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Seattle residents launch Approval Voting initiative for representative elections [pdf]

89 points by troydavis 5y ago

yboris 5y ago
I learned about Approval Voting from the amazing podcast by 80,000 Hours https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/aaron-hamlin-voting-reform/ https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/aaron-hamlin-voting-... It's an amazing in-depth interview about Approval and other types of voting systems.
troydavis 5y ago
I'm co-leading this initiative. It's democracy, not politics: a simple, non-partisan, candidate-neutral change that leads to far more representative[1] winners. If anyone would like to invest time or money to make this happen, please contact us or donate here: https://SeattleApproves.org/ https://SeattleApproves.org/ [1]: https://electionscience.github.io/vse-sim/VSEbasic/ https://electionscience.github.io/vse-sim/VSEbasic/ , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7btAd1HYvjU&t=1329 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7btAd1HYvjU&t=1329
- otterley 5y ago
  Can you compare this against ranked-choice voting with instant run-offs?
  - godelski 5y ago
    The first link there does actually compare against ranked choice. It is just called IRV. There's a larger comparison that includes more types of ranked choice (also called "ordinal") here[0]. Though I particularly like this animation[1]. I'll also add that there is a lot of nuance to voting and VSE isn't everything. There's a lot of factors to consider including: how do strategies work? Is it scalable? Can it easily be counted and/or verified statistically? How easy is it for voters? How effective are (strong and weak) spoiler candidates? And many more questions. For the most part cardinal methods (like Approval) fair better on all these accounts. There is a slight tradeoff to VSE. Note STAR in [0] has a slightly lower VSE than RP/Schulz (ranked), but a tighter grouping (better vs strategies). But also STAR is more complex for voters and counting than Approval is (I'd still argue STAR is easier for voters and counters than ordinal systems). So these are the types of tradeoffs you're making [0] https://electionscience.github.io/vse-sim/VSE/ https://electionscience.github.io/vse-sim/VSE/ [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4FXLQoLDBA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4FXLQoLDBA
    - clairity 5y ago
      i'd actually love to see a voting system developed that's closer to a conjoint, which is a statistical method designed to reveal preferences, rather than relying on stated preferences (which are notoriously unreliable). it's more complicated, but we have plenty of technology nowadays to make it practical. one method of implementing this (from thinking about it for all of 2 minutes), is developing a list of the top 10-20 issues that voters care about in a given election and providing tradeoff choices for each, then matching them to the candidate closest to their revealed preference. of course, the biggest issue with method is that it moves the problem up one level, from voting to choice design. [0]: https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Conjoint_analysis https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Conjoint_analysis
      - godelski 5y ago
        I honestly think it is very difficult to determine what voters' actual preferences are. I mean think of your standard political compass tests. Or even Meyer Briggs. They can change day to day or mood to mood and lots of questions tend to be leading. While I love the idea, I think logistically it would be a nightmare and greatly reduce transparency. It would also be far more vulnerable to so called experts manipulating the system if they aren't acting in good faith.
        clairity 5y ago
        it's exceedingly difficult to fairly aggregate voter preferences, but all current voting systems seem to reduce all that complexity down to a singular choice in the overwhelming majority of cases. that's a shitload of information discarded, to put it crassly. the neat thing about conjoint is that it multiplexes the choice-making (when designed well), so that the choice burden scales reasonably while also better representing collective choice. nothing is going to be perfect, but conjoint could potentially be better than all current systems, probably by an order of magnitude or more. it's relatively complicated, so yes, 'experts' (i disdain this term, frankly) could in theory manipulate the system, but transparency of voting data (just like now) and survey design (the more likely bias vector) would make that difficult. transparency would allow competing independent journalists, academics/researchers, political analysts, etc. to weigh in and balance out biases (not perfectly of course), as well as verify results.
  - troydavis 5y ago
    Other people gave good answers about how this compares to RCV/IRV (thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29266519#29269246 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29266519#29269246), and both of the links in my first footnote above (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29266519#29266537 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29266519#29266537) cover it. That's all academic, though. A great real example is the 2021 Seattle City Attorney primary, which had only 3 candidates. The votes were split: 36%, 32%, 30%. These 2 candidates emerged from the primary: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/30/us/seattle-city-attorney-election.