4 ms·

Approval voting is simultaneously simpler to understand, more effective in achieving results voters are happy with, and is inherently de-polarizing for obvious

Approval voting is simultaneously simpler to understand, more effective in achieving results voters are happy with, and is inherently de-polarizing for obvious reasons. It's also very easy to understand why someone won when the winning criteria is "be the person that the largest number of voters are okay with".

manholio 4y ago
Approval voting is very sensitive to strategic voting. Outside of toy elections where people are altruistically trying to find the best candidate, it reverts to similar dynamics as First-Past-the-Post.
- CarVac 4y ago
  Has this been demonstrated?
  - manholio 4y ago
    I can't be bothered to search for academic papers, but I've seen it use in real elections to designate party candidates. Voters were absolutely rabid, marking exclusively for candidates from their group. The largest group gets a clean slate and the unaligned voters, instead of acting like swings, are simply ignored.
    - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
      This misses the point dramatically. If someone is favoured by a large enough group, they're supposed to win. The point is what happens when people aren't fanatical but are forced to vote as if they were.
      - manholio 4y ago
        The point is to have fair representation. If a 30% fanatical minority can get a 100% clean slate for its candidates by voting strategically, AV fails. In a single winner election AV makes coordination among moderates somewhat easier, so it's an improvement, but still inferior to Ranked Choice/STV with multi-member districts.
        CarVac 4y ago
        This probably is a difference in PoV based on how many of your elections are multi-winner versus single-winner. I was mostly thinking about single-winner elections because the big headline elections in the US are all single-winner.
        jjitz 4y ago
        AV is great for a single winner. As you have noticed, if you elect multiple winners the "naive" way then you can get unproportional outcomes. However, there are simple ways to use approval to elect winners proportionally! One easy example is this one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequential_proportional_approval_voting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequential_proportional_approv...
        ClayShentrup 4y ago
        Approval voting gets very good results even under asymmetrical strategy. https://rpubs.com/Jameson-Quinn/VSE5key https://rpubs.com/Jameson-Quinn/VSE5key Your scenario is unrealistic because real humans aren't that tightly clustered, so you get defectors. And people vote strategically. The winning position is the centroid. https://www.rangevoting.org/AppCW https://www.rangevoting.org/AppCW It is not known whether proportional representation can compete with the best single winner voting methods. We don't have enough data and we can't do multi-winter Bayesian regret calculations confidently. Here's an article you really should read if you think proportion representation is the answer. https://www.rangevoting.org/PropRep https://www.rangevoting.org/PropRep
        jjitz 4y ago
        There is a litany of research showing that proportional representation leads to more representative and stable democracies, both in terms of empirical outcomes and normative political theory. Saying we don't have enough data just because some borderline-crackpot blogger doesn't like it is pretty disingenuous.
        ClayShentrup 4y ago
        Here's a compilation of the best expert research, arguing for and against PR. https://www.rangevoting.org/PropRep https://www.rangevoting.org/PropRep A. The research compares proportional (PR) methods to plurality voting, the worst single-winner voting method there is. But superior methods like score voting and approval voting roughly double the accuracy (i.e. group welfare) compared to plurality voting. So no, there's no research showing the superiority of PR to these methods. B. Even in that limited comparison, of PR to plurality voting, the data still is actually not that clear. For instance, Canada uses plurality voting rather than PR, and is rated as one of the most high functioning democracies by The Economist. Meanwhile lots of proportional democracies are far worse than plurality countries. Compare proportional Brazil (and several other Latin countries) to non-proportional UK, Canada, and USA.
- ClayShentrup 4y ago
