I am always looking for for how new voting systems work. Someone replied to a Facebook comment I made recently, and asked my opinion on Graded Approval Voting (GAV).
Guy Ottewell in "Arithmetic of Voting". Universal Workshop, first described the system in 1977 and also by Robert J. Weber, who coined the term "Approval Voting." It was more fully published in 1978 by political scientist Steven Brams and mathematician Peter Fishburn in "Approval Voting". American Political Science Review.
GAV is a Non-Partisan election where the voter is asked, for each candidate, "Do you approve or disapprove this person for the job?". GAV lets each voter indicate support for one, some, or all candidates. All votes count equally, and everyone gets the same number of votes: one vote per candidate, either for or against. Final tallies show how many voters support each candidate, and the winner is the candidate whom the most voters support.
GAV ballots show, for each office being contested, a list of the candidates running for that seat. Next to each name is a check-box, or another similar way to mark 'Yes' or 'No' for that candidate. This "check yes or no" approach means approval voting provides one of the simplest ballots for a voter to understand.
Ballots on which the voter marked every candidate the same (whether yes or no) have no effect on the outcome of the election. Each ballot can, therefore, be viewed as a small "delta" that separates two groups of candidates, those supported and those that are not. Each candidate approved is considered preferred to any candidate not approved, while the voter's preferences among approved candidates is unspecified, and likewise the voter's preferences among unapproved candidates is also unspecified.
Other issues with GAV
- Approval voting can allow voters to cast a compromise vote without abandoning their favorite candidate as long as voters accept the potential of that compromise vote resulting in the defeat of their favorite. Plurality voting can lead to voters abandoning their first choice in order to help a "lesser of evils" to win.
- Approval ballots can be counted by existing machines designed for plurality elections, as ballots are cast, so that final tallies are immediately available after the election, without any upgrades to equipment. Approval counting can be completed at the local level and conveniently summed at the regional or national level.
- If voters are sincere, approval voting would elect centrists at least as often as moderates of each extreme. If backers of relatively extreme candidates are insincere and "bullet vote" for that first choice, they can help that candidate defeat a compromise candidate who would have won if every voter had cast sincere preferences.
- If voters are sincere, candidates trying to win an approval voting election might need as much as 100% approval to beat a strong competitor, and would have to find solutions that are fair to everyone to do so. However, a candidate may win a plurality race by promising many perks to a simple majority or even a plurality of voters at the expense of the smaller voting groups.
- Approval voting fails the majority criterion, because it is possible for the candidate the majority of voters most preferred for example, winning 60% in a plurality election, to lose if 65% indicate another candidate is at least acceptable. If 40% strongly dislike candidate A but like candidate B, and 60% mildly prefer candidate A over candidate B, approval voting might elect candidate B, whereas plurality would elect candidate A in a two candidate race.
- Suppose a candidate is eliminated, say, for medical reasons, between a primary election and the party convention. With plurality voting, anyone who voted for that candidate effectively lost their franchise. Approval voting automatically shows their preference among the remaining candidates.
- Approval voting makes it much easier for voters to vote against a candidate by voting for several others instead of just one other, increasing the probability that some other candidate wins, and thus that the first does not.
- In contentious elections with large groups of organized voters who prefer their favorite candidate vastly over all others, approval voting may revert to plurality voting. Some voters support only their single favored candidate when they perceive the other candidates more as competitors to their preferred candidate than as compromise choices. Score voting and Majority Judgment allow these voters to give intermediate approval ratings, but at the cost of added ballot complexity and longer ballot counts.
Some argue that Approval Voting tends to vote the least disliked choice, rather than the most liked candidate. Additionally, Approval Voting is susceptible to strategic insincere voting, in which a voter does not vote their true preference to try to increase the chances of their choice winning.
Who Uses Approval Voting
- Colorado Libertarian Party
- Texas Libertarian Party
- Texas Green Party
- Reform Party (US National)
- Modern Whig Party (US National)
Approval Voting Attempts for Public Elections
- In 1987, a bill to enact approval voting for certain statewide elections passed in the Senate but not the House in North Dakota.
- In 2011, Representatives in New Hampshire proposed HB 240, which would have implemented Approval Voting for all statewide offices and presidential primaries.
- In 2013, a Democrat and Republican from Colorado's State Congress proposed SB 13-065. This bill would have given all Colorado municipalities the right to adopt Approval Voting for non-partisan elections. The bill was supported by Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler (R). Despite bipartisan sponsorship and endorsements from both Common Cause and GOP Secretary of State Scott Gessler, the Senate State Affairs Committee killed the bill on a 3-2 vote.
- In October, 2013, petitioners in Oregon launched a ballot initiative drive to establish a “unified primary election” in place of Oregon’s current closed partisan primary. This type of primary lets voters use approval voting to choose any number of candidates irrespective of party and advances the top two, regardless of party, to the General Election. This proposed initiative was unable to raise the necessary signatures to get on the ballot.
- In 2014, the same two Colorado Senators from 2013 reintroduced the bill proposed as HB 14-1062. Again, this bill would have given localities the option to use approval voting in nonpartisan elections. The bill was supported by the ACLU, Common Cause, the League of Women Voters, and all three of Colorado’s ballot-qualified minor parties. Despite this, the Military affairs Committee struck down the bill 3-8.
Please let me know hoe ties would be handled in an GAV system.
NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote! Michael H. Drucker
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