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/30/us/seattle-city-attorney-.... The candidate that most accurately represented the opinion of the electorate, Holmes, was eliminated. That would have still happened in a ranked ballot. The voters who voted for Thomas-Kennedy or Davison in our current system would have still put Thomas-Kennedy or Davison #1 in a ranked ballot. I tried to distill this in https://twitter.com/troyd/status/1461389190206156802 https://twitter.com/troyd/status/1461389190206156802. And a 3-way race like that is actually the simplest possible case. Effects like that are much more likely with more candidates and they happen everywhere in the elimination cycle, they’re just less obvious to casual observers. That's what you see in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7btAd1HYvjU&t=1329 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7btAd1HYvjU&t=1329 (note that IRV == RCV in that video). (Obligatory disclaimer: I don't care who wins. I do care how accurately the winners reflect the inputs, namely, voter opinion.) Separately, Washington law requires cities hold a primary that produces 2 candidates for the general election, so cities can't legally eliminate primaries. That said, whether primaries are a net positive or negative is a really complicated discussion. Beyond election mechanics, the disadvantage of primaries is that only a subset of voters in the general will turn out in the primary. The advantage is that voters don't spend much time on ballots and it focuses that time. Seattle had 15 candidates for Mayor (many races are 10+). If someone spends 10 minutes on their ballot and the ballot has 10 races, that's 1 minute per race - 6 seconds per candidate. No easy answer here. However, for practical purposes we don't need to answer that hard question; this one change delivers an incredibly representative election.
- wfhpw 5y ago
  My prior intuition was that rank-choice voting would be preferable to approval voting, but this [1] was pretty helpful. Thanks! [1] https://electionscience.org/library/approval-voting-versus-irv/ https://electionscience.org/library/approval-voting-versus-i...
  - troydavis 5y ago
    You’re welcome! You might also enjoy the concrete example (from a recent Seattle primary) here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29266519#29277580 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29266519#29277580
- slownews45 5y ago
  I've seen approval voting up close, approval and top 3 make it to council seats. One issue seems to be domination by majority? For example, let's say 55% of electorate is hard left, 45% moderate to conservative. Under approval those 55% can vote for all 3 lets say hard left candidates, no moderate's make it in? RCV, once someone has gotten their candidate in, their vote is exhausted. Seems to come out much better. Still might end up with 2 hard left, one moderate, but that seems fairer to me.
  - ClayShentrup 5y ago
    This is actually completely backwards. IRV favors extremists whereas approval voting tends to find the most broadly appealing candidate. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-4FXLQoLDBA https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-4FXLQoLDBA
    - slownews45 5y ago
      That's not how its working here. We are getting near 100% representation from about 56% of votes. The ballot is approval style voting, you can vote for X of Y candidates.
      - pxx 5y ago
        That's not approval voting. If X is equal to the number of open seats that's literally just the definition of multiple winner plurality voting. Approval voting is a single winner system.
      - xvedejas 5y ago
        if X is a fixed number, then it's not approval voting. In approval voting, there is no limit, either minimum or maximum, on the number of candidates you can vote for. If X is limited, then you get something a bit more like plurality voting, since the spoiler effect is in play.
      - jpfed 5y ago
        As others have said, if they're limiting the number of approvals you can make on your ballot, then that's not how approval voting is supposed to be administered. If they're just adding up each candidate's votes, that's not how approval is supposed to be tabulated in a multi-winner context (which is more complicated); see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_approval_voting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_approval_voting
- ISL 5y ago
  What blocks us from attempting a similar approach state-wide? Seattle's top-two approach has already made a big difference in making the general election relevant and competitive. Where I see trouble these days is with Federal elections. Being able to vote for anyone but X or Z would be a wonderful way to send a signal as a voter. I suspect that both the east and west sides of the state would feel similarly (East: "Anyone but X!", West: "Anyone but Y!". Result: M gets elected, who is thankfully neither X nor Y.).
  - godelski 5y ago
    > What blocks us from attempting a similar approach state-wide? Same thing that makes it difficult by attempting to do it country wide. That it is larger and more difficult. It would be nice if we could just wave a hand and change everything at once, but that also wouldn't be very democratic. What is also nice is that we can experiment, refine, and test at smaller levels before we advance to larger elections.
  - troydavis 5y ago
    Sorry for the late response. I wasn't on HN yesterday. Someone else answered this well, but: money. A Seattle initiative is roughly 10%-20% as expensive as a statewide one, and it's still an incredible challenge to raise enough to do this. Ask me where I spend my time. Qualifying for the ballot in Seattle requires about 26,200 valid signatures (10% of votes cast in the last Mayoral election). They must be collected during a 180-day period that, due to deadlines to make the November ballot, must is basically January-June. Since January-March is wet and cold, people aren't outside as much and many initiatives just do April-June. Collecting 26,000 signatures in 90-180 days is all but impossible with volunteers, which means the core challenge for an initiative is fundraising to pay signature-gathering costs. You can divide 26,000 by any number of valid signatures collected per hour - 3, 6, 12, whatever - and it's still a lot of time and thus really expensive. So, that's for the Seattle ballot. Getting on the WA state ballot requires 324,516 (!). Yes, 12x more. And that cost scales roughly linearly; the few efficiencies of scale are offset by new inefficiencies like travel. There's some efficiencies with overhead, but that's a small % of the cost. So, that's why. It takes 5-10x more money. Of course, voters would need to support it statewide too. In Seattle, this will pass; our job is to get it on the ballot. A statewide campaign may also need to do at least an education/awareness campaign (roughly the last paragraph of your comment) and potentially even try to change public opinion. These can cost even more than collecting signatures. (If you're reading this and thinking "Wow, Troy knows this stuff - and it's interesting and there's a plan to do this!" - it is and there is! I'd love your help as a volunteer and/or your donations.)
- pagibson 5y ago
  Despite the claim that this isn't political, it's very difficult not to see this in light of the fact that Seattle's city council has the only elected Marxist in the U.S. Kshama Sawant fought for the $15 minimum wage, the Amazon tax, numerous renters' rights protections, a ban on police use of chemical weapons against protestors, and is now continuing the fight for rent control. She's currently facing a right-wing recall campaign because big business was unable to defeat her in the 2019 election, despite Amazon dumping $1.5 million into various races for citywide office. A few here have remarked that approval voting tends to select more "moderate" candidates over "extremes." This isn't a neutral preference, it's obviously ideological, and targeted at one specific legislator in Seattle. Voters should reject this measure as a transparent attack on the most effective and sincere fighter for working people in the country. Full disclosure, Kshama and I are both members of Socialist Alternative. I may be limited in my ability to respond today, as I'm rushing right after work to a volunteer shift to make sure she stays in office. I'll try my best to check in occasionally!
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - TulliusCicero 5y ago
    This seems like a bit of a hot take. Are the people behind this initiative connected to conservative or anti-Sawant organizations?
    - abeyer 5y ago
      Sawant and her supporters have had a pretty loose relationship with the truth in general, so I wouldn't put too much stock in that. It seems far more likely that if it's specifically in response to recent events that it's actually the fact that "conservative" (by Seattle standards, where we just elected the first republican in 30 years to a city office) candidates did quite well in the Nov elections where they were running against far left candidates and had squeezed out any more moderate voices in the primaries.
      - pagibson 5y ago
philwelch 5y ago
You know, when I lived in Seattle, my biggest problem when voting was never, "I approve of too many of these candidates and it's hard for me to choose just one".
- blacksmith_tb 5y ago
  Well, having lived and voted in SF and Portland, I would say that I can think of races where I would have been fine with several of the contenders, but would have really not wanted an outlier to win, so AV seems like it could work. In my undergrad days I got to experience a ranked system, which is interesting, but seems sort of inefficient.
  - titanomachy 5y ago
    Inefficient in what way? Surely the small amount of computing power needed to process the ballots and determine the winner is not significant when compared to the increased democratic power of the system. Or do you mean inefficient in the sense of "more effort for voters"? You could always just rank your favorite candidate as 1 and leave the rest blank, which should give you the same amount of voting power you had in a single-vote system.
    - blacksmith_tb 5y ago
      Mostly the potential for ties and then run-offs, which obviously can happen with other systems too.
    - godelski 5y ago
      I'd argue that cardinal systems are much more efficient, on two accounts. First, you just need to do reduced sums to determine the winners, whereas ranked systems you have blocks at each round (preventing it from being asynchronous). Second, you have a better embedding space for cardinal systems than ranked. In ranked you're saying that your preference is equidistant. This is not a requirement in cardinal systems (e.g. score or star). Thus you can express that you ''really,, like candidate A over B rather than just A is better than B.
Taikonerd 5y ago
Perhaps this link should point to the main https://seattleapproves.org https://seattleapproves.org site, instead of a PDF?
godelski 5y ago
Voting systems is one of the few political things I'm very passionate about (those of you that know me will know I won't shut up about this). I really do think this is one of the most important things we can do to fix our democracy. I've always been saddened that Ordinal systems have captured the public eye but Cardinal systems haven't. Everything I have read suggests that Cardinal is leagues better: scalability, ease, verifiability, resistance to strategies, and vse. I'm really happy to see more and more Approval initiatives (I'm a bigger fan of STAR, but Approval is good enough that I'd shut up about voting). I also suggest other users look for Clay[0] in these threads. He's the co-inventor of STAR and writes a lot about voting. Also a HN user. [0] https://twitter.com/ClayShentrup https://twitter.com/ClayShentrup
- Apofis 5y ago
  Just getting rid of first-past-the-post would do wonders for our country and by the looks of it approval voting is inferior to run-off voting by a mile.
  - godelski 5y ago
    > by the looks of it approval voting is inferior to run-off voting by a mile. I'm curious why you think this? I think exactly the opposite. RCV/IRV has major problems, especially for strong spoilers. They are also more difficult to tabulate and with the recent events of the last election the importance of ease to tabulate went up in my priority list (making me even question my preference of score over approval). In fact, IRV also favors extremists, which is something I really don't want.
    - noahtallen 5y ago
      For more context, this post has some cool interactive features to explain the voting types: https://ncase.me/ballot/ https://ncase.me/ballot/ Another problem with RCV is that it’s difficult to understand, at least when you get into the runoffs. That makes it harder for people to understand and trust the election system, which is also very important.
hirundo 5y ago
> Instead of reading “Vote for one,” the ballot instructs voters to “Vote for as many as you approve of.” So they've changed it from vote for one to vote for zero. Thanks but it's been a long time since a politician I approved of made it onto my ballot. Better wording would be "Vote for as many of the lesser evils as you want." Otherwise I have to lie in order to vote.
- gowld 5y ago
  Voting for 0 has always been acceptable.
  - polka_haunts_us 5y ago
    There's a significant difference between "Not Voting" and "Voting for 0". Other than Nevada, most states don't allow "Voting for 0". The closest thing we get is writing in Mickey Mouse where writeins are allowed.
