Agree that some individual moderate politicians could benefit from a change in voting methods (Romney is another that comes to mind). But I don’t see how they could convince the majority of their party to support changes that go against their personal best interests.
A majority of the Democratic congressman are corporate Democrats and those have to fear getting primaried by people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. This is especially the case as the power of far-left activsts to primary corporate Democrats rises.
At the same time people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez would likely have a hard time publically openly arguing that far-left ideas that wouldn’t win under approval voting should win out.
But each individual “corporate Democrat” congressperson also has huge incentives to cooperate with the rest of the party to maintain the current system. Their party has a ~50% chance of winning each election, and incumbents have a substantial advantage when facing re-election. Any individual (or small group) who proposes to defect in favor of a new, untested voting system would likely face a backlash for not being “true Democrats” and for making it more likely that non-Democrats would win more elections going forward.
Also, I notice you mentioned approval voting several times as an alternative voting method. Is the voting theory community unified behind approval voting at this point? I feel 3-2-1 voting has a greater likelihood of becoming widely supported by the general population, for reasons I outlined in this comment.
Congressional seats are not given out by the rest of the party. The decision for them is made by the primary voters in a given
I think “there’s too much polarization between the political parties” and it would be good to have a voting system isn’t a position for which you are likely going to be attacked by people on the fringes who don’t like politics as usual.
“true Democrats” and for making it more likely that non-Democrats would win more elections going forward
You have centrist Democratic strategists who worry that Democrats don’t win certain elections because the primary voters chose a candidate that’s too extreme to win the general election.
I feel 3-2-1 voting has a greater likelihood of becoming widely supported by the general population, for reasons I outlined in this comment.
A lot has happened since that discussion. OpenPhil funds the The Center for Election Science which managed to run a successful referenda to get Approval Voting into Fargo, ND.
While 3-2-1 voting might be easier then ranked choice voting Approval Voting is even easier to understand (there are not multiple rounds).
Hmm. I feel like we are talking past each other to some extent, or not using terms the same way due to inferential differences, or something like that. Sorry if I’ve been unclear, I’ll try to explain my position better.
Congressional seats are not given out by the rest of the party. The decision for them is made by the primary voters in a given
Very true. I was thinking more of the question, “Which actual senator or group of senators would propose an actual bill to effect change to a new voting system?” I still don’t see how any have an incentive to do that.
Re polarization: I also think there’s too much polarization, which is why I support any efforts to get away from FPTP. I agree approval voting is a huge improvement over FPTP, and I’m glad Fargo has adopted it.
While 3-2-1 voting might be easier then ranked choice voting Approval Voting is even easier to understand (there are not multiple rounds).
I don’t think getting people to understand [how the rules work] is the key variable to optimize for here. I think it’s getting them to understand [why the heck changing to this system will make any difference] in an intuitive way.
I think that if I explained approval voting to my friends, they would understand how the rules work in ten seconds. But when they ask why we should switch, I would have to say something that boils down to “well a bunch of nerds ran some simulations, and this one worked better” and they would pretend to fall asleep.
I think that if I explained 3-2-1 voting to my friends, they would understand how the rules work in twenty seconds. And when they ask why we should switch, there is the obvious reason that the candidate they most fear winning the election gets knocked out in round 2. Democrats will be relieved that Trump would never win under such a system, and Republicans will be relieved that Bernie/AOC types would never win either. And if it’s established as a clear anti-both-party or anti-the-current-two-party-system alternative, it may have a better chance of gaining support from voters from a wide variety of backgrounds.
“Which actual senator or group of senators would propose an actual bill to effect change to a new voting system?”
I think the main issue with that is that senators don’t vote on bills that decide how senators get elected. It’s state laws that decide how the senators of a given state are elected (and whether they are elected at all or appointed).
Change would more likely to happen by a senator saying: “Our state is grid-looked because we don’t have enough bipartisanship. We should change our voting system in our state to allow for more bipartisanship.”
You likely need some grassroots movement for voting reform for a politician to make such a move and be able to portray it as being a noble reformer but it seems possible to me to happen without the politician acting against their interests.
Democrats will be relieved that Trump would never win under such a system, and Republicans will be relieved that Bernie/AOC types would never win either.
Bernie and AOC are very different here. Bernie wins election where he is on a third-party ticket (he got 67.44% as an independent). AOC on the other hand got on the Justice Democrats board which is an organization that promized to support primary challenges of Democrats by candidates that aren’t in the board of it. Then Justice Democrats poored all their resources into getting AOC to win her primary challenge and unseat a powerful Democrat.
Agree with how senators are elected. I was thinking of senators proposing a bill to change how federal elections are held, especially for President. As I understand it (90% confident?) such a change would require a constitutional amendment ratified by Congress and the states. Most of my considerations have been around Presidential elections, since they are the focal point of the US political system.
As you mention, state laws decide how their senators are elected and it’s quite likely that some states (preceded by cities such as Fargo) will change to an alternate voting method before the federal government does. This provides an additional incentive for individual senators to remain unattached to any alternate voting method proposals, as they will be able to watch how public opinion reacts to the experiments on state and local levels.
Change would more likely to happen by a senator saying: “Our state is grid-looked because we don’t have enough bipartisanship. We should change our voting system in our state to allow for more bipartisanship.”
Or a newcomer.
You likely need some grassroots movement for voting reform for a politician to make such a move and be able to portray it as being a noble reformer but it seems possible to me to happen without the politician acting against their interests.
Is there a popular grassroots movement taking place right now? For a newcomer, being a noble reformer, and actually being a noble reformer, could squarely align with their interests.
Re Bernie/AOC: I was again referring to the chance of them being elected President, which is what I think drives most people’s fears. It could make sense they would remain popular locally and maintain their current seats in Congress. I was thinking more of a typical Republican in a red state, who probably doesn’t have to worry about losing their own congressional seats, but would be very worried about losing the Presidency. And especially worried that a future Democrat nominee would be more extreme than the current President. Many can probably live with weird Bernie up there in Vermont, at least he’s different for a change.
Since I’m getting it all out, a couple more advantages of 3-2-1 voting:
Assuming people understand how 3-2-1 voting works, they automatically understand how approval voting works, since it’s just the first half of 3-2-1. So then you can say things like, “If you understand this one voting method, you’ll understand everything that matters about the issue”, at least for single-winner elections like President. Or even something like, “I promise this is the last voting method for President I’ll ever ask you about, and if this doesn’t convince you, I’ll leave you alone” which I hope would be received as a reasonable and respectful deal.
Thanks for your willingness to engage me on this, it has helped me understand my own position much more clearly.
Most of my considerations have been around Presidential elections, since they are the focal point of the US political system.
Practically, that means not caring about moves to get alternative voting systems adopted.
From a principled reason it’s stupid to experiment with new voting systems at the place that’s most central instead of other less central places. Practically, senators and congressman from places with an alternative voting system can reasonable make proposals like “Our voting system is much better, everyone should adopt it” without getting punished as being unserious.
Or a newcomer.
If you both have established politicians speaking in favor of changing the voting system and a bunch of grassroots reformers it’s easier for the proposal to succeed in a state.
Re Bernie/AOC: I was again referring to the chance of them being elected President, which is what I think drives most people’s fears.
Most people’s fear is a different topic then what’s good politically for senators and congressmen. Senators and congressmen fear getting primaried.
I was thinking more of a typical Republican in a red state, who probably doesn’t have to worry about losing their own congressional seats, but would be very worried about losing the Presidency.
A typical Republican in a red state has to fear getting successfully primaried by some extreme tea party candidate or Qanon believer under the current system. On the other hand they are unlikely to lose their seat to a Democrat in either the current system or approval voting (and 3-2-1).
Approval voting (and 3-2-1) make it less likely that a tea party candidate or Qanon believer manages to unseat them.
