Please add positive comments on our submission page for Looking At Democracy contest
27 views
Skip to first unread message
Clay Shentrup
May 4, 2013, 10:30:34 PM5/4/13
to electio...@googlegroups.com
http://lookingatdemocracy.org/submissions/14935-the-united-states-needs-approval-voting
Right now, we're second place if you sort the submissions by number of comments. Let's fix that. :)
Jameson Quinn
May 5, 2013, 8:10:10 AM5/5/13
to electio...@googlegroups.com
I submitted a positive comment that explains why I think the video would be even better if the incumbent hadn't won:
Good job!
In fact, this video barely scratches the surface of approval's advantages. In the video, approval voting ends up protecting a popular incumbent from a spoiler. But our current outdated voting system protects unpopular incumbents as a matter of course. As long as they are more popular than their mainstream opponent, they can complacently assume that voters, afraid of the spoiler problem shown in the video, will ignore all "third" candidates. In fact, potential opponents often decide not to run, or drop out of the race, to avoid being spoilers, as happened recently in the Maine senate race; and this anti-democratic choice is in fact the only responsible one under the broken system we have.
Approval voting, by allowing elections with 3 or more candidates to be fair, would improve not just voter choice, but everything about democracy. We'd have a broader, healthier debate, with less zero-sum negativity.
http://lookingatdemocracy.org/submissions/14935-the-united-states-needs-approval-votingRight now, we're second place if you sort the submissions by number of comments. Let's fix that. :)
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Center for Election Science" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to electionscien...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Abd ul-Rahman Lomax
May 5, 2013, 1:28:37 PM5/5/13
to electio...@googlegroups.com
I added a comment:
>This video very cleanly and simply points out the simplest,
>do-no-harm, voting reform. Approval is not the perfect voting
>system, but considering that it is no-cost and is easy to
>understand, and when it fails in some way has done no harm, voting
>systems experts have come to agree that Approval is *the* obvious
>first improvement. The principle is really of voting independently
>on all candidates, and that principle can be extended to more
>sophisticated rating or ranking on ballots. But this is, absolutely,
>the place to start, and the Center for Election Science has done a
>fantastic job in making this point. Approval can be combined with
>other, more established reforms, such as runoff voting, to improve
>the systems. It's time to start Counting All the Votes, instead of
>discarding "overvoted" ballots because of an obsolete rule that
>originated under very different conditions.
As to Jameson's comment, he's quite correct, but pointing out how, in
some ways, an incumbent might be *less* safe under Approval is not
exactly an efficient way to gain support from incumbents and those
who support them. It's a reasonable model, but is better raised in a
more sophisticated environment, where people already have an idea
that Approval is fair and a good idea, and then need to understand
possible down sides, so they can balance their choices.
Approval, in fact, will not have a huge impact on most elections,
because of how people *really* vote. It will have a small and almost
entirely positive impact. It eliminates an old injustice, the
effective punishment of voters for "overvoting." Robert's Rules tells
clerks not to count overvotes, because "the intention of the voter is
not clear," which simply assumes that voters did not intend it. There
is no other argument against Approval under RRONR, it simply was off
the radar. (And RRONR was describing Majority, not Plurality, and
those deprecated votes still form part of the basis for Majority, so
they are not actually discarded. When the *same voting method* used
in deliberative process was used in public elections, which is
probably the history -- nice topic for a research paper -- and it was
considered impractical to repeat the voting, as RRONR wants -- even
with difficult and cumbersome wide voting, like mail voting, this
protection was lost.)
Approval does create a "problem" of possible multiple majorities, but
in public elections, we can predict that these will be quite rare:
Approval doesn't go far enough to encourage additional approvals,
it's Bucklin, "instant runoff approval" that does this.
What I've found fascinating is the Arizona proposal, HB 2518, because
it *effectively encourages additional approvals* by *requiring* the
runoff. Those additional approvals are cast in the runoff, which is
the more convenient election of the two. It does not allow approval
voting in the runoff, and would be greatly improved if it did. But
it's an historic step in a more functional direction. All while being
quite simple. Using approval in the primary *will* encourage a
lessening of Favorite Betrayal. (It is my view that approving an
additional candidate, equal ranking, is not "Betrayal," it is simply
signalling a willingness to compromise, and a voter has, in the
Arizona primary, by approving a Favorite and second choice, voted to
push *both* of them into the runoff. It does not cause the Favorite
to lose). This is even more clear under Bucklin, and will give voters
the freedom to specify their preference, and, as well, to indicate
preference strength if they want.