    - jesterpm 5y ago
      That surprises me. You can add Washington state to the list that allow voting for none of the candidates[1]. [1]: https://www.sos.wa.gov/elections/faq_vote_by_mail.aspx https://www.sos.wa.gov/elections/faq_vote_by_mail.aspx
- AnthonyMouse 5y ago
  Changing the voting system changes the incentives for different kinds of candidates to run. Suppose right now you have a Democrat, a Republican and a moderate. In first past the post, the moderate splits the vote with whichever major party candidate is most like them, causing the one less like them to win. Also, everybody knows this and then only votes for one of the major parties. So then the moderate doesn't bother to run and the only thing on the ballot is the one evil or the other. With approval voting, if the moderate runs, most of the Republicans approve of the Republican and the moderate (because better the moderate than the Democrat) and most of the Democrats approve of the Democrat and the moderate (because better the moderate than the Republican). So then the moderate runs, and wins. And you get a candidate you might actually want to vote for.
hash872 5y ago
Gentle reminder that approval voting has been tried & discarded by a number of organizations over the decades (it's literally centuries old!) The main issue is that consistently 80+% of voters 'bullet vote', or simply select one candidate despite their options. Is it a terrible flaw or something that makes AV unusable? Of course not- but it should cool some of the more heated claims. The IEEE, Mathematical Association of America, and the Dartmouth Alumni Association have all tried & discarded AV- as they consistently found that the vast majority of voters bullet vote https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approval_voting#Other_organizations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approval_voting#Other_organiza... Moreover, it's inferior to a simple runoff with a large number of candidates. As Dartmouth found, when you have 6-8+ candidates, even with AV the plurality winner will be a pretty small chunk of total votes cast (like less than 40 or even 30%). Pretty ironic result for a method that claims that to help find the consensus solution! Unpopular opinion, FPTP with a runoff is superior to AV or RCV just for sheer workability & finding the consensus candidate. Even more unpopular opinion, voting systems just don't matter that much- healthy democracies have been plenty stable with FPTP (the UK has like the most extreme version possible), unhealthy democracies will be unstable no matter which voting system is used
- clairity 5y ago
  > "...with AV the plurality winner will be a pretty small chunk of total votes cast (like less than 40 or even 30%). Pretty ironic result for a method that claims that to help find the consensus solution!" that's not ironic. that's closer to the complex reality of heterogeneous interests and perspectives. what's unnatural is the idea that 50+% of a group would naturally, in an unbiased setting, pick only 2 viable candidates out of millions, and then vote consistently for one of them.
  - hash872 5y ago
    Many people find selecting a candidate for political office with 20-30% support to be deeply suboptimal. You're flirting with your government being perceived as illegitimate by regular citizens. At the national level these are incredibly powerful offices- imagine a divisive President ruling the US having won under 30% of votes cast. This is how civil wars start. Yes there are a few countries whose systems work out that way (the UK at times), and it's been criticized for decades. >what's unnatural is the idea that 50+% of a group This is literally how a runoff works- a pragmatic system that's been used for decades by 50+ countries globally. It also enhances democratic legitimacy, as the majority of people feel invested in having voted for the eventual winner. (To be fair, I will say that using AV to select the top two candidates who then go to a runoff is pretty interesting)
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
lukeschlather 5y ago
The key feature of this proposal is that it only applies in our open primaries. The top two vote getters advance to the general election for a normal FPTP with only two candidates. Personally, I think this is an elegant way to get third parties into the process without the complexity of the various IRV concepts.
- diggernet 5y ago
  This makes it sound very much like California's system. As garmaine described elsewhere in this discussion[1], you won't get third parties, you'll get one party. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29271948 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29271948
erehweb 5y ago
I'm confused by how "all you approve of" should work. In an election with Center-Left, Center-Right and Fascisf, if my preferences are in that order, do I approve of the Center-Right candidate? I suppose they are better than the Fascist, but I wouldn't really approve of them except if it was a choice between them and the Fascist. Is "approves of" dependent on the candidate set?
- abeyer 5y ago
  I think that's part of the point -- you get to draw that line and decide if you're more in favor of promoting your favorite over all others vs opposing your least favorite. Where you decide to put your approval mark favors one vs the other.
  - pseudalopex 5y ago
    Have to. Not get to.
46756e 5y ago
Love this and I salute you Seattle residents. This is something everyone can get behind. Literally Democrat or Republican, you would be happier with more parties and more options. There really shouldn't be anyone on the other side of this issue except the politicians who use the two party system to keep power among the few.
throwawaysea 5y ago
Voting schemes aren’t Seattle’s problem. It’s things like district based elections for council members, maneuvers to set up low income housing in particular areas to skew district voting patterns (see Magnuson Park), sitting council members (see Kshama Sawant) abusing city resources for political gain, a rioting extremist left that is willing to use violence for political gain, suspicious late vote swings in one direction (left), ballot harvesting of the homeless, and so on. These things undermine the city and its constituency, and unfortunately it may be too late to reverse the shift in political power that has resulted.