  on the contrary, approval voting is specifically beloved by game theory experts for its immense resistance to tactical voting. for instance, NYU professor of political science and *game theory*, steven brams. bayesian regret and voter satisfaction efficiency calculations show approval voting generally outperforming alternatives such as instant runoff voting ("ranked choice voting") with any mixture of strategic or honest voters. https://www.rangevoting.org/BayRegsFig https://www.rangevoting.org/BayRegsFig https://rpubs.com/Jameson-Quinn/VSE5key https://rpubs.com/Jameson-Quinn/VSE5key part of the reason this happens is that the IRV/RCV tabulation mechanism flat out ignores much of the preference information on the ballot. https://www.rangevoting.org/IrvIgnoreExample.html https://www.rangevoting.org/IrvIgnoreExample.html approval voting is also just much more resistant to gamesmanship. it satisfies the "favorite betrayal criterion", meaning it can never hurt you to support your favorite candidate with approval voting. for instance, my aunt voted for biden even tho she preferred warren, to try to stop trump. if she had been ranking them in a single IRV/RCV election, she would have analogously ranked biden in 1st even tho she preferred warren. this kind of tactic means electability is still key, and it disadvantages third party and independent candidates. with approval voting by contrast, she might strategically vote for biden (her 2nd choice) but she would still be free to also approve warren, as that could not possibly cause a worse outcome for her. the center for election science has a good compilation of the best articles on tactical voting. https://electionscience.org/library/tactical-voting-basics/ https://electionscience.org/library/tactical-voting-basics/ there's also an excellent book on the topic, called "gaming the vote". https://www.amazon.com/Gaming-Vote-Elections-Arent-About/dp/0809048922 https://www.amazon.com/Gaming-Vote-Elections-Arent-About/dp/...
notahacker 4y ago
Superficially it's simpler to understand. The actual tactics are even more complex than FPTP (and unlike ranked choice, it's not potential edge cases where rank order matters but every vote involving a decision about how low a bar of "wouldn't absolutely hate them running the country" to set for the people you approve vs the "every additional vote I approve might hurt the candidate I actually want to win) I do agree that it tends to be depolarising in the candidates that win, but at the same time it still strongly incentivises moderates to ensure the most partisan alternative candidates get plenty of campaign airtime (both to scare moderates who identify with the other side of the aisle into putting "approve" next to their relatively moderate name, and as a "dirty tricks" campaign to promote the idea of bullet voting the other side's radicals to the other side's base)
- clolege 4y ago
  > The actual tactics are even more complex than FPTP Maybe marginally? How would you describe the tactics of FPTP? They may be simpler, but in some elections it is the difference of expressing your actual preferences and voting for "who you have to." The nice thing with AV that I often see overlooked is that it always in a voters interest to vote for their favorite candidate. This is called the favorite betrayal criterion, and nearly all ordinal voting methods (inc FPTP) fail it. Even still though - the UX, strategy, counting, and expressing results of ranked choice voting (IRV) is considerably more complex than both AV and FPTP. And its failure of the precinct summability criterion is a huge liability that we could just avoid entirely. If you are in favor of other types of ranking, such as Borda, why not just Score? Score is counted identically, but without the restriction of "you can only vote for one candidate in each rank or we'll toss your ballot." I agree that it would be nicer to give a more nuanced vote than just like/dislike, but I personally see AV as a stepping stone to other, more nuanced forms of Cardinal Voting. And who knows? Many online interfaces have moved from the star system in favor of thumbs up/down, and none that I'm aware of use ranking. Maybe there is an argument for a simpler UX in order to get more people to engage.
zajio1am 4y ago
Approval voting is hard. My voting preferences pretty much match ranked-choice model, but approval requires reducing that to just two levels, so setting the bar is either arbitrary, or requires much information about decisions of other people.
- ClayShentrup 4y ago
  This is a common intuition-based fallacy. The total information throughput of approval voting is actually GREATER than for ranked methods, when you factor in the tabulation efficiency and tactical voting effects. https://electionscience.org/library/expressiveness-in-approval-vs-ranked-ballots/ https://electionscience.org/library/expressiveness-in-approv...