Sorry, again I realize I didn’t explain some of my thoughts clearly enough. I think we are discussing two different but related questions: 1. How do we convince the average voter to support alternate voting systems, vs. 2. How do we convince senators, state and local governments, local political activists, etc. to support alternate voting systems, get them on the ballot, and ultimately passed into law. Most of my thinking and comments in this thread have been more related to question 1, but it feels like you interpreted some as related to question 2. Both are important, but I think the incentives and strategies required are different for the two questions.
When I said Presidential elections are the focal point of the political system, I was thinking about how I would try to convince the average voter to support alternate voting systems. In such a conversation, I know I have very limited time to make my argument, and my conversation partner is likely predisposed to doubt me, since I’m sending clear signals that I’m not “on their team” (whichever “team” they are on). Therefore I need to be able to explain very quickly how the alternate system would work and how it would improve outcomes. Since President is the most important office in US politics and most average voters have a decent understanding of how it currently gets elected, my strategy would be to use Presidential elections as an example, and point out how 3-2-1 can help prevent scary extremists from getting elected as President.
I think ranked choice voting failed to capture much public support (as seen by its failure in recent state ballot questions) because it’s too complicated to explain quickly, and too hard for the average voter to quickly understand how it would improve outcomes. 3-2-1 is substantially better by both measures.
Switching over to question 2 now, I agree it would be foolish to start by trying to change federal elections before state and local elections. And I agree that once an alternate method shows some success in a given state, that state’s senators might have incentive to say “our system is better, everyone should adopt it”. I still don’t think current senators have an incentive to be among the first to support alternate methods.
If you both have established politicians speaking in favor of changing the voting system and a bunch of grassroots reformers it’s easier for the proposal to succeed in a state.
Agree—but are there any established politicians publicly in favor of changing the system right now? I’m not aware of any. How are you trying to convince them to publicly support this?
Finally, my quote about the “typical Republican in a red state” was referring to the typical Republican voter that I might try to convince, not a typical Republican congressperson. I mostly agree with your analysis of the incentives a typical Republican congressperson faces. I would just add that any typical or moderate Republican who comes out in support of alternate voting methods now would likely open the door to a extremist primary challenge against them, on the grounds that they are not a sufficiently loyal Republican, who should only be focused on defeating Democrats. Longer term, the incentives might align for moderate Republicans to support alternate voting methods as you describe… but how do we get there from here?
One last comment/reminder to myself: I read nostalgebrist’s summary of Weyl’s “Why I am not a technocrat” argument (haven’t read the original yet), and his last few points seem very relevant to my argument:
8. What needs to be true for a mechanism to be open to modification by the masses? For one thing, the masses need to understand what the mechanism is! This is clearly not sufficient but it at least seems necessary.
9. Elites should design mechanisms that are simple and transparent enough for the masses to inspect and comprehend. This goal (“legibility”) trades off against fidelity, which tends to favor illegible models.
10. But the elite’s mechanisms will always have problems with insufficient fidelity, because they miss information known to the masses (#3). The way out of this is not to add ever more fidelity as viewed from the elite POV. We have to let the masses fill in the missing fidelity on their own.
And this will requires more legibility (#8), which will come at the cost of short-term fidelity (#9). It will pay off in fidelity gains over the long term as mass intervention supplies the “missing” fidelity.
I take this to be the central piece of advice articulated in the essay.
Agree that some individual moderate politicians could benefit from a change in voting methods (Romney is another that comes to mind). But I don’t see how they could convince the majority of their party to support changes that go against their personal best interests.
A majority of the Democratic congressman are corporate Democrats and those have to fear getting primaried by people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. This is especially the case as the power of far-left activsts to primary corporate Democrats rises.
At the same time people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez would likely have a hard time publically openly arguing that far-left ideas that wouldn’t win under approval voting should win out.
But each individual “corporate Democrat” congressperson also has huge incentives to cooperate with the rest of the party to maintain the current system. Their party has a ~50% chance of winning each election, and incumbents have a substantial advantage when facing re-election. Any individual (or small group) who proposes to defect in favor of a new, untested voting system would likely face a backlash for not being “true Democrats” and for making it more likely that non-Democrats would win more elections going forward.
Also, I notice you mentioned approval voting several times as an alternative voting method. Is the voting theory community unified behind approval voting at this point? I feel 3-2-1 voting has a greater likelihood of becoming widely supported by the general population, for reasons I outlined in this comment.
Congressional seats are not given out by the rest of the party. The decision for them is made by the primary voters in a given
I think “there’s too much polarization between the political parties” and it would be good to have a voting system isn’t a position for which you are likely going to be attacked by people on the fringes who don’t like politics as usual.
You have centrist Democratic strategists who worry that Democrats don’t win certain elections because the primary voters chose a candidate that’s too extreme to win the general election.
A lot has happened since that discussion. OpenPhil funds the The Center for Election Science which managed to run a successful referenda to get Approval Voting into Fargo, ND.
While 3-2-1 voting might be easier then ranked choice voting Approval Voting is even easier to understand (there are not multiple rounds).
Hmm. I feel like we are talking past each other to some extent, or not using terms the same way due to inferential differences, or something like that. Sorry if I’ve been unclear, I’ll try to explain my position better.
Very true. I was thinking more of the question, “Which actual senator or group of senators would propose an actual bill to effect change to a new voting system?” I still don’t see how any have an incentive to do that.
Re polarization: I also think there’s too much polarization, which is why I support any efforts to get away from FPTP. I agree approval voting is a huge improvement over FPTP, and I’m glad Fargo has adopted it.
I don’t think getting people to understand [how the rules work] is the key variable to optimize for here. I think it’s getting them to understand [why the heck changing to this system will make any difference] in an intuitive way.
I think that if I explained approval voting to my friends, they would understand how the rules work in ten seconds. But when they ask why we should switch, I would have to say something that boils down to “well a bunch of nerds ran some simulations, and this one worked better” and they would pretend to fall asleep.
I think that if I explained 3-2-1 voting to my friends, they would understand how the rules work in twenty seconds. And when they ask why we should switch, there is the obvious reason that the candidate they most fear winning the election gets knocked out in round 2. Democrats will be relieved that Trump would never win under such a system, and Republicans will be relieved that Bernie/AOC types would never win either. And if it’s established as a clear anti-both-party or anti-the-current-two-party-system alternative, it may have a better chance of gaining support from voters from a wide variety of backgrounds.
I think the main issue with that is that senators don’t vote on bills that decide how senators get elected. It’s state laws that decide how the senators of a given state are elected (and whether they are elected at all or appointed).
Change would more likely to happen by a senator saying: “Our state is grid-looked because we don’t have enough bipartisanship. We should change our voting system in our state to allow for more bipartisanship.”
You likely need some grassroots movement for voting reform for a politician to make such a move and be able to portray it as being a noble reformer but it seems possible to me to happen without the politician acting against their interests.
Bernie and AOC are very different here. Bernie wins election where he is on a third-party ticket (he got 67.44% as an independent). AOC on the other hand got on the Justice Democrats board which is an organization that promized to support primary challenges of Democrats by candidates that aren’t in the board of it. Then Justice Democrats poored all their resources into getting AOC to win her primary challenge and unseat a powerful Democrat.
Agree with how senators are elected. I was thinking of senators proposing a bill to change how federal elections are held, especially for President. As I understand it (90% confident?) such a change would require a constitutional amendment ratified by Congress and the states. Most of my considerations have been around Presidential elections, since they are the focal point of the US political system.
As you mention, state laws decide how their senators are elected and it’s quite likely that some states (preceded by cities such as Fargo) will change to an alternate voting method before the federal government does. This provides an additional incentive for individual senators to remain unattached to any alternate voting method proposals, as they will be able to watch how public opinion reacts to the experiments on state and local levels.
Or a newcomer.
Is there a popular grassroots movement taking place right now? For a newcomer, being a noble reformer, and actually being a noble reformer, could squarely align with their interests.
Re Bernie/AOC: I was again referring to the chance of them being elected President, which is what I think drives most people’s fears. It could make sense they would remain popular locally and maintain their current seats in Congress. I was thinking more of a typical Republican in a red state, who probably doesn’t have to worry about losing their own congressional seats, but would be very worried about losing the Presidency. And especially worried that a future Democrat nominee would be more extreme than the current President. Many can probably live with weird Bernie up there in Vermont, at least he’s different for a change.
