You linked to an article about Arrow’s Theorem, which only applies to ordinal (ranked) voting methods, not cardinal (rated) voting methods like Score Voting and Approval Voting.
In any case, it’s worth noting that Approval Voting was adopted in Fargo, ND in November 2018, and will be used in June 2020.
There will be a 2020 ballot initiative in St. Louis to convert their current partisan March primary + April general with a non-partisan March open primary with Approval Voting, followed by an April top-two.
You linked to an article about Arrow’s Theorem, which only applies to ordinal (ranked) voting methods
While Arrow’s Theorem applies only to ordinal voting methods, other voting methods still have downsides, primarily that you need to be tactical: voting honestly won’t always give you your best result.
cardinal (rated) voting methods like Score Voting and Approval Voting
Why are you classifying Approval Voting as cardinal?
Cardinal voting methods will win in the long run.
Why do you think this? You can think of there as being a range of complexity in terms of how much information is elicited from voters: single top preference (FPTP), all acceptable candidates (Approval), candidates in order (Ranked), candidates with ratings (Range). Where we end up on this seems like more a question of what ends up working well in practice than something we can answer from thinking about humans. I like Approval a lot, as I said in the post, but after seeing more hotly contested Approval elections I might understand new aspects of how it works in practice that would change my mind.
Why are you classifying Approval Voting as cardinal?
Ordinal voting systems force you to express a strict preference between all candidates; cardinal voting systems allow you to have candidates tie. For any election with at least three candidates, there has to be a tie if you’re using approval voting.
(What kind of long run? Why is this to be expected?) Popularity is not based on only merit, being more complicated than the simplest most familiar method sounds like a near-fatal disadvantage. Voting being involved with politics makes it even harder for good arguments to influence what actually happens.
Australia has been using a much more complicated ranked system since 1918, and Ireland has used an even more complicated weighted proportional system. The entire state of Maine adopted IRV, and cardinal systems are much simpler. It’s not a fatal disadvantage.
The Approval Voting system is arguably simpler than the status quo, because you remove a rule. The one that stays your vote is invalid if you vote for multiple candidates.
Maybe “near-fatal” is too strong a word, the comment I replied to also had examples. Existence of examples doesn’t distinguish winning from survival, seeing some use. I understand the statement I replied to as meaning something like “In 200 years, if the world remains mostly as we know it, the probability that most elections use cardinal voting methods is above 50%”. This seems implausible to me for the reasons I listed, hence the question about what you actually meant, perhaps my interpretation of the statement is not what you intended. (Is “long run” something like 200 years? Is “winning” something like “most elections of some kind use cardinal voting methods”?)
If you could get people to honestly report the change in utility they would experience, then you could choose the things that would give the largest utility increases. But since you can’t assume honesty it doesn’t work.
I don’t think it’s intuitive that “give me a full account of all of your desires” wont end up working better than “give me an extremely partial picture of your desires”
You linked to an article about Arrow’s Theorem, which only applies to ordinal (ranked) voting methods, not cardinal (rated) voting methods like Score Voting and Approval Voting.
In any case, it’s worth noting that Approval Voting was adopted in Fargo, ND in November 2018, and will be used in June 2020.
There will be a 2020 ballot initiative in St. Louis to convert their current partisan March primary + April general with a non-partisan March open primary with Approval Voting, followed by an April top-two.
There will be twin 2020 ballot initiatives to get STAR Voting in Eugene, OR as well as in its surrounding Lane County, OR.
Cardinal voting methods will win in the long run.
While Arrow’s Theorem applies only to ordinal voting methods, other voting methods still have downsides, primarily that you need to be tactical: voting honestly won’t always give you your best result.
Why are you classifying Approval Voting as cardinal?
Why do you think this? You can think of there as being a range of complexity in terms of how much information is elicited from voters: single top preference (FPTP), all acceptable candidates (Approval), candidates in order (Ranked), candidates with ratings (Range). Where we end up on this seems like more a question of what ends up working well in practice than something we can answer from thinking about humans. I like Approval a lot, as I said in the post, but after seeing more hotly contested Approval elections I might understand new aspects of how it works in practice that would change my mind.
Ordinal voting systems force you to express a strict preference between all candidates; cardinal voting systems allow you to have candidates tie. For any election with at least three candidates, there has to be a tie if you’re using approval voting.
Defining “cardinal” as “allows you to rank two candidates as equal” is a very weird use of the term, but it does appear to be standard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinal_voting
(What kind of long run? Why is this to be expected?) Popularity is not based on only merit, being more complicated than the simplest most familiar method sounds like a near-fatal disadvantage. Voting being involved with politics makes it even harder for good arguments to influence what actually happens.
Australia has been using a much more complicated ranked system since 1918, and Ireland has used an even more complicated weighted proportional system. The entire state of Maine adopted IRV, and cardinal systems are much simpler. It’s not a fatal disadvantage.
http://scorevoting.net/Complexity
The Approval Voting system is arguably simpler than the status quo, because you remove a rule. The one that stays your vote is invalid if you vote for multiple candidates.
Maybe “near-fatal” is too strong a word, the comment I replied to also had examples. Existence of examples doesn’t distinguish winning from survival, seeing some use. I understand the statement I replied to as meaning something like “In 200 years, if the world remains mostly as we know it, the probability that most elections use cardinal voting methods is above 50%”. This seems implausible to me for the reasons I listed, hence the question about what you actually meant, perhaps my interpretation of the statement is not what you intended. (Is “long run” something like 200 years? Is “winning” something like “most elections of some kind use cardinal voting methods”?)
Is utilitarianism an ordinal voting system?
If you could get people to honestly report the change in utility they would experience, then you could choose the things that would give the largest utility increases. But since you can’t assume honesty it doesn’t work.
So you agree that it’s a voting system.
I don’t think it’s intuitive that “give me a full account of all of your desires” wont end up working better than “give me an extremely partial picture of your desires”