[jfengel]

I'm not convinced it can actually achieve that. There is still just one winner, just as now, and I'm not sure the people who picked them under duress will really feel they were listened to. (Or they can approve of only one, and almost certainly lose if it's not one of the two most popular parties.)

Still, I'm not averse to trying. Either it will help, or tactical voting will leave us more or less where we are now. If nothing else it's an opportunity to give the current deadlock a shove.

[AnthonyMouse]

> Or they can approve of only one, and almost certainly lose if it's not one of the two most popular parties.

"They can only approve of one" is FPTP, the existing system. Everybody knows that sucks. The whole point of approval or score voting is to avoid that.

Right now if you favor candidate C but they have 5% of the vote and candidate A and B each have 45%, your preferred candidate has no chance and your vote can only change something in determining whether the winner is A or B, so you avoid voting for your preferred candidate.

With approval voting you vote for them and one of the major parties. Then people notice that third party candidates are immediately getting 30-40% of the vote because the people afraid of wasting their vote no longer have to refrain from voting for their preferred candidate. In some districts they even win. Which dissolves the two party system because people have to take third party candidate seriously and starting a new party has a real chance at succeeding rather than being an exercise in futility.

[jfengel]

I phrased that badly. I meant that they may choose to vote for only their favorite, as tactical voting. It says they don't approve of any other, to send a message.

But it's not clear they will feel the message is sent if their candidate loses, and they are stuck with least favorite choice because they didn't select an alternative.

[eru]

So they _should_ vote tactically, and only send the message when it doesn't hurt them.

[ClayShentrup]

tactical voting is normally what we call it when you DON'T vote for your favorite, e.g. a green party supporter votes democrat.

with approval voting they'd obviously vote for green too.

some of the people who normally vote green under the current system might _still_ only vote green with approval voting, but very few would do it unless green actually had a chance to win.

https://www.rangevoting.org/BulletVoting

[eru]

> There is still just one winner, just as now, and I'm not sure the people who picked them under duress will really feel they were listened to.

Huh, where is that duress coming from?

> (Or they can approve of only one, and almost certainly lose if it's not one of the two most popular parties.)

Huh, why can they approve of only one? The whole point is that you can approve more than one.

[edflsafoiewq]

I think the idea is that if there are two popular candidates A and B, one of whom is almost certain to win, a voter feels forced to approve of whichever of A or B they prefer even if they don't really want either one, just to hedge against the other winning, exactly as in FPTP. Or they can approve of only the candidates they really want, but they will likely lose.

Approval only seems to be able to break this gridlock if there is a "hidden" commonground between the two parties which can be revealed by the extra approval votes.

[AnthonyMouse]

The problem with FPTP is that as soon as you have more than two parties, the two most similar parties split the vote among their common constituency and give the win to the least similar party. As a result any candidate who wants a chance at winning has to run on the ticket of the major party they most agree with, or else they split the vote with them and lose. Hence two party system.

With a cardinal voting system, someone can run on a ticket which is similar to one of the major parties and should get approximately the same level of approval as that party's candidate. Which is to say, they can potentially win. Then more third party and independent candidates run, giving people more options.

It's not just about what voters do, it changes what candidates do.

[jfengel]

That's not necessarily all that different from now. We have a two stage system. In the primary people with broadly similar platforms run against each other. The "third parties" are factions within the two major ones.

Those options exist, and it's a multi way election. Primaries receive far less attention but they are where the real work of democracy is done.

I believe people are hoping they can vote for a radical candidate and a mainstream candidate, on the off chance people will love the radical candidate if they just get on the general ballot. I'm not convinced that will ever happen, and such people will be not just disappointed, but continue to be convinced the system is rigged against them.

[eru]

> In the primary people with broadly similar platforms run against each other. The "third parties" are factions within the two major ones.

No, you still have that problem of splitting the vote in the primaries.

Remember how Donald Trump used to be the most hated Republican candidates within the Republicans in around 2015 / 2016? As in the one that the most people actively disliked in polls; but he was different enough from the other candidates that he didn't suffer from the internal vote splitting that they did.

The primaries still use first-past-the-post in the US, don't they?

[eru]

> It's not just about what voters do, it changes what candidates do.

Yes, exactly, the indirect impact on candidate and voter tactics are what's important!

[wffurr]

Approval voting with multi member districts.

[AnthonyMouse]

That's likely to reduce diverse representation vs. single-member districts. If there are e.g. 8 seats a party could run 8 identical candidates and they'd all get the highest approval ratings for the combined district if one of them would, and other parties wouldn't get any.

[jfengel]

List voting might work as an alternative to single member districts. You vote for your favorite party, and they are allocated a proportion of the total seats.

You lose the ability to know your local candidate, but how many people really do these days? It's what we set up in Iraq, but we don't do it ourselves.

It doesn't solve the problem that there is still exactly one chief executive. You can try making that a committee but that has other downsides.

[AnthonyMouse]

> List voting might work as an alternative to single member districts.

But now you don't have a cardinal voting system and that's even worse than single member districts.

> It doesn't solve the problem that there is still exactly one chief executive. You can try making that a committee but that has other downsides.

Committees are dealing with it the wrong way. The right way to deal with it is to take away all of the executive's power. Constrain the national government from doing hardly anything and instead pass local laws to do whatever you want to do.

Then create elected positions responsible for different portions of the government. Directly elect the Attorney General and the heads of the major government departments. Let the President be like the Queen of England -- a figurehead with minimal responsibilities.

[eru]

Germany has an interesting hybrid voting system that combines proportional representation via parties with local representatives.

In Germany, you cast two different votes. The first vote elects your local representatives via a first-past-the-post system; they all go to parliament. Then you fill up parliament with more people to make the proportions match those of the second votes cast all over the country. (There's lots of special cases and rules involved. Eg to handle the case when a party gets lots of first votes, but no second votes.)