A SIMPLE RECIPE FOR ELECTIONS
Approval Voting is an easy system for people to adapt to, writes Alex Boston.
Election reform is in the air, and like many, I have an idea of how to improve the current first-past-the-post system. I once testified to a citizens’ assembly in British Columbia when they considered modifying it. Alas (from my point of view), they went for another idea, which itself failed to secure enough votes to alter anything.
The system that I favour is called Approval Voting. The idea is that one takes a ballot and then votes, not just for one candidate, but for any and all candidates that one would approve of as one’s representative to Parliament. Thus, if one liked the Green Party candidate, the NDP candidate, and a well-spoken independent candidate, for example, one could vote for all three of them by putting the usual “X” beside their names. (The voter would not be allowed to vote for the same candidate more than once, mind you!) As with FPTP, the candidate with the most votes would win.
So what are the advantages of Approval Voting? For one thing, it is simple. It is simple to vote, it is simple to count the vote, and it is simple to understand how the votes are counted. This last is important, as the public should be able to work out where their votes went. I think that the proposal to change the voting system in B.C. to the Single Transferable Vote system failed, at least in part, because some people found it difficult to know how their votes would be counted.
Another advantage of Approval Voting is that it is completely backwards-compatible. If someone wishes to vote and does not know how Approval Voting works, they could vote the old FPTP way, for only one candidate. Even in the information age, there are people, if our electoral system is changed, that will not hear about the new way to vote. I would hate to think that some voters’ ballots would be spoiled simply because they did not know about a new voting system.
A third advantage of Approval Voting is that it helps to prevent votesplitting, which occurs if, for example, a majority vote is split between two or more fairly similar candidates, allowing a minority vote to prevail. With approval voting this is far less likely: If, for example, two candidates are so similar that vote-splitting would be an issue in the FPTP system, AV voters would likely vote for both candidates.
Approval Voting also allows one to tailor one’s vote. If one is concerned only about one issue, one could vote for those candidates that favour that issue. If on the other hand, one would be happy with anyone except one particular candidate, then one could vote for everyone except that candidate. One’s bar of approval is personal to each voter, who would best determine which of the candidates meet that voter’s standards.
This leads to the question of what would happen if you voted for all of the candidates? In that case, you would have indicated that you approve of all of them, with no expressed preference. In effect, you would cancel out your own vote.
I do not claim that the AV system solves all electoral problems. For those who favour Proportional Representation, the AV system still retains ridings. And there are those who would want a more fine-grained way of determining which candidate one favours than simply “yes” or “no,” such as an ordering system (first, second, third choice, et cetera) or even a rating system (on a scale of 1 to 10 for each candidate, perhaps).
That said, if electoral reform is to convince the public, then whatever system is put forward as a candidate to replace FPTP should be simple to explain, as well as an improvement over FPTP. I believe that Approval Voting meets those criteria.