Plurality Voting vs. Approval Voting

[Big Brother]

Somebody on the old board posted:

“While the media coverage of third parties diminishes alternative voices, it is ultimately the single-member pluralists elections (winner take all) that reduces our elections to two parties. The framework of the Constitution seems to have been designed to eliminate "radical" voices from politics in the country. An alternative election system and various other reforms are about all that we could do to give third parties a chance. “


I couldn’t agree more. About.com recently had an article about this same subject. From the article...

“Plurality voting is one big reason we have only two major parties, and plurality voting is manipulatable and has other serious flaws. This begs the question: Is plurality voting really majority rule?”

This has long been fodder for conspiracy theorist, since it provides an easy way for “them” to fix elections. It works like this ... our country has two major parties ... whoever gets the most votes wins ... So, if you run a candidate with similar views to a candidate from one of the major parties, you will cost that candidate votes and allow the OTHER guy to win.

The question of "what if" comes up every tme a 3rd party or independant gets more than 1% of the vote. You have John Anderson helping Reagan to win, Ross Perot helping Bill Clinton defeat Bush Sr. in 1992 and helping him to stay in office in 1996, and Ralph Nader taking enough Gore votes to put Bush over the top in 2000.

But there is an easy way to put a stop this.

The About.com article goes on to describe other methods of voting, namely “Condorcet voting” and “Approval voting”. I can say that after reading this article, I am now an ardent support of “Approval Voting”. Under such a system, each voter would cast a vote for each candidate he approves of. So for instance, given the choice between Gore, Bush, and Nader, a Nader supporter would be allowed to cast a vote for Nader AND Gore. This way, left-leaning individuals would no longer have to choose between the two candidates on “their side”. Each voter cast a vote for every candidate they "approve" of, and whoever gets the most votes wins.

So, if you suppose that most Nader supporters would prefer Gore to Bush, Al Gore would today be our president.

Well, maybe. Because if you were to go back in time to the election of 1992 and institute an “Approval Voting” system, George Bush Sr. would have beat out Clinton/Gore and retained his job. This is because that it has been estimated that at least two thirds of Perot supporters would have voted for Bush if Perot had not been on the Ballot. (In that election, Clinton received 43%, Bush Received 38%, and Perot received 19%. If you add 12% to Bush and 6% to Clinton you end up with Bush squeaking ahead of Clinton by 1% of the vote). Of course, if people knew that they could vote for Perot without “wasting their vote”, Perot would have undoubtedly received more votes as well. And this may have made people take him a little more seriously in 1996. But instead, Perot probably lost votes in 1996 because Republicans learned a lesson in 1992 and didn’t want to waste their vote again and end up with Clinton/Gore for another 4 years. (But they still lost anyway.)


The Center for Voting and Democracy has some good information on the folly of plurality voting as well.

http://www.fairvote.org/plurality/index.html


And actually, it may come as a surprise to some that a constitutional amendment would NOT be necessary to institute such a system. Elections are run by the States, so any state could easily switch over to an "approval" system with an act of its State legislature.

All the constitution says about the Presidential election is...

“Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.”

And for the House, it says...

“The House of Representatives shall be composed of members chosen every second year by the people of the several States…”

The constitution merely says that an election needs to be held. It's up to each state to decide how to actually carry the elections out.

This "approval voting" method is a small change that would have a HUGE impact on the way elections are carried out, so LET’S GET TO IT!

[Emmanuel Goldstein]

Given the dichotomy on offer, I cant understand why you would choose approval voting above concorcet voting. Under approval voting, candidates are divided into two camps - those you approve of and those you dont. There is no distinction between candidates within these camps, whereas concorcet voting seperates every single candidate in order of preference.

But it's still the lesser of two evils. I have no "right" to impress my will upon others, regardless of the accuracy of the system.

[Big Brother]

[carldiesturmer]

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[Big Brother]