Our innate tendency is to accept as inevitable even disappointing circumstance when we are accustomed to them. And that surely applies to the two-party duopoly. This limitation on our politics by now seems so familiar that we accept, along with its consequences, it as necessary evils. We concede that there can only be two parties because
that is all we have ever experienced; that limitation even pervades our language, such as in the phrase "the other party". We understand how unfortunate some consequences of duopoly are, but the two party system along with the baggage it carries it just seem unavoidable; we simply dismiss any suggestion that it could be ended. The incorporation of these beliefs into our habits of language even makes it difficult, even hypothetically, to suspend these beliefs.
None of the widely familiar voting system allows us to vote in opposition to candidates. But it does seem that we harbor some dissatisfaction with that limitation when we invent ways to pretend otherwise. Even in primary elections when so often there are many candidates, we still proclaim that we are voting against a candidate when it would be more accurate to say we are voting for one of the other candidates. The notion of "the other candidate" in truth is nonsense when there fails to be exactly two candidates, but so accustomed we are to the two-party system that we protest it by adopting sloppy and inaccurate language. We say what we would prefer in a pretense of denying what is an unpleasant reality. This corruption of language is practiced even when discussing voting systems like ranked voting or approval voting that place a special emphasis on accommodating larger numbers of candidates.
Despite that lip-service of encouraging more candidates, the prominent voting systems all fall short in taking proper account of the baggage that accompanies the two-party system; specifically, with more than two candidates, voters lose the ability oppose candidates. Each of the alternative voting systems simply allow voters to lose that option as they encourage participation by more than two candidates. Should not an alternative voting system correct for this loss of voter expression? Neither ranked voting nor approval voting take that step though they could and they should. And that oversight only serves to perpetuate the two-party duopoly. Attempting to vote against candidates, voters may seek out seemingly clever strategic voting strategies but sadly, such tricks tend to be ineffective and they risk even becoming counterproductive.
Non-support of a candidate should be recognized as distinct from opposition to that candidate; opposition is only one possible reason for failing to support a candidate. Other reasons include unfamiliarity with the candidate, but it may just as well signal ambivalence about the candidate; it may even be accidental, when a voter plans to return to the question but forgets. But none of the three widely promoted voting systems take account of complexity. Instead, thy allow voters to have no way to accurately express opposition to candidates. It is likely that this is simply an oversight by the designers of these voting systems, just as it is likely that the sloppy misuse of words that is so common with these issues contributed to the oversight.
A clear example of this confusion be found in the heading of Critique #3 of an Election Science article on approval voting:
Critique #3: Approval voting is inexpressive because you can only approve or disapprove of any particular candidate.
With approval voting, a voter is asked to indicate which of the many candidates he or she supports. In effect, for each candidate, the voter can only choose between declaring support or withholding that declaration of support; voters have no real opportunity to express disapproval. The winner of the election is the candidate with the most support; when votes are tallied, non-supporting votes are simply ignored. But in Critique #3, withholding support is equated with declaring "disapproval". The author treats what might actually be indifference to or even unfamiliarity with a candidate as a much more active, disapproval of that candidate. A voter who actually thinks of withholding support as and expression of disapproval will be sorely disappointed to learn that in an approval-voting election, such a vote will be simply ignored and in no manner respected as a vote of opposition.
To actually express disapproval, the voter must at least have the third option (abstention) of expressing neither approval nor disapproval. But to become an effective expression of disapproval, disapproval would be counted as equal but opposite from another expression of approval; approval and disapproval must cancel each other when votes are tallied for disapproval votes to truly become instruments of disapproval. Interestingly, our Congress, like most legislative bodies, does use such a system when voting on legislation; members can vote for the bill or against the bill, but they can also abstain (sometimes called "voting present"); the bill will pass only if support votes outnumber opposition votes. But with the notable exception of Latvia, citizen voters are not allowed this important avenue of expression when they vote. Balanced approval voting, not to mention the many other balanced voting systems described in this series, does exactly that and it does promise the end of a two-party duopoly. To be clear, however, balance alone will not guarantee the end of the two-party duopoly; balance is necessary but alone it is not sufficient.
When voters are prevented from expressing opposition to candidates (or even if the opportunity for expressing opposition is restricted) it puts a thumb on the scale to give advantage to particular candidates. In particular, the advantage goes to candidates (usually from the largest political parties) with the greatest public recognition. To see why, notice that negligibly few voters will feel indifferent to a candidate who is a well-known public figure; however, there will likely be many voters who strongly oppose such a candidate. But in these voting systems there is no opportunity to oppose any candidate. If instead, voters had the option of opposition, that would force candidates to be more sensitive to the wishes of all of the voters, not just their own supporters. Fear of converting abstention votes into opposition votes would force candidates to show more respect for the entire population and not just for their own dedicated advocates.
The advantage that favors the largest parties will naturally lead to a two-party duopoly. And the two-party duopoly will in turn lead to democracy-crippling partisanship and to the sponsoring of attack ads. Attack ads, demonizing "the other party", will of course antagonize the members of that other party, but so what? Additional disapproving voters matters little when the voters lack any effective way to express that disapproval. In such a context, candidates worry little about further antagonizing voters because all that matters in the election is the magnitude of support.
The two-party duopoly leads to roughly half of the voters being disappointed in every election and it seems to bring about gridlock in governing. This could lead citizens to give up, drop out and become non-voters. Democracy itself gradually withers away.
We continue to rely mostly on plurality voting. Whenever there are more than two candidates, plurality is a truly pathetic voting system, but plurality voting does perpetuate the two-party system and in that perverse way voters maintain the ability vote against either of the two candidates. That internal consistency and its great simplicity are the two most attractive features of this otherwise unattractive voting system. But it is a system that enforces the two-party duopoly and all the harm that follows from that.
In the United States today, there is considerable enthusiasm for adopting instant-runoff (a.k.a., ranked-choice voting). This is also a quite flawed system of voting), but one which has long been used in Australia, It is illuminating that Australia still retains a two-party system.
A third voting system that has established some interest, though largely in academic circles, is approval voting. These two alternative voting systems (ranked voting and approval voting) enjoy active organizations (Fair Vote and Election Science) to promote them. In contrast, balanced-approval voting has no organization and perhaps due its limited promotion has not gathered much attention.
What raises doubt the ideas in this series of articles on balanced voting may be the challenge presented to the habitual adoption of a familiar pair of ideas. First there is the two-party duopoly and second there is the (consequent) notion that we do have a way to vote against a candidate. But if the two-party system is to be abandoned, it is necessary to provide an alternative way to vote against candidates. Conversely, so long as voters are denied a way to vote in opposition as well as in support of candidates we will continue to be limited to a two-party duopoly.
Through these articles, I've done what I can to spread the word about balanced approval voting, but the the concept seems to require more robust promotion if it is to ever to play a significant role in improving our politics.
