Approval Voting

At least two people on my blogroll approve of approval voting. Time for me to get with the online program.

To the very minor extent I care about electoral reform, I wholeheartedly endorse approval voting. One simple change (vote for as many candidates as you like) eliminates many of problems with and for minor candidates. I don’t understand why anyone likes complicated and problematical alternatives with terrible user interfaces.

6 Responses

  1. Thanks for citing the San Francisco supes ballot; I was wondering what it looked like.

  2. […] 217;t think it’s within the authority of Congress to require it – and thereby forbid approval voting which I like better still. No Comme […]

  3. […] I wouldn’t expect it to. At a minimum you need something like approval voting or at the extreme delegable proxy voting. I’ve always found such reforms curious but distracting, as I don’t know what their impact on policy outcomes would be, and I suspect they’d be small. However given that voters are not outcome oriented I wonder if being able to make a closer to their ideal expression when oting would make voters happier, at least for time they are in the voting booth. […]

  4. […] friend Mike Linksvayer links to some good info about voting methods. See in particular why the problem of […]

  5. […] Approval Voting substantially reduces the expressive — the dominant — value of voting, and should thus be rejected. Voting for one (or in the ranked case, a #1) candidate promotes forming a very satisfying fantasy bond and group identity with one’s one or #1 and others with the same preference. Merely approving candidates, even if one voluntarily only approves one, kills the animal spirits that keep the economy of democracy at full engagement. […]

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