Q: How would we know approval voting would give better policies? Why would the policies be good? And how do we know the policies would be good rather than merely popular?
A: I’m combining these ideas I pulled out because of their similarity. Approval voting tends to pull out the middle viewpoint (whatever that is for a particular electorate). And because viability is not an issue to gain initial support, it can provide a ramp for new ideas.
Is it possible that the popular opinion is bad? It sure is. But for this to be a real worry under approval voting would mean that the alternative of what we have now as being better. We might find that there is some popular issue that people win on that is not correct or overall good. This is also possible now, but with a poorer voting method. The question is whether approval voting provides a net gain so that popular issues that are good actually move forward at a pace faster than they would otherwise. Because of the quicker feedback and approval voting doing a better job of capturing candidate support, I believe this to likely be true. And to the degree that this is true in enacting better policies, many policies have carryover benefits that go well into the future.
I’m not sure I understood the question on supply and demand-side politics.
P.S. I accidentally added this as a main thread reply. Sorry about that.
Hi Adam,
Q: How would we know approval voting would give better policies? Why would the policies be good? And how do we know the policies would be good rather than merely popular?
A: I’m combining these ideas I pulled out because of their similarity. Approval voting tends to pull out the middle viewpoint (whatever that is for a particular electorate). And because viability is not an issue to gain initial support, it can provide a ramp for new ideas.
Is it possible that the popular opinion is bad? It sure is. But for this to be a real worry under approval voting would mean that the alternative of what we have now as being better. We might find that there is some popular issue that people win on that is not correct or overall good. This is also possible now, but with a poorer voting method. The question is whether approval voting provides a net gain so that popular issues that are good actually move forward at a pace faster than they would otherwise. Because of the quicker feedback and approval voting doing a better job of capturing candidate support, I believe this to likely be true. And to the degree that this is true in enacting better policies, many policies have carryover benefits that go well into the future.
I’m not sure I understood the question on supply and demand-side politics.
P.S. I accidentally added this as a main thread reply. Sorry about that.