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Here's my obligatory plug for approval voting. Approval is the "checkboxes instead of radio buttons" voting method. Select any, instead of select one. Vote for

Here's my obligatory plug for approval voting. Approval is the "checkboxes instead of radio buttons" voting method. Select any, instead of select one. Vote for whoever you want and the candidate with the most votes wins. It gets rid of a lot of the drawbacks of FPTP while retaining its simplicity, unlike IRV. I've always wanted to get people to vote on voting systems with a variety of voting methods and see what wins by what method. I'd vote this: [ ] FPTP [x] Approval [x] IRV Approval > IRV > FPTP As an aside: It's a pet peeve when people call instant runoff voting (IRV) "ranked choice voting (RCV)." There are many kinds of RCV, and IRV is just one, and it has some pretty undesirable properties (a condorcet winner doesn't always win, so there can be a losing candidate that the majority prefers over the winner).

lostdog 5y ago
So many plugs for approval voting in these threads, but it just seems so terrible for what people really want to express. For example, in 2016, plenty of people wanted Sanders more than Clinton. Who are they supposed to "approve?" Many of them would note their preference by just approving Sanders and not Clinton, which is the opposite of what a voting system is supposed to help achieve.
- obelos 5y ago
  People voting for the only candidate they want just doesn’t strike me as a failure. The failure comes when someone has to vote for someone who is not their preferred. That said, the 2016 Dem primary doesn’t seem like a useful example for testing the constraints of any voting system since there were really only two viable candidates. All methods work equally well under those conditions. Why would someone approve both of the only two candidates when only one of them could win?
  - lostdog 5y ago
    I was talking about the general election not the primary. (If we used a decent voting system, then all popular candidates could go to the general).
- adjkant 5y ago
  Exactly. What about if it was Sanders, Clinton, Kasich, and Trump? As a far left voter, do I have to approve Kasich if I really don't want Trump to win? In RCV, it's simple: Sanders, Clinton, maybe Kasich to ensure Trump doesn't win. There are 100% problems in IRV that Clinton or Kasich may be the first elimination there, meaning moderates can get screwed even with preference, but it's still way better than Approval IMO. The answer is a better RCV system than IVF, but let's start by getting rid of FPTP. I'd love to see some nuanced RCV methods that combine IRV, Ranked Pairs, Condorcet Winners, etc to basically improve IRV eliminations and take "shortcuts" like steps that consider what % of ballots you're on. Basically, approval voting has its place, but it should be within RCV. Does it make understanding the tally harder for the layman? Yes. But if designed right, it simplifies the voting end so that people can essentially approval and rank vote together. Rank everyone you approve/would accept, and rank in your true preference order. That's what we should be solving for IMO.
  - postalrat 5y ago
    Vote Sanders and Clinton. Or Sanders, Clinton, and Kasich. Or just Sanders. Vote for as many as you approve of. Simple.
    - bootlooped 5y ago
      What's not simple is where to draw the approve/disapprove line.
      - postalrat 5y ago
        You could be honest and pick the ones you approve of. Or if you just dont want some candidate(s) to win pick everyone else.
        bootlooped 5y ago
        I don't think it's as simple of a question as you suggest. Think of a food you disapprove of. Ok, now if you're stranded on a desert island, do you approve of it now? If you're at your usual grocery store you might disapprove of certain foods, but if you have to go to a much smaller one you may switch some of those to approve.
- ajmurmann 5y ago
  That's where something like STAR voting is even better. Just score people 0 to 5 on how much you like them. Gets rid of strategic voting, spoiler effect and works super well for large sets of choices as well. It's in essence like we score movies or restaurant reviews which makes it familiar as well.
  - lostdog 5y ago
    I would take STAR voting! The only downside is having to hear politicians ask for 5 stars in every speech!
  - MichaelApproved 5y ago
    Let’s be honest, it’s hard enough getting Americans to the ballot on Election Day, we don’t need to introduce more complexity. Ranking requires far less brain power than a rating system would. Maybe the energy expenditure between the two is small for the HN group but for the general public, the aversion to doing the mental work would be enough to dramatically reduce turnout. This goes for all countries, not just America. Not to mention how easy it is to spread lies for something as simplistic as FPTP. The more complicated a system is, the easier it’ll be to spread lies about it.
    - ajmurmann 5y ago
      I'm not sure why you claim that ranking requires less brain power. Ranking becomes especially burdensome as you have more candidates/options. On top of that ranked voting seems much simpler on the surface than it actually is. The actual calculation is quite opaque in comparison.
    - goatse-4-u 5y ago
      .
    - ClayShentrup 5y ago
