5 ms·

A cardinal voting system might be a more popular, balanced, expressive, and satisfying if you could also vote against candidates you actively dislike with negat

A cardinal voting system might be a more popular, balanced, expressive, and satisfying if you could also vote against candidates you actively dislike with negative percentages, where 0% is neutral "don't care". So for the common case of hating all the candidates, you could vote: A: -100% B: -100% C: -100% There could be some way to normalize it so everyone gets the same voting power, but can choose to spend it positively or negatively in any combination. That would give Republicans who hate Trump but refuse to vote for a Democrat the psychological out of not voting positively for any Democrats, but voting negatively for Trump.

godelski 4y ago
This is an unnecessary complication but I get what you're saying. We could instead label a ballot numerically as: strongly disapprove (1), disapprove (2), neutral (3), approve (4), strongly approve (5). Or rather, both. What I'm getting at here is that nothing in the math changes so it isn't correct to say that these modifications make a system more balanced or expressive. I'll make no arguments about popularity or satisfaction since this is opinionated. A benefit of cardinal systems that you are actually pointing out is that not only can we determine winners, but we can also get a lot of information about voter preference. This is quite useful to politicians and researchers (understanding how represented people feel). But I will also note that a strictly negative ballot is likely to be rare as it is purely a protest ballot.
- DonHopkins 4y ago
  Even though it may be mathematically equivalent, I think the psychological appeal is important to motivate people to vote at all, if not think clearly about how they vote, and do it honestly and wisely. Human factors are important -- remember the Butterfly Ballots of the 2000 elections! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_United_States_presidential_election_recount_in_Florida#Palm_Beach_County's_butterfly_ballots https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_United_States_presidentia... I think that 0 being "don't care" and negative numbers being negative percentages is easier to grasp and more balanced and granular than (3) being neutral. Even -3 to 3 would be better than 1 to 7. Voting "A: -100%, B: -100%, C: -100%" weights each candidate the same as "A: 0%, B: 0%, C: 0%" the same as "A: 100%, B: 100%, C: 100%", but as you said, it's useful to get an overall count of the voters' absolute satisfaction with each candidate. A popular positively winning candidate would have a more legitimate claim to a mandate, and the lesser of two evils candidates would be branded as such.
  - godelski 4y ago
    > Even though it may be mathematically equivalent, I think the psychological appeal is important to motivate people to vote at all, if not think clearly about how they vote, and do it honestly and wisely. I agree with you here, maybe I did not articulate my previous comment correctly to reflect this.
supreme_loquat 4y ago
The biggest issue with a proposal like this is that a lack of any preference given whatsoever should not count positively towards a candidate. If someone labels candidate A as +3, candidate B as -3, and doesn't label candidate C, candidate C should not be given more preference than candidate B. People will either not understand the ramifications (they might not know someone and think that "no preference" is truly no preference when in reality it's positive preference), will forget, be lazy and not fill in some candidates, etc. I don't think that's a desirable trait since it's essentially ascribing a vote which the voter did not want. Of course if you want to make -3 (on a -3 to +3 scale) the default value assigned to "no preference" votes, perhaps that would be okay.

godelski 4y ago

This is an unnecessary complication but I get what you're saying. We could instead label a ballot numerically as: strongly disapprove (1), disapprove (2), neutral (3), approve (4), strongly approve (5). Or rather, both. What I'm getting at here is that nothing in the math changes so it isn't correct to say that these modifications make a system more balanced or expressive. I'll make no arguments about popularity or satisfaction since this is opinionated. A benefit of cardinal systems that you are actually pointing out is that not only can we determine winners, but we can also get a lot of information about voter preference. This is quite useful to politicians and researchers (understanding how represented people feel). But I will also note that a strictly negative ballot is likely to be rare as it is purely a protest ballot.

DonHopkins 4y ago
Even though it may be mathematically equivalent, I think the psychological appeal is important to motivate people to vote at all, if not think clearly about how they vote, and do it honestly and wisely. Human factors are important -- remember the Butterfly Ballots of the 2000 elections! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_United_States_presidential_election_recount_in_Florida#Palm_Beach_County's_butterfly_ballots https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_United_States_presidentia... I think that 0 being "don't care" and negative numbers being negative percentages is easier to grasp and more balanced and granular than (3) being neutral. Even -3 to 3 would be better than 1 to 7. Voting "A: -100%, B: -100%, C: -100%" weights each candidate the same as "A: 0%, B: 0%, C: 0%" the same as "A: 100%, B: 100%, C: 100%", but as you said, it's useful to get an overall count of the voters' absolute satisfaction with each candidate. A popular positively winning candidate would have a more legitimate claim to a mandate, and the lesser of two evils candidates would be branded as such.
- godelski 4y ago
  > Even though it may be mathematically equivalent, I think the psychological appeal is important to motivate people to vote at all, if not think clearly about how they vote, and do it honestly and wisely. I agree with you here, maybe I did not articulate my previous comment correctly to reflect this.

supreme_loquat 4y ago

The biggest issue with a proposal like this is that a lack of any preference given whatsoever should not count positively towards a candidate. If someone labels candidate A as +3, candidate B as -3, and doesn't label candidate C, candidate C should not be given more preference than candidate B. People will either not understand the ramifications (they might not know someone and think that "no preference" is truly no preference when in reality it's positive preference), will forget, be lazy and not fill in some candidates, etc. I don't think that's a desirable trait since it's essentially ascribing a vote which the voter did not want. Of course if you want to make -3 (on a -3 to +3 scale) the default value assigned to "no preference" votes, perhaps that would be okay.