89 points by troydavis 5y ago

I learned about Approval Voting from the amazing podcast by 80,000 Hours https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/aaron-hamlin-voting-reform/ https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/aaron-hamlin-voting-... It's an amazing in-depth interview about Approval and other types of voting systems.

troydavis 5y ago

I'm co-leading this initiative. It's democracy, not politics: a simple, non-partisan, candidate-neutral change that leads to far more representative[1] winners. If anyone would like to invest time or money to make this happen, please contact us or donate here: https://SeattleApproves.org/ https://SeattleApproves.org/ [1]: https://electionscience.github.io/vse-sim/VSEbasic/ https://electionscience.github.io/vse-sim/VSEbasic/ , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7btAd1HYvjU&t=1329 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7btAd1HYvjU&t=1329

otterley 5y ago
Can you compare this against ranked-choice voting with instant run-offs?
- godelski 5y ago
  The first link there does actually compare against ranked choice. It is just called IRV. There's a larger comparison that includes more types of ranked choice (also called "ordinal") here[0]. Though I particularly like this animation[1]. I'll also add that there is a lot of nuance to voting and VSE isn't everything. There's a lot of factors to consider including: how do strategies work? Is it scalable? Can it easily be counted and/or verified statistically? How easy is it for voters? How effective are (strong and weak) spoiler candidates? And many more questions. For the most part cardinal methods (like Approval) fair better on all these accounts. There is a slight tradeoff to VSE. Note STAR in [0] has a slightly lower VSE than RP/Schulz (ranked), but a tighter grouping (better vs strategies). But also STAR is more complex for voters and counting than Approval is (I'd still argue STAR is easier for voters and counters than ordinal systems). So these are the types of tradeoffs you're making [0] https://electionscience.github.io/vse-sim/VSE/ https://electionscience.github.io/vse-sim/VSE/ [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4FXLQoLDBA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4FXLQoLDBA
  - clairity 5y ago
    i'd actually love to see a voting system developed that's closer to a conjoint, which is a statistical method designed to reveal preferences, rather than relying on stated preferences (which are notoriously unreliable). it's more complicated, but we have plenty of technology nowadays to make it practical. one method of implementing this (from thinking about it for all of 2 minutes), is developing a list of the top 10-20 issues that voters care about in a given election and providing tradeoff choices for each, then matching them to the candidate closest to their revealed preference. of course, the biggest issue with method is that it moves the problem up one level, from voting to choice design. [0]: https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Conjoint_analysis https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Conjoint_analysis
    - godelski 5y ago
      I honestly think it is very difficult to determine what voters' actual preferences are. I mean think of your standard political compass tests. Or even Meyer Briggs. They can change day to day or mood to mood and lots of questions tend to be leading. While I love the idea, I think logistically it would be a nightmare and greatly reduce transparency. It would also be far more vulnerable to so called experts manipulating the system if they aren't acting in good faith.
      - clairity 5y ago
        it's exceedingly difficult to fairly aggregate voter preferences, but all current voting systems seem to reduce all that complexity down to a singular choice in the overwhelming majority of cases. that's a shitload of information discarded, to put it crassly. the neat thing about conjoint is that it multiplexes the choice-making (when designed well), so that the choice burden scales reasonably while also better representing collective choice. nothing is going to be perfect, but conjoint could potentially be better than all current systems, probably by an order of magnitude or more. it's relatively complicated, so yes, 'experts' (i disdain this term, frankly) could in theory manipulate the system, but transparency of voting data (just like now) and survey design (the more likely bias vector) would make that difficult. transparency would allow competing independent journalists, academics/researchers, political analysts, etc. to weigh in and balance out biases (not perfectly of course), as well as verify results.
- troydavis 5y ago
  Other people gave good answers about how this compares to RCV/IRV (thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29266519#29269246 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29266519#29269246), and both of the links in my first footnote above (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29266519#29266537 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29266519#29266537) cover it. That's all academic, though. A great real example is the 2021 Seattle City Attorney primary, which had only 3 candidates. The votes were split: 36%, 32%, 30%. These 2 candidates emerged from the primary: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/30/us/seattle-city-attorney-election.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/30/us/seattle-city-attorney-.... The candidate that most accurately represented the opinion of the electorate, Holmes, was eliminated. That would have still happened in a ranked ballot. The voters who voted for Thomas-Kennedy or Davison in our current system would have still put Thomas-Kennedy or Davison #1 in a ranked ballot. I tried to distill this in https://twitter.com/troyd/status/1461389190206156802 https://twitter.com/troyd/status/1461389190206156802. And a 3-way race like that is actually the simplest possible case. Effects like that are much more likely with more candidates and they happen everywhere in the elimination cycle, they’re just less obvious to casual observers. That's what you see in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7btAd1HYvjU&t=1329 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7btAd1HYvjU&t=1329 (note that IRV == RCV in that video). (Obligatory disclaimer: I don't care who wins. I do care how accurately the winners reflect the inputs, namely, voter opinion.) Separately, Washington law requires cities hold a primary that produces 2 candidates for the general election, so cities can't legally eliminate primaries. That said, whether primaries are a net positive or negative is a really complicated discussion. Beyond election mechanics, the disadvantage of primaries is that only a subset of voters in the general will turn out in the primary. The advantage is that voters don't spend much time on ballots and it focuses that time. Seattle had 15 candidates for Mayor (many races are 10+). If someone spends 10 minutes on their ballot and the ballot has 10 races, that's 1 minute per race - 6 seconds per candidate. No easy answer here. However, for practical purposes we don't need to answer that hard question; this one change delivers an incredibly representative election.
