Undervotes in Approval Voting elections

[Eric Sanders]

If a voter 'submits' a totally blank ballot in an Approval Voting election, would you count that as a 'non-selection' for each candidate? (in determining if a candidate has "majority" approval)

[Jameson Quinn]

My opinion: If this were the only race on that ballot, yes. Otherwise, no.

2013/11/22 Eric Sanders <er...@electology.org>

If a voter 'submits' a totally blank ballot in an Approval Voting election, would you count that as a 'non-selection' for each candidate? (in determining if a candidate has "majority" approval)

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[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

Under Roberts Rules, a blank ballot is considered scrap paper. It is not counted. Under standard Roberts Rules elections,  secret ballot, a blank ballot is *literally* a blank piece of paper. However, if the ballot has any mark on it, it is considered a ballot to be counted and is part of the basis for majority, even if no specific vote can be discerned.

With printed ballots, multiple races, there would be a cause to consider a blank *race* to be a No on all candidates. But a totally blank ballot, no. Any mark on the ballot would trigger counting it. I've pointed out many times that in majority required elections, NOTA is already implemented. Mark the ballot NOTA, it has that effect.

Sent from my iPhone

On Nov 22, 2013, at 11:39 PM, Eric Sanders <er...@electology.org> wrote:

If a voter 'submits' a totally blank ballot in an Approval Voting election, would you count that as a 'non-selection' for each candidate? (in determining if a candidate has "majority" approval)

[Matt Welland]

Pragmatically speaking does it make any difference? Unless your election rules have some action to be taken if no candidate gets more than some percentage of the vote the impact on who wins is zero.

This did trigger a curious thought, what if you required that for a ballot to be valid at least two candidates had to be selected. I know that sounds nutty but in transitioning from single choice to approval one problem is voter intellectual inertia. People are so accustom to picking only one that for at least one election cycle or some variation thereof *forcing* multi choices would stimulate discussion and I think help shift the behaviours of voters. After that first cycle the rule would be removed.

It is just food for thought.

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Matt
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90% of the nations wealth is held by 2% of the people. Bummer to be in the majority...

[Bruce Gilson]

On Sat, Nov 23, 2013 at 7:44 PM, Matt Welland <esti...@gmail.com> wrote:

[...]

This did trigger a curious thought, what if you required that for a ballot to be valid at least two candidates had to be selected. I know that sounds nutty but in transitioning from single choice to approval one problem is voter intellectual inertia. People are so accustom to picking only one that for at least one election cycle or some variation thereof *forcing* multi choices would stimulate discussion and I think help shift the behaviours of voters. After that first cycle the rule would be removed.

 

This is a terrible idea. Suppose the candidates were all but one really bad, in the eyes of a voter. (Put anyone you like on a ballot, with the others being Hitler, Idi Amin, Stalin, and Pol Pot.) Forcing the voter to pick at least two means you must "approve" someone you really despise. 

 

Unless, of course, you can write in someone like yourself.

[Matt Welland]

Yes, I agree it is a terrible idea. But I think the problem of voter intellectual inertia is real and what I'm suggesting is a transitory trick to break the lock on the voter habits.

At the least it would be good to do in polls or practice elections or in online examples of approval voting. Another action in online polls that might help where the voter selected only one candidate would be to pop up a windows on vote commit asking something like "You voted for only one candidate, are you sure you don't want to select at least one alternate?"

I like your suggestion being able to write in someone, although that would become a burden in large elections.

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[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

My suggestion: empower voters, don't confine or restrict them, based on ideas about how they "should" vote.

What I truly wonder is why the IRV "overvotes" aren't simply counted. With Majority, it doesn't matter much if overvotes aren't counted, because the election will fail, to be repeated. With IRV, plurality result allowed, it causes harm to discard them and treat a lower preference as higher. IRV with multiple votes in each rank allowed is a far better system, because it can be voted as Approval.

CES has its work cut out. That may be somewhat diluted by the taking of advocacy positions.

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