Dartmouth adopted approval voting in 1990
to fill vacancies as they arose on its "Board of Trustees."
[Dartmouth has 18 trustees. The procedure during 1990-2007 was
for them to be elected in single-winner
elections when a vacancy needs to be filled,
from 3 nominees selected by Council, plus however many more satisfy
petition requirements.]
But as of 2007 , it appears from this report (pdf)
that Dartmouth is about to abandon it to go back to plurality voting.
Why?
Well, frankly, the reasons given in the report make no sense to us, and some of the claims there
are false:
Page 27: "Some colleges ... have incorporated instant runoff...
to prevent the election of candidates with less than a majority of the
vote."
But this is false – instant runoff can
elect a candidate M
despite the fact that large supermajorities of voters prefer C over both M and
every other rival.
Page 6: They complain that "The elections have begun to resemble
modern – and expensive – political campaigns, something 'unheard of in
alumni elections' as the Boston Globe
put it [Marcela Bombardieri: College trustees clash on key values – Dartmouth alumni
funding both sides, 3 April 2007]... mass mailings... advertisements... [one spent]
$75000
on his campaign and he is not alone..."
But approval voting has nothing to do with this, indeed there
is reason to believe
that Approval decreases the importance of cash.
Approval is "confusing."
But it actually is simpler than plurality voting (gets rid of gthe "overvotes are illegal"
rule) and in all experiemnts
with real human voters I am aware of, AV resulted in decreased ballot
spoilage rates.
Page 9. "Some alumni have noted that [approval voting] permits a form of tactical
voting known as 'bullet voting'... under which organized supporters of a
particular candidate are encouraged to vote only for that candidate
and no other."
Huh? So to eliminate the "threat" of "bullet voting," force everyone to
bullet vote and discard their ballots if they do otherwise?!?!
The facts:
"bullet voting" can be not "strategic," but rather a "big mistake";
with approval voting, it always is strategically optimal
to vote your true favorite top,
and in 3-candidate races it always is strategically optimal to cast a vote
consistent with your true preference order;
meanwhile with plurality voting,
voting for your true favorite
can easily be a strategic mistake.
(From Dartmouth math professor Robert Z. Norman)
There was a per voter average of voting for 1.8 candidates.
Hence the proportion of bullet votes had to be fairly small (or else
nearly everyone voted for
one or all three candidates, but not two, which would seem crazy).
Nevertheless, apparently all that made sense to the brilliant individuals making
voting recommendations for Dartmouth. We suspect that the Dartmouth
voters would be less likely to countenance
e.g, abandoning choosing valedictorians via grade-point averages
and switching to "each professor names one student" plurality voting.
(Well, we know they would be less likely, since count the number of years this
system has been operating without any such proposal.) In other words,
range voting
would seem less likely to lead to a backslide.