votes
"Like, what if someone cheats and gives all their votes to one person?"
"You can't do that, it's approval voting, you can cast one approval vote for each candidate"
"But that means each person can vote for multiple candidates!"
"Yes. Every person uses their ballot to indicate which candidates they find acceptable."
"But what if I like one candidate more than all the others?"
"Then you can either vote for them and everyone else you think would be OK, or just vote for them."
"But what if someone else votes for all the people I don't like."
"How is that different from people voting for a candidate you don't like now?"
"Well, they can only pick one candidate I don't like now."
I understand no voting system is perfect, but I was not expecting this one to be such a hard sell.
- abecedarius 7y agoThis makes me wonder if the relative complexity of IRV makes it paradoxically easier to sell. People tuning out the details and deciding based on stories of past elections that could've been different, plus their impressions of the advocates.
- martinflack 7y agoI think Range Voting is easier to pitch. You vote each candidate on a 5-star basis similar to your ride sharing and delivery apps. As a bonus it collects more fine-gained data per voter.
- Sohcahtoa82 7y agoThis method of voting makes the enthusiasm gap have a greater impact on the results. Trump won because Republicans loved him, whereas most Democrats were pretty lukewarm on Clinton. If I rated Bernie 5 stars, but Clinton only 3, it would have merely made a Trump victory even more secure.
- lukifer 7y agoInteresting, I wouldn't have expected that either. I wonder if the "some people get more votes" concern disappears if reframed from "vote for you who approve", to "vote yes or no for each candidate". In a 7-candidate race, it's not that one person casts 1 vote, and another casts 4; both cast 7 votes (1-6 vs 4-3). I suspect we're so conditioned to treating votes as exclusionary/zero-sum, the mere idea of one person ticking multiple boxes can easily trigger instincts for fairness / cheater detection.
- wwweston 7y agoI like the frame! Would love to have thought of that then, my intuition is also that it has a lot of potential to carry the idea, likely better than my various diagrams of tally marks.