Thanks for this — having been soaking in political theory and history of late (in part to make sense of this election!) I feel I have a deeper appreciation for the kind of Catch-22 problem that electoral reform really represents: you probably don’t get there unless the political process is already contested in some way, but if it’s contested in some way then how do you build the consensus required to change the process…! And as someone whose day job has meandered further towards data science, I’m also more acutely aware than ever of the difficulty of trying to convince anyone that a mathematical model is “correct” much less “fair” — and when you really get down to the detail view of looking at the game theory behind different electoral systems, it very quickly becomes a rabbit hole where even highly-qualified statisticians find room to disagree. So, a paradox: how do we create a system that can be shown to be mathematically “moral” (for lack of a better word…) to a citizenry, the majority of which would be hard-pressed to understand the math or agree with the idea that morality can even be bounded or maintained by such mathematics?!

The Approval Voting concept you linked is very compelling because it has the potential to bypass getting bogged down in mathematical quibbles because of its strong intuitive appeal. It’s also additive vs. subtractive, which feels like it could really fit the need here in the U.S. where there’s a sense that there is still some real gravity around a 2 major party system but not quite enough flexibility to allow a kind of “creative destruction” if you will *within* those parties of the type that fundamentally changes them or splinters them… much like we’re seeing in this election with the tension between Clinton’s “Establishment” perspective (which is a bit hilarious, because 40 years ago she was lambasted as one of those ‘crazy radical idealist’ scions of the 60s…) and Bernie’s farther-Left social democratic platform — which, having lived through it also, reminds me a lot of the Nader-Gore split in 2000. That one worked out disastrously for the planet, so I’m really hoping to avoid that situation this time around… which puts me in the ironic place of realizing the old adage is true: I am “becoming my parents” and waggling my finger at the young, hot-headed radicals who want to uproot the whole system overnight and start from scratch… i.e., myself in my youth ;) Oh, life…

This also has the consequence of leading me to place a bet more on the bottom-up method than the top-down. Start small, get real results, and use those as a more powerful form of argument than theory. Also fits the “agile vs. waterfall” mentality that is now culturally dominant, and the Enlightenment tradition of grounding theory in experience. The other thing I like about it is its “twofer” effect: we really sorely need to get people more involved at those smaller, local, “unsexy” levels of civic participation again — and election reform is a great way to draw interest in a way that ultimately relates to all levels but can start closer to home, where I think most people might be astonished to find out how much of a voice we really can have in our local communities and their governance.

Thanks again — look forward to moving forward :)