I agree that EAs should continue investigating and possibly advocating different voting methods, and I strongly agree that electoral reform writ large should be part of the “EA portfolio.”
I don’t think EAs (qua EAs, as opposed to as individuals concerned as a matter of principle with having their electoral preferences correctly represented) should advocate for different voting methods in isolation, even though essentially all options are conceptually superior to FPTP/plurality voting.
This is because A democratic system is not the same as a utility-maximizing one. The various criteria used to evaluate voting systems in social choice theory are, generally speaking, formal representations of widely-shared intuitions about how individuals’ preferences should be aggregated or, more loosely, how democratic governments should function.
Obviously, the only preferences voting systems aggregate are those over the topic being voted on. But voters have preferences over lots of other areas as well, and the choice of voting system relates only to two of them: (a) their preferences over the choice in question and (b) their meta-preferences over how preferences are aggregated (e.g. how democratic their society is).
As others in this thread have pointed out, individuals’ electoral preferences cannot be convincingly said to represent their preferences over all of the other areas their choice will influence.
So an individual gains utility from a voting system if and only if the utility gained by its superior representation of their preferences exceeds the utility lost in other areas lost by switching. I don’t think this is a high bar to clear, but I do think that, beyond the contrast between broadly democratic and non-democratic systems, we have next-to-no good information about the relationship between electoral systems and non-electoral outcomes.
In the simplest terms possible: we know that some voting systems are better than others when it comes to meeting our intuitive conception of democratic government. But we’re concerned about people’s welfare beyond just having people’s electoral preferences represented, and we don’t know what the relationship between these things is.
It is totally possible that voting systems that violate the Condorcet criterion also dominate systems that meet the criterion with respect to social welfare. We simply don’t know.
It’s also not clear to what degree different voting systems induce a closer relationship between individuals’ electoral preferences and their preferences over non-electoral topics, e.g. by incentivizing or disincentivizing voter education.
To reiterate, I strongly support the increased interest in approval voting and RCV that we’re seeing, and I voted for it here in NYC. I want to see my own electoral preferences represented more accurately and I don’t think there is a big risk that (at least here) my other preferences will suffer. But as consequentialists I think we are on very uncertain ground.
A democratic system is not the same as a utility-maximizing one.
In my utilitarian view, these are one in the same. An election is effectively just “a decision made by more than one person”, thus the practical measure of democratic-ness is “expected utility of a voting procedure”. I would argue it could be perfectly democratic to replace elections with a random sample of voter opinions over a statistically significant subset of the eligible voting population. This would probably be more democratic than the current system, which is distorted by demographic disparities in turnout. The issue would be making the process provably random, so as to ensure legitimacy.
The various criteria used to evaluate voting systems in social choice theory are, generally speaking, formal representations of widely-shared intuitions about how individuals’ preferences should be aggregated or, more loosely, how democratic governments should function.
Yes, this is why the utilitarian camp within the electoral reform community eschews voting method criteria in favor of utility efficiency calculations, traditionally expressed as Bayesian regret, or more recently inverted into voter satisfaction efficiency. The procedure is pretty straightforward. We just start with a random utility distribution, then turn that into preferences by mangling it with an “ignorance factor”, then turn that into a cast ballot by normalizing it and adding strategy. Then we compute the winner and measure the utility lost by not electing the social utility maximizer.
This allows us to property assess the combined effect of all criteria at once, even ones we never thought to consider, with their proper utility-decreasing weight, times frequency. There are of course externalities, like complexity and cost of voting machine upgrades, but luckily the better performing methods like approval voting tend to also be simpler than ranked voting methods too.
So an individual gains utility from a voting system if and only if the utility gained by its superior representation of their preferences exceeds the utility lost in other areas lost by switching.
I don’t see how there is any appreciable utility lost by adopting approval voting. There might be a tiny amount lost from the physical cost of things like new voting machines if we upgrade to a more complex ranked system, but even then I believe the utility gain exceeds that by an order of magnitude.
In the simplest terms possible: we know that some voting systems are better than others when it comes to meeting our intuitive conception of democratic government. But we’re concerned about people’s welfare beyond just having people’s electoral preferences represented, and we don’t know what the relationship between these things is.
I have argued above that we do know. We have voter satisfaction efficiency and Bayesian regret. That is indeed the utilitarian lens through which many of the foundational members of the approval voting community see the world, and the basis of much of their support.
It is totally possible that voting systems that violate the Condorcet criterion also dominate systems that meet the criterion with respect to social welfare. We simply don’t know.
This is in fact true! Score voting violates the Condorcet criterion, and also outperforms Condorcet methods in utility efficiency calculations.
In my utilitarian view, [democracy and utility maximizing procedures] are one in the same. An election is effectively just “a decision made by more than one person”, thus the practical measure of democratic-ness is “expected utility of a voting procedure”.
We just start with a random utility distribution, then turn that into preferences by mangling it with an “ignorance factor”
The ignorance factor represents a disparity between the actual utility impact a candidate will have on a voter, and the assumed utility impact which forms the basis for her vote. Even with lots of ignorance, there’s still a significant difference in performance from one voting method to another.
In addition, I believe a lot of our ignorance comes from “tribal” thinking. If we have two parties (tribes), and each party must pick one side of any issue (abortion, guns, health care, etc.). Thus voters will tend to retroactively justify their beliefs about a given issue based on how it comports with their stated party affiliation. Note that this forced binary thinking is so powerful that we even have a party divide over the objective reality of climate change!
