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A comment on Forced Exposure. Parent comment

Re:Forced Exposure by dllthomas on Tuesday August 20, 2013 @02:10PM (#6245461)
"Here's hoping that the people eventually figure out that instant runoff can be implemented state-by-state."

I prefer approval, but hey, your state can have IRV and mine can have approval and thanks to the electoral college that doesn't break things!

Unless we're in the same state, in which case we'll have to agree on something I guess.

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Re:Forced Exposure by lukifer on Tuesday August 20, 2013 @03:11PM (#6245888)
Unpack "approval" for me?

Honestly, I'm in favor of any modifications to winner-take-all. "None of the Above" would be a major win for the protest vote, with a huge meta-electoral effect even if it never wins. And while it would boost morale and turnout for presidential years, the real effect would be seen if we elected Congress that way as well.

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Re:Forced Exposure by dllthomas on Tuesday August 20, 2013 @05:17PM (#6246649)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approval_voting

Basically, you check yes or no for everyone, and the winner is the one with the most "yes" votes. Less expressive than IRV, but also simpler to understand and tabulate.

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Re:Forced Exposure by lukifer on Friday August 23, 2013 @07:41PM (#6266856)
Belatedly: thanks for sharing. It does seem an easier sell, because the counting process is so easy to understand. It's not as favorable to third parties as IRV, because "[X] Minor [X] Major" obviously doesn't carry as much weight as "[1] Minor [2] Major", but at least it still kills the spoiler effect. While IRV seems more "pure" in an information theory sense, Approval is elegant in its simplicity.
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Re:Forced Exposure by dllthomas on Saturday August 24, 2013 @03:08PM (#6269474)
That's mostly my views as well, yeah. There are a couple (narrow) weird cases with IRV, too... but IRV is unquestionably a tremendous improvement over FPTP.
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Re:Forced Exposure by dllthomas on Tuesday August 20, 2013 @09:16PM (#6247619)
"the real effect would be seen if we elected Congress that way as well."

Elaborate on that a bit - I know it's popular to say that Congress has a low approval rating, but no one votes for "congress" - they vote for their congresspeople, who typically have high approval ratings. There may well be other effects I'm not spotting, though...

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