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Partisanship is the problem, (something the founders considered but didn't fully grasp) and it could be ~90% solved by instituting a voting system that tends to

Partisanship is the problem, (something the founders considered but didn't fully grasp) and it could be ~90% solved by instituting a voting system that tends to elect the first choice of the median voter. As it is, we have plurality elections for electing representatives as well as the president, and by their nature candidates must cluster into parties to avoid losing due to vote splitting. That's where most of our partisanship comes from. A lot of people point to ranked choice voting to solve this, but it really isn't a lot better than plurality. Approval voting does way better, and it finally has been put into practice in local elections (in Fargo ND), and is being considered for a big city (St. Louis MO). It's a shame more people don't see this for the mathematical problem that it is, since it is relatively easy to solve.

kgwxd 7y ago
What would it take to make any change in the way elections currently work at the federal level?
- robbrown451 7y ago
  I believe it is up to the states how they elect representatives. It's a little harder with the presidency, because of the electoral college (a state may be at a disadvantage if they used approval while other states use plurality...it does not good to pick a middle ground candidate if they can't actually win). However, changing the way we elect representatives/senators would go a long way. https://www.electionscience.org/ces-updates/making-approval-voting-a-reality-in-us-elections/ https://www.electionscience.org/ces-updates/making-approval-...
smacktoward 7y ago
It's not so much that the Founders didn't grasp partisanship as it was that they thought it incompatible with republican government. Their conception of "good government" was a society governed by an aristocratic class of landed gentry, whose wealth would (in theory) make them immune to temptations like bribery and self-dealing. Ordinary people couldn't be trusted with their own government, because they would too easily succumb to those same temptations. In practice, of course, that theory broke down almost immediately. Political parties started coalescing around Hamilton and Jefferson practically before the ink on the Constitution had dried, and the gentry whose disinterestedness the Founders had placed so much trust in turned out to be just as flawed and venal as everybody else. If you're interested in why the Founders thought the way they did and the process of how reality broke their worldview in half, I can't recommend Gordon Wood's book The Radicalism of the American Revolution (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6956.The_Radicalism_of_the_American_Revolution https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6956.The_Radicalism_of_t...) highly enough. It's a great read that will change the way you look at the Revolution and the early republic.
- robbrown451 7y ago
  I think what they didn't fully grasp was how partisanship directly arrives from the voting method. Sure, there was factionalism, but the forcing into two opposing (and almost always equally balanced) parties as a mathematical equilibrium sort of thing probably wasn't in their lexicon. For instance Duverger's Law, which didn't even get a name until the 1950s or so. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law I will check out that book, thanks.
  - CharlesColeman 7y ago
    > and almost always equally balanced Doesn't that also follow from the voting method? A faction will make the political compromises it needs to reliably get past 50% in order to active power, but won't go much past that because it would be an unnecessary political sacrifice.
    - robbrown451 7y ago
      Yes exactly. That's the equilibrium under plurality.
  - smacktoward 7y ago
    Originally there weren't all that many places in the Constitutional system where a popular vote actually mattered, though. Senators were elected by state legislatures until 1913, for instance, not by popular vote. And the President was elected by the Electoral College, which in its original conception was supposed to have been a kind of grand assembly of the landed aristocracy, much in the same way the Constitutional Convention had been. In line with this conception, Electors were originally (and technically, still are) completely free to vote for whichever candidate they liked, without reference to who won their state's popular vote. And the Electoral College votes by state rather than by a raw count of the votes of the electors, adding a further layer of indirection.
CharlesColeman 7y ago
> Approval voting does way better, and it finally has been put into practice in local elections (in Fargo ND), and is being considered for a big city (St. Louis MO). That looks a lot more understandable and straightforward than ranked-choice voting, which is a big plus to me. Vote counting systems should be so straightforward that even a simpleton can understand them, as the more complicated they are the less I think they'll be trusted. Even with such a system, I think I'd still like there to be a final runoff election for important offices. It gives an opportunity for correction if a crazy somehow unexpectedly comes out ahead, and it will give a majority endorsement to someone.
- robbrown451 7y ago
