Delegate and Vice Delegate Election Reform Bill

Eluvatar

Eluvatar

TNPer
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TNP Nation
Zemnaya Svoboda
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Eluvatar#8517
I am introducing this bill to use Approval voting in order to improve the effectiveness of our elections at electing the candidate most desired by the voters and reduce the likelihood of runoff elections.

In an approval vote system, one can approve of any set of candidates, and all of them get one vote from you. The candidate who receives the most votes in such a system wins. There are a great number of arguments in favor of approval voting: it is a system which is very good at meeting a great many of desirable criteria[note]As proven by Arrow's Impossibility theorem of course, no voting system can satisfy all such criteria.[/note] for voting systems.

Because of our constitutional requirement of majority support for the Delegate and Vice Delegate, we must still account for some (reduced) possibility that no candidate will be approved of by a majority of the voters. In that case we would have a runoff between the top two vote-getters, pretty much as currently. This will happen less frequently however as with the ability to vote for multiple candidates, candidates will generally get the votes of larger fractions of the electorate.

Delegate and Vice Delegate Election Reform Bill:
A Proposal to Amend a Law
1. The below clauses will be appended to Chapter 4, Section 4 of the Legal Code:

4.15-17:
15. Any voter who does not abstain may approve of as many candidates for Delegate or Vice Delegate as they wish in their vote.
16. If more than one candidate has the approval of a majority of non-abstaining voters, the candidate receiving the most approval votes will win.
17. If no candidate has the approval of a majority, then the two candidates with the most approval votes will continue to a runoff.
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2. The subsequent clauses of Chapter 4 will be appropriately renumbered.

3. This bill will not affect any election which began before it is enacted.
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I have in the past been in favor of switching to some voting system that would prevent run-offs, and had in particular supported instant-runoff voting.

While I could see myself supporting this proposal as an improvement over what we have, I have doubts that it will be effective in preventing run-offs. I believe we will observe the following pattern: the majority of voters will be voting for/approving of a single candidate anyway; and only few undecided voters will be voting for a set consisting of the strong contenders.

Regarding the language of the amendment, as I mentioned on IRC, I would be strongly against including a definition of "set" in the Legal Code. Instead, I suggest removing that definition, and changing the new 4.16 to be:

16. Any voter who does not abstain may approve of as many candidates for Delegate or Vice Delegate as they wish in their vote.
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In such a system, should we include an option to cast a vote in favor of no candidates? In essence, a vote that counted against every candidate?

And yeah, let's leave out the definition of set and just say they can vote for any number of candidates.

One objection I have is that unfamiliar vote systems are going to confuse new voters. Also, we may end up with candidates that everyone is ambivalent about, but included them on their ballot cause they don't have any strong feelings against them. A system in which they can only vote for one forces the voter to decide which candidate is the best, not simply which ones they would be OK with.
 
r3naissanc3r:
I have in the past been in favor of switching to some voting system that would prevent run-offs, and had in particular supported instant-runoff voting.
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This is much better than IRV.
r3naissanc3r:
While I could see myself supporting this proposal as an improvement over what we have, I have doubts that it will be effective in preventing run-offs. I believe we will observe the following pattern: the majority of voters will be voting for/approving of a single candidate anyway; and only few undecided voters will be voting for a set consisting of the strong contenders.
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I don't think so.
r3naissanc3r:
Regarding the language of the amendment, as I mentioned on IRC, I would be strongly against including a definition of "set" in the Legal Code. Instead, I suggest removing that definition, and changing the new 4.16 to be:

16. Any voter who does not abstain may approve of as many candidates for Delegate or Vice Delegate as they wish in their vote.
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Certainly. Proposal updated.
Crushing Our Enemies:
In such a system, should we include an option to cast a vote in favor of no candidates? In essence, a vote that counted against every candidate?
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Given how we currently legislate abstentions, I wouldn't introduce that at the moment, particularly as I believe the consensus is we have too many runoffs. I don't see anything morally wrong with not counting votes against all the candidates.
Crushing Our Enemies:
And yeah, let's leave out the definition of set and just say they can vote for any number of candidates.
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Sure.
Crushing Our Enemies:
One objection I have is that unfamiliar vote systems are going to confuse new voters. Also, we may end up with candidates that everyone is ambivalent about, but included them on their ballot cause they don't have any strong feelings against them. A system in which they can only vote for one forces the voter to decide which candidate is the best, not simply which ones they would be OK with.
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Okay...

1. I don't see what's so confusing about voting for all the candidates you approve of.
2. I expect people to vote for the candidates they actually approve of, rather than vote for everyone they don't actually hate. Maybe I'm a horrible, horrible optimist.
3. Why should we force people to decide which candidate they think is the best, if they know which candidates are best?
 
Eluvatar:
3. Why should we force people to decide which candidate they think is the best, if they know which candidates are best?
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I think because there is only one Delegate, and not a team of people with equal powers and responsibilities. This would work well in an election for the Executive Council, but not in the election for the Delegate.

Also, this system could be used basically to vote someone off, rather than to vote for someone: "I'm ok with this person and this person becoming Delegate, but certainly not with that one being elected". I don't think we should be optimistic here: such changes deserve that we take into account the worst possible outcomes as well as the best.

And, finally, on a more personal level, I don't see why run-offs are a problem. On the contrary, they allow voters whose vote had been cast for one of the smaller candidates to still have a say in the final decision. They're also a way to ensure that 2 candidates with similar profiles won't neutralize each other: you can vote for either, but in the run-off you know that all votes will be gathered on one candidate. It's fun, fair and efficient.
 
Considering that there is only one winner in the election, I think we need a system that takes into account voter preference, down to the individual. If someone votes for three candidates, we don't know which one they like best.

And I don't think this system is confusing, merely unfamiliar, and unconventional for a race with only one victor. I think new members have enough trouble as it is figuring out the [nocode][/nocode] tag, let alone voting for a list of candidates for delegate instead of one. I don't necessarily think they'll misunderstand the ballot (although some certainly will) but I do think they'll question why we do it that way, and before long someone will propose moving to a single vote majoritarian system with runoff elections.
 
Thank you Hileville.

The argument that people should only vote for one candidate because we're electing one person sounds about as logical to me as an argument that one man one vote means only people who didn't vote in the first round should be allowed to vote in the runoff.
 
After Elu's explanation of this system by IRC, I too support this amendment. I'm concerned about how it will work in practice, but I can see the idea working.
 
Eluvatar:
r3naissanc3r:
While I could see myself supporting this proposal as an improvement over what we have, I have doubts that it will be effective in preventing run-offs. I believe we will observe the following pattern: the majority of voters will be voting for/approving of a single candidate anyway; and only few undecided voters will be voting for a set consisting of the strong contenders.
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I don't think so.
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(Leaving my own quote in for context.) The article you linked addresses some arguments claiming that approval voting defaults to in practice to plurality voting, but not my arguments. It addresses the case of a voter who ideologically wants to vote for a weak candidate, but pragmatically wants to vote for one of the strong contenders to avoid having their vote "wasted". This is not the case I raised. Even in addressing that case, it is based on a working assumption of a different context: in real life, voters often have legitimate ideological reasons to want to vote for the weak candidate. In TNP, very often those are "troll" votes.

In any case, I do believe that this system is an improvement over plurality voting, in that even if it does not prove to be effective in preventing runoffs, at least it will not cause any more than plurality voting does. Also, it is very, very simple: you just vote for the candidates you approve. You can keep voting the way you did if you want. You can vote for all them, or none of them, or anything in between. It is as simple as that.

So, for these reasons, I will also support this bill.
 
The problem with the WA in NationStates isn't the voting system itself, it's the lack of real discrete elections and the low information available to voters.
 
I'm opposed to this as well. I get the reasoning for it, but as we've seen with the voting system for cabinet elections these kinds of systems can produce odd results. I do think we have issues with the length of our elections, particularly special elections, but I don't think this is the way to resolve them.
 
Er... this all just kind of seems unnecessary I'd say. It makes sense (much like endorsements for NS), but I'm just not sold on the idea of turning a system that moderately work into something else. Basically, there's nothing that seems to "improve" upon our current system. It's not really better or worse... it's just different.

I don't see a real reason for a change to this system when our current one works fine and this system wouldn't necessarily "improve" democracy. However, that doesn't mean I am absolutely against this. At the moment though, I do not see any severe benefits that would make me support this change.
 
Eluvatar:
The problem with the WA in NationStates isn't the voting system itself, it's the lack of real discrete elections and the low information available to voters.
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That's the problem with any voting system, but why give low and no information voters more votes which would only tend to amplify the effect?
 
Romanoffia:
Eluvatar:
The problem with the WA in NationStates isn't the voting system itself, it's the lack of real discrete elections and the low information available to voters.
Click to expand...
That's the problem with any voting system, but why give low and no information voters more votes which would only tend to amplify the effect?
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That's not how it works. An informed voter, who knows which candidates are more likely to get more votes, would be able to vote more effectively than a voter who is not informed and votes for more candidates than would be strategically optimal. Logically speaking, the vote of someone who votes for all the candidates has little effect on the result. (In the proposed system, the only effect such a vote would have is making a runoff less likely.)
 
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