Since I’m getting it all out, a couple more advantages of 3-2-1 voting:
Assuming people understand how 3-2-1 voting works, they automatically understand how approval voting works, since it’s just the first half of 3-2-1. So then you can say things like, “If you understand this one voting method, you’ll understand everything that matters about the issue”, at least for single-winner elections like President. Or even something like, “I promise this is the last voting method for President I’ll ever ask you about, and if this doesn’t convince you, I’ll leave you alone” which I hope would be received as a reasonable and respectful deal.
Thanks for your willingness to engage me on this, it has helped me understand my own position much more clearly.
Practically, that means not caring about moves to get alternative voting systems adopted.
From a principled reason it’s stupid to experiment with new voting systems at the place that’s most central instead of other less central places. Practically, senators and congressman from places with an alternative voting system can reasonable make proposals like “Our voting system is much better, everyone should adopt it” without getting punished as being unserious.
If you both have established politicians speaking in favor of changing the voting system and a bunch of grassroots reformers it’s easier for the proposal to succeed in a state.
Most people’s fear is a different topic then what’s good politically for senators and congressmen. Senators and congressmen fear getting primaried.
A typical Republican in a red state has to fear getting successfully primaried by some extreme tea party candidate or Qanon believer under the current system. On the other hand they are unlikely to lose their seat to a Democrat in either the current system or approval voting (and 3-2-1).
Approval voting (and 3-2-1) make it less likely that a tea party candidate or Qanon believer manages to unseat them.
Sorry, again I realize I didn’t explain some of my thoughts clearly enough. I think we are discussing two different but related questions: 1. How do we convince the average voter to support alternate voting systems, vs. 2. How do we convince senators, state and local governments, local political activists, etc. to support alternate voting systems, get them on the ballot, and ultimately passed into law. Most of my thinking and comments in this thread have been more related to question 1, but it feels like you interpreted some as related to question 2. Both are important, but I think the incentives and strategies required are different for the two questions.
When I said Presidential elections are the focal point of the political system, I was thinking about how I would try to convince the average voter to support alternate voting systems. In such a conversation, I know I have very limited time to make my argument, and my conversation partner is likely predisposed to doubt me, since I’m sending clear signals that I’m not “on their team” (whichever “team” they are on). Therefore I need to be able to explain very quickly how the alternate system would work and how it would improve outcomes. Since President is the most important office in US politics and most average voters have a decent understanding of how it currently gets elected, my strategy would be to use Presidential elections as an example, and point out how 3-2-1 can help prevent scary extremists from getting elected as President.
I think ranked choice voting failed to capture much public support (as seen by its failure in recent state ballot questions) because it’s too complicated to explain quickly, and too hard for the average voter to quickly understand how it would improve outcomes. 3-2-1 is substantially better by both measures.
Switching over to question 2 now, I agree it would be foolish to start by trying to change federal elections before state and local elections. And I agree that once an alternate method shows some success in a given state, that state’s senators might have incentive to say “our system is better, everyone should adopt it”. I still don’t think current senators have an incentive to be among the first to support alternate methods.
Agree—but are there any established politicians publicly in favor of changing the system right now? I’m not aware of any. How are you trying to convince them to publicly support this?
Finally, my quote about the “typical Republican in a red state” was referring to the typical Republican voter that I might try to convince, not a typical Republican congressperson. I mostly agree with your analysis of the incentives a typical Republican congressperson faces. I would just add that any typical or moderate Republican who comes out in support of alternate voting methods now would likely open the door to a extremist primary challenge against them, on the grounds that they are not a sufficiently loyal Republican, who should only be focused on defeating Democrats. Longer term, the incentives might align for moderate Republicans to support alternate voting methods as you describe… but how do we get there from here?
One last comment/reminder to myself: I read nostalgebrist’s summary of Weyl’s “Why I am not a technocrat” argument (haven’t read the original yet), and his last few points seem very relevant to my argument: