Three Important Virtues of Approval Voting (that I plan to detail in a new paper)

 

Approval Voting (“AV”) has had its champions. In their eponymous book on the subject, Steven Brams and Peter Fishburn set forth a list of eight characteristics that they take to make for the unparalleled virtues of the scheme:

1.       It gives voters more flexible options.

2.       It could increase voter turnout.

3.       It would help elect the strongest candidate.

4.       It would give minority candidates their proper due.

5.       It is relatively insensitive to the number of candidates running.

6.       It is superior to preferential voting [e.g., RCV or The Single Transferable Vote].

7.       It will add legitimacy to the outcome.

8.       It is eminently practicable.

 

In my new book I joined the ranks of AV advocates, claiming that it is uniquely capable of playing a crucial part in an accurate determination of “the general will”—what the people want. I argued, in particular, that AV’s exclusive reliance on minimally successful (as conceived ex ante) states of affairs makes it the perfect electoral correlate for what I designated “CHOICE Voluntarism,” a theory of prudential value that assigns each “successful result”—as well as each person—equal respect/weight. While I do not think that frequent use of of a simple quasi-majoritarian mechanism like AV can alone completely capture the general will of an electorate (largely because, in my view, there must also be provisions for robust proportional representation, recall, referendum, and reversal, as well as an explanation of how the two recommended voting systems should be combined), I do think that AV is an essential constituent of an authentically democratic system.

But there was insufficient space in my book to include comprehensive discussion of several important merits of AV or to respond to every criticism that has been made of the scheme. No doubt I will likely miss several of them in my new paper too. But the three advantages to be discussed that AV has over every preference-based (ranking) voting rule seem to me make AV’s inclusion crucial to the construction of any authentic democracy. What are they?

I will argue first that AV cannot be convicted of irrationality due to any alleged failure to guarantee results that are independent of “irrelevant alternatives.” Second, I will show that AV eliminates the possibility of using agenda-setting to produce results that are inconsistent with majoritarianism and pluritarianism. Finally, I will explain why AV is not subject to the majority voting cycles that have troubled observers from Condorcet to Arrow. 

It is my hope that I will have an opportunity to summarize this paper in an APSA meeting next Fall on the West Coast.