  The proposition in St. Louis does have a runoff. Seems like a lot of expense. One system I've been looking at recently is "For and Against", which is also easy to understand. You get to vote for one candidate and against one. Against votes count as a -1, although in theory you could "phase the system in" by having the against votes count as -.5 or the like, the first election with the new system. That gives parties and other structures a bit more time to adapt. For and against is interesting in that it simply cancels out the vote splitting effect of plurality. You no longer have an incentive to hold nominations to eliminate candidates, since similar candidates will split against votes.
  - ClayShentrup 7y ago
    For and against still gives you the vote splitting problem. Approval voting is much superior.
    - robbrown451 7y ago
      Hi Clay, I'm not specifically advocating for For and Against (at least not compared to Approval), but I think it has interesting properties that can be used effectively for explaining vote splitting and Duverger's Law to those who don't quite grasp it. (I also think the fact that it could theoretically be phased in gradually is very interesting, particularly to those that worry about politicians who were elected with plurality being reluctant to endorse a different method) To the best I can test it, though, (I've been working on a graphically based voting simulator), For and Against comes up with remarkably good results compared to Approval, sometimes better, sometimes worse. Let me know if you want to see the graphical voting simulator, I'd be interested in your ideas about the assumptions made (there are lots of ways to tune it). I guess the way I'd put it is "yes it still has vote splitting, but that vote splitting doesn't result in Duverger's Law") Interestingly, For and Against is less expressive than Approval if there are five or more candidates, but more expressive if there are only 3. (e.g. you can say "Nader>Gore>Bush", rather than just "Nader=Gore>Bush" or "Nader>Gore=Bush") But again, I think the main value of For and Against is using it to explain how vote splitting results in a duopoly, ultimately opening people's minds to Approval or for that matter STAR (which I see you are the inventor of?). If you weight it toward "against" (e.g. count the against votes as -1 but the for votes as only 0.1), it has the exact opposite effect as plurality, in the sense that parties would want to have many candidates running, to dilute the against votes directed at their candidates. If you count them equally, though, the vote splitting effects effectively cancel each other out. The tunability of the method, as well as the way its strategy sort of directly derives out of Plurality strategy, has a lot of pedagogical value to me. Approval addresses vote splitting and Duverger's Law, but I personally find it harder to clearly explain how it actually accomplishes that.
kedean 7y ago
I disagree. Some kind of new system that isn't first-past-the-post is definitely necessary, but it won't solve partisanship right here and now. The state we are in has a huge portion of people literally hating the guts of anyone who is in a different party from them. The republican senators who are claiming they won't vote out Trump are largely doing it because they fear not getting re-elected, and a different voting system right now won't solve that, because republicans will still be republicans and see a vote for removal as "betrayal". It would take years before sufficient numbers of new parties would form and start to gain enough traction to get anywhere (I don't think groups like the libertarian party will do great, because they tend to be pretty polarizing, but I could be wrong). I don't call that an easy solve. A different style of voting might have lead to different election results though, due to the huge number of people who either abstained or voted for Trump because they disliked HRC, and the people who only voted Trump because they are registered republicans and that's that. It would not have lead to people voting in a non-partisan way. It's gotten so bad that there's a top subreddit, r/ENLIGHTEDCENTRISM, dedicated to making fun of people who don't vehemently subscribe to either Democrat or Republican ideologies.
- robbrown451 7y ago
  "The state we are in has a huge portion of people literally hating the guts of anyone who is in a different party from them" And how did this happen? With a voting system that elects the first choice of the median voter, there wouldn't be two opposing parties. There would more likely be people who organize around specific candidates, or that support specific issues, but not an artificial "right vs left" or "republican vs democrate"or "conservative vs liberal". And there wouldn't be big surprises on election day. A good way to visualize it is a hypothetical situation where you are voting for a number. Say it is a big office, and everyone votes on the temperature to set the thermostat. You could imagine a bad voting system, where the cold natured people and the warm natured people start to cluster into groups for strategic purposes, and they end up hating each other. Or a good system where everyone just writes down their preferred temperature, and the median temperature is chosen. Never a surprise after a vote, no one is particularly disgruntled. The ones that are extremely cold natured might dress warmer, etc, but that makes sense, right? That's how it could be. The problem is we are so used to it the way it has been for a long time, it is hard to realize it mostly comes from the voting system. Obviously it would take a bit of time for the effects of partisanship to fade, but that's expected.

