Hi Aaron, thanks for highlighting this. We inadvertently published an older version of the write-up before your feedback—this has been corrected now. However, there are still a number of areas in the revised version which I expect you’ll still take issue with, so I wanted to share a bit of perspective on this. I think it’s excellent you brought up this disagreement in a comment, and would encourage people to form their own opinion.
First, for a bit of context, my grant write-ups are meant to accurately reflect my thought process, including any reservations I have about a grant. They’re not meant to present all possible perspectives—I certainly hope that donors use other data points when making their decisions, including of course CES’s own fundraising materials.
My understanding is you have two main disagreements with the write-up: that I understate CES’s ability to have an impact on the federal level, and that the cost effectiveness is lower than you believe to be true.
On the federal level, my updated write-up acknowledges that “CES may be able to have influence at the federal level by changing state-level voting rules on how senators and representatives are elected. This is not something they have accomplished yet, but would be a fairly natural extension of the work they have done so far.” However, I remain skeptical regarding the Presidential general for the reasons stated: it’ll remain effectively a two-candidate race until a majority of electoral college votes can be won by approval voting. I do not believe you ever addressed that concern.
Regarding the cost effectiveness, I believe your core concern was that we included your total budget as a cost, whereas much of your spending is allocated towards longer-term initiatives that do not directly win a present-day approval voting campaign. This was intended as a rough metric—a more careful analysis would be needed to pinpoint the cost effectiveness. However, I’m not sure that such an analysis would necessarily give a more favorable figure. You presumably went after jurisdictions where winning approval voting reform is unusually easy; so we might well expect your cost per vote to increase in future. If you do have any internal analysis to share on that then I’m sure I and others would be interested to see it.
Hi Aaron, thanks for highlighting this. We inadvertently published an older version of the write-up before your feedback—this has been corrected now. However, there are still a number of areas in the revised version which I expect you’ll still take issue with, so I wanted to share a bit of perspective on this. I think it’s excellent you brought up this disagreement in a comment, and would encourage people to form their own opinion.
First, for a bit of context, my grant write-ups are meant to accurately reflect my thought process, including any reservations I have about a grant. They’re not meant to present all possible perspectives—I certainly hope that donors use other data points when making their decisions, including of course CES’s own fundraising materials.
My understanding is you have two main disagreements with the write-up: that I understate CES’s ability to have an impact on the federal level, and that the cost effectiveness is lower than you believe to be true.
On the federal level, my updated write-up acknowledges that “CES may be able to have influence at the federal level by changing state-level voting rules on how senators and representatives are elected. This is not something they have accomplished yet, but would be a fairly natural extension of the work they have done so far.” However, I remain skeptical regarding the Presidential general for the reasons stated: it’ll remain effectively a two-candidate race until a majority of electoral college votes can be won by approval voting. I do not believe you ever addressed that concern.
Regarding the cost effectiveness, I believe your core concern was that we included your total budget as a cost, whereas much of your spending is allocated towards longer-term initiatives that do not directly win a present-day approval voting campaign. This was intended as a rough metric—a more careful analysis would be needed to pinpoint the cost effectiveness. However, I’m not sure that such an analysis would necessarily give a more favorable figure. You presumably went after jurisdictions where winning approval voting reform is unusually easy; so we might well expect your cost per vote to increase in future. If you do have any internal analysis to share on that then I’m sure I and others would be interested to see it.
Hi Adam,
I think your response fairly addresses the concerns I initially raised, and I appreciate your effort there. Thank you for the delicate response.