Great explanation. I really hope this passes. I really wish the "independent media" that blames Nader for giving Bush the win in 2000 would cover this, but they can't seem to recognize that other voting systems are even conceivable.
One idea I had is to make this used for the Senate in a modified sense. Get enough members of your party to sign a petition, say 5% of your party, or a number of elected representatives in the state to total 5% of the party members, and then you are listed on the primary as a partisan candidate, and you can have the petition signed by voters in general or elected representatives in general to be an independent. Put you all through this type of generalized primary. This allows you to connect with reasonable allies in other parties rather than the extreme of your own, even though you'd have a legitimate reason to call yourself a candidate from any given party, and then put a runoff between the top two, or possibly the best from each party with a ranked ballot between those, is put on the final ballot. Provided this is combined with something like single transferable vote in the other legislative elections, this could help to make the Senate more multi party, along with more power vested in say the senators collectively (like them all using a secret ballot to put people on committees, electing their committee chairs by secret ballots, giving the agenda power to a more collectivized body somehow, and filibuster getting 2/3 to end debate early but every senator has a maximum of say 30 minutes to speak except on the confirmation of SCOTUS judges, even if you can't have more than one person elected at the same time per election. You might also try doing this with gubernatorial and mayoral elections too.
Oh, and I should also add that California and Washington both have redistricting commissions that are separated from politicians, at least to a significant degree, along with a rank order list of criteria to fulfill to limit the partisan advantage of districts. Oregon does not have such. Adding them would be an important part of changing politics.
Just to follow on from Clay, putting AV in the primary fits within the two step process we already use, and makes the AV pass more honest. If we discover that the general election results always match the primary results, then we can do away with that step quite easily after several cycles.
I'm really not trying to poke the bear here, but I'm pretty certain that democracy works great in small groups where everyone gets to share their thoughts for all to hear; at the size that nations have grown to, the dysfunction becomes visible. Everyone argues against the system that they have but they have no idea what they want in its place. It's time for a change, not just in the United States, but in all democratic countries. The governmental systems in place are centuries old now and don't apply to the swelling population, global communication and instant news. We're all going through the motions and it's not doing anyone any measure of good. If you believe in being a free person, exercise your free will and share your ideas, it's the only way anything will change.
With respect to SRV During the Preference Runoff (the second part of the tally process) I don't follow the calculation. Originally I assumed an AVERAGE of all scores would be taken for the remaining two candidates. But it appears that it's actually just the SUM of all scores captured for each candidate over the total vote captured between them. If that's the case then why wouldn't you just Score vote and whoever gets the highest sum wins in that case? Seems much more simple than a runoff.
No offense to the movement, which I do appreciate, but there is a considerably better voting system. It's called Instant-runoff and it asks people to rank candidates in the order that they like them (or leave any of them blank for no-support). The lowest ranked candidate is eliminated and votes reallocated based on each voter's preferences until one candidate wins with a majority. It's very simple and ensures each voter has truly equal influence. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting Of course, no system is going to be perfect, but the method suggested in the video suffers from a number of potential scenarios where a minimally supported, but least objectionable candidate still appears to receive support from a majority. It virtually ensures voters end up choosing "the lesser of two evils." Additionally, IRV is easily scalable across the entire system, even up to the highest elections. P.S. I'm also a programmer and I also want a solution with less bugs. ;) *Note: I'm making no statements regarding parties or political issues, and I'm going to stay out of such discussions. I'm commenting purely on the point that one voting system would be more suitable than another.
Clay Shentrup I don't have time to enter into a proper debate on the topic, but I see a number of problems with this particular posting. The claim about software updates not being necessary for approval voting is obviously just false. For that matter, a few of the points speak to potential challenges in implementation, not the actual quality each system. Those details are certainly relevant for real-world application, but not for judging systems for their level of accuracy. The real issue with the posting is that everything is based on theories and simulations. Granted, the people constructing the theories are well studied and certainly intelligent, but they still lack high-quality, hard evidence. My first introduction to IRV was from a professor with a Ph.D. in mathematics who was covering in my advanced statistics class and discussed actual results he had studied in real-world elections using different methods. A few years later, I implemented score voting inside of a company and watched as many of the "unlikely" points of failure came to life. Also, each of the prime examples against IRV in that post are loaded with bias (the language makes this exceedingly obvious). With respect to the person that wrote that post, are too many points written in the form of "I'm rubber, you're glue." It's challenging to take anything seriously. As I said before, I can't take the time for a lengthy discussion, nor do I think it would sway the opinions of anybody reading. However, I would at least suggest seeking out better source material. I'm not saying the conclusion is wrong, but the foundational arguments as they are delivered on that page are littered with potential fallacies. It's all put together very poorly and makes it too easy to dismiss.
My criticisms were clearly directed at the poorly put together page that you linked to. The problems are with how it's written and presented. Your condescending attitude betrays your personal involvement (obsession?) and further demonstrates that there's nothing to be gained by continuing to response. I've already made it clear I'm not going to be pulled into a long discussion. If you want to invent your own narrative for why that may be, feel free to go on believing it.
Clay Shentrup I have zero expertise in voting theory. I have lived in NY and now SC and have only been exposed to one form of voting. I'm somewhat familiar with IRV but not in any great detail. Cody Toombs The mathematics is something I understand but it does not, on its own, prove or disprove the overall validity of one form of voting theory over any other. Again I am not an expert in voting theory but I do believe that this is exactly the type of lengthy discussion/debate we need to have and make time for. I am reading this and I would like to know more. www.wolf-pac.com far and free elections for all!
scott stein I would have to disagree about the mathematics statement. It's this analysis of a voting method that will show to what degree it produces outcomes that the voters want. If a voting system produces outcomes contrary to the will of the voters, the voters lose faith in the system and unplug, and our politicians become responsive to fewer and fewer of us. At its core, the Unified Primary is about giving all voters an equal voice - and it's obvious on its surface that it does so. IRV does not, plurality does not, and our current two stage divided party plurality system certainly does not.
Mark Frohnmayer I have been doing a lot of reading and have been staring at more charts and graphs than I can even count. I have concluded that IRV is mathematically the worst of the voting options being spoken of in the many links from the above posts. However, the point I was trying (albeit poorly) to make was that all of the maths done on the different voting methods have been simulations. Until we can compare the outcome of two or more of these voting methods implemented in the US under the same situations ie,State senate race in four different states using four different voting methods, the maths do not, on there own, prove one voting method is better than any other; with the exception of IRV.
Karen, agreed. One of the really beneficial features of the Unified Primary is that it completely does away with the concept of a "wasted vote" so you can vote for all the candidates you actually like, including any minor party or independents, without fear of inadvertently helping a candidate you really don't like. The results will show an accurate level of support for all candidates, instead of the system we have today that vastly under represents minor party viewpoints.
I don't think this works. Say that the two winners of this unified primary are from the same political party, therefore you'd end up with two candidates reading from the same playbook and once again it boils down to a name recognition fuelled money race.
One fallacy here is that approval voting in a primary changes who gets elected in a district. Gerrymandering still ensures that one party gets few districts and the other party gets the majority of districts even if it's a minority in the state. Another is that primaries should be open. Primary elections are party functions. The elections commission runs them only because that provides little-i independent oversight of the tally, and, clearly, confuses the voters into thinking they're a necessary part of the electoral process. They could just as well be done at the conventions by voice vote, or by the party chairman picking a name out of a hat, or pushing his brother into the ring. They're none of the country's business, really. The general election is. And Clay, pretending that Nader could have got elected if there was a different structure to elections is insane. Just stop thinking like that, because dayum. Nader's presence in the election in 2000 is the all-time classic example of non-party, ideological vote splitting. The votes he stole from Gore in Florida gave us 8 years of W, the worst President ever. If that election had been approval-voted, Gore would have won by a lot, Bush would have trailed by double-digit percent, and Nader would have gotten about ten times as many votes as he did but would have been a very distant third in any case. If you really want to fix the American electoral process, first do away with the electoral college and do popular voting for President. Then create a rational means of apportioning districts geographically, instead of letting partisans gerrymander them to steal wins in spite of natural demographics. Then add approval voting as the default means of deciding any vote, because one-man-one-vote democracy is a mathematical fallacy, and the only reason we have it is because people in the 1700s in general were too dumb and uneducated to even be aware of the alternatives to it.
