Actually it’s an enlarged edition of my booklet called “The Arithmetic of Voting.” I’ve given it a new title, “Approval Voting,” partly because that’s what it’s really about, and partly because the earlier essay called “The Arithmetic of Voting” is now just the beginning. There are several added chapters:
– A selection of examples of the acute need for Approval Voting – elections in which sides were split and voters suffered the “voter’s dilemma,” often resulting in a less-approved winner.
– Countries and times where Approval Voting was actually used, though it didn’t get that name until 1977. There are more and larger instances than I had realized.
– A comparison with the more complicated reform that was rejected in the British referendum of 2011.
– People in America who are campaigning for Approval Voting.
– Some examples of how exit polls reveal the way people would vote if they were allowed to vote by this freer rule.
To see the details, click “Publications” in the menu at the top, or, equivalently, go to
https://www.universalworkshop.com/
Then scroll down to find “Approval Voting.”
But wait! – while you’re looking at that main “Publications” screen you could play a game I’ve just discovered. Not as important a discovery as Approval Voting, but quite engrossing. You can alternately enlarge and reduce the sixe of what you’re looking at by pressing the “control” key on your keyboard (“command” on a Mac) with the plus or minus keys; or on an iPad you can do it with your fingers. And as you do it to this web page (which was made with a “plug-in” called Huge-IT) you’ll see the books shuffling into different places – flying around like leaves in a breeze. The Fluttergame!
That’s why I wanted you to go to the “Approval Voting” page by this two-step route, but you can also go there directly.
https://www.universalworkshop.com/approval-voting/
Some of the other leaves in the breeze have changed, because, besides “Approval Voting,” I have done new editions of “The Spiral Library” and “Plurry” (my imaginary musical instrument). While I was doing this I was surprised to remember that a prototype Plurry was actually made by Tim Eisele in 1998, and that he said: “I am very pleased with the way it works out. Not only is it equally convenient to play in any key, but the fingering of the chords is greatly simplified…” abd more. Tim, are you still out there?
I’m making new editions, and new publications, by the print-on-demand method, which means that they cost more per copy but can easily be revised, and one doesn’t have to print and warehouse a huge initial number. More are on the way.
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ILLUSTRATIONS in these posts are made with precision but have to be inserted in another format. You may be able to enlarge them on your monitor. One way: right-click, and choose “View image”, then enlarge. Or choose “Copy image”, then put it on your desktop, then open it. On an iPad or phone, use the finger gesture that enlarges (spreading with two fingers, or tapping and dragging with three fingers). I am grateful to know of what methods work for you.
This weblog maintains its right to be about astronomy or anything under the sun.
I’m a member of the US Democratic party. For a long time I was a member of the Green party, which is much closer to my political ideology, but the US and California systems are rigged in such a way that only candidates of the Democratic and Republican parties can get elected to the presidency, congress, and the state legislature. Voting in the Democratic presidential primary is the only real say I have as to who will be elected president. Whichever Democrat wins the nomination will almost certainly win the California general election and therefore receive all of California’s Electoral College votes. Given the huge field of candidates for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, I would love to be able to rank-order my favorite candidates, rather than have to choose the one whose positions I like best and who seems to have the best chance of winning in the general elections.
By the way, the Electoral College was written into the constitution not to protect small states from the tyranny of big states (the Senate serves that dubious purpose), but at the demand of delegates from southern slave-holding states who had huge populations of enslaved people who would not have been eligible to vote in a direct popular election. Each enslaved person counted as three-fifths of a person in allocating electoral votes, thus preventing any chance that northern voters would elect an anti-slavery president.
This essay, “Five myths about the electoral college”, by George C. Edwards III, was published in the Washington Post in 2012:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/five-myths-about-the-electoral-college/2012/11/02/2d45c526-1f85-11e2-afca-58c2f5789c5d_story.html?utm_term=.e82c581e6adf
In the U.S. we have the Electoral College to prevent more populated states from running roughshod over the smaller ones. Now there are elements trying to override the EC in order to thwart the wishes and intentions of the framers of the U.S. Constitution who implemented the EC to level the playing field. The anti-EC group wants to thwart the EC with strange vote swapping deals. One thing’s for sure, without the EC the only states that would see candidates campaigning in them would be CA, NY, TX and FL – in other words only the minimum number of states with enough EC votes to achieve the “270” threshold. That is why “approval voting” — or whatever other name it goes by — will not be accepted by U.S. voters. In the past, the EC has helped the U.S. dodge bullets more than once.
Approval Voting has nothing to do with the issue of the Electoral College. It would be compatible with that system.
Voters in any of those large states could have been allowed to vote for both Gore and Nader, instead of being forced to choose one and thus weaken the other. They would still have been sending electors to the Electoral College.
As for the existing system, one has to point out that it causes candidates to concentrate first on Iowa and New Hampshire.
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I’m so very glad to hear you’ve updated your book! We at the Center for Election Science (https://www.electionscience.org) are celebrating both the cities in the US who have adopted approval voting or are considering it, and the greeks for using it in legislative elections a century ago. I look forward to hearing more of the history you’ve written about.