kgwxd 7y ago

What would it take to make any change in the way elections currently work at the federal level?

robbrown451 7y ago
I believe it is up to the states how they elect representatives. It's a little harder with the presidency, because of the electoral college (a state may be at a disadvantage if they used approval while other states use plurality...it does not good to pick a middle ground candidate if they can't actually win). However, changing the way we elect representatives/senators would go a long way. https://www.electionscience.org/ces-updates/making-approval-voting-a-reality-in-us-elections/ https://www.electionscience.org/ces-updates/making-approval-...

smacktoward 7y ago

It's not so much that the Founders didn't grasp partisanship as it was that they thought it incompatible with republican government. Their conception of "good government" was a society governed by an aristocratic class of landed gentry, whose wealth would (in theory) make them immune to temptations like bribery and self-dealing. Ordinary people couldn't be trusted with their own government, because they would too easily succumb to those same temptations. In practice, of course, that theory broke down almost immediately. Political parties started coalescing around Hamilton and Jefferson practically before the ink on the Constitution had dried, and the gentry whose disinterestedness the Founders had placed so much trust in turned out to be just as flawed and venal as everybody else. If you're interested in why the Founders thought the way they did and the process of how reality broke their worldview in half, I can't recommend Gordon Wood's book The Radicalism of the American Revolution (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6956.The_Radicalism_of_the_American_Revolution https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6956.The_Radicalism_of_t...) highly enough. It's a great read that will change the way you look at the Revolution and the early republic.

robbrown451 7y ago
I think what they didn't fully grasp was how partisanship directly arrives from the voting method. Sure, there was factionalism, but the forcing into two opposing (and almost always equally balanced) parties as a mathematical equilibrium sort of thing probably wasn't in their lexicon. For instance Duverger's Law, which didn't even get a name until the 1950s or so. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law I will check out that book, thanks.
- CharlesColeman 7y ago
  > and almost always equally balanced Doesn't that also follow from the voting method? A faction will make the political compromises it needs to reliably get past 50% in order to active power, but won't go much past that because it would be an unnecessary political sacrifice.
  - robbrown451 7y ago
    Yes exactly. That's the equilibrium under plurality.
- smacktoward 7y ago
  Originally there weren't all that many places in the Constitutional system where a popular vote actually mattered, though. Senators were elected by state legislatures until 1913, for instance, not by popular vote. And the President was elected by the Electoral College, which in its original conception was supposed to have been a kind of grand assembly of the landed aristocracy, much in the same way the Constitutional Convention had been. In line with this conception, Electors were originally (and technically, still are) completely free to vote for whichever candidate they liked, without reference to who won their state's popular vote. And the Electoral College votes by state rather than by a raw count of the votes of the electors, adding a further layer of indirection.

CharlesColeman 7y ago

> Approval voting does way better, and it finally has been put into practice in local elections (in Fargo ND), and is being considered for a big city (St. Louis MO). That looks a lot more understandable and straightforward than ranked-choice voting, which is a big plus to me. Vote counting systems should be so straightforward that even a simpleton can understand them, as the more complicated they are the less I think they'll be trusted. Even with such a system, I think I'd still like there to be a final runoff election for important offices. It gives an opportunity for correction if a crazy somehow unexpectedly comes out ahead, and it will give a majority endorsement to someone.