      > Ranking requires far less brain power than a rating system would. Rating is simpler than ranking in every way we can measure, from rates of ballot spoilage, to average time taken to complete a ballot. https://medium.com/election-science/star-voting-is-simpler-than-irv-84b8990986f2 https://medium.com/election-science/star-voting-is-simpler-t... https://www.rangevoting.org/Complexity https://www.rangevoting.org/Complexity Most obviously, ranking is effectively a bubble sort, О(n^2), whereas rating is just two passes: 1. Get the max and min. 2. Normalize, thus O(n). And Approval Voting, technically rating on a 0-1 binary scale, is arguably even simpler than the status quo.
- aimor 5y ago
  They are supposed to approve of each candidate individually. This avoids problems such as the one you allude to in your example where Sanders may lose to Clinton despite more total people approving of Sanders, simply because Clinton supporters (the larger group) rank Clinton>Sanders while Sanders supporters (a minority of voters) only rank Sanders.
- ClayShentrup 5y ago
  > it just seems so terrible for what people really want to express. Intuition would say so, but intuition is wrong. https://electionscience.org/library/expressiveness-in-approval-vs-ranked-ballots/ https://electionscience.org/library/expressiveness-in-approv... > Who are they supposed to "approve?" Everyone they prefer to the expected utility of the winner. https://www.rangevoting.org/RVstrat6 https://www.rangevoting.org/RVstrat6 And indeed, Sanders (and Warren) did quite well in multiple approval voting polls like this one. https://electionscience.org/press-releases/new-poll-74-of-democratic-primary-voters-would-support-warren-for-president/ https://electionscience.org/press-releases/new-poll-74-of-de...
throw5away 5y ago
I'd go as far as to say Approval > FPTP > IRV. FPTP has good properties like monotonicity (for a good example see http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/ http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/), easily distributed counting, and preservation of the secret ballot that IRV does _not_ have. You really don't get much bang for your buck by switching to IRV; I'd say it's a negative deal overall.
- dane-pgp 5y ago
  If we're comparing Approval and FPTP in terms of easily distributed counting, it's worth noting that a ballot paper with N candidates can be marked in N different ways with FPTP and 2^N ways with Approval. That may not be a problem for computers, but if you want to avoid the potential failure modes of (and conspiracy theories related to) electronic voting machines, there is a big difference between an election official trying to place a ballot on one of 10 piles versus trying to find the correct one out of 1024 piles. A system like MMP can avoid this problem by using FPTP counting of ballots and then topping up the number of seats for each party to make the distribution of winners match the distribution of total votes.
  - throw5away 5y ago
    You don't need the n bits of information from each ballot. You can just transmit the aggregate counts. A human can easily put tally marks in each of n buckets. In fact, a computer would likely do the same instead of creating an exponential number of buckets... If you insist on a degenerate formulation, just split the ballots into n different elections and transmit the results of each one of those elections. We can use the same equipment we have today.
    - alisonkisk 5y ago
      Even simpler, an approval voter can cast up to N (different) ballots.
      - dane-pgp 5y ago
        I like this, although with paper ballots it would mean counting (up to) N times as many pieces of paper, which would be (up to) N times slower/more expensive.
jasonhansel 5y ago
Also: for better or for worse, IRV tends to harm moderate candidates (who might be everyone's second choice, but nobody's first choice). Approval voting, on the other hand, tends to favor moderates (since they get one vote from a large percentage of the population, even if they're not on the top of anyone's list).
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
godelski 5y ago
> As an aside: It's a pet peeve when people call instant runoff voting (IRV) "ranked choice voting (RCV)." Honestly I've just shifted to referring to ranked systems as "ordinal," which is also the proper term, though doesn't use layman language. I honestly believe that Fair Vote has pushed this terminology to create confusion. Their site has historically had many misleading errors, especially w.r.t. spoiler effects (ignoring the favorite betrayer criterion).
spbaar 5y ago
I can't quite grasp this. Candidates A B C i prefer in that order. I look at the polls and see A and B are close, but i much prefer them to C, so I approve of A and B. But the results come in and B won over A by 1 vote. Lets say me and 5 other people thought and acted that way. We're disappointed because we were not able to express our preference. Lets say we 5 people do the opposite and only approve of A because we want to avoid the above, but it turns out C wins by 1 vote over B. We're disappointed we took a gamble to avoid the first situation and ended up with the second. I understand RCV 1 2 3 may lead to weird situations downballot and horse trading, I know those examples but they seem infinitely harder to game out and vote defensively on compared to approval. The explanations of approval all seem to rely on the falsehood that the voter approves of their choices equally.

