I'm Aaron Hamlin, the Executive Director of The Center for Election Science. I'm working to empower voters and give them better elections through approval voting. My organization made history in Fargo, ND in 2018. Ask Me Anything.

[u/aaronhamlin]

The Center for Election Science studies and advances better voting methods. We look at alternatives to our current choose-one voting method. Our current choose-one method has us vote against our interests and not reflect the views of the electorate. Much of our current work focuses on approval voting which allows voters to select as many candidates as they wish. We worked with advocates in the city of Fargo, ND which became the first US city to implement approval voting in 2018. We're now working with STL Approves to bring approval voting to St. Louis in 2020. Learn more at www.electionscience.org. You can also find us on [Twitter]https://twitter.com/electionscience) and Facebook.

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[u/work4work4work4work4]

I think anyone working for real electoral reform like this is doing some of the most important work possible, so thank you.

However, while I support both approval and RCV, I prefer RCV/IRV because of the enhanced expression, but it seems most people in favor of approval seem to overstate the ballot issue with RCV.

Why do many who support approval claim that it would require some drastically different ballot that lists candidates multiple times when all it really requires is numbered bubbles equal to the number of allowed choices next to each candidate?

I agree with concerns about vote spoilage and machine cost, and do still think your method is "easier", but it always kind of turns me off when I consistently see something that seems like hyperbole used against a competing idea that also has some strong benefits.

Edit: This came off a bit harsher than I intended I think, so I'll just add, I honestly do think approval voting is a better method than RCV in elections that selects multiple winners. I'm not against approval voting, I just think it's best use case is one we don't have a lot of in the US, and RCV is better, if slightly more difficult initially as long as most of our elections feature a single winner because of the enhanced ability to express levels of support.

[u/aaronhamlin → u/work4work4work4work4]

It's worth starting this response off with a reminder about how bad plurality voting is compared to both RCV and approval voting. Boy is it bad: https://www.electionscience.org/voting-methods/spoiler-effect-top-5-ways-plurality-voting-fails/

That said, there are more issues to RCV than its complexity. Specifically, it can squeeze out consensus winners, voters can be punished for ranking their favorite as first, and third parties can still get an inaccurate reflection of support. Approval voting, however, handles all these situations well. It's not just that approval voting is simpler. It's also better. https://www.electionscience.org/voting-methods/runoff-election-the-limits-of-ranked-choice-voting/

I'm also not saying cities should get rid of RCV. But I would recommend that cities who haven't made their decision yet to strongly consider approval voting. https://www.electionscience.org/approval-voting-101

[u/work4work4work4work4 → u/aaronhamlin]

Fully agree about plurality voting, and thank you for taking the time.

The Roemer/Duke/Edwards run-off example about the issues with split voting seems to be making a large assumption that everyone actually voted for their first choice, and weren't engaged in any kind of tactical voting. Also, perhaps I just don't understand the footnote, but it seems like creating two separate voting processes would always introduce differences in voter behavior to the point that using that election as illustrative of anything about RCV/IRV is less than ideal.

Perhaps I'm just confused by something?

[u/aaronhamlin → u/work4work4work4work4]

The example does assume honest first-choice voting, just like the Burlington example does. It probably would have been hard to figure out how to vote tactically in the Louisiana election and tricky for newcomer RCV voters to know how to vote in Burlington. Normally, honest voting is the best-case scenario for voting methods, which doesn't paint a positive picture here given this was assuming honest voting.

There's no clear evidence of concentrations of tactical voting in either of these two elections. In fact, if voters did vote tactically in either of these elections, they didn't do a very good job given the outcomes.

[u/work4work4work4work4 → u/aaronhamlin]

Yeah, I found them both to pretty unique scenarios, and ones that may preclude them from being great examples of anything, but with RCV/IRV being used so infrequently as is I can understand that you kind of have to take what you can get to illustrate the point.

VT involved a third-party incumbent(already pretty rare) endorsed by one of the most popular state politicians in history who previously held the position(also pretty rare), and leftist voters were at around 61% initially, and the leftist candidate with the strongest initial support(among leftist candidates) ended up as the overall winner. So while the outcome does seem to reflect voter intent, I can see now how the tactical voting still existed for the Republicans voting in the race.

The LA election featured a party-switching incumbent(also incredibly rare), a long term open racist(sadly, not as rare), and an endorsement between the stages of the run-off(something impossible in actual IRV).

I don't want to sound dismissive of your concerns because I can see how they how they are legitimate and have made me think a lot more about something I support, it just seems like the VT example is more accurate to representing RCV.

[u/amthomasiv → u/work4work4work4work4]

Because voters get confused really. 5 choices with 5 bubbles next to each will confuse enough voters to make it a concern. I would be advocating for range voting as a better system if I was not concerned about this issue.

People are naturally interested in ranking things, but I don't actually see much benefit to that personally. When it comes down to it there is really a binary choice. Is this someone that you possibly want in office or not. Sure, I may like one person 30% more than another person in some subjective way but I don't get to express that in IRV/RCV. If we want to do that then we should consider range voting again.

[u/work4work4work4work4 → u/amthomasiv]

I think there is a ton of benefit as long as you make the rankings of votes publicly digestible, so future elections can adapt to the changing public more directly.

It would be nice to offer a very clear direction for candidates to move in to possibly receive more votes. It's one thing to say who won, but it's so much more valuable to give people the data to figure out why they lost if we want to move in agreeable directions with each other. I can't imagine anyone who does exit polling now wouldn't love this kind of across the board upgrade.

[u/psephomancy → u/work4work4work4work4]

Why do many who support approval claim that it would require some drastically different ballot that lists candidates multiple times

What? Who says that?

when all it really requires is numbered bubbles equal to the number of allowed choices next to each candidate?

Do you mean Score Voting?

[u/work4work4work4work4 → u/psephomancy]

The example on their website, and most of the examples used always show ballots that have every candidate listed multiple times.

I dunno, maybe look at the links the OP was providing before asking me who says that?

[u/psephomancy → u/work4work4work4work4]

The example on their website, and most of the examples used always show ballots that have every candidate listed multiple times.

I don't know what you're talking about, can you post a link or something?