Senators Padraig MacLochlainn and Mary LouMcDonald voting.
(Image by Sinn Fe'in from flickr) Details DMCA
When a legislative body votes on a bill, its members cast votes either Yea or Nay, but a third option is to vote Present instead. Present votes are simply ignored. Generally, when there are more Yea votes than Nay votes then the bill passes, though sometimes a higher threshold is set.
Yea is a vote of support; Nay is a vote of opposition and Present is an abstention. Aside from the transformed language, just how different is this voting system from balanced approval voting (BAV)? It is not difficult to see that this is an example of BAV, though with only a single candidate. Given that limitation, the outcome (pass or not pass) is determined by simply comparing the number of Yea's and Nay's; there is no reason to calculate the net vote.
But the downside of insisting on only a single candidate is that none of the benefits of BAV are realized. This is clearly a blunder. BAV works quite well with numerous candidates and surely there must be a way for a legislature to benefit from this. With more candidates, computing a net score (Yea's minus Nay's) for each candidate would become necessary, but we will show that only two separate votes are needed. And there is a likelihood of producing better legislation.
When a bill is introduced to a legislature, it may face a comprehensive transformation through an amendment process. Traditionally, this happens through a sequence of votes, each vote deciding whether to adopt or reject a proposed amendment. There may be dozens of votes for dozens of proposed amendments but in the end, it sometimes happens that even the legislator who introduced the bill does not support it. The iterative nature of this process itself shares much of the blame for this apparent disfunction.
Whether by accident or by design, an amendment adopted early in this process may preempt another amendment from being considered later. One way this may happen is because the two amendments are so similar that the second becomes moot; but often it is because the later amendment conflicts with another that has already been adopted. If the order of introduction of two conflicting proposals were reversed, it could surely have been the other amendment that was adopted. When the two amendments conflict with each other, this seemingly accidental swapping can induce a major change in the effects of a bill. Clearly, it is a significant advantage to introduce an amendment early. In turn this his places undue power in the hands of whoever establishes the schedule. But no matter which order occurs, some legislators will become frustrated at being unable introduce the amendment they prefer.
Legislators may be denied the opportunity even to vote for a bill they would have supported and, feeling wronged in some way, these legislators may turn against passage of the bill. Another concern about this procedure is that it is all too easy for legislators to focus on the details of individual amendments while paying too little attention to the overall impact on the bill. Finally, it is worth considering whether amendments introduced late in the process are the very ones that benefit from greater consideration. If so, it seems clear that this iterative process favors the proposals that are the least thoroughly assessed.
A different procedure could provide some important advantages. For this alternative procedure, amendments would be introduced and debated first, before there is any voting. Then, a single BAV election would ask legislators to express, in a single session of voting, to specify, Yea, Nay or Present, regarding each of the proposed amendments. Tradition-loving legislators would be free to continue voting Yea or Nay rather than support or oppose but the net vote for each amendment would be computed as the Yea count minus the Nay count and amendments that fail to receive a positive net vote would be removed from further consideration. Notice that with this BAV vote, an amendment gains no advantage by being introduced first. Legislators are asked to weigh conflicting amendments against one another and vote accordingly with the choice determined on perceived merit rather than on which alternative was introduced first.
The first vote would reduce, perhaps quite significantly, the number of amendments that remain under consideration. The clearly poor amendments will be rejected. But still, it is entirely possible for there to remain amendments that conflict with others. Further deliberation and another BAV vote would be required to further refine the remaining amendments and use a compatible assortment of amendments.
In preparation for the second vote, a legislator could submit a list showing which of the remaining amendments would be included. That selection would serve to define a bill to serve as one candidate for the second BAV vote. In general, several legislators would likely propose competing bills, defined by their alternative lists of amendments. A second round of debate would ensue, enforcing focus and discussion on the relative merits of these proposed bills. Ultimately, the second (and final) BAV election would be held to determine which of the candidate bills is the most widely favored by the legislature. Provided the net vote for that candidate bill is positive (or some stronger requirement might be set) then that bill would pass out of that chamber of the legislature.
As with other BAV elections, individuals may find several of the bills acceptable and vote Yea for them (making clear a considered degree of willingness to compromise). And, of course, individual legislators may, at the same time, vote Nay regarding several other of the competing bills. The bill with the larges net vote is the bill most favored by the legislature; provided that the net support for that bill is positive, that is the bill that will pass from that chamber of the legislature. If that bill does not receive a positive net vote then no bill is passed.
As with the first vote, this second one makes the order of introduction irrelevant. Would this process take longer than the traditional one? Perhaps, but votes can be time-consuming and with this revised process, only two votes need be taken, certainly never dozens. The strategy of introducing a poison-pill amendment designed to undermine subsequent amendments would become ineffective. And the second vote would force legislators to consider the various proposed bills with respect to their overall impact.
It does seem likely that the legislation produced would improve with the adoption of this altered process.