lostdog 5y ago

So many plugs for approval voting in these threads, but it just seems so terrible for what people really want to express. For example, in 2016, plenty of people wanted Sanders more than Clinton. Who are they supposed to "approve?" Many of them would note their preference by just approving Sanders and not Clinton, which is the opposite of what a voting system is supposed to help achieve.

obelos 5y ago
People voting for the only candidate they want just doesn’t strike me as a failure. The failure comes when someone has to vote for someone who is not their preferred. That said, the 2016 Dem primary doesn’t seem like a useful example for testing the constraints of any voting system since there were really only two viable candidates. All methods work equally well under those conditions. Why would someone approve both of the only two candidates when only one of them could win?
- lostdog 5y ago
  I was talking about the general election not the primary. (If we used a decent voting system, then all popular candidates could go to the general).
adjkant 5y ago
Exactly. What about if it was Sanders, Clinton, Kasich, and Trump? As a far left voter, do I have to approve Kasich if I really don't want Trump to win? In RCV, it's simple: Sanders, Clinton, maybe Kasich to ensure Trump doesn't win. There are 100% problems in IRV that Clinton or Kasich may be the first elimination there, meaning moderates can get screwed even with preference, but it's still way better than Approval IMO. The answer is a better RCV system than IVF, but let's start by getting rid of FPTP. I'd love to see some nuanced RCV methods that combine IRV, Ranked Pairs, Condorcet Winners, etc to basically improve IRV eliminations and take "shortcuts" like steps that consider what % of ballots you're on. Basically, approval voting has its place, but it should be within RCV. Does it make understanding the tally harder for the layman? Yes. But if designed right, it simplifies the voting end so that people can essentially approval and rank vote together. Rank everyone you approve/would accept, and rank in your true preference order. That's what we should be solving for IMO.
- postalrat 5y ago
  Vote Sanders and Clinton. Or Sanders, Clinton, and Kasich. Or just Sanders. Vote for as many as you approve of. Simple.
  - bootlooped 5y ago
    What's not simple is where to draw the approve/disapprove line.
    - postalrat 5y ago
      You could be honest and pick the ones you approve of. Or if you just dont want some candidate(s) to win pick everyone else.
      - bootlooped 5y ago
        I don't think it's as simple of a question as you suggest. Think of a food you disapprove of. Ok, now if you're stranded on a desert island, do you approve of it now? If you're at your usual grocery store you might disapprove of certain foods, but if you have to go to a much smaller one you may switch some of those to approve.
ajmurmann 5y ago
That's where something like STAR voting is even better. Just score people 0 to 5 on how much you like them. Gets rid of strategic voting, spoiler effect and works super well for large sets of choices as well. It's in essence like we score movies or restaurant reviews which makes it familiar as well.
- lostdog 5y ago
  I would take STAR voting! The only downside is having to hear politicians ask for 5 stars in every speech!
- MichaelApproved 5y ago
  Let’s be honest, it’s hard enough getting Americans to the ballot on Election Day, we don’t need to introduce more complexity. Ranking requires far less brain power than a rating system would. Maybe the energy expenditure between the two is small for the HN group but for the general public, the aversion to doing the mental work would be enough to dramatically reduce turnout. This goes for all countries, not just America. Not to mention how easy it is to spread lies for something as simplistic as FPTP. The more complicated a system is, the easier it’ll be to spread lies about it.
  - ajmurmann 5y ago
    I'm not sure why you claim that ranking requires less brain power. Ranking becomes especially burdensome as you have more candidates/options. On top of that ranked voting seems much simpler on the surface than it actually is. The actual calculation is quite opaque in comparison.
  - goatse-4-u 5y ago
    .
  - ClayShentrup 5y ago
    > Ranking requires far less brain power than a rating system would. Rating is simpler than ranking in every way we can measure, from rates of ballot spoilage, to average time taken to complete a ballot. https://medium.com/election-science/star-voting-is-simpler-than-irv-84b8990986f2 https://medium.com/election-science/star-voting-is-simpler-t... https://www.rangevoting.org/Complexity https://www.rangevoting.org/Complexity Most obviously, ranking is effectively a bubble sort, О(n^2), whereas rating is just two passes: 1. Get the max and min. 2. Normalize, thus O(n). And Approval Voting, technically rating on a 0-1 binary scale, is arguably even simpler than the status quo.
aimor 5y ago
They are supposed to approve of each candidate individually. This avoids problems such as the one you allude to in your example where Sanders may lose to Clinton despite more total people approving of Sanders, simply because Clinton supporters (the larger group) rank Clinton>Sanders while Sanders supporters (a minority of voters) only rank Sanders.
ClayShentrup 5y ago
> it just seems so terrible for what people really want to express. Intuition would say so, but intuition is wrong. https://electionscience.org/library/expressiveness-in-approval-vs-ranked-ballots/ https://electionscience.org/library/expressiveness-in-approv... > Who are they supposed to "approve?" Everyone they prefer to the expected utility of the winner. https://www.rangevoting.org/RVstrat6 https://www.rangevoting.org/RVstrat6 And indeed, Sanders (and Warren) did quite well in multiple approval voting polls like this one. https://electionscience.org/press-releases/new-poll-74-of-democratic-primary-voters-would-support-warren-for-president/ https://electionscience.org/press-releases/new-poll-74-of-de...

