I'm asking because some jurisdictions have a constitutional/charter requirement for elections to be "plurality", and I want to if approval is legal in those jurisdictions.
On one hand, the Wikipedia articles for Plurality Voting System and Approval Voting Systems explicitly make a distinction between the two. On the other hand, approval elections are won with a plurality of votes, so etymologically it makes sense.
Plurality systems are bad so it gets another vote without the less popular options, sorry its another vanity 6h random comment wins it
u/curvedyellowjays won a hugz by a random number generator
There are plenty of videos and articles online showing the problems with the plurality method (a.k.a. FPTP).
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https://youtu.be/s7tWHJfhiyo
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-past-the-post_voting#Disadvantages
Really the only reason we use FPTP is that it is easy to understand and commit. But that is not an excuse to what I believe breeds apathy in the political and democratic process at best, and disenfranchises people at worst.
What is a good alternative?
Well, there are many. MANY. Each ones with their own ups and downs.
But we have to keep one thing is mind, we need the system to keep people as honest as possible about their political preferences, the system has to be as efficient as possible in choosing the best result, AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, as easy as possible.
The first thing people point to is the Alternative Vote, a.k.a. Instant Runoff Voting (IRV). Down below I discuss a different method.
My suggestion is one that is really so simple, it is amazing that it isn't used much more widely. It is called Score Then Automatic Runoff: STAR.
STAR voting has only two parts to it:
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A voter gets a ballot with all the candidates listed on it, and must "rate" them on a scale from 0-5 (if left blank, it means 0). The top two candidates with the highest score move the runoff.
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Your vote goes to the finalist you prefer. Any ties mean abstentions. The finalist with the most votes wins the election.
Why the STAR method over IRV or STV or MMP?
I choose STAR over IRV because IRV actually has some properties that are still undesirable and come up too often for any democratic process. IRV is simple, but it is flawed, just not as flawed as FPTP. I'd refer you to here for more detailed explanations.
STV or MMP require too much change and are still not as effective as STAR in keeping voters honest and choosing the "best" candidate. All that is needed for STAR is a new ballot. MMP requires parties have a predetermined list of who is to be chosen should a party be awarded extra seats, and the lower house of the legislature needs to be able to have overhang seats. STV requires redrawing entirely new electoral districts with more representatives per district, AND it requires the voter to rank potentially 15 candidates in
... keep reading on reddit ➡I just watched the "Why don't we have better presidential candidates?" clip and was surprised that the mechanism by which those candidates are elected wasn't brought up. Rather than the "dead on arrival" unity ticket, this is something I believe could really happen if it was brought more into the forefront of public dialogue.
Yes, money in politics is a big part of who wins without an easy answer, but the other big part is how we vote. Our current system of choosing one candidate out of 10-20 in a primary almost guarantees vote splitting and forcing people to vote for a leading candidate over your genuine favorite. This also means a baseline level of name recognition is needed to be in that frontrunner conversation which excludes those new to the scene with new and interesting ideas like Andrew Yang.
Ranked choice voting gets talked about a lot and has had a few notable successes like Maine, but there are other voting systems that could be even better for a functional representative democracy and ending the two party duopoly such as Approval voting https://electionscience.org/approval-voting-101/ or STAR voting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STAR_voting
I'd love to see Lex get a voting systems expert on the podcast to bring these topics to the forefront. My feeling is that if a representative democracy is the means by which we intend to achieve policy change then we're screwed if the voting system doesn't reflect actual voter preferences rather than just the lesser of two evils. It's like steering a boat with a hole in your sail...maybe we should patch the hole first.
I came across an interesting thought yesterday:
An [exhaustve ballot] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exhaustive_ballot), an election of runoffs until only one candidate is left remaining does not always elect the Condorcet winner but, like any single-winner electoral system with some kind of runoff mechanism, it does guarantee that the condorcet loser will not be elected.
Does an exhaustive ballot using anti-plurality (voters vote not for their favourite but against their most disliked candidate in every round until one candidate remains) elect the Condorcet winner? If the most disliked candidate is kicked in every round doesn't that leave the Condorcet winner in the end? Unfortunately, I couldn't find literature for this question and I do not possess the maths skills to test it.
If that is indeed the case the implications could be quite profound: Condorcet winner elections in small circles ("one-room elections") could be held very quickly and without a computer. I could imagine this would be the best way to elect a party leader by its delegates, for example.
I’m all in support of a 3rd party. But with the current plurality voting system (each person gets one vote for a candidate) I don’t know that it’s realistic to gain offices/positions. With the current polarization in the US, a 3rd party would likely still trail significantly - even with a more robust organization behind it. I’m not saying that I approve of that, but that’s just how things shake out in the current system. Is the MPP also pushing for a ranked choice voting system or something similar? In the current state of politics that seems to be the only way to bust out of the dreaded “spoiler effect.”
www.metavote.us currently has a poll up for Biden's VP using 4 different voting methods to compare the results.