alphabeticalor - the problem with gerrymandering today is that it ensures that a significant portion of the population within a district have effectively no voice, and candidates are more fearful of extremes within their own parties than they are of general election challengers. Even in a heavily dominated district, Unified Primary will do a far better job of finding a fair representative of that district as a whole than our voting system does today - regardless of party, every voter gets an equal voice. Today you either have a voice or you don't depending on which party you belong to. The "if you really want to fix the American electoral process" line doesn't make sense. We need to take an all of the above approach, and fixing the primary voting system, in-state, by statute is both much more achievable and potentially way more impactful. It's Congress that's broken, and that cannot be fixed without repairing elections in the 50 states.
Voters follow money because the choose-one system penalizes them for giving full support for the candidates in whom they see merit. Approval Voting removes that incentive, so money won't make so much of a difference.
the same party will end up with 2 candidates as Oregon, for example, has many more Democrats than Republican's, Independents are wishful thinkers, I would wage that 75% of them always vote one way. You really think 1/3 of voters do not have an affiliation? I question that % One way to help elections more equal is to stop parties voting in both sides. There have been elections where anyone can vote in Republican primaries, for example. Democrats flooded the ballot box voting for the candidate theu wanted to run against
When Americans say "democracy", they don't mean throwing out the Bill of Rights. They use the term to distinguish a democratic republic from an undemocratic republic. I think your camp wants to confuse the discussion. That's why you write as though "republic" and "democracy" were opposites.
Great explanation. I really hope this passes. I really wish the "independent media" that blames Nader for giving Bush the win in 2000 would cover this, but they can't seem to recognize that other voting systems are even conceivable.
Good luck Mark. You have my support, albeit from Nevada, and I'll be helping as much as I can
One idea I had is to make this used for the Senate in a modified sense. Get enough members of your party to sign a petition, say 5% of your party, or a number of elected representatives in the state to total 5% of the party members, and then you are listed on the primary as a partisan candidate, and you can have the petition signed by voters in general or elected representatives in general to be an independent. Put you all through this type of generalized primary. This allows you to connect with reasonable allies in other parties rather than the extreme of your own, even though you'd have a legitimate reason to call yourself a candidate from any given party, and then put a runoff between the top two, or possibly the best from each party with a ranked ballot between those, is put on the final ballot.
Provided this is combined with something like single transferable vote in the other legislative elections, this could help to make the Senate more multi party, along with more power vested in say the senators collectively (like them all using a secret ballot to put people on committees, electing their committee chairs by secret ballots, giving the agenda power to a more collectivized body somehow, and filibuster getting 2/3 to end debate early but every senator has a maximum of say 30 minutes to speak except on the confirmation of SCOTUS judges, even if you can't have more than one person elected at the same time per election. You might also try doing this with gubernatorial and mayoral elections too.
Oh, and I should also add that California and Washington both have redistricting commissions that are separated from politicians, at least to a significant degree, along with a rank order list of criteria to fulfill to limit the partisan advantage of districts. Oregon does not have such. Adding them would be an important part of changing politics.
Why not just use approval voting and skip the primary?
Just to follow on from Clay, putting AV in the primary fits within the two step process we already use, and makes the AV pass more honest. If we discover that the general election results always match the primary results, then we can do away with that step quite easily after several cycles.
Matt, I think Clay was just talking about how just two candidates advance. He is well aware of the difference between Open and Unified Primary :-)
A third bug is gerrymandering.
We use our democracy to elect representatives in our republic.
I'm really not trying to poke the bear here, but I'm pretty certain that democracy works great in small groups where everyone gets to share their thoughts for all to hear; at the size that nations have grown to, the dysfunction becomes visible. Everyone argues against the system that they have but they have no idea what they want in its place.
It's time for a change, not just in the United States, but in all democratic countries. The governmental systems in place are centuries old now and don't apply to the swelling population, global communication and instant news. We're all going through the motions and it's not doing anyone any measure of good.
