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Range voting
A few readers asked me to discuss range voting. Wikipedia defines it as following:
Range voting (also called ratings summation, average voting, cardinal ratings, score voting, 0–99 voting, or the score system or point system) is a voting system for one-seat elections under which voters score each candidate, the scores are added up, and the candidate with the highest score wins. Range voting was used in all public elections in Ancient Sparta in the form of measuring how loud the crowd shouted for different candidates.[1] Approval voting can be considered to be range voting with only 2 levels (approved (1) and disapproved (0)).
The main question to get out of your head is whether or not range voting satisfies Arrow's Impossibility Theorem. (In fact it doesn't, most forms of range voting violate the independence of irrelevant alternatives, but don't worry about that!). There's no major reason why a democratic system should follow all of Arrow's axioms as defined across universal domain, which means you have to rule out the very possibility of paradoxes. Can anyone do that? No, not even when you're deciding which book to read next. (But should you stop reading? No.) We do, however, care if the system can:
1. Deliver decent economic growth and an acceptable level of civil liberties.
2. Build consensus and legitimacy going forward, and
3. Toss out the truly bad politicians.
Ideally, we'd even like:
4. The democratic process itself educates people, raises the level of discourse, and makes for a better society.
On those counts, it is not clear what advantage range voting brings over either a two-party winner-take-all system or some form of proportional representation. Do we really need to count the preference intensity of voters? That could sooner be harmful in extreme situations. Do we really need to teach voters complicated aggregation systems? The relatively well-educated Germans used a "vote twice but ultimately only the party vote counts" form of PR and for decades most of them never understood it and now they are changing it, finally.
Most countries don't use range voting. Ireland and Tasmania have had some experience with the Single Transferable Vote (STV) system. What happens is that a bunch of candidates run for each post, party identification is weak, and reps emphasize constituency service. That's probably the major dominant effect, namely that most systems of range voting weaken political parties.
The bottom line: Range voting is a solution in search of a problem. The main problems with democracy include poorly informed, irrational, and short-term voters and politicians. Range voting doesn't cure any of those and arguably by weakening party affiliation it makes some of them worse.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on November 12, 2009 at 07:45 AM in Political Science | Permalink
Comments
I don't think it violates Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives; rather, I think it doesn't meet the preconditions of Arrow's theorem.
To me the issue is (a) how complicated the system is and (b) the likelihood that people will falsify the intensity of their preferences. I can think of candidates I would have liked less than Obama and candidates I would have liked more than McCain, but there would have been no incentive for me to give, say, 25 points to Obama and 75 to McCain; that would be equivalent to throwing away half of my vote.
Posted by: DF at Nov 12, 2009 8:22:59 AM
"The main problems with democracy include poorly informed, irrational, and short-term voters and politicians."
Corruption, extortion, factionalism, street violence, tribal and civil warfare, and repression say "hi". Why do smart people seem to limit their definition of democracy to Western Europe, the US and Canada?
Posted by: josh at Nov 12, 2009 8:30:27 AM
Have we all been so taken in by the libertarian anti-democracy movement that we forget to add another desirable function about a democratic system:
5. Represents people's views about economic and social policies?
Posted by: Millian at Nov 12, 2009 8:36:55 AM
"That's probably the major dominant effect, namely that most systems of range voting weaken political parties."
That wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. But large, powerful PAC's would likely rise up in their place, negating any real gain. There would probably be a lot more jockeying for position going on, which is the secret reason politigeeks are interested in different voting schemes.
Posted by: Aaron at Nov 12, 2009 8:40:17 AM
Apologies for my lack of clarity in posting above. What I'm saying is that a two-party system, with which Tyler seems more than comfortable, can shoehorn voter preferences into bundles which need not represent a coherent agenda at all.
The American eastern working class, choosing between big-business Republicans and bien pensant Democrats, is symptomatic of this problem. In a non-winner take all system, they can establish their own party. In the United States, they have to either vote for things that really aren't in their interests or effectively disenfranchise themselves by choosing a third party which will not hold a balance of power.
This is undoubtedly a problem that we'd resolve if we could, but looking at the uber-instrumental four criteria presented by Tyler, it doesn't seem to matter. And why would it, when he sees human irrationality (after Caplan and most of the economics profession) as a problem to be solved rather than as a facet of humanity?
Posted by: Millian at Nov 12, 2009 8:45:48 AM
It certainly would promote the possible emergence of a third, more centrist party. One big issue we have in this country is the pandering to the wings of the parties. That's a result of the specific number - 2 - of parties. If there was uniform interest in the primary process across the political spectrum, it would not be a problem, but in fact the interest is concentrated in the wings.
Posted by: Mesa at Nov 12, 2009 8:53:56 AM
What are the Germans changing?
