 Hey everyone, I'm Eric Sanders from the Center for Election Science. I'm here with our President Aaron Hamlin I'm in New York City. Aaron's in Washington, DC. How you doing Aaron? Good. Well, thank you. All right, awesome. So we're very fortunate today because we get to talk about a very important, but maybe potentially easily misunderstood concept in voting theory, the concept of expressiveness. So Aaron, what do we mean when we say how expressive is a voting method? What are we talking about? When we're talking about expressiveness, we're talking about the amount of information and the type of information that's being put on a ballot, which is then translated into a result. Okay, so basically what the ballot is asking the voter to provide? What kind of information? Right, right. So and in general like you mentioned the instructions on the ballot is going to be telling the voter what kind of information that they're asking for. So they're expressiveness and traditionally that's going to be asking the voter to choose one candidate, which is our priority method. But that's not the only way that we can express ourselves. We can express ourselves in other ways depending on what type of ballot that we have. So different voting methods offer voters more expressiveness than just asking them to pick one candidate? Yeah, absolutely. And in fact choosing one candidate is about the bare minimum as far as expressiveness goes. So what are some other ways that we can express ourselves? What are some other examples? Well another way would be to choose as many candidates as you want, as you approve of. Okay, and that's approval voting, right? Right, right. You could rank candidates. That's another way. We call that instant runoff voting, one of the most common names, right? Well, instant runoff voting is a type of ranking method. There's condorsay methods, there's border count, all different types of those. Gotcha. But I'll ask you to rank candidates. And then what, there's another way too, right, that we like. Right, right. And another way is called score voting, which is you giving your opinion, you're expressing yourself with all the different candidates. And so there would be a scale and you would score a candidate on the given scale and you would do that for each individual candidate. So that's really as expressive as a gift because you're providing a lot of information there. Okay, so I get the different voting methods by asking for different types and amounts of information from the voter are more or less expressive, with probability being like the least expressive and let's say score being the most expressive, right? Right, right. So, and now you have a nice analogy. Can you share that with us in terms of what expressiveness might look like? Sure, sure. Well, one analogy that I've used before is that of a sketch artist. So we'll imagine a scenario where we're saying that you have a loved one that's missing and for this example, we'll say it your way. So here you go down to the police station and you file a report, they take you down the hall and they introduce you to the sketch artist. And here we have that sketch artist embody probability voting. So the sketch artist in this situation would go and ask you, okay, well, tell me the best physical feature about your wife. Okay, so he just asked you for one, pick one thing. Right, right. So, and like if in this case, what would you, what would you respond? I guess I'd say her eyes. Her eyes, okay. So you would be describing her eyes in the switch and you would say their color, maybe their sparkle. And, but that would be it. So you might start to go on wanting to provide your information, but the sketch artist, he would stop you. Right, that's it. That's it. No more. That's all you can, that's all you can tell me. Just the eyes. I got it. I got it. I got a great picture. I know what you want, right? Right, right. And so you would, you would get a picture at the end of this. Right. So the sketch artist turns the picture around. And what does this picture look like? It looks like floating eyeballs. Okay, floating eyeballs. So plurality aka vote for one gives us a very, when we say inaccurate representation of the wishes of the voter, a very unfull, a very limited perspective? Well, it's, it's going to be the least amount of information possible. So you're getting the bare minimum of information. And whether that information is even an accurate expression, as far as like them being honest about that one choice, like that's, that's another issue. Right, right. Even if they were being honest, it's still very, it's a bare minimum. So, so for a group of voters, for an electorate, it sounds like what you're saying is different voting methods asking voters to provide more information equals an outcome that is potentially more representative of the overall wishes of the electorate. Is that, is that fair to say? Well, having, you need a more expressive method to have a chance at a good outcome. But having an expressive method doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to have that, that best outcome. Gotcha. But would we say it's a necessary first step towards producing the best, the most accurate representative outcome possible? Absolutely. Because if you're looking for reflection of the expression from your, your electorate, your, your outcome isn't going to be very representative of that expression if the electorate themselves can't offer that information to begin with. Gotcha, right. So, so if we're not asking someone to give input into all of the candidates on the ballot, how can we expect to have a sort of robust representative result at the end of the, the calculation of the ballots, right? Right, right. I mean, if you, if you got a result, that result has to come from some kind of information. It has to be calculated or something. And if you don't provide that information to calculate that result, then I mean, you can't get there. Gotcha. That makes a lot of sense. So, so long story short, just going back to the analogy for one second. So, with plurality, we turn it around, we just see floating eyeballs with like approval or score voting as we move up towards maximum expression. What would the picture look like? Well, if we're still making this analogy look like, say, say your wife here, it would resemble an actual person that looks like a wife. Okay. So, is this what we want as a voter? Do I want more expressiveness? Is this beneficial to me? Well, if you want a shot at having a result that reflects the will of the electorate, then you're going to need to have an expressive ballot. Ah, okay. So, that makes a lot of sense. Awesome. Well, Aaron, I think I have a much better sense of expressiveness. Any final thoughts? You want to leave it at that? I think we can leave it at that for now. We'll have plenty of time. I learned a lot in a few minutes. Thanks a lot.