Messaging for voting activism: "pride" and turnout
Jameson Quinn
Jameson Quinn
Phil Uhrich
Jameson Quinn
I'm still not exactly sure how it works. When the candidates do their rankings is it supposed to just be in their riding or state wide?
... If it's state wide how is that any different than just keeping it in the party except that it might create party factions?
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Steve Cobb
About the problem:
Voter turnout is a clever focus for The Problem. Low turnout has several causes, a bunch of which in turn result from the poor election method: poor candidate offering, gratuitous negative compaigning (including among candidates who should be allies), suboptimal or even perverse outcomes (from vote splitting), and an unresponsive party duopoly.
However, voter turnout depends on other things as well. I can think of at least five general reasons to vote or not: decision importance, candidate interest, my influence on the outcome, civic virtue, and cost. We all know about the “paradox of voting”. I would expect turnout to be low in a large, constitutionally-constrained, decentralized democracy.
You don’t mention it, but your initial chart of countries’ voter turnouts is of the 35 OECD nations—not random but cherry-picked. When making OECD comparisons I usually say something like “among our peer OECD nations”. But let’s run with it: are the countries with higher turnout than the US democratically so great (e.g. in the metrics of democracy index, prosperity, respect for human rights, and low corruption), and those below so awful? What leaps out at me is that Mexico (the OECD’s poorest, most corrupt, and most violent country) is above, and below the US are elite countries from their respective regions. I don’t even see any correlation with size. In fact, to me turnout vs. size and prosperity is the chart’s story, and warrants further investigation. At least two of the countries higher on the list have compulsory voting, imposing a fine if you don’t. Maybe not such great examples. BTW, I wrote this paragraph before clicking the chart’s reference link, which leads to a highly informative article spelling out this and more. In the 6 OECD countries with some form of compulsory voting, pride is making virtue out of necessity.
Looking at the chart of US turnout history, there seem to be three distinct periods. Turnout has been markedly lower for the past century than during the previous century—why? We have the same voting method and representation system. The chart suggests that the problem lies elsewhere.
Why should the wisdom of a crowd depend on some minimum participation level? Does a market require some percentage of players from its community? Presumably every market player believes that he or she has some valuable information to contribute, and is interested in helping to arrive at the right answer. A voter contributes a mixture of pure information and interest, desiring not necessarily a “correct”, but a *personally beneficial* answer. In the case of interest, we have a bit of a Prisoner’s Dilemma game going, like WWI trench warfare: my side will not turn out to vote if your side will not turn out. We can just send some representatives, for whom the cost is relatively lower.
Sidenote: A significant number of principled Americans consider voting, and certainly voting for certain types of candidates, to be an act of violence, an attempt to impose by force one’s opinion on others, with little regard for human rights. Such people debate internally whether they should vote as an act of self defense, or whether it merely legitimizes the process, but, regardless, to such people the “I voted” button signals no virtue. But many more libertarians and also conservatives who do believe in voting would disagree vehemently with this statement (common sense to a leftist):
“For me, it comes down to pride in democracy. That should be America’s legacy to all its citizens. Even if I disagree with you, I believe that you have a right to that pride.”
They would say that America’s legacy is the conception of human rights defined in the founding documents (DoI and Constitution), and they would qualify “democracy” as “liberal democracy” or “constitutional democracy”. Mere “democracy” is mob rule. My purpose here is to point out what is both a potential landmine and a principled reason for lower voter turnout.
There is an internal contradiction in promoting majority turnout but not a majority decision basis, e.g. in Approval Voting. What, we value participation but not consensus? I suppose that it is more legitimate than a plurality of a minority. Admittedly, in this particular article you don’t promote AV or any other single-winner methods.
You mention spoilers, but not vote splitting. Spoilers refer to obviously irrelevant candidates who do nothing but change the outcome. The implication is that they should not have run. The more general problem is vote splitting, e.g. if there are two or more equally strong candidates whom no one would accuse of being mere spoilers. I really think we should be hammering on vote splitting as the one big problem that all voting reformers can agree on. In the causal chain, vote splitting lies between the root cause (the current voting method) and low voter turnout.
About the solution:
GOLD is both complex and radical. Would it not make sense to first give a brief overview of simpler alternative voting methods, at least the ones that we like, as obvious reforms, before launching into the GOLD proposal? This article seems aimed at people new to voting theory and reform. BTW, in the article you never define the acronym GOLD.
However, it seems that GOLD is an allocational method, not a rating (what I’m now calling evaluational) method like the ones that we usually promote. Except for the candidates rating each other. Interesting challenge how to describe GOLD coherently along with our other endorrsed methods.
Is GOLD really a five-part package deal, or are some elements optional? That fifth redistricting step in particular looks like an optional variation. Simplifying GOLD will make it more feasible.
