1. I guess Professor Galbraith has never heard of Duvurger’s Law. Though I suppose his message was well heard for those voting for Cambridge’s city council. That’s because they’re the only city in the country that uses a pure PR system, single transferable vote.

   His energy would have been better utilized had he offered range or approval voting as a mechanism for holding democrats accountable (at least in single-seat offices). These two systems still must contend with the first hurdle of Duvurger’s Law–a high threshold. That’s simply inherent in single-seat systems.

   But they overcome the second hurdle–the psychological one that tells you not to throw your vote away. Approval and range voting are the only two clearly defined single-seat systems that always allow you to vote your favorite (IRV does not). As such, they also allow for momentum building–something plurality (and IRV) just don’t permit.

   Voting honestly for an alternate candidate under plurality does have some benefit. It sends a message. Unfortunately, that’s about all it does. Even worse, Democrats don’t have a very good ear.

2. I doubt there will ever be a “Liberal Party” separate and apart from the “Democratic Party” for the same reason there will never be a true “Conservative Party” separate and apart from the “Republican Party.” Both groups know they need the respective larger party to win elections and vice-versa.

3. Alabama Independent,

   That’s only true due to our poor voting method, Plurality Voting.

   With Score Voting or Approval Voting, that wouldn’t be the case. Major parties wouldn’t have to worry about “spoilers”, but if minor parties’ support grew, they could become successful, because people could continue to strategically support their favorite of the traditional parties until that point came.

4. There’s no such thing as a perfect voting system. I enjoy how advocates of score/approval voting continually overlook the fact that it can be ‘gamed’ just like any other system.

   I’m not necessarily an IRV advocate, and by no means do I find it to be perfect, but I think it’s a good first step in the right direction since it’s easy for most people to understand and it’s already been constitutionally vetted.

   Obviously, if people are interested in ‘more fair’ systems later on, they could then move to things like score or approval voting. I find it unlikely that people would regress back to simple plurality voting.

5. There is, here in New York, evidence for the claim that there can’t be a Liberal or a Conservative Party separate and apart from the D’s and R’s. Both exist (well, the Liberals went away but were replaced by the Working Families) but are almost exclusively tied to one or the other of the major parties.
   IRV may be “all the rage” right now but it’s flaws are obvious and substantial. I won’t settle for it without a fight, even in single-seat races, because the alternatives are so much more preferable.

6. @Erik

   Sure, no voting system is “perfect” in that it automatically selects the perfect winner. But some voting systems are MUCH better than others. Approval/score voting advocates such as myself promote these systems because they ARE much better. The “gaming” that you’re referring to with these systems does not occur in the same way as other systems.

   For instance, approval and range are the only two systems that ALWAYS let you vote for your favorite. And if you try to “game” too much, then you shoot yourself in the foot. Surveys in France and Germany show their strong performance as do computer simulations. Suggestions that voters will do otherwise (and in essence vote stupidly) is complete speculation and without any evidence.

   Approval and range voting are easier to understand and provide a much better winner on average than any other voting system. This is true even when voters go a tactical route. Sure, approval and range aren’t “perfect” as defined above. But given their strength, I think it’s quite warranted to show some more enthusiasm for these systems.

7. Erik G.,

   We absolutely do not “overlook” the fact that ALL deterministic voting methods are susceptible to gaming. In fact if you search scorevoting.net, you’ll find around twenty pages discussing the implications of strategy on score voting. The thing is that:

   1) score voting is less harmed by tactics, since it makes it safe for voters to support candidates they sincerely prefer to either of the frontrunners, and

   2) score voting is inherently so much better than, say, IRV that it performs better with 100% strategic voters than IRV does with 100% sincere voters.

   IRV may be better than plurality, but that’s not what it has typically replaced. Usually it has replaced top two runoff, which may actually be better.

8. Erik G.,

   Here’s a link that shows voting method performance as a function of strategic-ness of voters:
   ScoreVoting.net/BayRegsFig.html

   As for simplicity, voters apparently do not find IRV all that simple, as they make about seven times as many ballot-invalidating errors:
   ScoreVoting.net/SPRates.html

   Also see the other objective ways in which Score/Approval is simpler than IRV (every way, basically):
   ScoreVoting.net/Lorenzo.html

   Aaron,

   Actually, Score and Approval are not the only methods that pass the Favorite Betrayal Criterion. I was surprised to learn this myself. Check out point 3, “Rank methods”:
   http://scorevoting.net/FBCsurvey.html

9. *facepalm*

   I understand how score voting works. You people are like a cult with your devotion to it. All I tried to say is that people more or less understand the concept of ranking their choices and how run-offs work. Is that perfect? Not by any means. If the ballot is constructed in a manner that creates validity issues, that’s a ballot issue, not a run-off one. And, in this case, it would be mostly replacing plurality voting instead of top-two, so that point is incredibly off-topic.

   And I even said I wasn’t an IRV advocate – I understand that mathematically it has issues compared to other systems. But good luck getting passed what you people are advocating. And please stop spamming the crap out of here and IPR with your cultish devotion.

10. Thanks Clay. I hadn’t heard of the MDDA ranking system before. Interestingly, it seems to sort of borrow from approval voting to get this property.

    @ Eric
    Are devoted groups like Free and Equal pushing for ballot access reform cultish too? Fairvote? Spam is tangential and unresponsive–neither of which is occurring here. And devotion has slightly more impact than fatalism. I’ll address you this once. I will ignore any further borderline ad hominem attacks.

11. The last thing this country needs is a new political party. We already have plenty to choose from. If anything, there should be a consolidation of political parties.

12. For election system fans —

    ALL election systems have problems — at the margins — due to —

    A > B

    Add C

    C may beat A head to head — BUT lose to B head to head.

    34 ABC
    33 BCA
    32 CAB
    99

    66 A > B
    67 B > C
    65 C > A

    C > A > B > C — so called circular tie.
    ——–
    P.R. and App.V. — pending utopia.

    See head to head Condorcet math — from the 1780s – repeat 1780s.

    The EVIL party hacks will reduce their EVIL machinations.

13. A tongue-in-cheek look at the political ecology created in the US by the distorting effects of first-past-the-post:
    http://www.halfsigma.com/2010/12/half-sigma-politics-chart.html

14. Keynes econ = nonstep govt borrowing in peacetime years for statist spending schemes, especially welfare schemes (see the deficit ROT in 1929-1941 and 2001-2010).

    = less and less private capital investment

    = DOOM for civilization — but of course that is what EVIL INSANE Keynes econ MORONS want.

15. Erik G.,

    There’s no need to “facepalm”. Maybe we misunderstood your concerns a bit. But you did specifically say, “advocates of score/approval voting continually overlook the fact that it can be ‘gamed’ just like any other system.” That is absolutely untrue, as a litany of of our web pages and online comments attest.

    You may be correct that part of the reason for increased ballot spoilage with IRV has to do with bad ballot design, but this trend spans a number of different elections, in different countries, and on different continents, leading a reasonable person to consider that it likely has at least something to do with the inherent properties of a ranked ballot. And in fact, that makes a lot of sense. Of all the ways one can rank a ballot, a proportionally greater number of them are invalid as compared to Approval Voting. For instance, you might give two candidates the same rank. With Approval Voting, there is no real analog to that. Approval Voting is just
    inherently less conducive to this particular problem.

    Moreover, it is not merely a matter of understanding how to rank candidates. It’s also about the tabulation mechanics. My conversations with Australian political activists reveal that a vast segment of the electorate tends to naively exaggerate (“polarize”) the frontrunners, so for instance a voter who prefers Libertarian > Republican > Democrat > Green will often VOTE Republican > Libertarian > Green > Democrat. While top-ranking the Republican in that case would actually make sense from a strategic point of view, bottom-ranking the Democrat cannot possibly help, since IRV is immune to burial. Yet lots of voters just do it anyway, because they don’t understand how IRV works.

    So, this is not merely a trivial ballot design issue.

    “I find it unlikely that people would regress back to simple plurality voting.”

    Oh really? How about these four cases of IRV repeal in just the past couple of years?
    http://www.electology.org/irv-repeal

    “And, in this case, it would be mostly replacing plurality voting instead of top-two, so that point is incredibly off-topic.”

    I’m sorry, I don’t know what you mean by “in this case”. In most (all?) of the US cases of IRV adoption in recent history, it has been in place of top-two runoff, NOT Plurality Voting. I agree that IRV is probably better than Plurality Voting, by a little. But even then, the opportunity cost of using reform momentum to implement IRV when it could be spent on Score or Approval Voting equates to a substantial negative.

    As for spam and cultishness, I don’t really know how to take these as serious criticisms. Sure, you can always call other people’s ideas spam if you disagree with them. And you can hurl insults at them, calling them a cult for being justifiably passionate. A more productive route would be to actually offer some evidence-based criticism that might actually shed light on the subject.

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