Quite properly, the CES video avoids dealing with the more complex
issues, and I think that the incumbent winning, under conditions
similar to those in the video (which *were* exaggerated for clarity
of effect), would be normal, so it is not at all misleading to have
the incumbent win.
Further, showing Peach with a majority would raise a complex issue
that could be confusing. Indeed, all the allegations that Approval
can be harmful use a multiple majority scenario, where the "harm" is
simply assumed, and would not be experienced as harm *by the voters,*
very likely.
Saari does this with Range:
99: A, 100 / B, 99
1: B: 100, A, 0.
Saari then simply assumes that we will all be *horrified* by B
winning, when 99% of the voters favored A. Saari is assuming that the
99 votes are sincere, and then also, as I recall, seems to assume
that the B vote is insincere. I.e, B, Saari imagines, "really
approves of A, but 'exaggerates' to get a preferred result." But the
B vote could be entirely sincere, maybe B knows or believes something
about A that nobody else knows or thinks, and with voters with any
brains or knowledge of the situation, they would not vote B 99 unless
their preference was only slight: they will be *pleased* by the
election of B, or they voted *very stupidly.*
Robert's Rules, with multiple majorities, if an organization adopted
a bylaw allowed Approval, would probably hold a ratification vote if
a majority choice was not clear. But in a public election, with
substantial cost for additional polls, the result of B is obviously
acceptable. Perfect? No. There could have been strategic voting on
the part of the A voters, based on a misunderstanding of the
probabilities, there may have been a third candidate or plausible
write-in vote that totally fizzled. More sophisticated voting systems
can develop the necessary information on original ballots, *probably, usually*.
A follow-up video could imagine the *next* elections. Particularly, I
imagine, perhaps Mayor Blueberry decides to retire, to make way for
new ideas and energy, and recommends Peach and commends him for his
valuable contributions to Plantsville and his constant
cooperativeness and gracious acceptance of the majority results.
Meanwhile new conditions arise and the election becomes more complex,
since Approval has encouraged more people to run for office, now that
the simple spoiler effect doesn't bite so hard.
Indeed, a series of videos could examine, with the same cast of
characters, or new ones as needed, much more complex issues. They
could even go into issue space simulations and Bayesian regret. They
could examine other reforms. It is very important to establish CES as
an open-minded organization, though not so open minded, to pick this
up from Sagan or a critic of Sagan, that our brains fall out.
CES is really representing, in promoting Approval voting, a consensus
of experts, not just the opinion of a few activists. CES is
straddling two horses: science and political activism. Let's be
careful; my own way of framing the possible conflict is to define our
*goal* as public understanding and use of what is known
scientifically, so science itself comes first.
One of the things about the video I loved most was "Join the
Conversation." That is a term used extensively in the training I've
been going through. Human transformation, and communication about it,
is called "the conversation." It's actually an *ancient*
conversation, but it is always fresh, and must be, or it becomes
dogma and fixed conclusion, instead of conversation and freedom.
I saw *many* subtle points in the video that I consider to be of high
sophistication. Somebody really knew what they were doing, or a
community knew what it was doing and worked together well.
The human mind can always make up arguments against any idea or
possibility. It can also make up argments *for* anything. We fall
into an old trap if we believe that these arguments are about truth.
We often confuse facts with argument. A fact is just a fact,
something known to have happened. It is neither for nor against
anything, that would be about how someone might *use* the fact.
Consensus begins, in social process and in science, through agreement
on what *actually* has happened, and this gets quite powerful when
"what happened" was the result of controlled experiment, where
variables are isolated and examined in designed simplicity.
Anyway, this is the ontology I'm working with, and it is, in my life
and in all the work I'm doing, powerful and effective.
no more original content below.
At 07:10 AM 5/5/2013, Jameson Quinn wrote:
>I submitted a positive comment that explains why I think the video
>would be even better if the incumbent hadn't won:
>
>Good job!
>
>In fact, this video barely scratches the surface of approval's
>advantages. In the video, approval voting ends up protecting a
>popular incumbent from a spoiler. But our current outdated voting
>system protects unpopular incumbents as a matter of course. As long
>as they are more popular than their mainstream opponent, they can
>complacently assume that voters, afraid of the spoiler problem shown
>in the video, will ignore all "third" candidates. In fact, potential
>opponents often decide not to run, or drop out of the race, to avoid
>being spoilers, as happened recently in the Maine senate race; and
>this anti-democratic choice is in fact the only responsible one
>under the broken system we have.
>
>Approval voting, by allowing elections with 3 or more candidates to
>be fair, would improve not just voter choice, but everything about
>democracy. We'd have a broader, healthier debate, with less zero-sum
>negativity.
>
>
>2013/5/4 Clay Shentrup <<mailto:cl...@electology.org>cl...@electology.org>
>This video very cleanly and simply points out the simplest,
>do-no-harm, voting reform. Approval is not the perfect voting
>system, but considering that it is no-cost and is easy to
>understand, and when it fails in some way has done no harm, voting
>systems experts have come to agree that Approval is *the* obvious
>first improvement. The principle is really of voting independently
>on all candidates, and that principle can be extended to more
>sophisticated rating or ranking on ballots. But this is, absolutely,
>the place to start, and the Center for Election Science has done a
>fantastic job in making this point. Approval can be combined with
>other, more established reforms, such as runoff voting, to improve
>the systems. It's time to start Counting All the Votes, instead of
>discarding "overvoted" ballots because of an obsolete rule that
>originated under very different conditions.
As to Jameson's comment, he's quite correct, but pointing out how, in
some ways, an incumbent might be *less* safe under Approval is not
exactly an efficient way to gain support from incumbents and those
who support them. It's a reasonable model, but is better raised in a
more sophisticated environment, where people already have an idea
that Approval is fair and a good idea, and then need to understand
possible down sides, so they can balance their choices.
Approval, in fact, will not have a huge impact on most elections,
because of how people *really* vote. It will have a small and almost
entirely positive impact. It eliminates an old injustice, the
effective punishment of voters for "overvoting." Robert's Rules tells
clerks not to count overvotes, because "the intention of the voter is
not clear," which simply assumes that voters did not intend it. There
is no other argument against Approval under RRONR, it simply was off
the radar. (And RRONR was describing Majority, not Plurality, and
those deprecated votes still form part of the basis for Majority, so
they are not actually discarded. When the *same voting method* used
in deliberative process was used in public elections, which is
probably the history -- nice topic for a research paper -- and it was
considered impractical to repeat the voting, as RRONR wants -- even
with difficult and cumbersome wide voting, like mail voting, this
protection was lost.)
Approval does create a "problem" of possible multiple majorities, but
in public elections, we can predict that these will be quite rare:
Approval doesn't go far enough to encourage additional approvals,
it's Bucklin, "instant runoff approval" that does this.
What I've found fascinating is the Arizona proposal, HB 2518, because
it *effectively encourages additional approvals* by *requiring* the
runoff. Those additional approvals are cast in the runoff, which is
the more convenient election of the two. It does not allow approval
voting in the runoff, and would be greatly improved if it did. But
it's an historic step in a more functional direction. All while being
quite simple. Using approval in the primary *will* encourage a
lessening of Favorite Betrayal. (It is my view that approving an
additional candidate, equal ranking, is not "Betrayal," it is simply
signalling a willingness to compromise, and a voter has, in the
Arizona primary, by approving a Favorite and second choice, voted to
push *both* of them into the runoff. It does not cause the Favorite
to lose). This is even more clear under Bucklin, and will give voters
the freedom to specify their preference, and, as well, to indicate
preference strength if they want.
Quite properly, the CES video avoids dealing with the more complex
issues, and I think that the incumbent winning, under conditions
similar to those in the video (which *were* exaggerated for clarity
of effect), would be normal, so it is not at all misleading to have
the incumbent win.
Further, showing Peach with a majority would raise a complex issue
that could be confusing. Indeed, all the allegations that Approval
can be harmful use a multiple majority scenario, where the "harm" is
simply assumed, and would not be experienced as harm *by the voters,*
very likely.
Saari does this with Range:
99: A, 100 / B, 99
1: B: 100, A, 0.
Saari then simply assumes that we will all be *horrified* by B
winning, when 99% of the voters favored A. Saari is assuming that the
99 votes are sincere, and then also, as I recall, seems to assume
that the B vote is insincere. I.e, B, Saari imagines, "really
approves of A, but 'exaggerates' to get a preferred result." But the
B vote could be entirely sincere, maybe B knows or believes something
about A that nobody else knows or thinks, and with voters with any
brains or knowledge of the situation, they would not vote B 99 unless
their preference was only slight: they will be *pleased* by the
election of B, or they voted *very stupidly.*
Robert's Rules, with multiple majorities, if an organization adopted
a bylaw allowed Approval, would probably hold a ratification vote if
a majority choice was not clear. But in a public election, with
substantial cost for additional polls, the result of B is obviously
acceptable. Perfect? No. There could have been strategic voting on
the part of the A voters, based on a misunderstanding of the
probabilities, there may have been a third candidate or plausible
write-in vote that totally fizzled. More sophisticated voting systems
can develop the necessary information on original ballots, *probably, usually*.
A follow-up video could imagine the *next* elections. Particularly, I
imagine, perhaps Mayor Blueberry decides to retire, to make way for
new ideas and energy, and recommends Peach and commends him for his
valuable contributions to Plantsville and his constant
cooperativeness and gracious acceptance of the majority results.
Meanwhile new conditions arise and the election becomes more complex,
since Approval has encouraged more people to run for office, now that
the simple spoiler effect doesn't bite so hard.
Indeed, a series of videos could examine, with the same cast of
characters, or new ones as needed, much more complex issues. They
could even go into issue space simulations and Bayesian regret. They
could examine other reforms. It is very important to establish CES as
an open-minded organization, though not so open minded, to pick this
up from Sagan or a critic of Sagan, that our brains fall out.
CES is really representing, in promoting Approval voting, a consensus
of experts, not just the opinion of a few activists. CES is
straddling two horses: science and political activism. Let's be
careful; my own way of framing the possible conflict is to define our
*goal* as public understanding and use of what is known
scientifically, so science itself comes first.
One of the things about the video I loved most was "Join the
Conversation." That is a term used extensively in the training I've
been going through. Human transformation, and communication about it,
is called "the conversation." It's actually an *ancient*
conversation, but it is always fresh, and must be, or it becomes
dogma and fixed conclusion, instead of conversation and freedom.
I saw *many* subtle points in the video that I consider to be of high
sophistication. Somebody really knew what they were doing, or a
community knew what it was doing and worked together well.
The human mind can always make up arguments against any idea or
possibility. It can also make up argments *for* anything. We fall
into an old trap if we believe that these arguments are about truth.
We often confuse facts with argument. A fact is just a fact,
something known to have happened. It is neither for nor against
anything, that would be about how someone might *use* the fact.
Consensus begins, in social process and in science, through agreement
on what *actually* has happened, and this gets quite powerful when
"what happened" was the result of controlled experiment, where
variables are isolated and examined in designed simplicity.
Anyway, this is the ontology I'm working with, and it is, in my life
and in all the work I'm doing, powerful and effective.
no more original content below.
At 07:10 AM 5/5/2013, Jameson Quinn wrote:
>I submitted a positive comment that explains why I think the video
>would be even better if the incumbent hadn't won:
>
>Good job!
>
>In fact, this video barely scratches the surface of approval's
>advantages. In the video, approval voting ends up protecting a
>popular incumbent from a spoiler. But our current outdated voting
>system protects unpopular incumbents as a matter of course. As long
>as they are more popular than their mainstream opponent, they can
>complacently assume that voters, afraid of the spoiler problem shown
>in the video, will ignore all "third" candidates. In fact, potential
>opponents often decide not to run, or drop out of the race, to avoid
>being spoilers, as happened recently in the Maine senate race; and
>this anti-democratic choice is in fact the only responsible one
>under the broken system we have.
>
>Approval voting, by allowing elections with 3 or more candidates to
>be fair, would improve not just voter choice, but everything about
>democracy. We'd have a broader, healthier debate, with less zero-sum
>negativity.
>
>
Michael Ossipoff
May 6, 2013, 12:32:37 PM5/6/13
to electio...@googlegroups.com
On Saturday, May 4, 2013 10:30:34 PM UTC-4, Clay Shentrup wrote:
http://lookingatdemocracy.org/submissions/14935-the-united-states-needs-approval-votingRight now, we're second place if you sort the submissions by number of comments. Let's fix that. :)
Of the 12, or so, comments on the video, all of the comments except mine (posted today) seem to have been posted on the same day, 5 days ago.
You're talking about the comments that appear under the video, reached by scrolling down, right?
Michael Ossipoff
Abd ul-Rahman Lomax
May 6, 2013, 2:59:37 PM5/6/13
to electio...@googlegroups.com, electio...@googlegroups.com
(I do see Ossipoff's comments on my iPhone,)
I don't think he's looking at the right video. I just looked, comments are more recent than he says and my comment from yesterday is still last. Looking on YouTube?
I followed the link Ossipoff cited.
Sent from my iPhone
Sent from my iPhone
--
Clay Shentrup
May 6, 2013, 3:41:59 PM5/6/13
to electio...@googlegroups.com
On Monday, May 6, 2013 9:32:37 AM UTC-7, Michael Ossipoff wrote:
You're talking about the comments that appear under the video, reached by scrolling down, right?
Right. Not the Youtube comments.
Reply all
Reply to author
Forward
0 new messages