PSF voting methods

[nas (Neil Schemenauer)]

@tim.one

The point is that people like being able to express more of what they believe, and particularly to express that they like A “a lot more” than B, or “just a little more”, or that they have no preference between them (if so, give them the same number of stars). The happier people are with their voting experience, the more likely they are to vote, and that matters too.

I used to prefer Approval voting. It has the advantages of being about as simple as possible while still giving good results. I think simple is important because ordinary people want to understand and trust how elections are run. That’s why I prefer pencil and paper voting for civil elections.

However, this “express what they believe” issue is perhaps fatal to Approval in terms of getting wide adoption. People don’t like to be forced into the binary choices and have a hard time believing that it likely doesn’t matter in an election with many voters. So, I think the little extra complication STAR requires is okay. Something like Condorcet is disqualified on the complexity aspect, IMHO.

I think the PSF should change as well. It will likely make the voters a bit more happy. It will also popularize the STAR method, which will hopefully one day replace the horrible methods being used in other elections (e.g. plurality and IRV, for example).