Meta:
As you say, the article got a bit long. For that reason you need to say something about the conclusion, or at least the solution, early on, e.g. in the title or subtitle. They are currently devoid of keywords. How about “Proportionally Proud” or “Pride and Proportionality”? At least say “Voting turnout” instead of just “turnout” in that key subtitle location. The first half of the article (The Problem) is a familiar lament about apathy. Nobody scanning their feed will have any clue that your article contains a radical new proposal. The beginning of the article needs a 1-2-sentence pitch, e.g. in the subtitle: “Voting turnout shows our civic and national pride, and GOLD proportional voting could restore it.”
It seems to me that you have three sections, but only one has a heading. They should be labeled in some way, to the effect of: The Symptoms, The Underlying Disease, and The Cure(s), but all including keywords.
The current voting method is not called “plurality”, but “plurality voting” (preferably capitalized, IMO)—plurality is a possible decision basis. How many Americans know the term FPTP? As long as we’re being radical and creating new terms I wish we’d try calling it “choose-one plurality voting”, for reasons that I’ve mentioned before.
Don’t mention python—it won’t impress the people who understand what it means, and it will only puzzle or scare the others. Just say that you built the FAQs.’
Anyway, a good start. I’m sure you’ll be writing more GOLD articles in the years to come.
Phil Uhrich
Jameson Quinn
Rate all other statewide candidates? From all parties?
And that gets displayed on the ballot?
In California with 53 CD's? Or New Hampshire's state house of representatives with 400 members? What about single district states?
Is it only votes of eliminated candidates that get moved on to other candidates? Wouldn't that make it a bad idea for a party to have 1 strong front runner with way too many over votes?
What happens in a special election?
Jameson Quinn
About the problem:
Voter turnout is a clever focus for The Problem. Low turnout has several causes, a bunch of which in turn result from the poor election method: poor candidate offering, gratuitous negative compaigning (including among candidates who should be allies), suboptimal or even perverse outcomes (from vote splitting), and an unresponsive party duopoly.
However, voter turnout depends on other things as well. I can think of at least five general reasons to vote or not: decision importance, candidate interest, my influence on the outcome, civic virtue, and cost. We all know about the “paradox of voting”. I would expect turnout to be low in a large, constitutionally-constrained, decentralized democracy.
You don’t mention it, but your initial chart of countries’ voter turnouts is of the 35 OECD nations—not random but cherry-picked. When making OECD comparisons I usually say something like “among our peer OECD nations”. But let’s run with it: are the countries with higher turnout than the US democratically so great (e.g. in the metrics of democracy index, prosperity, respect for human rights, and low corruption), and those below so awful? What leaps out at me is that Mexico (the OECD’s poorest, most corrupt, and most violent country) is above, and below the US are elite countries from their respective regions. I don’t even see any correlation with size. In fact, to me turnout vs. size and prosperity is the chart’s story, and warrants further investigation. At least two of the countries higher on the list have compulsory voting, imposing a fine if you don’t. Maybe not such great examples. BTW, I wrote this paragraph before clicking the chart’s reference link, which leads to a highly informative article spelling out this and more. In the 6 OECD countries with some form of compulsory voting, pride is making virtue out of necessity.
Looking at the chart of US turnout history, there seem to be three distinct periods. Turnout has been markedly lower for the past century than during the previous century—why? We have the same voting method and representation system. The chart suggests that the problem lies elsewhere.
Why should the wisdom of a crowd depend on some minimum participation level? Does a market require some percentage of players from its community? Presumably every market player believes that he or she has some valuable information to contribute, and is interested in helping to arrive at the right answer. A voter contributes a mixture of pure information and interest, desiring not necessarily a “correct”, but a *personally beneficial* answer. In the case of interest, we have a bit of a Prisoner’s Dilemma game going, like WWI trench warfare: my side will not turn out to vote if your side will not turn out. We can just send some representatives, for whom the cost is relatively lower.
- Costs are lower than marginal benefits for all voters. 100% turnout.
- There is at least one equilibrium where costs equal marginal benefits for each side. It would take implausibly strong assumptions to guarantee that turnout for both sides is equal at equilibrium. Thus, one side is getting an "unfair advantage".
- One side's costs are always higher than their marginal benefits. Only one side turns out.
Sidenote: A significant number of principled Americans consider voting, and certainly voting for certain types of candidates, to be an act of violence, an attempt to impose by force one’s opinion on others, with little regard for human rights. Such people debate internally whether they should vote as an act of self defense, or whether it merely legitimizes the process, but, regardless, to such people the “I voted” button signals no virtue. But many more libertarians and also conservatives who do believe in voting would disagree vehemently with this statement (common sense to a leftist):
“For me, it comes down to pride in democracy. That should be America’s legacy to all its citizens. Even if I disagree with you, I believe that you have a right to that pride.”