With a system like approval voting, candidates can easily run outside of the party system and still be viable. Thus they can take any arbitrary position on any issue, giving voters the freedom to move freely through the issue axes. A new offshoot of the GOP could form that is generally socially conservative and pro gun rights, but totally committed to addressing climate change. With 3-5 viable parties able to constantly adjust to changing realities, this is expected to reduce the amount of voter ignorance considerably, by allowing voters to consider issues which were once taken as given as part and parcel of their party affiliation.
I agree that EAs should continue investigating and possibly advocating different voting methods, and I strongly agree that electoral reform writ large should be part of the “EA portfolio.”
I don’t think EAs (qua EAs, as opposed to as individuals concerned as a matter of principle with having their electoral preferences correctly represented) should advocate for different voting methods in isolation, even though essentially all options are conceptually superior to FPTP/plurality voting.
This is because A democratic system is not the same as a utility-maximizing one. The various criteria used to evaluate voting systems in social choice theory are, generally speaking, formal representations of widely-shared intuitions about how individuals’ preferences should be aggregated or, more loosely, how democratic governments should function.
Obviously, the only preferences voting systems aggregate are those over the topic being voted on. But voters have preferences over lots of other areas as well, and the choice of voting system relates only to two of them: (a) their preferences over the choice in question and (b) their meta-preferences over how preferences are aggregated (e.g. how democratic their society is).
As others in this thread have pointed out, individuals’ electoral preferences cannot be convincingly said to represent their preferences over all of the other areas their choice will influence.
So an individual gains utility from a voting system if and only if the utility gained by its superior representation of their preferences exceeds the utility lost in other areas lost by switching. I don’t think this is a high bar to clear, but I do think that, beyond the contrast between broadly democratic and non-democratic systems, we have next-to-no good information about the relationship between electoral systems and non-electoral outcomes.
In the simplest terms possible: we know that some voting systems are better than others when it comes to meeting our intuitive conception of democratic government. But we’re concerned about people’s welfare beyond just having people’s electoral preferences represented, and we don’t know what the relationship between these things is.
It is totally possible that voting systems that violate the Condorcet criterion also dominate systems that meet the criterion with respect to social welfare. We simply don’t know.
It’s also not clear to what degree different voting systems induce a closer relationship between individuals’ electoral preferences and their preferences over non-electoral topics, e.g. by incentivizing or disincentivizing voter education.
To reiterate, I strongly support the increased interest in approval voting and RCV that we’re seeing, and I voted for it here in NYC. I want to see my own electoral preferences represented more accurately and I don’t think there is a big risk that (at least here) my other preferences will suffer. But as consequentialists I think we are on very uncertain ground.
@Matt_Lerner,
In my utilitarian view, these are one in the same. An election is effectively just “a decision made by more than one person”, thus the practical measure of democratic-ness is “expected utility of a voting procedure”. I would argue it could be perfectly democratic to replace elections with a random sample of voter opinions over a statistically significant subset of the eligible voting population. This would probably be more democratic than the current system, which is distorted by demographic disparities in turnout. The issue would be making the process provably random, so as to ensure legitimacy.
Yes, this is why the utilitarian camp within the electoral reform community eschews voting method criteria in favor of utility efficiency calculations, traditionally expressed as Bayesian regret, or more recently inverted into voter satisfaction efficiency. The procedure is pretty straightforward. We just start with a random utility distribution, then turn that into preferences by mangling it with an “ignorance factor”, then turn that into a cast ballot by normalizing it and adding strategy. Then we compute the winner and measure the utility lost by not electing the social utility maximizer.
This allows us to property assess the combined effect of all criteria at once, even ones we never thought to consider, with their proper utility-decreasing weight, times frequency. There are of course externalities, like complexity and cost of voting machine upgrades, but luckily the better performing methods like approval voting tend to also be simpler than ranked voting methods too.
I don’t see how there is any appreciable utility lost by adopting approval voting. There might be a tiny amount lost from the physical cost of things like new voting machines if we upgrade to a more complex ranked system, but even then I believe the utility gain exceeds that by an order of magnitude.
I have argued above that we do know. We have voter satisfaction efficiency and Bayesian regret. That is indeed the utilitarian lens through which many of the foundational members of the approval voting community see the world, and the basis of much of their support.
This is in fact true! Score voting violates the Condorcet criterion, and also outperforms Condorcet methods in utility efficiency calculations.
Doesn’t this ignore the irrational tendencies of voters?
I discussed this in my post:
The ignorance factor represents a disparity between the actual utility impact a candidate will have on a voter, and the assumed utility impact which forms the basis for her vote. Even with lots of ignorance, there’s still a significant difference in performance from one voting method to another.
In addition, I believe a lot of our ignorance comes from “tribal” thinking. If we have two parties (tribes), and each party must pick one side of any issue (abortion, guns, health care, etc.). Thus voters will tend to retroactively justify their beliefs about a given issue based on how it comports with their stated party affiliation. Note that this forced binary thinking is so powerful that we even have a party divide over the objective reality of climate change!
With a system like approval voting, candidates can easily run outside of the party system and still be viable. Thus they can take any arbitrary position on any issue, giving voters the freedom to move freely through the issue axes. A new offshoot of the GOP could form that is generally socially conservative and pro gun rights, but totally committed to addressing climate change. With 3-5 viable parties able to constantly adjust to changing realities, this is expected to reduce the amount of voter ignorance considerably, by allowing voters to consider issues which were once taken as given as part and parcel of their party affiliation.