It’s not gaming the system because you’re comparing apples and oranges. An election consisting of Obama vs Kucinich is not the same as Romney vs Palin. You’re changing your votes because the candidates are changing.
Yup. I’ve never been a fan.
Except the candidates I’m voting on aren’t changing. Romney is the same person no matter whom he’s running against, but sometimes I approve him, and sometimes I disapprove him. Likewise Obama.
Yes, in approval voting your vote can change depending on who the other candidates are, and on how well each is likely to poll. For example, in a three-way contest between Obama, Clinton and Palin for President:
(1) If I know that Palin will poll very poorly (i.e., less than 30%), and cannot possibly win, I will vote for just one out of Obama and Clinton, because I do prefer one to the other, even though I prefer either to Palin.
(2) If I know that Palin is likely to poll very well, and has a good chance of winning, then I’ll vote for both Obama and Clinton. I don’t want to risk that both will lose to Palin.
So I’m not going to vote for a less preferred candidate over a more preferred candidate (as can easily happen in instant-runoff voting), but the decision on how many to vote for is a strategic one.
An election isn’t held to determine a candidate’s absolute popularity, but to select one candidate among several. So the entire slate of candidates is important when deciding one’s votes. We should expect votes to change when the slate changes.
YouTube provides some great educational videos on RCV, since it is a complex method to wrap your head around.
Giles gives an example, but videos help those who are visual learners.
Here are some pro/cons that can help you see how it can (or can’t) work.
http://www.youtube.com/sjvoter
http://www.youtube.com/fairvote
Fairvote is very simplistic, while sjvoter shows some real-life examples.
For me, an election in June, when all the state, county, and fed elections are running, and a run-off in Nov at the general election is preferable. It doesn’t add a “special runoff” election, and doesn’t cost much for the benefit of democracy. That’s how all counties in CA do it with the exception of SF.
Yes. On the other hand, you have actual preferences there. Imagine a city council election with ten candidates trying to fill three seats:
Thagirlihated N. Highschool
Marijuana A. D. Vocate
T. Quiet Incumbent
Z. Krupt Incumbant
Kay Thule Oofoggin
Skald the Rhymer
Yorcule Nayber
Gene Eric Biznessman
D. R. Occupant
Ramone Johnson
Do you have actual preferences for most of them, or do you just pick an order at random? I like STV/IRV, but it does create a lot of arbitrary data out of nothing due to people just numbering non-fave, non-hated candidates at random.
That said, since I said “three seats,” I would still consider STV mathematically superior to approval voting. Approval voting overvalues pluralities & is very swingy, STV is more proportional. If it were one seat, I might support approval voting.
Then again, if my choice is truly random, then it’ll probably be either balanced out by other people choosing at random, or swamped by people choosing non-randomly between those same candidates. And even if the election is decided by my random voting, I don’t see that as all that big a deal, since I am, by postulate, indifferent between those candidates.
Fair point.
Just don’t vote for
Uh, oh, looks like Skald managed to “silence” foolsguinea before he could finish that post.
Don’t blame me, I voted for fnord
I would write in John Ya Ya, or maybe I.C. Weiner. And the Lizard People, of course.
I’d support basically any system other than winner-take-all balloting. In practice, avoiding “Split-vote” effects is the important thing, and both IRV and approval voting handle that problem. Our current system does not.
The wiki article on instant runoff shows an example where IRV can produce odd results. So I have a weak preference for approval voting. Range voting would be fine as well. But in most cases, candidates are chosen on the basis of left/right and more corrupt/less corrupt: the simplicity of the actual selection make IRV paradoxes typically moot.