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Yep, I tried it before reading your comment. I think that's great. Approval voting is awesome, and probably a better default for a lot of things anyways. Eve

by elihu 5y ago

Yep, I tried it before reading your comment. I think that's great. Approval voting is awesome, and probably a better default for a lot of things anyways. Even mundane things like "where do you want to eat lunch" with first-past-the-post you run the risk of selecting a place most people don't want to eat at because they split their vote between a bunch of options most people preferred. Really, you want people to distinguish between places they want to eat at and places they don't want to eat at, and the optimal thing is to select the one that the most people do want to eat at. That's basically how approval voting works.

dragonwriter 5y ago
> Even mundane things like “where do you want to eat lunch” with first-past-the-post you run the risk of selecting a place most people don’t want to eat If you have open ballots and either approval is a commitment to join or disapproval is a waiver of the right to join, approval is very good method for choosing group activities in a way it is not for most public elections, where there is no coherent meaning to the approval/disapproval divide so it ends up just being a very weird forced reduction in resolution of a preference ballot to two preference ranks. (The lack of coherent meaning between different ballots is a problem that most analysis ignores in basically all voting systems that aren’t either bullet ballots of full forced or unforced preference ballots; of popularly proposed alternative voting methods its a particular issue for those using approval or range/score ballots, or variations on either.)
- elihu 5y ago
  I think approval voting ballots have a pretty reasonable interpretation: if you would tolerate this person in this office then vote for them, if not then don't. The winner of the election is the one with the highest approval rating. If it's a three candidate election and there's one person you like, one person you don't, and one you're ambivalent about then it gets a little more complicated if you want to vote strategically. Generally, you'd vote yes to the first, no to the second, and for the third you can either vote for them or not based on whether you're more worried that your favorite candidate will lose or that your least favorite candidate will win. Range voting is a bit more expressive because you can rank candidates on a scale of one to ten or whatever, but the problem with range voting in real elections is that voters have the most influence over the result when they only use maximum or minimum ratings, thus a minority of strategic voters can outvote a majority of honest voters. Approval voting solves that by forcing everyone to follow the strategic voting strategy. STAR (Score Then Automatic Runoff) voting is another way to solve that problem. STAR voting works like range voting to select the top two candidates, then does a runoff between those top two after maximizing everyone's voting preferences. It's not perfect, but it's a way to allow people to express ratings that are more subtle than yes/no for each candidate while still giving people who vote honestly the same voting power in most situations as people who vote strategically.
- ClayShentrup 5y ago
  Approval voting is excellent for public elections. It was used in Fargo and St Louis to apparent great public satisfaction. https://electionscience.org/press-releases/st-louis-voters-use-new-approval-voting-system-in-march-primary-election/ https://electionscience.org/press-releases/st-louis-voters-u... And computer simulations show that it does extremely well at measuring public support. https://www.rangevoting.org/BayRegsFig https://www.rangevoting.org/BayRegsFig You're talking about how the _concept_ of approval makes you feel. But the _results_ you'll get with it are highly accurate/satisfying.

by elihu 5y ago

dragonwriter 5y ago

> Even mundane things like “where do you want to eat lunch” with first-past-the-post you run the risk of selecting a place most people don’t want to eat If you have open ballots and either approval is a commitment to join or disapproval is a waiver of the right to join, approval is very good method for choosing group activities in a way it is not for most public elections, where there is no coherent meaning to the approval/disapproval divide so it ends up just being a very weird forced reduction in resolution of a preference ballot to two preference ranks. (The lack of coherent meaning between different ballots is a problem that most analysis ignores in basically all voting systems that aren’t either bullet ballots of full forced or unforced preference ballots; of popularly proposed alternative voting methods its a particular issue for those using approval or range/score ballots, or variations on either.)

elihu 5y ago
I think approval voting ballots have a pretty reasonable interpretation: if you would tolerate this person in this office then vote for them, if not then don't. The winner of the election is the one with the highest approval rating. If it's a three candidate election and there's one person you like, one person you don't, and one you're ambivalent about then it gets a little more complicated if you want to vote strategically. Generally, you'd vote yes to the first, no to the second, and for the third you can either vote for them or not based on whether you're more worried that your favorite candidate will lose or that your least favorite candidate will win. Range voting is a bit more expressive because you can rank candidates on a scale of one to ten or whatever, but the problem with range voting in real elections is that voters have the most influence over the result when they only use maximum or minimum ratings, thus a minority of strategic voters can outvote a majority of honest voters. Approval voting solves that by forcing everyone to follow the strategic voting strategy. STAR (Score Then Automatic Runoff) voting is another way to solve that problem. STAR voting works like range voting to select the top two candidates, then does a runoff between those top two after maximizing everyone's voting preferences. It's not perfect, but it's a way to allow people to express ratings that are more subtle than yes/no for each candidate while still giving people who vote honestly the same voting power in most situations as people who vote strategically.
ClayShentrup 5y ago
Approval voting is excellent for public elections. It was used in Fargo and St Louis to apparent great public satisfaction. https://electionscience.org/press-releases/st-louis-voters-use-new-approval-voting-system-in-march-primary-election/ https://electionscience.org/press-releases/st-louis-voters-u... And computer simulations show that it does extremely well at measuring public support. https://www.rangevoting.org/BayRegsFig https://www.rangevoting.org/BayRegsFig You're talking about how the _concept_ of approval makes you feel. But the _results_ you'll get with it are highly accurate/satisfying.