7 ms·

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.

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

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