[In response to /u/BambiiDextrous asking why bother with the added complexity of Evaluative Voting when most governments would only put forward one proposal at once, for a binary yes/no choice]

Many referenda are best as a choice between 2 distinct options, and such binary votes avoid many issues. In these cases using Evaluative Voting isn’t strictly necessary, however a similar method of treating votes for as +1, votes against as -1 and abstentions as 0 would still be a good way to avoid the pathologies of turnout thresholds.

My suggestion to use Evaluative Voting is a formalisation of this approach which also allows for non-binary votes. There would be no functional difference in a binary vote between using Evaluative Voting and using the approach described in the paragraph above. Describing it as Evaluative Voting however allows the system to be easily generalised to one that permits more than 2 options.

If all you are using referenda for is “confirmatory” votes, in which the electorate rubber stamps or rejects proposed legislation (the way that the Republic of Ireland uses referenda), then a binary choice is all you need. If you make wider use of referenda however (as in the Swiss system), the ability to have more options on the ballot becomes beneficial.

A wider range of options can be beneficial in many situations where change is needed, but politicians are unable to decide on a clear direction. Often these situations end up with opposing parties in deadlock over the solution, or with a compromise solution that satisfies nobody and doesn’t really address the problem. This link is a really deep dive into the political system in Switzerland, specifically how referenda are used. A key quote from it is this:

“The next trick was to make a government counter-proposal for a popular initiative and thus divide its supporters. If, say, 60% of the people were in favor of the initiative, the two proposals (the original proposal and the government’s counter-proposal) divided them into two groups of 30% each, so that neither proposal passed.

This problem was solved in 1987 by the introducing so-called “double yes” which makes it is possible to vote for both the initiative and the official counterproposal. An additional question has also been introduced which asks which of the proposals one would favor if both proposals were successful.”

It obviously depends on what you want to use referenda for, but from Switzerland’s experience if popular initiatives are going to be allowed to be voted on, it is important to have a system that can facilitate voting on counter-proposals as well as the initial proposals themselves.