They would say that America’s legacy is the conception of human rights defined in the founding documents (DoI and Constitution), and they would qualify “democracy” as “liberal democracy” or “constitutional democracy”. Mere “democracy” is mob rule. My purpose here is to point out what is both a potential landmine and a principled reason for lower voter turnout.
There is an internal contradiction in promoting majority turnout but not a majority decision basis, e.g. in Approval Voting. What, we value participation but not consensus? I suppose that it is more legitimate than a plurality of a minority. Admittedly, in this particular article you don’t promote AV or any other single-winner methods.
You mention spoilers, but not vote splitting. Spoilers refer to obviously irrelevant candidates who do nothing but change the outcome. The implication is that they should not have run. The more general problem is vote splitting, e.g. if there are two or more equally strong candidates whom no one would accuse of being mere spoilers. I really think we should be hammering on vote splitting as the one big problem that all voting reformers can agree on. In the causal chain, vote splitting lies between the root cause (the current voting method) and low voter turnout.
About the solution:
GOLD is both complex and radical. Would it not make sense to first give a brief overview of simpler alternative voting methods, at least the ones that we like, as obvious reforms, before launching into the GOLD proposal? This article seems aimed at people new to voting theory and reform. BTW, in the article you never define the acronym GOLD.
However, it seems that GOLD is an allocational method, not a rating (what I’m now calling evaluational) method like the ones that we usually promote. Except for the candidates rating each other.
Interesting challenge how to describe GOLD coherently along with our other endorrsed methods.
Is GOLD really a five-part package deal, or are some elements optional? That fifth redistricting step in particular looks like an optional variation. Simplifying GOLD will make it more feasible.
Meta:
As you say, the article got a bit long. For that reason you need to say something about the conclusion, or at least the solution, early on, e.g. in the title or subtitle. They are currently devoid of keywords. How about “Proportionally Proud” or “Pride and Proportionality”? At least say “Voting turnout” instead of just “turnout” in that key subtitle location. The first half of the article (The Problem) is a familiar lament about apathy. Nobody scanning their feed will have any clue that your article contains a radical new proposal. The beginning of the article needs a 1-2-sentence pitch, e.g. in the subtitle: “Voting turnout shows our civic and national pride, and GOLD proportional voting could restore it.”
It seems to me that you have three sections, but only one has a heading. They should be labeled in some way, to the effect of: The Symptoms, The Underlying Disease, and The Cure(s), but all including keywords.
The current voting method is not called “plurality”, but “plurality voting” (preferably capitalized, IMO)—plurality is a possible decision basis. How many Americans know the term FPTP? As long as we’re being radical and creating new terms I wish we’d try calling it “choose-one plurality voting”, for reasons that I’ve mentioned before.
Don’t mention python—it won’t impress the people who understand what it means, and it will only puzzle or scare the others. Just say that you built the FAQs.’
Anyway, a good start. I’m sure you’ll be writing more GOLD articles in the years to come.
Brian Langstraat
On Monday, July 31, 2017 at 11:32:08 PM UTC-5, Jameson Quinn wrote:
Thanks for your thoughtful response, Steve. I'm going to quickly respond to you point-by-point. Thus, these responses will be generally less well-thought-out and less coherent than yours were. You have been warned.
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Jeremy Macaluso
1. District Plurality: elects a council through multiple single winner elections. The actual districts are optional.
2. Multi-winner FPTP: an at-large election where each person votes for n candidates and the n candidates with the most votes all win.
3. SNTV/Limited voting: an at-large election where each person votes for 1 candidate and the n candidates with the most votes all win.
The first two are not proportional at all. The third one is semi-proportional - if everyone is knowledgeable and strategic it will be proportional, but it won't if people screw up.
Jameson Quinn
Jameson,I disagree with your following statment:Personally, I think of FPTP as a multiwinner method (basically the worst one), while plurality voting is a single winner method.
"FPTP as a multiwinner method" is often called Single Non-Transferable Vote (SNTV).I have discussed the merits of SNTV in several Topics.Just today, I voted for SNTV in a local special election.
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Steve Cobb
The GOLD voting method is clever, shifting the work from the many voters to the relatively few candidates. The former get a simple ballot like the current one, the latter are forced to declare in a meaningful way their preferences among themselves. That would be a huge cultural change. Note that GOLD is another allocational method, not a rating method; votes flow as discrete tokens. And it is precinct summable—Is there any non-allocational PR method that does not require retaining original ballots?
>I'm not fully convinced by "choose-one plurality voting" but I could be.
You saw Aaron’s recent blog post defining a voting method:
https://electology.org/blog/what-voting-method
If a voting method consists of three elements, and is defined by those three elements, surely the name should be based on those three elements, or at least the most salient of them? Plurality Voting is thus a misleading name. FPTP might be a little less absurd name if it were used for multi-winner elections, but until your comment I’ve never heard that suggested.