wfhpw 5y ago
My prior intuition was that rank-choice voting would be preferable to approval voting, but this [1] was pretty helpful. Thanks! [1] https://electionscience.org/library/approval-voting-versus-irv/ https://electionscience.org/library/approval-voting-versus-i...
- troydavis 5y ago
  You’re welcome! You might also enjoy the concrete example (from a recent Seattle primary) here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29266519#29277580 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29266519#29277580
slownews45 5y ago
I've seen approval voting up close, approval and top 3 make it to council seats. One issue seems to be domination by majority? For example, let's say 55% of electorate is hard left, 45% moderate to conservative. Under approval those 55% can vote for all 3 lets say hard left candidates, no moderate's make it in? RCV, once someone has gotten their candidate in, their vote is exhausted. Seems to come out much better. Still might end up with 2 hard left, one moderate, but that seems fairer to me.
- ClayShentrup 5y ago
  This is actually completely backwards. IRV favors extremists whereas approval voting tends to find the most broadly appealing candidate. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-4FXLQoLDBA https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-4FXLQoLDBA
  - slownews45 5y ago
    That's not how its working here. We are getting near 100% representation from about 56% of votes. The ballot is approval style voting, you can vote for X of Y candidates.
    - pxx 5y ago
      That's not approval voting. If X is equal to the number of open seats that's literally just the definition of multiple winner plurality voting. Approval voting is a single winner system.
    - xvedejas 5y ago
      if X is a fixed number, then it's not approval voting. In approval voting, there is no limit, either minimum or maximum, on the number of candidates you can vote for. If X is limited, then you get something a bit more like plurality voting, since the spoiler effect is in play.
    - jpfed 5y ago
      As others have said, if they're limiting the number of approvals you can make on your ballot, then that's not how approval voting is supposed to be administered. If they're just adding up each candidate's votes, that's not how approval is supposed to be tabulated in a multi-winner context (which is more complicated); see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_approval_voting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_approval_voting
ISL 5y ago
What blocks us from attempting a similar approach state-wide? Seattle's top-two approach has already made a big difference in making the general election relevant and competitive. Where I see trouble these days is with Federal elections. Being able to vote for anyone but X or Z would be a wonderful way to send a signal as a voter. I suspect that both the east and west sides of the state would feel similarly (East: "Anyone but X!", West: "Anyone but Y!". Result: M gets elected, who is thankfully neither X nor Y.).
- godelski 5y ago
  > What blocks us from attempting a similar approach state-wide? Same thing that makes it difficult by attempting to do it country wide. That it is larger and more difficult. It would be nice if we could just wave a hand and change everything at once, but that also wouldn't be very democratic. What is also nice is that we can experiment, refine, and test at smaller levels before we advance to larger elections.
- troydavis 5y ago
  Sorry for the late response. I wasn't on HN yesterday. Someone else answered this well, but: money. A Seattle initiative is roughly 10%-20% as expensive as a statewide one, and it's still an incredible challenge to raise enough to do this. Ask me where I spend my time. Qualifying for the ballot in Seattle requires about 26,200 valid signatures (10% of votes cast in the last Mayoral election). They must be collected during a 180-day period that, due to deadlines to make the November ballot, must is basically January-June. Since January-March is wet and cold, people aren't outside as much and many initiatives just do April-June. Collecting 26,000 signatures in 90-180 days is all but impossible with volunteers, which means the core challenge for an initiative is fundraising to pay signature-gathering costs. You can divide 26,000 by any number of valid signatures collected per hour - 3, 6, 12, whatever - and it's still a lot of time and thus really expensive. So, that's for the Seattle ballot. Getting on the WA state ballot requires 324,516 (!). Yes, 12x more. And that cost scales roughly linearly; the few efficiencies of scale are offset by new inefficiencies like travel. There's some efficiencies with overhead, but that's a small % of the cost. So, that's why. It takes 5-10x more money. Of course, voters would need to support it statewide too. In Seattle, this will pass; our job is to get it on the ballot. A statewide campaign may also need to do at least an education/awareness campaign (roughly the last paragraph of your comment) and potentially even try to change public opinion. These can cost even more than collecting signatures. (If you're reading this and thinking "Wow, Troy knows this stuff - and it's interesting and there's a plan to do this!" - it is and there is! I'd love your help as a volunteer and/or your donations.)
pagibson 5y ago
Despite the claim that this isn't political, it's very difficult not to see this in light of the fact that Seattle's city council has the only elected Marxist in the U.S. Kshama Sawant fought for the $15 minimum wage, the Amazon tax, numerous renters' rights protections, a ban on police use of chemical weapons against protestors, and is now continuing the fight for rent control. She's currently facing a right-wing recall campaign because big business was unable to defeat her in the 2019 election, despite Amazon dumping $1.5 million into various races for citywide office. A few here have remarked that approval voting tends to select more "moderate" candidates over "extremes." This isn't a neutral preference, it's obviously ideological, and targeted at one specific legislator in Seattle. Voters should reject this measure as a transparent attack on the most effective and sincere fighter for working people in the country. Full disclosure, Kshama and I are both members of Socialist Alternative. I may be limited in my ability to respond today, as I'm rushing right after work to a volunteer shift to make sure she stays in office. I'll try my best to check in occasionally!
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- TulliusCicero 5y ago
  This seems like a bit of a hot take. Are the people behind this initiative connected to conservative or anti-Sawant organizations?
  - abeyer 5y ago
    Sawant and her supporters have had a pretty loose relationship with the truth in general, so I wouldn't put too much stock in that. It seems far more likely that if it's specifically in response to recent events that it's actually the fact that "conservative" (by Seattle standards, where we just elected the first republican in 30 years to a city office) candidates did quite well in the Nov elections where they were running against far left candidates and had squeezed out any more moderate voices in the primaries.
    - pagibson 5y ago

