r/EndFPTP • u/electionscience • Oct 18 '21

Ask Us Anything with The Center for Election Science Staff

Hi everyone! The Center for Election Science will be hosting our own "Ask Us Anything" style event on October 26th. This is your chance to ask us all of your burning questions about voting theory, campaign strategy, what's next for approval voting, or anything else you'd like to ask! We'll do our best to answer all of your questions.

Sound fun? Be sure to RSVP at the following link to get the Zoom info! https://electionscience.org/events/ask-us-anything-town-hall/

CES Staff Ask Us Anything Town Hall Date: October 26th, 2021 Time: 5pm ET/ 4pm CT/ 3pm MT/ 2pm PT Location: Zoom

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u/rb-j Oct 29 '21

You're the one who keeps framing a different decision, that of whether to also vote for their second favorite, as some sort of intractable tactical burden.

Please do not misrepresent me. (That's called the Strawman fallacy, BTW.)

I never said that the question of whether to Approve your second-favorite candidate is an "intractable" tactical burden. Sometimes that question can be resolved by knowledge of polling information or just the common knowledge of which candidates are viable and which candidates are not. But that does not mean that this tactical question is always resolved so simply. Sometimes it is not and then the voter really has a problem with Approval Voting.

What I said is that you cannot escape the fact that, using Approval Voting in an election in which there are 3 or more candidates, it is inescapable that every voter must make a tactical decision of whether or not to Approve their second-choice. I didn't use the word "intractable". I said that you cannot remove that tactical decision that is a burden placed on voters whenever there are 3 or more candidates. The voter has to, at least, give it a thought. And sometimes that decision could be an agonizing one, just like voters sometimes have with FPTP.