Steven Brams letter to editor in NYTimes

[Ted Stern]

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/14/opinion/the-merits-of-approval-voting.html?_r=0

[Warren D Smith]

The Merits of Approval Voting
MAY 13, 2016
To the Editor:

“Unusual Flavor of G.O.P. Race Illustrates a Paradox” (The Upshot, May
10) gives an incomplete picture of social choice theory.

Yes, the French mathematician the Marquis Condorcet showed that
choices may cycle, and Kenneth Arrow’s generalization of this paradox
showed that there is no perfect voting system, but both results are
founded on the assumption that voters rank candidates. If, instead,
voters grade candidates, these results no longer hold.

The simplest grading system is approval voting, whereby voters
indicate all candidates they find acceptable (give a grade of 1); the
others are deemed unacceptable and receive grades of 0. The candidate
with the greatest number of approvals wins the election.

Under approval voting, there can be no cycle: The candidate who wins
is more approved than every other candidate in paired comparisons.

Because approval voting does not restrict voters to supporting only
one candidate, it tends to elect the most acceptable candidate over
all, not the strongest minority candidate who benefits from a divided
field.

In the 2016 Republican primaries, polls show that Donald Trump was not
acceptable to a significant portion of Republican voters, so he would
not have done nearly as well under approval voting.

STEVEN J. BRAMS

New York

The writer is a professor of politics at New York University and the
author of “Mathematics and Democracy: Designing Better Voting and
Fair-Division Procedures.”


--
Warren D. Smith
http://RangeVoting.org <-- add your endorsement (by clicking
"endorse" as 1st step)

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

Yes. Nice. Approval voting will not necessarily
generate majority approval, but should improve
results or at the least not harm them. At a
convention, approval can work with multiple
rounds until some desired level of approval is
reached. A party may want to go for more than a
majority! And it might be worth the effort.

At 11:41 PM 5/13/2016, Warren D Smith wrote:
>The Merits of Approval Voting
>MAY 13, 2016
>To the Editor:
>

>“Unusual Flavor of G.O.P. Race Illustrates a Paradox†(The Upshot, May

>10) gives an incomplete picture of social choice theory.
>
>Yes, the French mathematician the Marquis Condorcet showed that

>choices may cycle, and Kenneth Arrow’s generalization of this paradox

>showed that there is no perfect voting system, but both results are
>founded on the assumption that voters rank candidates. If, instead,
>voters grade candidates, these results no longer hold.
>
>The simplest grading system is approval voting, whereby voters
>indicate all candidates they find acceptable (give a grade of 1); the
>others are deemed unacceptable and receive grades of 0. The candidate
>with the greatest number of approvals wins the election.
>
>Under approval voting, there can be no cycle: The candidate who wins
>is more approved than every other candidate in paired comparisons.
>
>Because approval voting does not restrict voters to supporting only
>one candidate, it tends to elect the most acceptable candidate over
>all, not the strongest minority candidate who benefits from a divided
>field.
>
>In the 2016 Republican primaries, polls show that Donald Trump was not
>acceptable to a significant portion of Republican voters, so he would
>not have done nearly as well under approval voting.
>
>STEVEN J. BRAMS
>
>New York
>
>The writer is a professor of politics at New York University and the

>author of “Mathematics and Democracy: Designing Better Voting and
>Fair-Division Procedures.â€

>
>
>--
>Warren D. Smith
>http://RangeVoting.org <-- add your endorsement (by clicking
>"endorse" as 1st step)
>

>--
>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/d/optout.