Beyond RCV: Zachary Westfall on Approval Voting & True Majority Rule

Duration: 3:56 491 transcript words EN summary

Video summary

The core argument presented in this discussion centers on redefining the fundamental purpose of an election beyond a simple competition between opposing groups. Instead of viewing elections merely as contests where candidates fight to defeat rivals within specific sections of their constituency, the goal should be to identify a single leader capable of representing and guiding everyone in that community. Traditional systems often reduce democratic choice to finding whoever can secure just over fifty percent support by appealing passionately to half the voters while ignoring or actively opposing the other half. This approach treats representation as a zero-sum game where winning is defined solely by beating others, rather than measuring who truly serves the best interests of the entire population. To address this limitation, the transcript introduces approval voting as a superior alternative that shifts the focus from defeating opponents to earning broad consensus. In systems like St. Louis, Missouri utilizes, voters are free to approve multiple candidates they find acceptable or supportive, effectively measuring each candidate's overall popularity and ability to represent diverse viewpoints. This method incentivizes politicians to reach out across ideological divides rather than narrowing their appeal to a specific base that can simply overpower the opposition in a head-to-head race. By selecting as many candidates as possible who align with voter preferences, approval voting ensures that only those with high levels of general support advance to later stages, filtering out polarizing figures who might win under traditional plurality rules but lack genuine broad backing. The ultimate conclusion drawn is that true majority rule requires more than a minimal threshold of fifty-one percent; it demands a leader who can command the respect and cooperation of as many people as possible without relying on strong objections from nearly half the electorate. When elections are structured to reward candidates with high approval ratings rather than just those who can mobilize a passionate minority, the resulting leadership is better suited to unite diverse groups under common goals. This system transforms the electoral process into an exercise in finding the most capable and representative leader for everyone, ensuring that elected officials have earned their position through widespread endorsement rather than mere tactical victory over specific opponents.

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The point of an election is to find the person who's going to lead a group of people, not one team within that group of people, not one section of that group of people. These competitions between candidates tend to basically become competitions between groups of voters within wherever they live. But the leader, the person who gets elected is elected to lead everybody. And we should be looking for the person who is best suited to do that. And having the candidates all just fight each other is not the best measure of who represents everybody in a town or state or country. With most election systems, what you find is in the nature of a competition, if you have 51% of the people who love you, who think you're amazing, that's all that matters because by definition, you can beat everybody else in a one-on-one competition. So, if we're looking for the candidate who can beat all the other candidates, at best, what we're looking for is somebody who has the passionate support of 51% of the people because that's it. That's all you need. I mean, if you get more than that, you got lucky. I don't think 51% is good enough for representation. And I certainly don't think it should be the ceiling. That's not even the minimum. That's that's the ceiling. We're saying that is if you've got that then you're good. And a person who has the passionate support of 51% of the people potentially over the strong objection of 49% of the people is not somebody who is qualified to lead everybody in that constituency. They're just not. There are other ways of choosing your leader. But because we think of elections as a competition, we don't even look at stuff like that. I mean, most people don't. Some places they do. St. Louis, Missouri, for example, has that exact system. A system where you come in and you look for more, for better, for somebody who represents more than just half the people plus one. They have a system where everybody runs. It's a nonpartisan primary election and they use approval voting which means you get to pick as many different people as you want. What you're measuring there is the approval rating of a candidate. Something we measure all the time. We talk all the time about somebody's approval rating. Well, this is saying who are the candidates who have the highest approval ratings, who represent the greatest number of people, and then those people run off in a general election. The final election is between the people who are approved of who have the highest approval ratings, the greatest number of people. When you do that, the consequence is that a person isn't incentivized to just get the support, the passionate support of half the voters. They're incentivized to reach out and represent every single person, as many people as possible.