New Hampshire Representative Dan McGuire and several other representatives have introduced HB 240, to let voters cast one vote for as many candidates for any particular office as they wish. This is usually called “Approval Voting.” For instance, if five candidates are running for a particular office and only one is to be elected, and a voter doesn’t particularly care who wins, but that voter is very eager that one particular candidate not be elected, the voter could vote for all four of the other candidates. Thanks to Dale Sheldon-Hess for this news.
Excellent news — we need more state legislators looking for ways to accommodate voter choice. I happen to have concerns with approval voting, but more power to McGuire and colleagues for taking action — and approval voting and range voting advocates can have a chance to focus on something positive.
Gee – Has the State Rep. been reading this blog ???
App.V. for executive/judicial offices.
P.R. for legislative bodies.
What century will a Prez mention P.R. and App.V. in a State of the Union speech ??? Do NOT hold your breath waiting.
Rob,
Thanks for your generally positive tone, but I think it’s really unfair to imply that advocates of Score Voting and Approval Voting haven’t been focusing on something positive.
Yes, we have been extremely oppositional to Instant Runoff Voting, but that stems from our desire to educate the public, and fact check the numerous false and misleading claims by IRV advocates. For example:
http://www.electology.org/san-leandro-inamdar
ScoreVoting.net/Irvtalk.html
That being said, I think that success for Approval Voting would help your ultimate goal of proportional representation in a major way. Unlike IRV, Approval Voting will actually help to break up duopoly, which will then make the adoption of PR much more likely.
I have great skepticism about the viability of approval voting politically and it living up to your high hopes in practice. But please — go out there and prove me wrong!
App.V. — Who has the highest Approval ???
For Prez, Guv, Mayor, Dogcatcher (an important job), Judge ???
— pending advanced Condorcet math and MASSIVE public education (IF that is possible with dumb and dumber stuff everywhere).
Rob,
We have already proved you wrong. You have routinely claimed that Approval Voting would degenerate into Plurality Voting in practice, because voters would all vote ONLY for their favorite candidates.
But, oh wait. We currently have a system in which voters are FORCED to vote for only one candidate, and yet they STILL often do not vote for their favorite candidate. E.g. a voter who prefers Nader but votes for Gore.
That, and essentially every other “skepticism” you have ever expressed are massively refuted by all available evidence.