throw5away 5y ago

I'd go as far as to say Approval > FPTP > IRV. FPTP has good properties like monotonicity (for a good example see http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/ http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/), easily distributed counting, and preservation of the secret ballot that IRV does _not_ have. You really don't get much bang for your buck by switching to IRV; I'd say it's a negative deal overall.

dane-pgp 5y ago
If we're comparing Approval and FPTP in terms of easily distributed counting, it's worth noting that a ballot paper with N candidates can be marked in N different ways with FPTP and 2^N ways with Approval. That may not be a problem for computers, but if you want to avoid the potential failure modes of (and conspiracy theories related to) electronic voting machines, there is a big difference between an election official trying to place a ballot on one of 10 piles versus trying to find the correct one out of 1024 piles. A system like MMP can avoid this problem by using FPTP counting of ballots and then topping up the number of seats for each party to make the distribution of winners match the distribution of total votes.
- throw5away 5y ago
  You don't need the n bits of information from each ballot. You can just transmit the aggregate counts. A human can easily put tally marks in each of n buckets. In fact, a computer would likely do the same instead of creating an exponential number of buckets... If you insist on a degenerate formulation, just split the ballots into n different elections and transmit the results of each one of those elections. We can use the same equipment we have today.
  - alisonkisk 5y ago
    Even simpler, an approval voter can cast up to N (different) ballots.
    - dane-pgp 5y ago
      I like this, although with paper ballots it would mean counting (up to) N times as many pieces of paper, which would be (up to) N times slower/more expensive.

jasonhansel 5y ago

Also: for better or for worse, IRV tends to harm moderate candidates (who might be everyone's second choice, but nobody's first choice). Approval voting, on the other hand, tends to favor moderates (since they get one vote from a large percentage of the population, even if they're not on the top of anyone's list).

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

godelski 5y ago

> As an aside: It's a pet peeve when people call instant runoff voting (IRV) "ranked choice voting (RCV)." Honestly I've just shifted to referring to ranked systems as "ordinal," which is also the proper term, though doesn't use layman language. I honestly believe that Fair Vote has pushed this terminology to create confusion. Their site has historically had many misleading errors, especially w.r.t. spoiler effects (ignoring the favorite betrayer criterion).

spbaar 5y ago

I can't quite grasp this. Candidates A B C i prefer in that order. I look at the polls and see A and B are close, but i much prefer them to C, so I approve of A and B. But the results come in and B won over A by 1 vote. Lets say me and 5 other people thought and acted that way. We're disappointed because we were not able to express our preference. Lets say we 5 people do the opposite and only approve of A because we want to avoid the above, but it turns out C wins by 1 vote over B. We're disappointed we took a gamble to avoid the first situation and ended up with the second. I understand RCV 1 2 3 may lead to weird situations downballot and horse trading, I know those examples but they seem infinitely harder to game out and vote defensively on compared to approval. The explanations of approval all seem to rely on the falsehood that the voter approves of their choices equally.