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by nerdsniper 343 days ago
Personally I think “approval voting” is almost as good as RCV but orders of magnitude easier to sell to the public.

There’s just a checkbox next to each candidate and you check the box next to any candidate you’re “okay” with. Results in the most “okay-est” candidates getting elected so when the winner is announced everyone goes “…okay.”

Also could make primaries less important, because multiple candidates from a party could theoretically run for the general election without splitting votes.

Communication is easier because in RCV the candidate who gets the most #1 votes doesn’t necessarily win which could lead to a loss of confidence in the system. Its very easy to tell the American public “this guy got the most checkmarks” and no one gets confused.
1 comments
9283409232 343 days ago
If I recall the problem with approval voting is that it is much easier to tamper with than RCV. Filling in an empty bubble is a lot easier than changing the order of ranking on a ballot
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nerdsniper 343 days ago
That’s a good point. Seems like that could be a problem for current ballots too - add a second checkmark to invalidate ballots voting for the “other” guy. Doesn’t seem to be a widespread issue, but detecting it for current ballots would be more obvious.

Maybe that breaks this idea. Maybe ideally you’d maybe want a touchscreen+printer to fill in the bubbles with printer ink and show it to the voter for them to double-check before putting in the stack (or, if wrong bubble filled, put it in rejected stack).

Would love more feedback from people to get a better sense of all pros and cons.

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xp84 342 days ago
The exact mechanism won’t be standardized, some places fill in ballots with pen today, let the voter feed it into the machine and optically scans to tabulate, and others use a computer that tabulates and (usually?) spools a paper record that’s behind a window so the voter can see that the paper record is accurate. The important part is the actual methodology itself.
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ClayShentrup 341 days ago
no it's not a good point, it's the complete opposite of reality.

http://scorevoting.net/StratHonMix

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ClayShentrup 341 days ago
it's utterly the opposite of that.

http://scorevoting.net/StratHonMix

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