manholio 4y ago

Approval voting is very sensitive to strategic voting. Outside of toy elections where people are altruistically trying to find the best candidate, it reverts to similar dynamics as First-Past-the-Post.

CarVac 4y ago
Has this been demonstrated?
- manholio 4y ago
  I can't be bothered to search for academic papers, but I've seen it use in real elections to designate party candidates. Voters were absolutely rabid, marking exclusively for candidates from their group. The largest group gets a clean slate and the unaligned voters, instead of acting like swings, are simply ignored.
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    This misses the point dramatically. If someone is favoured by a large enough group, they're supposed to win. The point is what happens when people aren't fanatical but are forced to vote as if they were.
    - manholio 4y ago
      The point is to have fair representation. If a 30% fanatical minority can get a 100% clean slate for its candidates by voting strategically, AV fails. In a single winner election AV makes coordination among moderates somewhat easier, so it's an improvement, but still inferior to Ranked Choice/STV with multi-member districts.
      - CarVac 4y ago
        This probably is a difference in PoV based on how many of your elections are multi-winner versus single-winner. I was mostly thinking about single-winner elections because the big headline elections in the US are all single-winner.
      - jjitz 4y ago
        AV is great for a single winner. As you have noticed, if you elect multiple winners the "naive" way then you can get unproportional outcomes. However, there are simple ways to use approval to elect winners proportionally! One easy example is this one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequential_proportional_approval_voting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequential_proportional_approv...
      - ClayShentrup 4y ago
        Approval voting gets very good results even under asymmetrical strategy. https://rpubs.com/Jameson-Quinn/VSE5key https://rpubs.com/Jameson-Quinn/VSE5key Your scenario is unrealistic because real humans aren't that tightly clustered, so you get defectors. And people vote strategically. The winning position is the centroid. https://www.rangevoting.org/AppCW https://www.rangevoting.org/AppCW It is not known whether proportional representation can compete with the best single winner voting methods. We don't have enough data and we can't do multi-winter Bayesian regret calculations confidently. Here's an article you really should read if you think proportion representation is the answer. https://www.rangevoting.org/PropRep https://www.rangevoting.org/PropRep
        jjitz 4y ago
        There is a litany of research showing that proportional representation leads to more representative and stable democracies, both in terms of empirical outcomes and normative political theory. Saying we don't have enough data just because some borderline-crackpot blogger doesn't like it is pretty disingenuous.
        ClayShentrup 4y ago
        Here's a compilation of the best expert research, arguing for and against PR. https://www.rangevoting.org/PropRep https://www.rangevoting.org/PropRep A. The research compares proportional (PR) methods to plurality voting, the worst single-winner voting method there is. But superior methods like score voting and approval voting roughly double the accuracy (i.e. group welfare) compared to plurality voting. So no, there's no research showing the superiority of PR to these methods. B. Even in that limited comparison, of PR to plurality voting, the data still is actually not that clear. For instance, Canada uses plurality voting rather than PR, and is rated as one of the most high functioning democracies by The Economist. Meanwhile lots of proportional democracies are far worse than plurality countries. Compare proportional Brazil (and several other Latin countries) to non-proportional UK, Canada, and USA.
ClayShentrup 4y ago
on the contrary, approval voting is specifically beloved by game theory experts for its immense resistance to tactical voting. for instance, NYU professor of political science and *game theory*, steven brams. bayesian regret and voter satisfaction efficiency calculations show approval voting generally outperforming alternatives such as instant runoff voting ("ranked choice voting") with any mixture of strategic or honest voters. https://www.rangevoting.org/BayRegsFig https://www.rangevoting.org/BayRegsFig https://rpubs.com/Jameson-Quinn/VSE5key https://rpubs.com/Jameson-Quinn/VSE5key part of the reason this happens is that the IRV/RCV tabulation mechanism flat out ignores much of the preference information on the ballot. https://www.rangevoting.org/IrvIgnoreExample.html https://www.rangevoting.org/IrvIgnoreExample.html approval voting is also just much more resistant to gamesmanship. it satisfies the "favorite betrayal criterion", meaning it can never hurt you to support your favorite candidate with approval voting. for instance, my aunt voted for biden even tho she preferred warren, to try to stop trump. if she had been ranking them in a single IRV/RCV election, she would have analogously ranked biden in 1st even tho she preferred warren. this kind of tactic means electability is still key, and it disadvantages third party and independent candidates. with approval voting by contrast, she might strategically vote for biden (her 2nd choice) but she would still be free to also approve warren, as that could not possibly cause a worse outcome for her. the center for election science has a good compilation of the best articles on tactical voting. https://electionscience.org/library/tactical-voting-basics/ https://electionscience.org/library/tactical-voting-basics/ there's also an excellent book on the topic, called "gaming the vote". https://www.amazon.com/Gaming-Vote-Elections-Arent-About/dp/0809048922 https://www.amazon.com/Gaming-Vote-Elections-Arent-About/dp/...

notahacker 4y ago

Superficially it's simpler to understand. The actual tactics are even more complex than FPTP (and unlike ranked choice, it's not potential edge cases where rank order matters but every vote involving a decision about how low a bar of "wouldn't absolutely hate them running the country" to set for the people you approve vs the "every additional vote I approve might hurt the candidate I actually want to win) I do agree that it tends to be depolarising in the candidates that win, but at the same time it still strongly incentivises moderates to ensure the most partisan alternative candidates get plenty of campaign airtime (both to scare moderates who identify with the other side of the aisle into putting "approve" next to their relatively moderate name, and as a "dirty tricks" campaign to promote the idea of bullet voting the other side's radicals to the other side's base)

clolege 4y ago
> The actual tactics are even more complex than FPTP Maybe marginally? How would you describe the tactics of FPTP? They may be simpler, but in some elections it is the difference of expressing your actual preferences and voting for "who you have to." The nice thing with AV that I often see overlooked is that it always in a voters interest to vote for their favorite candidate. This is called the favorite betrayal criterion, and nearly all ordinal voting methods (inc FPTP) fail it. Even still though - the UX, strategy, counting, and expressing results of ranked choice voting (IRV) is considerably more complex than both AV and FPTP. And its failure of the precinct summability criterion is a huge liability that we could just avoid entirely. If you are in favor of other types of ranking, such as Borda, why not just Score? Score is counted identically, but without the restriction of "you can only vote for one candidate in each rank or we'll toss your ballot." I agree that it would be nicer to give a more nuanced vote than just like/dislike, but I personally see AV as a stepping stone to other, more nuanced forms of Cardinal Voting. And who knows? Many online interfaces have moved from the star system in favor of thumbs up/down, and none that I'm aware of use ranking. Maybe there is an argument for a simpler UX in order to get more people to engage.

zajio1am 4y ago

Approval voting is hard. My voting preferences pretty much match ranked-choice model, but approval requires reducing that to just two levels, so setting the bar is either arbitrary, or requires much information about decisions of other people.

ClayShentrup 4y ago
This is a common intuition-based fallacy. The total information throughput of approval voting is actually GREATER than for ranked methods, when you factor in the tabulation efficiency and tactical voting effects. https://electionscience.org/library/expressiveness-in-approval-vs-ranked-ballots/ https://electionscience.org/library/expressiveness-in-approv...