Tim, Frankfurt
Posted by: TimK at Nov 12, 2009 8:56:39 AM
Great post. My concern also is that a party which is more heterogenous has a problem of fragmentation with small candidates running against it as against a party which is more homogenous, which may be a minority, but which could nevertheless win. Think Perot against George Bush. Think any urban area where there are racial minorities, religious groups, etc.
Posted by: Bill at Nov 12, 2009 9:15:51 AM
In states like Connecticut where there are already more unaffiliated voters than voters aligned with either party, I doubt approval voting could adversely weaken party affiliation more than the current system. In CT, voters have in effect said that avoiding a strict ideology is more important than the perverting results of primaries left to strongly-affiliated members. As an unaffiliated voter in CT, I’d like to be able to vote for the best candidate without hurting the outcome of the best candidate-I-think-could-win.
Posted by: jdc at Nov 12, 2009 9:17:10 AM
I would disagree with the comment that it would result in centrist candidates. More likely, it would result in contests between the extremes with a divided middle.
Posted by: Bill at Nov 12, 2009 9:17:34 AM
"The relatively well-educated Germans used a "vote twice but ultimately only the party vote counts" form of PR and for decades most of them never understood it and now they are changing it, finally."
In 2008 the German constitutional court ruled the rules for allocating seats unconstitutional because they can produce "negative weight" for votes (i.e. you loose seats by gaining votes).
This sounds pretty horrible, but it has never changed the outcome of an election (i.e. the ruling party). Most Germans prefer this system even as-is to first-past-the-post elections like in Britain and Canada because it is easy to understand how those can produce large majorities for parties that have less than 50% of the vote. (Don't get me wrong - this is an acquired taste...)
Negative weights are a result of the rather arcane rules of allocating votes. While the German system is very complicated, I think part of this is just inherent in PR - just try explaining the D'Hont method.
Since we are talking about Germany, my guess is that we'll come up with some pretty arcane fixes to the arcane rules and those surely won't amount to "changing the system".
Posted by: kai* at Nov 12, 2009 9:29:58 AM
You're inevitably going to have parties; the question is how many you have and what they do. Instead of having to vot for the lesser of two evils, or,say, twelve parties each jockeying for the top slot, perhaps we could have parties aiming for Cabinet positions / single major policy positions. If I wanted to vote for, say "protect privacy, legalize grass, pursue the war, free trade", I could.
If you wanted to take it further, you could dream about putting expected per-capita costs next to each ballot choice.
Posted by: Laserlight at Nov 12, 2009 9:40:55 AM
Just as an aside: I think you somewhat misrepresent the German system as much as the intended changes. (Not that anyone cares around here likely, but still.) The problem any change is trying to address is precisely that in some situations not only the party vote but also the candidate vote change the makeup of parliament as a whole.
Posted by: Firionel at Nov 12, 2009 9:44:19 AM
On the voting rules front, St. Paul Minnesota just passed a referendum implementing instant runoff of voting. In the system you rank the candidates in preference order. It isn't range voting though because the winner isn't decided by adding up points, but by eliminating candidates in rounds. see Wikipedia for more info. Minneapolis and St. Paul have adopted it as has San Fransisco.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting
Posted by: Stephen at Nov 12, 2009 9:47:16 AM
No, the main problem with democracy is that in a 2-party system, the political class can easily form a cartel against the taxpayers. Both parties can commit to an ever larger, more expensive and intrusive government -- but differ slightly in the implementation details, and yell at each other lot.
The only hope for the taxpayer is be a third-party candidate, but the winner-take-all system makes that nigh impossible. If voters were allowed to rank the candidates 1-2-3, there would be real change. Which is why you will never see it here.
Posted by: Jim at Nov 12, 2009 10:03:38 AM
Tyler wrote:
There's no major reason why a democratic system should follow all of Arrow's axioms as defined across universal domain...
I think the major reason is, "The axioms all sounded perfectly innocuous and reasonable when Arrow first dreamed them up, since his original intent was just to rule out all the self-evidently undesirable voting procedures and focus on the sensible ones."
And then when Arrow realized he had just ruled out every possible voting procedure, people moved the goalposts.
If it were called Arrow's Reasonability Criteria, I think social democrats would be citing it all over the place to justify their desired reforms, just like they use Pareto Optimality. But since Arrow's axioms should have been a game ender, out the window they go.
(NOTE: I am relying on the history of Arrow and his impossibility theorem as a professor recounted it orally at NYU. If the above is a legend, my apologies.)
Posted by: Bob Murphy at Nov 12, 2009 10:21:00 AM
Wouldn't cardinal voting collapse into what we have now because voters would lie?
On a scale of 1-100, my preferences last year were Obama 3, McCain 15. I would have voted Obama 0, McCain 100 becuase I liked him better.
That's just like me voting for McCain in our current system?
Posted by: dave smith at Nov 12, 2009 10:25:49 AM
"it is not clear what advantage range voting brings over either a two-party winner-take-all system"
I can't disagree strongly enough. I can think of many advantages.
