Center for Election Science - Wikipedia
webCredibility Rating
3/5
Good(3)Good quality. Reputable source with community review or editorial standards, but less rigorous than peer-reviewed venues.
Rating inherited from publication venue: Wikipedia
This Wikipedia article describes the Center for Election Science, a nonprofit promoting approval voting and electoral reform. It has roots in effective altruism, a community closely tied to AI safety, and its work on institutional design and decision-making systems is tangentially relevant to AI governance and coordination mechanisms.
Metadata
Importance: 12/100wiki pagereference
Summary
The Center for Election Science is a US 501(c)(3) nonprofit founded in 2011 that promotes cardinal voting methods, particularly approval voting, as superior electoral reforms. It has successfully passed approval voting in Fargo, ND (2018) and St. Louis, MO (2020). The organization has roots in the effective altruism community and received significant funding from Open Philanthropy.
Key Points
- •Founded in 2011 by Clay Shentrup, Aaron Hamlin, and Warren D. Smith; received $598,600 grant from Open Philanthropy in 2017.
- •Advocates for approval voting as superior to ranked-choice/instant-runoff methods due to accuracy, simplicity, and the favorite betrayal criterion.
- •Successfully passed approval voting referendums in Fargo, ND (63.5% approval, 2018) and St. Louis, MO (2020).
- •Has roots in the effective altruism community, connecting it to broader rationalist and AI safety adjacent networks.
- •Argues approval voting elects more consensus candidates by not eliminating broadly-supported candidates with low first-preference votes.
Cached Content Preview
HTTP 200Fetched Apr 9, 202612 KB
Center for Election Science - Wikipedia
Jump to content
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
American nonprofit organization
The Center for Election Science Founders Clay Shentrup
Aaron Hamlin
Dr. Warren D. Smith [ 1 ] Type 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization Purpose Promoting electoral reform in the United States Headquarters Remote/Distributed, U.S. Chief Executive Officer Nina Taylor [ 2 ] Board of directors Chair
Michael Ruvinsky
Vice Chair
John Hegeman
Treasurer
LaShana Lewis,
Secretary
Justine Metz
Directors
Tamika Anderson
Sara Ponzio
[ 3 ] Revenue $2.1 million (2022) [ 4 ] Website electionscience.org
The Center for Election Science is an American 501(c)(3) organization that focuses on voter education and promoting election science . [ 5 ] [ 6 ] [ 7 ] [ 8 ] The organization promotes cardinal voting methods such as approval [ 9 ] and score voting . [ 10 ] They have their early roots in effective altruism . [ 11 ] [ 12 ]
The Center for Election Science helped pass approval voting in the city of Fargo, North Dakota , during the 2018 elections alongside Reform Fargo. [ 13 ] In St. Louis, Missouri , the organization passed an approval voting law in 2020 with the help of St. Louis Approves. [ 14 ] [ 15 ] [ 16 ]
Organizational opinions
[ edit ]
The Center argues that approval voting is superior to other proposed electoral reforms for multiple reasons, including accuracy, simplicity, and tractability. [ 17 ] They say approval voting will elect more consensus winners, which it contends traditional runoffs and instant-runoff ranked methods don't allow, because they eliminate candidates with low first-preference support but broad support in general. [ 18 ] [ 19 ] [ 20 ]
They further argue that the system's adherence to the favorite betrayal criterion is highly desirable, because it allows voters to safely give their true favorite maximum support without worrying that voting insincerely could give them a better overall result. [ 17 ]
History
[ edit ]
The Center for Election Science was founded in 2011 by Clay Shentrup, Aaron Hamlin, and Warren D. Smith. [ 1 ] It achieved status as a 501(c)3 in 2012 and began soliciting donations. The board of directors for that year consisted of:
Aaron Hamlin - President
Jan Kok - Vice President
Dr. Andrew Jennings - Treasurer
Clay Shentrup - Secretary
Eric Sanders - Parliamentarian
They focused on building an online and in-person presence by writing articles and giving presentations to reform organizations, a notable event being Hamlin's interview with Kenneth Arrow of Arrow's impossibility theorem fame. [ 21 ]
In Decembe
... (truncated, 12 KB total)Resource ID:
4c62fd337f9a5146 | Stable ID: sid_4MUFzsT9vF