robbrown451 7y ago
The proposition in St. Louis does have a runoff. Seems like a lot of expense. One system I've been looking at recently is "For and Against", which is also easy to understand. You get to vote for one candidate and against one. Against votes count as a -1, although in theory you could "phase the system in" by having the against votes count as -.5 or the like, the first election with the new system. That gives parties and other structures a bit more time to adapt. For and against is interesting in that it simply cancels out the vote splitting effect of plurality. You no longer have an incentive to hold nominations to eliminate candidates, since similar candidates will split against votes.
- ClayShentrup 7y ago
  For and against still gives you the vote splitting problem. Approval voting is much superior.
  - robbrown451 7y ago
    Hi Clay, I'm not specifically advocating for For and Against (at least not compared to Approval), but I think it has interesting properties that can be used effectively for explaining vote splitting and Duverger's Law to those who don't quite grasp it. (I also think the fact that it could theoretically be phased in gradually is very interesting, particularly to those that worry about politicians who were elected with plurality being reluctant to endorse a different method) To the best I can test it, though, (I've been working on a graphically based voting simulator), For and Against comes up with remarkably good results compared to Approval, sometimes better, sometimes worse. Let me know if you want to see the graphical voting simulator, I'd be interested in your ideas about the assumptions made (there are lots of ways to tune it). I guess the way I'd put it is "yes it still has vote splitting, but that vote splitting doesn't result in Duverger's Law") Interestingly, For and Against is less expressive than Approval if there are five or more candidates, but more expressive if there are only 3. (e.g. you can say "Nader>Gore>Bush", rather than just "Nader=Gore>Bush" or "Nader>Gore=Bush") But again, I think the main value of For and Against is using it to explain how vote splitting results in a duopoly, ultimately opening people's minds to Approval or for that matter STAR (which I see you are the inventor of?). If you weight it toward "against" (e.g. count the against votes as -1 but the for votes as only 0.1), it has the exact opposite effect as plurality, in the sense that parties would want to have many candidates running, to dilute the against votes directed at their candidates. If you count them equally, though, the vote splitting effects effectively cancel each other out. The tunability of the method, as well as the way its strategy sort of directly derives out of Plurality strategy, has a lot of pedagogical value to me. Approval addresses vote splitting and Duverger's Law, but I personally find it harder to clearly explain how it actually accomplishes that.

kedean 7y ago

I disagree. Some kind of new system that isn't first-past-the-post is definitely necessary, but it won't solve partisanship right here and now. The state we are in has a huge portion of people literally hating the guts of anyone who is in a different party from them. The republican senators who are claiming they won't vote out Trump are largely doing it because they fear not getting re-elected, and a different voting system right now won't solve that, because republicans will still be republicans and see a vote for removal as "betrayal". It would take years before sufficient numbers of new parties would form and start to gain enough traction to get anywhere (I don't think groups like the libertarian party will do great, because they tend to be pretty polarizing, but I could be wrong). I don't call that an easy solve. A different style of voting might have lead to different election results though, due to the huge number of people who either abstained or voted for Trump because they disliked HRC, and the people who only voted Trump because they are registered republicans and that's that. It would not have lead to people voting in a non-partisan way. It's gotten so bad that there's a top subreddit, r/ENLIGHTEDCENTRISM, dedicated to making fun of people who don't vehemently subscribe to either Democrat or Republican ideologies.

robbrown451 7y ago
"The state we are in has a huge portion of people literally hating the guts of anyone who is in a different party from them" And how did this happen? With a voting system that elects the first choice of the median voter, there wouldn't be two opposing parties. There would more likely be people who organize around specific candidates, or that support specific issues, but not an artificial "right vs left" or "republican vs democrate"or "conservative vs liberal". And there wouldn't be big surprises on election day. A good way to visualize it is a hypothetical situation where you are voting for a number. Say it is a big office, and everyone votes on the temperature to set the thermostat. You could imagine a bad voting system, where the cold natured people and the warm natured people start to cluster into groups for strategic purposes, and they end up hating each other. Or a good system where everyone just writes down their preferred temperature, and the median temperature is chosen. Never a surprise after a vote, no one is particularly disgruntled. The ones that are extremely cold natured might dress warmer, etc, but that makes sense, right? That's how it could be. The problem is we are so used to it the way it has been for a long time, it is hard to realize it mostly comes from the voting system. Obviously it would take a bit of time for the effects of partisanship to fade, but that's expected.