1. The single, biggest advantage I can think of is THIRD PARTIES actually getting a shot at winning an election.
2. Voters can actually vote honestly, and don't have to vote "strategically" by voting for the lesser of two evils.
3. Parties cannot entrench themselves in power (as the Democrats and Republicans have done since before the Civil War).
4. Americans don't have to fit themselves into one of two buckets, but can express their true preferences at the ballot box.
5. There would no longer be any "safe" districts, and politicians would face real competition in every election.
6. No spoiler effects.
7. The centrist candidate not only can win, but pretty much always does.
Let's look at your criteria:
1. Deliver decent economic growth and an acceptable level of civil liberties.
2. Build consensus and legitimacy going forward, and
3. Toss out the truly bad politicians.
4. The democratic process itself educates people, raises the level of discourse, and makes for a better society.
Re #1, I don't see how RV can result in less economic growth, and the current two Parties often abuses our civil liberties in order to entrench their own power; see: http://blog.heritage.org/2009/10/20/the-politicization-of-justice-kinston-north-carolina/
Re #2, RV is clearly superior at building a consensus candidate. It's not even close. This is just mathematics too, not my opinion; see http://rangevoting.org/AppCW.html
Re #3, RV is clearly superior at tossing out bad politicians. There's actually a way for the WORST candidate to win given our current political system given that multiple good candidates can crowd each other out by competing for the same votes.
Re #4, RV is again superior. Right now most people don't have to think at all when voting - they vote Party line. In an RV system where you have to assign a relative score to each of the candidates you are actually required to enough about them to do this.
I think the summary conclusion on this post couldn't be more wrong. We have real problems in this country already, and RV can be the solution to them. Not the entire solution, but a big part of it.
Posted by: Brock at Nov 12, 2009 10:25:58 AM
dave smith: You're right, range voting usually collapses to approval voting, but that's not the same as our current system. For example, if there are 3 candidates, you can vote 100 for two of them and 0 for the third.
Posted by: Peter de Blanc at Nov 12, 2009 10:31:03 AM
Funny. All I can think of is two wolves and a sheep voting on dinner.
All these pie in the sky voting systems people come up with are their attempts at finding a system they think they can game in order to acquire power over everyone else.
Posted by: Yancey Ward at Nov 12, 2009 10:45:05 AM
Voters can actually vote honestly, and don't have to vote "strategically" by voting for the lesser of two evils.
I'm not sure that's right.
Suppose you strongly favor X, can tolerate Y, and hate Z. How do you vote? Obviously, Z gets zero, but what's the X/Y split? 100-0? Any share you give Y risks Z beating X.
But what if X is a serious underdog? Remember, the Spartans didn't have public opinion surveys (I think). There is is still a strong temptation to vote for Y, the lesser evil, to keep Z from winning.
STV lets you vote for X as #1 and Y as #2 without worrying about this. I live in Cambridge, here we use STV. It's not without problems, including complexity, but it does let you vote for your preferred candidate without effectively wasting your vote if your candidate is not popular.
Posted by: Bernard Yomtov at Nov 12, 2009 10:47:00 AM
I stopped reading at "and an acceptable level of civil liberties."
Once part of endeavor is to consider depriving us of civil liberties, the entire thought experiment has been corrupted by tyranny.
Civil liberties aren't a "cost constraint to efficiency." They are a necessary condition for efficiency.
I will grant Tyler the benefit of the doubt in that he may have phrased it that way to acknoweldge those people who believe in civil non-liberties such as "the right to a living wage" or "the right to a smoke-free environment."
Posted by: Ryan at Nov 12, 2009 10:50:22 AM
Hmm. I didn't think I said anything objectionable, but perhaps I'll rephrase:
In my OPINION, a full array of civil liberties is what is required, not just "a decent leve."
Furthermore, in the American system the Framers were clear that what they did not want was "to build consensus," but rather "to establish Rule of Law," i.e. clear, fair, and just guidelines that people could operate under (and even disagree!). Think about the consensus among voters in the USSR for example...
Sorry if I offended with my earlier comment. Unintended. Too much von Mises leads a person to adopt his method of speaking, which is caustic.
Posted by: Ryan at Nov 12, 2009 10:56:03 AM
Most German city/county council elections already use a voting system similar to range voting called 'cumulative voting': you have, say, 20 points and can give up to 3 points to any candidate (or if you don't know them, you can just give all 20 to a party which will allocate it to the top spots on their party list). This is a good compromise as it prevents much of the potential for gaming the vote, and gives a good chance for independent candidates.
However, it is more suitable for the election of a larger council/senate, rather than the election of one single president/governor.
Posted by: Marton H at Nov 12, 2009 11:03:35 AM
wouldn't any rational voter just give maximum value to the candidate he prefers, and zero to any other candidate who might in any way be considered a threat to that candidate? any other split and he's just working to neutralize his own vote.
Posted by: Azazello at Nov 12, 2009 11:07:27 AM