philwelch 5y ago

You know, when I lived in Seattle, my biggest problem when voting was never, "I approve of too many of these candidates and it's hard for me to choose just one".

blacksmith_tb 5y ago
Well, having lived and voted in SF and Portland, I would say that I can think of races where I would have been fine with several of the contenders, but would have really not wanted an outlier to win, so AV seems like it could work. In my undergrad days I got to experience a ranked system, which is interesting, but seems sort of inefficient.
- titanomachy 5y ago
  Inefficient in what way? Surely the small amount of computing power needed to process the ballots and determine the winner is not significant when compared to the increased democratic power of the system. Or do you mean inefficient in the sense of "more effort for voters"? You could always just rank your favorite candidate as 1 and leave the rest blank, which should give you the same amount of voting power you had in a single-vote system.
  - blacksmith_tb 5y ago
    Mostly the potential for ties and then run-offs, which obviously can happen with other systems too.
  - godelski 5y ago
    I'd argue that cardinal systems are much more efficient, on two accounts. First, you just need to do reduced sums to determine the winners, whereas ranked systems you have blocks at each round (preventing it from being asynchronous). Second, you have a better embedding space for cardinal systems than ranked. In ranked you're saying that your preference is equidistant. This is not a requirement in cardinal systems (e.g. score or star). Thus you can express that you ''really,, like candidate A over B rather than just A is better than B.

Taikonerd 5y ago

Perhaps this link should point to the main https://seattleapproves.org https://seattleapproves.org site, instead of a PDF?

godelski 5y ago

Voting systems is one of the few political things I'm very passionate about (those of you that know me will know I won't shut up about this). I really do think this is one of the most important things we can do to fix our democracy. I've always been saddened that Ordinal systems have captured the public eye but Cardinal systems haven't. Everything I have read suggests that Cardinal is leagues better: scalability, ease, verifiability, resistance to strategies, and vse. I'm really happy to see more and more Approval initiatives (I'm a bigger fan of STAR, but Approval is good enough that I'd shut up about voting). I also suggest other users look for Clay[0] in these threads. He's the co-inventor of STAR and writes a lot about voting. Also a HN user. [0] https://twitter.com/ClayShentrup https://twitter.com/ClayShentrup

Apofis 5y ago
Just getting rid of first-past-the-post would do wonders for our country and by the looks of it approval voting is inferior to run-off voting by a mile.
- godelski 5y ago
  > by the looks of it approval voting is inferior to run-off voting by a mile. I'm curious why you think this? I think exactly the opposite. RCV/IRV has major problems, especially for strong spoilers. They are also more difficult to tabulate and with the recent events of the last election the importance of ease to tabulate went up in my priority list (making me even question my preference of score over approval). In fact, IRV also favors extremists, which is something I really don't want.
  - noahtallen 5y ago
    For more context, this post has some cool interactive features to explain the voting types: https://ncase.me/ballot/ https://ncase.me/ballot/ Another problem with RCV is that it’s difficult to understand, at least when you get into the runoffs. That makes it harder for people to understand and trust the election system, which is also very important.

hirundo 5y ago

> Instead of reading “Vote for one,” the ballot instructs voters to “Vote for as many as you approve of.” So they've changed it from vote for one to vote for zero. Thanks but it's been a long time since a politician I approved of made it onto my ballot. Better wording would be "Vote for as many of the lesser evils as you want." Otherwise I have to lie in order to vote.

gowld 5y ago
Voting for 0 has always been acceptable.
- polka_haunts_us 5y ago
  There's a significant difference between "Not Voting" and "Voting for 0". Other than Nevada, most states don't allow "Voting for 0". The closest thing we get is writing in Mickey Mouse where writeins are allowed.
  - jesterpm 5y ago
    That surprises me. You can add Washington state to the list that allow voting for none of the candidates[1]. [1]: https://www.sos.wa.gov/elections/faq_vote_by_mail.aspx https://www.sos.wa.gov/elections/faq_vote_by_mail.aspx
AnthonyMouse 5y ago
Changing the voting system changes the incentives for different kinds of candidates to run. Suppose right now you have a Democrat, a Republican and a moderate. In first past the post, the moderate splits the vote with whichever major party candidate is most like them, causing the one less like them to win. Also, everybody knows this and then only votes for one of the major parties. So then the moderate doesn't bother to run and the only thing on the ballot is the one evil or the other. With approval voting, if the moderate runs, most of the Republicans approve of the Republican and the moderate (because better the moderate than the Democrat) and most of the Democrats approve of the Democrat and the moderate (because better the moderate than the Republican). So then the moderate runs, and wins. And you get a candidate you might actually want to vote for.

hash872 5y ago

Gentle reminder that approval voting has been tried & discarded by a number of organizations over the decades (it's literally centuries old!) The main issue is that consistently 80+% of voters 'bullet vote', or simply select one candidate despite their options. Is it a terrible flaw or something that makes AV unusable? Of course not- but it should cool some of the more heated claims. The IEEE, Mathematical Association of America, and the Dartmouth Alumni Association have all tried & discarded AV- as they consistently found that the vast majority of voters bullet vote https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approval_voting#Other_organizations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approval_voting#Other_organiza... Moreover, it's inferior to a simple runoff with a large number of candidates. As Dartmouth found, when you have 6-8+ candidates, even with AV the plurality winner will be a pretty small chunk of total votes cast (like less than 40 or even 30%). Pretty ironic result for a method that claims that to help find the consensus solution! Unpopular opinion, FPTP with a runoff is superior to AV or RCV just for sheer workability & finding the consensus candidate. Even more unpopular opinion, voting systems just don't matter that much- healthy democracies have been plenty stable with FPTP (the UK has like the most extreme version possible), unhealthy democracies will be unstable no matter which voting system is used

clairity 5y ago
> "...with AV the plurality winner will be a pretty small chunk of total votes cast (like less than 40 or even 30%). Pretty ironic result for a method that claims that to help find the consensus solution!" that's not ironic. that's closer to the complex reality of heterogeneous interests and perspectives. what's unnatural is the idea that 50+% of a group would naturally, in an unbiased setting, pick only 2 viable candidates out of millions, and then vote consistently for one of them.
- hash872 5y ago
  Many people find selecting a candidate for political office with 20-30% support to be deeply suboptimal. You're flirting with your government being perceived as illegitimate by regular citizens. At the national level these are incredibly powerful offices- imagine a divisive President ruling the US having won under 30% of votes cast. This is how civil wars start. Yes there are a few countries whose systems work out that way (the UK at times), and it's been criticized for decades. >what's unnatural is the idea that 50+% of a group This is literally how a runoff works- a pragmatic system that's been used for decades by 50+ countries globally. It also enhances democratic legitimacy, as the majority of people feel invested in having voted for the eventual winner. (To be fair, I will say that using AV to select the top two candidates who then go to a runoff is pretty interesting)

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

lukeschlather 5y ago

The key feature of this proposal is that it only applies in our open primaries. The top two vote getters advance to the general election for a normal FPTP with only two candidates. Personally, I think this is an elegant way to get third parties into the process without the complexity of the various IRV concepts.

diggernet 5y ago
This makes it sound very much like California's system. As garmaine described elsewhere in this discussion[1], you won't get third parties, you'll get one party. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29271948 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29271948

erehweb 5y ago

I'm confused by how "all you approve of" should work. In an election with Center-Left, Center-Right and Fascisf, if my preferences are in that order, do I approve of the Center-Right candidate? I suppose they are better than the Fascist, but I wouldn't really approve of them except if it was a choice between them and the Fascist. Is "approves of" dependent on the candidate set?

abeyer 5y ago
I think that's part of the point -- you get to draw that line and decide if you're more in favor of promoting your favorite over all others vs opposing your least favorite. Where you decide to put your approval mark favors one vs the other.
- pseudalopex 5y ago
  Have to. Not get to.

46756e 5y ago

Love this and I salute you Seattle residents. This is something everyone can get behind. Literally Democrat or Republican, you would be happier with more parties and more options. There really shouldn't be anyone on the other side of this issue except the politicians who use the two party system to keep power among the few.

throwawaysea 5y ago

Voting schemes aren’t Seattle’s problem. It’s things like district based elections for council members, maneuvers to set up low income housing in particular areas to skew district voting patterns (see Magnuson Park), sitting council members (see Kshama Sawant) abusing city resources for political gain, a rioting extremist left that is willing to use violence for political gain, suspicious late vote swings in one direction (left), ballot harvesting of the homeless, and so on. These things undermine the city and its constituency, and unfortunately it may be too late to reverse the shift in political power that has resulted.