If you believe in being a free person, exercise your free will and share your ideas, it's the only way anything will change.
Is this idea of unified primary what is represented in ballot measure 90 or does ballot measure 90 look more like what California and Washington have?
Luke, see equalvote.co/compare_california and equalvote.co/fineprint .
With respect to SRV During the Preference Runoff (the second part of the tally process) I don't follow the calculation.
Originally I assumed an AVERAGE of all scores would be taken for the remaining two candidates.
But it appears that it's actually just the SUM of all scores captured for each candidate over the total vote captured between them.
If that's the case then why wouldn't you just Score vote and whoever gets the highest sum wins in that case? Seems much more simple than a runoff.
How can I get such a measure on the ballot in California?
No offense to the movement, which I do appreciate, but there is a considerably better voting system. It's called Instant-runoff and it asks people to rank candidates in the order that they like them (or leave any of them blank for no-support). The lowest ranked candidate is eliminated and votes reallocated based on each voter's preferences until one candidate wins with a majority. It's very simple and ensures each voter has truly equal influence.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting
Of course, no system is going to be perfect, but the method suggested in the video suffers from a number of potential scenarios where a minimally supported, but least objectionable candidate still appears to receive support from a majority. It virtually ensures voters end up choosing "the lesser of two evils." Additionally, IRV is easily scalable across the entire system, even up to the highest elections.
P.S. I'm also a programmer and I also want a solution with less bugs. ;)
*Note: I'm making no statements regarding parties or political issues, and I'm going to stay out of such discussions. I'm commenting purely on the point that one voting system would be more suitable than another.
Clay Shentrup I don't have time to enter into a proper debate on the topic, but I see a number of problems with this particular posting. The claim about software updates not being necessary for approval voting is obviously just false. For that matter, a few of the points speak to potential challenges in implementation, not the actual quality each system. Those details are certainly relevant for real-world application, but not for judging systems for their level of accuracy.
The real issue with the posting is that everything is based on theories and simulations. Granted, the people constructing the theories are well studied and certainly intelligent, but they still lack high-quality, hard evidence. My first introduction to IRV was from a professor with a Ph.D. in mathematics who was covering in my advanced statistics class and discussed actual results he had studied in real-world elections using different methods. A few years later, I implemented score voting inside of a company and watched as many of the "unlikely" points of failure came to life.
Also, each of the prime examples against IRV in that post are loaded with bias (the language makes this exceedingly obvious). With respect to the person that wrote that post, are too many points written in the form of "I'm rubber, you're glue." It's challenging to take anything seriously.
As I said before, I can't take the time for a lengthy discussion, nor do I think it would sway the opinions of anybody reading. However, I would at least suggest seeking out better source material. I'm not saying the conclusion is wrong, but the foundational arguments as they are delivered on that page are littered with potential fallacies. It's all put together very poorly and makes it too easy to dismiss.
My criticisms were clearly directed at the poorly put together page that you linked to. The problems are with how it's written and presented.
Your condescending attitude betrays your personal involvement (obsession?) and further demonstrates that there's nothing to be gained by continuing to response. I've already made it clear I'm not going to be pulled into a long discussion. If you want to invent your own narrative for why that may be, feel free to go on believing it.
Clay Shentrup I have zero expertise in voting theory. I have lived in NY and now SC and have only been exposed to one form of voting. I'm somewhat familiar with IRV but not in any great detail.
Cody Toombs The mathematics is something I understand but it does not, on its own, prove or disprove the overall validity of one form of voting theory over any other. Again I am not an expert in voting theory but I do believe that this is exactly the type of lengthy discussion/debate we need to have and make time for. I am reading this and I would like to know more. www.wolf-pac.com far and free elections for all!
scott stein I would have to disagree about the mathematics statement. It's this analysis of a voting method that will show to what degree it produces outcomes that the voters want. If a voting system produces outcomes contrary to the will of the voters, the voters lose faith in the system and unplug, and our politicians become responsive to fewer and fewer of us.
At its core, the Unified Primary is about giving all voters an equal voice - and it's obvious on its surface that it does so. IRV does not, plurality does not, and our current two stage divided party plurality system certainly does not.
Mark Frohnmayer I have been doing a lot of reading and have been staring at more charts and graphs than I can even count. I have concluded that IRV is mathematically the worst of the voting options being spoken of in the many links from the above posts. However, the point I was trying (albeit poorly) to make was that all of the maths done on the different voting methods have been simulations. Until we can compare the outcome of two or more of these voting methods implemented in the US under the same situations ie,State senate race in four different states using four different voting methods, the maths do not, on there own, prove one voting method is better than any other; with the exception of IRV.
Sadly, it's always been like that. They need to start recognizing the other parties. That way everyone's votes count & matter.
Karen, agreed. One of the really beneficial features of the Unified Primary is that it completely does away with the concept of a "wasted vote" so you can vote for all the candidates you actually like, including any minor party or independents, without fear of inadvertently helping a candidate you really don't like. The results will show an accurate level of support for all candidates, instead of the system we have today that vastly under represents minor party viewpoints.
I don't think this works. Say that the two winners of this unified primary are from the same political party, therefore you'd end up with two candidates reading from the same playbook and once again it boils down to a name recognition fuelled money race.
One fallacy here is that approval voting in a primary changes who gets elected in a district. Gerrymandering still ensures that one party gets few districts and the other party gets the majority of districts even if it's a minority in the state.
Another is that primaries should be open. Primary elections are party functions. The elections commission runs them only because that provides little-i independent oversight of the tally, and, clearly, confuses the voters into thinking they're a necessary part of the electoral process. They could just as well be done at the conventions by voice vote, or by the party chairman picking a name out of a hat, or pushing his brother into the ring. They're none of the country's business, really. The general election is.
And Clay, pretending that Nader could have got elected if there was a different structure to elections is insane. Just stop thinking like that, because dayum.
Nader's presence in the election in 2000 is the all-time classic example of non-party, ideological vote splitting. The votes he stole from Gore in Florida gave us 8 years of W, the worst President ever.
If that election had been approval-voted, Gore would have won by a lot, Bush would have trailed by double-digit percent, and Nader would have gotten about ten times as many votes as he did but would have been a very distant third in any case.
If you really want to fix the American electoral process, first do away with the electoral college and do popular voting for President. Then create a rational means of apportioning districts geographically, instead of letting partisans gerrymander them to steal wins in spite of natural demographics. Then add approval voting as the default means of deciding any vote, because one-man-one-vote democracy is a mathematical fallacy, and the only reason we have it is because people in the 1700s in general were too dumb and uneducated to even be aware of the alternatives to it.
alphabeticalor - the problem with gerrymandering today is that it ensures that a significant portion of the population within a district have effectively no voice, and candidates are more fearful of extremes within their own parties than they are of general election challengers. Even in a heavily dominated district, Unified Primary will do a far better job of finding a fair representative of that district as a whole than our voting system does today - regardless of party, every voter gets an equal voice. Today you either have a voice or you don't depending on which party you belong to.
The "if you really want to fix the American electoral process" line doesn't make sense. We need to take an all of the above approach, and fixing the primary voting system, in-state, by statute is both much more achievable and potentially way more impactful. It's Congress that's broken, and that cannot be fixed without repairing elections in the 50 states.
Voters follow money because the choose-one system penalizes them for giving full support for the candidates in whom they see merit. Approval Voting removes that incentive, so money won't make so much of a difference.
the same party will end up with 2 candidates as Oregon, for example, has many more Democrats than Republican's, Independents are wishful thinkers, I would wage that 75% of them always vote one way.
You really think 1/3 of voters do not have an affiliation? I question that %
One way to help elections more equal is to stop parties voting in both sides. There have been elections where anyone can vote in Republican primaries, for example. Democrats flooded the ballot box voting for the candidate theu wanted to run against
We have affiliations; they just aren't the same as yours.
I'd rather Repair Our Republic, not a democracy.
When Americans say "democracy", they don't mean throwing out the Bill of Rights. They use the term to distinguish a democratic republic from an undemocratic republic. I think your camp wants to confuse the discussion. That's why you write as though "republic" and "democracy" were opposites.