This is a good article. I just wanted to take issue with this claim: "Twitter is a public company, funded by investor money; they thus owe a legal duty to make as much money for their investors as they can."
As some commenters point out, it's not clear whether that's a good or bad thing. But approval voting would broaden out the conversation by allowing more heterodox parties to attract a significant fraction of the vote, reflecting their actual support, rather than just an artificially low 0-3%.
But that's exactly what's missing from all this discussion of voting systems, if the US and UK are your examples of "failed" democracies these experts obviously haven't considered the full range of how voting works. Living in a city that has instant run off voting it is clear that first past the post has some important advantages that voting system gurus seem to discount--namely it forces pre-negotiation and coalitions before questions are put to the voters. It is impossible for a voting system to inquire what the will of the body politic is on all questions as all times like it is an oracle--but if you construct a system that poses choose A or B question and there's education (campaigning) around that choice, the electorate can make a reasonably informed decision about whether A or B is better. Viewing voters as a static oracle to be consulted misses the whole point which is to actually get the electorate to make a decision since all things are not possible and government inevitably picks policies that favor some interests over others. In fact, suppression of heterodox policy party ideas in policy making (while protecting their expression through a strong 1st amendment) seems like one of the greatest features (not a bug) of US democracy.
I think that the citizens have kind of lost the whole idea of "representative".
Voters now want to send people to Congress who will carry out a specific agenda. But the idea of a representative is that you were sending someone with (more or less) your general views, and they would use their own judgment.
This whole "pre-negotiation and coalitions before questions are put to the voters" might be more the problem than the solution.
Your second and third paragraphs seem to be at odds with each other? Negotiating (whether pre or post) and forming coalitions is exactly what you'd expect proper representatives to do.
Representatives, yes. Political parties before elections, not so much (which is the point of the bit I was quoting in the third paragraph). Especially not so much if people expect the representatives to be bound by those negotiations for the duration of their terms, rather than actually using judgment as their term unfolds.
> if the US and UK are your examples of "failed" democracies these experts obviously haven't considered the full range of how voting works.
"Obviously?" Perhaps they have considered it properly and have reasonably concluded both systems are utterly failed in terms of representing the views of the electorate. As an outsider looking in US politics appears equally broken, just sometimes in different ways.
So now let me stay on ground I am more sure of, the UK. It's one of the least representative "democracies" around.
For most of the electorate it simply doesn't matter who they vote for, it's pointless. Most seats are "safe". Where I currently live, if you have anything but Brexit-Tory views don't bother as the seat hasn't changed hands in years. So consider yourself entirely disenfranchised. We get especially poor candidates as a result - from both parties. A cardboard cutout would probably get elected if wearing a blue rosette.
If you have Tory views, and live in one of those nice £1m+ warehouse flat conversions you are probably now in a permanently safe Labour inner-city seat, and are equally disenfranchised. cardboard equally electable, just give it a red rosette.
The percentage in a given constituency who get the government they voted for is often quite shocking. CGP Grey did a video on this if I recall correctly.
What does that do to politics? Well, it's total war, total victory and total annihilation only. Parties only treat the electorate as even vaguely interesting in the 10% of seats that might change hands.
No one negotiates. Beforehand or otherwise, unless every other avenue to grab power has failed. System working as intended then as it tends to reinforce the two party status quo.
"Woo, we got elected, just." Now it's simple. Every policy of the previous government was crap. Even the really good ones that were proven to be working. No matter, we didn't think them up, so get rid of the policy with extreme prejudice. We'll rename the same policy when writing our next manifesto so that we can imply we did invent it next time.
> namely it forces pre-negotiation and coalitions before questions are put to the voters.
When did the US last have a coalition, or even pre-negotiation?
In the UK we had one, successfully, during WW2. Since then there has been one, but a selection of minority governments. The recent coalition is widely considered to have been a failure. Essentially we got Tory govt, with a few rough edges knocked off. Tories got a convenient kicking partner.
> the electorate can make a reasonably informed decision about whether A or B is better.
Gosh that's a positive view of how it works. In our media-first, FPTP, system it is much more about the media friendly face, nice smile, soundbites and dog whistles. Interviews become an excruciating exercise of answering the question you'd like to have been asked like it's a Monty Python sketch.
May gave us a comical example of doing soundbites and interviews wrong with the "strong and stable government" line that everyone, including the media, were sick of on the very first day of campaign. After a term or two "it's about time we gave the other guys a chance" and "I'm sick of these idiots" becomes a significant influence.
In short I am firmly in favour of electoral reform and adoption of PR (and not the second-class incarnation of it we were given a referendum about during the coalition). I'd quite like to figure out a way to weaken party politics too, but I digress. In my twenties I was quite in favour for FPTP as I felt it enabled more to be done. Nowadays I'd like a lot less done and a system that a) encourages consensus day to day and b) provides a parliament representative of the far wider range of views commonly held than two diametrically opposed parties. This became far, far too long so I'll spare you the deeper reasoning in favour of PR. :)
My own politics is a coalition - I like some parts of Tory, Labour, Green and LibDem. Even during my most focused support of one party I found some of their policies were utterly bonkers. I think that's the case with most aside from the tiny, tiny minority who actually join parties.
"...there's actually a really good track record in the US for passing ballot initiatives on single winner voting methods, so we expect the likelihood of winning some to be pretty high.
The way that we look at it is instant runoff voting has been passed as a ballot initiative in a number of cities, but we see approval voting as producing better outcomes, and having better political dynamics compared to instant runoff voting. Approval voting is also so much easier, and it avoids a lot of the problems.
If instant runoff voting can win, then surely, a simpler voting method that produces good outcomes and has good dynamics should also be able to do it."
Approval voting is worse than even IRV because of inconsistent meaning of ballot markings, an effect which the naive mathematical analyses which support the claims of it's superiority ignore.
This problem is negated when the is a consistent meaning to approval or disapproval markings, which can happen with non-secret ballots tied to concrete commitments. Approval is, for that reason, an excellent voting method to decide group activities in a social group, where an approve vote is a binding opt-in to the activity if it is chosen (or if a disapprove vote is a binding opt-out.)
For the same reason (the lack of a concrete definition of what “approve” or “disapprove” means), approval is not really simpler than IRV (or other ranked ballots) methods, even if the space of possible ballot markings is narrower.
