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.
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: