In Orionland, the politic spectrum runs from Red to Blue.
Elections are to be held in this constell-stituency. On the Red side there is a single candidate, an outsize character named Betelgeuse; but on the Blue side there are no fewer than six candidates, representing shades of a common general color of opinion. Here is a list of all candidates and the numbers of voters (lower-magnitude stars) who prefer them, judging by the polls:
Betelgeuse 20,000
Rigel 71,400
Bellatrix 6,100
Alnilam 5,900
Alnitak 5,600
Saiph 4,900
Mintaka 4,600
(I concocted those figures by taking the inverse of their magnitudes – 1 divided by the number – and multiplying by 10,000. Opinion pollsters use statistical trickery.)
You can see that one Blue candidate, another gigantic personality, named Rigel, will easily win – if all 98,500 Blue sympathizers vote for him, or even if they all vote for their preferred candidate. But both of those patterns are unlikely, without coordinated strategic voting.
Some find Rigel’s speeches pedestrian, preferring Mintaka’s equable manner, or Saiph’s sword-like wit, or Bellatrix’s fierce feminism. In short, 27,100 voters have the Voter’s Dilemma: whether to support the one they really like, increasing the chance of getting the one they hate; or the one on their “side” who has most chance of winning, leaving the one or more whom they approve to wither away.
Back to Earth department
I voted by mail in many previous elections, but for yesterday’s British election I went around to the friendly scene in the polling station, a nearby church hall.
This was a tripartite election, for mayor of London, for the South West constituency’s member of the London Assembly, and for the London-Wide Assembly (I’m still struggling to decipher, from the election booklet, the relation between those last two). For mayor, there were 20 candidates, for the second thing 5, and for the third 15 slates of from 4 to 25 names.
There was a jungle of parties, some competing in all three categories Besides the major ones, Conservative and Labour, and the rising-major, Liberal Democrat and Green, there were the Count Binface for Mayor Party, and the Burning Pink Party. The Christian Peoples Alliance; the Communist Party of Britain. And Let London Live; London Real Party; Londependence. And combinations of Liberal, Labour, Socialist, Co-operative, Trade Unionist. And indefinite ones – Renew; The Reclaim Party – and four called just Independent. And some who wedged mini-manifestoes into their titles: Reform UK London Deserves Better; Heritage Party Free Speech and Liberty; Animal Welfare Party, People, Animals, Environment.
Each of these parties had paid £10,000 if it had its standard-sized colored ad included in the election booklet.
The voting rule, of course, was that you could choose just one in each of these three elections. Not quite: for mayor, you could vote for a first choice by writing an X in column A, and a second choice in column B. A limited ranking system, a nod to the Voter’s Dilemma, but not solving it: second choices still suffer.
I’m a member of the Liberal Democrats, since I came over from America one time when there happened to be an election and happened to read their enlightened manifesto. And I once canvassed for Labour in Manchester. But a campaign card a few days ago from Sadiq Khan, the excellent incumbent Labour mayor, pleaded, in effect: If you vote for Lib Dem, which can’t win, instead of for Labour which can, you are helping to elect the Conservative.
Millions of people have the Voter’s Dilemma in various forms in almost every election, and this was an acute case. I would have liked to vote for Labour, Liberal Democrat, Green, the Women’s Equality Party, the Animal Welfare Party, and certainly for Rejoin EU. And I should have had the right to. That is Approval Voting, the system of the future.
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This weblog maintains its right to be about astronomy or anything under the sun.
Hopefully Scotland will untie itself from the yoke of the UK and Britishness soon?it always seems strange that the right wing leaders of England (both constitutional and elected), or is it the UK? , approved of countries like the USSR, Czechoslovakia and dare I say it considering what happened there, Yugoslavia coming apart at the seams but they can’t stand the idea of their own doing so.they are not alone as close by Spain and Belgium have similar pressures.
If you vote Liberal you are directly voting Conservative as the activities of Nick Clegg and Vince Cable (the name who gave away the Royal Mail for peanuts) prove.in many ways by backing up the Cameron government the Liberals are the architects of the present problems England finds itself in.shame about the Hartlepool by election.
Approval voting certainly makes more sense than the alternatives currently used in the UK or those used in the US. I don’t think that the advantages of approval voting necessarily make it the system of the future. Change would need to be instituted either through the current representative process or through direct democratic initiative. The parties that win in the current system are going to maintain the current system. Why would they institute reforms that would put them out of power? I don’t think there will ever be a critical mass of citizens who are sufficiently motivated and organized to overthrow the current system *and* institute something better and workable, although small improvements are certainly possible, and more likely to come through citizen initiative than through legislatures.
In 2010 California voters passed the “Top Two Primaries” Initiative which changed how we elect people for State offices, including the legislature and the governor. Since the amendment took effect in 2011, all the candidates for a voter-nominated office are listed on a single primary ballot, and the two candidates who get the most votes in the primary run in the general election. The practical effect has mostly been to put two Democrats on the final ballot in majority Democratic districts, and two Republicans on the final ballot in majority Republican districts. This has resulted in generally more moderate, more competent, and less wacko people getting elected to the legislature, which has been able to pass a budget on time and pass reasonable laws. It has also helped that the Democrats control both houses of the legislature and the governorship. Statewide there are still enough Republicans that a Republican still gets on the general ballot, but the Democrats have won the past few general elections easily.
San Francisco and many other local jurisdictions have passed rank choice voting for local elections. I know this doesn’t pass the approval voting purity test, but it seems like a step in the right direction.
The older I get, the more comfortable I am voting strategically, trying to do the best I can in an imperfect system, supporting small improvements, and not expecting things to get a whole lot better during my lifetime.
Yes, “The parties that win in the current system” will not want to change the current system. But there are situations where they might. In Scotland no party gets a clear majority, so SNP (Scottish National Party) forms a ruling coalition with the Greens. Both of those would benefit from approval voting – many people would vote for both – so they should like it if they knew about it.
And there may “never be a critical mass of citizens” to support AV.
I haven’t recently checked the news from the Center for Election Science, https://electionscience.org/
but you might do so and find out how many jurisdictions have recently gone over to AV or are stuying whether to do so. Incremental progress; creating precedents that may set others thinking.
Fun exercise with a serious point!
Love this analog! Fun. In the meantime, Guy, I want to send you my book. Can you email your shipping address? ~Mary
Thanks, Mary, I’ve replied to this by email.