Why should we prefer democracy as a system of government: because it indulges an individual voter, or because it produces the best results for the most number of people?
Back in the 1990s, an Australian voting activist was charged with promoting illegal and invalid voting (there is such a crime). He rejected the blunt instrument of having to vote ranked choice, numbering everyone from 1 to 5 or 7 or 9, or whatever. He advised voting "1" for your preferred candidate, and then "2" for everyone else, on the grounds that you couldn't - or didn't want to - rank them in any meaningful way, since they were not your choice. (I have some sympathy with this view).
Anyway - he won the case - and they changed the legislation saying you had to use the numbers 1-N for all N candidates on the ballot paper, to vote in a valid way. I think Score Voting could solve this, if you could give you favourite candidate say 10 out of 10, your second preference 6, and then everyone else zero, or close to zero.
We fundamentally disagree about why I, personally (or you personally) should support democracy.
To my mind, the counterfactual should be answered. If I don't like the results of an election, I can get a gun and try to kill everyone I disagree with, and I can try to find others who think like me and who also want to kill everyone who disagrees with us. In other words, the losing side always has the option of starting a civil war. What is the argument for why they should support democracy? It has to be that democracy, in the long run, produces the best results for everyone, including those people who are tempted to start a civil war.
I notice you continue to put the emphasis on allowing the voters to vote their preference, but I don't see why anyone should refrain from civil war merely to supplicate someone's personal preferences. In other words, the utility argument is something like "I'm interested in everyone voting because it benefits me, not because it benefits them." In that model, voting can be seen as sending a signal, the process is a bit like a Machine Learning process, in that the overall system ends up smarter than any one person in the system. In other words, the end result will be better than anything I could achieve on my own. But then, I trust other voters only in so far as the science of Machine Learning has shown that their signals can be trusted, and Machine Learning has shown people have some cognitive limits, even regarding their own preferences.
Again, Netflix is the most interesting case to examine, they initially allowed score voting, but they had to give it up, because people lacked the skill to rank their preferences among movies. Netflix had to adopt approval voting, which did a better job of aggregating together the preferences of groups of people. And again, the limit was that people often don't know how much they like a movie (or they vote on a movie while they are in some particular mood, but their mood quickly changes).
But again, the actual system of voting is only one of many factors. We could build a thriving democracy that relied on First Past The Post if we could get widespread agreement on the importance of all of the other factors that I mentioned above. Indeed, for much of the 20th Century, Americans were happy with their democracy, even though they relied on First Past The Post. So while I think approval voting offers some benefits, there are other reforms I'd like to see more urgently.
"I’ve previously written in favor of approval voting."
That is the problem - "Approval Voting", like "Score Voting" are just slightly more subtle versions of the very blunt instrument of FPTP voting. However anyone who favours "Approval Voting" or "Score Voting" are really just saying that they can't accept Ranked Choice - even though on just about all reasonable election criteria, RC will result is the most broadly approved candidate being elected.
Ranked Choice voting is only attacked by those who are really down in the weeds, looking at the very tiny percentage of anomalies in outcomes. For 99.9% of the time, RC works as it it should, delivering the most broadly accepted candidate, even across very diverse electorates.
This vehement clinging to FPTP Voting (under another guise such as "Approval Voting" or "Score Voting") is quite puzzling. It indicates to this sceptical Aussie that there is a plurality/winner take all - "American" mentality all too much in play here, even if not articulated, however I concede I could be misreading things. But really - why do Americans hate Ranked Choice so much?
Sorry to be slow to reply, I just had a month when my consulting clients had some emergencies. About this:
"Ranked Choice voting is only attacked by those who are really down in the weeds, looking at the very tiny percentage of anomalies in outcomes."
I'd put this the other away around. FPTP is bad, and everything else is about equally better. You have to get really down in the weeds to notice the differences between RC/IR versus approval voting versus score voting versus some kind of Condorcet method. There are many, many factors that go into building a healthy democracy:
length of terms
independence of judiciary
integrity among the police
integrity among the military
method of changing the constitution
ease of participation in the political process by all citizens
strength and independence of educational establishments
and so much more.
So the actual method of voting is just one many factors and so we should not put too much emphasis on it. We can say that FPTP is uniquely bad, and everything else is better, and once you've adopted something other than FPTP, your greatest concern about democracy is likely going to be one of the many other factors that make up the overall system.
Still, approval voting, in a system that elects a large number of candidates, does, I think, offer some unique benefits, which I outlined in that other essay.
Back in the 1990s, an Australian voting activist was charged with promoting illegal and invalid voting (there is such a crime). He rejected the blunt instrument of having to vote ranked choice, numbering everyone from 1 to 5 or 7 or 9, or whatever. He advised voting "1" for your preferred candidate, and then "2" for everyone else, on the grounds that you couldn't - or didn't want to - rank them in any meaningful way, since they were not your choice. (I have some sympathy with this view).
Anyway - he won the case - and they changed the legislation saying you had to use the numbers 1-N for all N candidates on the ballot paper, to vote in a valid way. I think Score Voting could solve this, if you could give you favourite candidate say 10 out of 10, your second preference 6, and then everyone else zero, or close to zero.
We fundamentally disagree about why I, personally (or you personally) should support democracy.
To my mind, the counterfactual should be answered. If I don't like the results of an election, I can get a gun and try to kill everyone I disagree with, and I can try to find others who think like me and who also want to kill everyone who disagrees with us. In other words, the losing side always has the option of starting a civil war. What is the argument for why they should support democracy? It has to be that democracy, in the long run, produces the best results for everyone, including those people who are tempted to start a civil war.
I notice you continue to put the emphasis on allowing the voters to vote their preference, but I don't see why anyone should refrain from civil war merely to supplicate someone's personal preferences. In other words, the utility argument is something like "I'm interested in everyone voting because it benefits me, not because it benefits them." In that model, voting can be seen as sending a signal, the process is a bit like a Machine Learning process, in that the overall system ends up smarter than any one person in the system. In other words, the end result will be better than anything I could achieve on my own. But then, I trust other voters only in so far as the science of Machine Learning has shown that their signals can be trusted, and Machine Learning has shown people have some cognitive limits, even regarding their own preferences.
Again, Netflix is the most interesting case to examine, they initially allowed score voting, but they had to give it up, because people lacked the skill to rank their preferences among movies. Netflix had to adopt approval voting, which did a better job of aggregating together the preferences of groups of people. And again, the limit was that people often don't know how much they like a movie (or they vote on a movie while they are in some particular mood, but their mood quickly changes).
But again, the actual system of voting is only one of many factors. We could build a thriving democracy that relied on First Past The Post if we could get widespread agreement on the importance of all of the other factors that I mentioned above. Indeed, for much of the 20th Century, Americans were happy with their democracy, even though they relied on First Past The Post. So while I think approval voting offers some benefits, there are other reforms I'd like to see more urgently.
"I’ve previously written in favor of approval voting."
That is the problem - "Approval Voting", like "Score Voting" are just slightly more subtle versions of the very blunt instrument of FPTP voting. However anyone who favours "Approval Voting" or "Score Voting" are really just saying that they can't accept Ranked Choice - even though on just about all reasonable election criteria, RC will result is the most broadly approved candidate being elected.
Ranked Choice voting is only attacked by those who are really down in the weeds, looking at the very tiny percentage of anomalies in outcomes. For 99.9% of the time, RC works as it it should, delivering the most broadly accepted candidate, even across very diverse electorates.
This vehement clinging to FPTP Voting (under another guise such as "Approval Voting" or "Score Voting") is quite puzzling. It indicates to this sceptical Aussie that there is a plurality/winner take all - "American" mentality all too much in play here, even if not articulated, however I concede I could be misreading things. But really - why do Americans hate Ranked Choice so much?
Sorry to be slow to reply, I just had a month when my consulting clients had some emergencies. About this:
"Ranked Choice voting is only attacked by those who are really down in the weeds, looking at the very tiny percentage of anomalies in outcomes."
I'd put this the other away around. FPTP is bad, and everything else is about equally better. You have to get really down in the weeds to notice the differences between RC/IR versus approval voting versus score voting versus some kind of Condorcet method. There are many, many factors that go into building a healthy democracy:
length of terms
independence of judiciary
integrity among the police
integrity among the military
method of changing the constitution
ease of participation in the political process by all citizens
strength and independence of educational establishments
and so much more.
So the actual method of voting is just one many factors and so we should not put too much emphasis on it. We can say that FPTP is uniquely bad, and everything else is better, and once you've adopted something other than FPTP, your greatest concern about democracy is likely going to be one of the many other factors that make up the overall system.
Still, approval voting, in a system that elects a large number of candidates, does, I think, offer some unique benefits, which I outlined in that other essay.