Third parties, approval, and MAS

[Jameson Quinn]

Obviously, it is in third-party activists' interest to support voting reform. (I'm going to discuss this with reference to the Greens, but much of what I'll say applies equally to other third parties, and in particular the Libertarians.) 

Currently, the Green party seems to have bought into IRV, with party high-up David Cobb creating a video that is obviously reading more-or-less verbatim from a FairVote script. 

In response, we at the CES currently offer just approval voting, and perhaps score. Yet to key Green constituencies, this is an unsatisfying offer. If Approval is to be seen as superior to plurality, then it is because it allows people to vote for both a Green and a major-party candidate—probably the Democrat. But to nearly anybody who is still involved in Green activism, the difference between the Green and the Democrat is far more crucial than the difference — if they see any — between the Democrat and the Republican. For somebody who feels that way, approval offers little directly. Unless, of course, they hope that, unshackled from plurality, others would join them in supporting the Green, and thus approval ballots could become a "gateway drug" to Green-only bullet voting.

(I realize that my last sentence is inflammatory. By no means do I believe that this is how all Green approval-sympathy has or could arise. But I do think it's a possibility, and I also think that it's not the kind of plan that would endear approval to a larger audience.)

I believe that if we really want to convince people like the Greens, and simultaneously make a pitch that is attractive to a wider audience, we need to have a system on offer that is more expressive, and more resistant to the Chicken dilemma, than approval. It should also be simpler than IRV.

I believe that MAS can be that solution. Consider the scenario if a third party, drawing support primarily from one of the two existing parties, were to start near zero and grow to a point where it could win executive offices. Somewhere between 1/5 and 1/3 support, it would pass its ideologically-similar existing party, creating either a center squeeze or a chicken dilemma. IRV breaks down under center squeeze; Approval risks breaking down under chicken dilemma; MAS can handle both, assuming only a moderate amount of cooperation (for several scenarios, see this worksheet). 

Crucially, unlike approval, MAS can ignore a strategy differential between two subfactions, as long as the strategy difference is less than a relatively high threshold. This means that strategy isn't a slippery slope, where defensive strategy shades into offensive strategy shades into an overall breakdown.

I'm still fully on board with approval voting as our principal proposal. But if we're trying to talk to a group like the Greens, I think that we should have a proposal that they can be enthusiastic about, not just one that pushes the battle lines over voting strategy from the Democrat/Green border to somewhere inside the Green coalition. I think MAS, or something like it, is our best hope for that.

[Nevin Brackett-Rozinsky]

With regard to “something like” MAS, it occurs to me that if you added a rule, “if any candidate has a majority of 2-point votes, then eliminate those who do not,” then (leaving aside the valuation of blank votes) it would be equivalent to “Elect the candidate with the highest median, using score totals as a tiebreaker.”

That rule seems just as easy to describe, and can be generalized to allow more than 3 levels if desired.

Nevin

[Warren D Smith]

http://rangevoting.org/ForGreens.html
was an old effort by me to speak to Greens and in particular that
damn ignoramus David Cobb is shown by the very poll
data mentioned there, to have
a huge plus with score voting, for him personally.

Another such old effort was my letter to Nader (once the Green
presidential canddt):
http://www.rangevoting.org/NaderRV.html

perhaps these will be a useful starting point for you.


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

[Warren D Smith]

Incidentally, I did not even point out about Cobb's other video rejecting
the whole "spoiler" ethos and recommending
voters vote their conscience --

well, Cobb is a total hypocrite
on exactly that issue, who in his 2004 presidential run,
vowed not to campaign in swing states for precisely this reason.

What a total hypocrite.