Approval should be the default. There’s no good reason not to do it everywhere. “Check anyone you like, most votes wins.” Done. Good results, low regret, no invitations to self-defeating strategery.
Incidentally it’s how presidential elections used to work: every voter wrote two names, and the runner-up became vice president. That ended with the twelfth amendment after a comically inept tie-breaking session needed thirty-five attempts.
Ranked ballots are better but I’m always going to endorse Condorcet specifically because ‘more people wanted this guy’ are what elections are for. RCV finds the first candidate who can scrounge together a simple majority. Condorcet finds anyone who’d beat them. The possibility of someone who’d beat them is all people need to know about why RCV sucks.
Score systems… I don’t see the draw. Intensity of support is individually crucial and collectively impactful, but if everybody counts equally, then the math can’t care. You don’t get to vote harder based on strong feelings. You also shouldn’t be able to throw away half your vote by scoring your favored frontrunner low. STAR does paper over that honesty-punishing shortcoming, but only by expressing what Ranked systems do naturally.
As an off-the-cuff illustration, if C>B>A and B>C>A voters score everyone 3-2-1, but A>B>C voters score everyone 5-3-1, C can be eliminated despite supermajority preference over A. If it’s split about evenly, A averages 1+1+5, B averages 3+2+3, and C averages 3+2+1. The runoff comes down to A and B. B wins, in this case… even if C>B>A ballots outnumber B>C>A ballots.
Approval should be the default. There’s no good reason not to do it everywhere. “Check anyone you like, most votes wins.” Done. Good results, low regret, no invitations to self-defeating strategery.
Incidentally it’s how presidential elections used to work: every voter wrote two names, and the runner-up became vice president. That ended with the twelfth amendment after a comically inept tie-breaking session needed thirty-five attempts.
Ranked ballots are better but I’m always going to endorse Condorcet specifically because ‘more people wanted this guy’ are what elections are for. RCV finds the first candidate who can scrounge together a simple majority. Condorcet finds anyone who’d beat them. The possibility of someone who’d beat them is all people need to know about why RCV sucks.
Score systems… I don’t see the draw. Intensity of support is individually crucial and collectively impactful, but if everybody counts equally, then the math can’t care. You don’t get to vote harder based on strong feelings. You also shouldn’t be able to throw away half your vote by scoring your favored frontrunner low. STAR does paper over that honesty-punishing shortcoming, but only by expressing what Ranked systems do naturally.
As an off-the-cuff illustration, if C>B>A and B>C>A voters score everyone 3-2-1, but A>B>C voters score everyone 5-3-1, C can be eliminated despite supermajority preference over A. If it’s split about evenly, A averages 1+1+5, B averages 3+2+3, and C averages 3+2+1. The runoff comes down to A and B. B wins, in this case… even if C>B>A ballots outnumber B>C>A ballots.