The supporters of Approval Voting appear to have qualified an initiative in Lane County, Oregon. If the county initiative has enough valid signatures and is otherwise approved for the ballot, Lane County voters would vote on the idea in November 2018.
This type of Approval Voting is new. First, the voters assign a numerical value (registering how much they like the candidate) to each candidate listed on the ballot. It is not necessary for the voter to do this for each candidate listed. Then, the sum total for each candidate is calculated. The vote for the two highest candidates is re-examined, and the number of voters (among the voters who assigned a score to each candidate) who preferred one of the two candidates, relative to the other candidate, is checked. Of the two strongest candidates, the one preferred by the most voters wins.
In such a system, if a voter assigns an equal score to each of the two top candidates, then his or her vote is discounted as an abstention. This feature of the system motivates voters to give sincere scores. This new system is termed by its inventors “Star voting”, where “Star” means “Score-then-automatic-runoff.” Here is a short video about the system, from http://Equal. Vote. Thanks to Independent Voters Network for the link.
This system, along with ranked choice voting, has the virtue of being held in the general election, when public interest is highest. It allows the primary to be eliminated, which also saves election administration cost.
STAR = Stupid, Terrible, Awful, Rotted —
typical half-ass New Age scheme
Number votes ONLY show relative stuff —
NOT absolute YES or NO.
—-
Condorcet with YES/NO tiebreaker —
legis, exec, judic
Until CYNT —
PR and AppV
This sounds more like range voting. I believe approval voting is the process of selecting all candidates that are acceptable to the voter. It does not have a scoring component.
This is a variation on Score Voting, not Approval Voting. Approval Voting is essentially Score Voting on a 0-1 scale. STAR Voting is “Score Then Automatic Runoff”, and it uses a 0-5 Score Voting ballot.
The winner is the majority favorite between the two highest rated overall candidates. So let’s suppose Bob and Alice are the highest rated candidates, and you score Alice higher than Bob. Your full vote goes to Alice in the head-to-head majority vote.
Local regimes in Oregon can have their own election systems
— NO State CONTROLS !!! ???
See the PR option section in the OR Stste Const — NOT enforced.
[trying to reproduce, while editing, a comment I input this morning which doesn’t seem to be here now]
I didn’t see in the linked video a clear statement on whether, if someone doesn’t rank a candidate at all, that’s treated the same as a 0 ranking. I would appreciate clarification on that.
Also, if there are many candidates, someone could reach the top two with support from only a very small share of voters. And the effect could be even more intense than in current US plurality/FPTP voting. For example, if 95 voters out of 100 rank a candidate 0 or don’t rank them at all, but the other 5 voters all give that candidate a 5, that’s a sum total score of 25. If there are 15 candidates (as has been known to happen in some primaries here in Michigan), 25 could well be enough to get into the AR portion of the process. Has this been discussed? If so, were there any suggestions to avoid it — such as requiring some minimum percentage of voters ranking a candidate above 0 for them to be eligible for the AR, or perhaps putting more than just two candidates into the AR if the top two didn’t get at least 1-rating support from a majority of the voters?
Scoring candidates is about the same as MINDLESS scoring of the latest mind altering drugs or junk cable TV shows.
Election systems — now especially LIFE or DEATH —
WHO should be elected and have PUBLIC legislative, executive or judicial POWER —
esp. in top USA regime offices ???
—
PR and AppV – pending Condorcet
Richard, thanks for the writeup on STAR Voting (Score Then Automatic Runoff).
You are the first to draw the connection to the Unified Primary (Approval + Top Two) that we ran in 2013/2014. The real advantage of STAR is that it uses a dramatically more expressive score ballot, rather than a binary yes/no expression system. Approval (YES/NO) is a big step up from what we have now (Plurality – choose your one favorite) because it still works when there are more than two candidates. We believe that STAR scales better still, because it recognizes both level of approval as well as distinct preferences. Like approval, STAR is fully “backwards compatible” for voters who only want to express a single choice — you can just give a 5 to your favorite and move on to the next race. But for voters who have distinct opinions about each (or any number of) candidates, STAR gives a much more robust range of expression.
The supporters of Approval Voting appear to have qualified an initiative in Lane County, Oregon. If the county initiative has enough valid signatures and is otherwise approved for the ballot, Lane County voters would vote on the idea in November 2018.
This type of Approval Voting is new. First, the voters assign a numerical value (registering how much they like the candidate) to each candidate listed on the ballot. It is not necessary for the voter to do this for each candidate listed. Then, the sum total for each candidate is calculated. The vote for the two highest candidates is re-examined, and the number of voters (among the voters who assigned a score to each candidate) who preferred one of the two candidates, relative to the other candidate, is checked. Of the two strongest candidates, the one preferred by the most voters wins.
In such a system, if a voter assigns an equal score to each of the two top candidates, then his or her vote is discounted as an abstention. This feature of the system motivates voters to give sincere scores. This new system is termed by its inventors “Star voting”, where “Star” means “Score-then-automatic-runoff.” Here is a short video about the system, from http://Equal. Vote. Thanks to Independent Voters Network for the link.
This system, along with ranked choice voting, has the virtue of being held in the general election, when public interest is highest. It allows the primary to be eliminated, which also saves election administration cost.
I pasted the original post in error. My previous post ends at “STAR gives a much more robust range of expression.” Apologies for any confusion!
ALL (100 percent) or NONE (0 percent) of a candidate is elected —
NOT some fraction — 20-40-60-80 percent.
@DR,
Yes. Counties have local home rule. The initiative in Lane County (Eugene) would apply only to elections of county officers.
@JALP,
The text of the specific initiative in Lane County, Oregon is here:
https://www.starlane.us/lane_reform
Not giving a score is equivalent to scoring as zero. If you are equivocal about a candidate, it would be better to give a two or three. If they finished among the Top 2, they would have your support in a contest against the candidates you opposed, and non-support in a contest against one of your favorites.
You could rate multiple candidates equal. In your scenario where 5 voters gave a score of 5 to their favorite, who received a total of 25, the other 13 candidates would have each had to got an average score of 25/95 or less from the other 95 voters. That would be like 24 voters giving one candidate a tepid score of one, and the other candidates a zero. Even if there was a minority extremist faction of 20 giving a score of 5 to their leader, the other 80 voters would have to give an average score of below 100/80 (or 1.25) to each of the other candidates.
@Demo Rep,
Scoring in the context of this system means offering a level of support.
If you, as a voter, only ever want to fully support just one candidate, you still can: give your favorite a 5 and leave the rest blank (counts as zero).
On the other hand, if you have a more nuanced view of the outcome, and want to support candidates at different levels, you can do that too.
Versus normal Score, STAR adds significant emphasis on _differentiation_ — i.e. an expression of preference.
Versus typical rank-order systems, STAR adds significant emphasis on _level_of_support_ for each candidate.
Please give it a closer look — http://equal.vote
This is in no way a “type of approval voting”. This type of messaging begs for confusion and makes our jobs harder. Merely being a cardinal method does not make something an approval voting variant. This seems more like it’s trying to ride the name recognition and research coattails of another method.
If a company were hiring a CEO, the board might rate the candidates in a similar fashion after an initial screening, and then have more intensive screening and interviews before making a final decision.
A board of directors would be derelict if they said, let’s do this on the cheap. Why is it considered virtuous to save money and time with instant runoffs?