HB240, the bill in the New Hampshire state house to enact approval voting, has failed to pass, having been deemed "Inexpedient to Legislate."
Apparently, some of the same state representatives who shot down Dr. Steven Brams' original push for approval voting in the state back in the 70s are still in the house, and did not find any of the research performed since 2000 persuasive.
I can only hope that this does not deter the approval voting advocates. Perhaps, given more time, they can persuade more of their colleagues of the system's benefits.
Or maybe it'd be best to push for the use of a modified form of IRV that essentially uses a limited form of approval voting in the first stage that determines the three finalists?
ReplyDeleteThen you could co-opt the rhetorical strategies of FairVote that have tilted the playing field for single-seated elections in favor of IRV... Rather than attacking IRV, you could be "fixing" IRV and reducing the expected vote-counting time.
It's something to consider. I wonder how much the BR would be at if one compared FPP, IRV3, IRV3+(as described above), and AV3(you can only approve of at most three candidates) and AV.
dlw
I hope it doesn't either. Reform movements rarely (if ever) achieve victory on the first (or second, or third....) try, so hopefully they'll simply organize stronger the next round.
ReplyDelete