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Lessig Bets On the Net To Clean Up Government
christian.einfeldt writes "Stanford Law Professor Larry Lessig really 'gets it' when it comes to the efficacy of distributed open source code production. Now he is attempting to use distributed production methods to expose corruption in the US Congress with the launch of another 'CC' organization — this time it's called 'Change Congress'. CC (as opposed to cc for Creative Commons) would invite users to track whether US legislators are willing to commit to Change Congress' four pledges. CC will rely on users to record and map the positions of candidates who are running for open seats in the US House and Senate. Change Congress will use a Google mash-up to create a map depicting which legislators have taken the CC pledge, which have declined, and which have signaled support for planks in the Change-Congress platform. The four pledges (which are not numbered 0 through 3) call for greater transparency in government, and less influence of private money in shaping legislation."
Larry's been hanging out with us for too long. He seriously thinks that he can get legislators to sign onto a CC labeling (licensing?) scheme? And if he does, the big stick if they violate it is . . . wait for it . . . voter outrage!
Heh. Yeah. That's been working just great for us, don't you think?
This looks to be one Lessig's more long-term projects.
I think I'll head over and sign up.
Hand me a mop and some bleach, bro.
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
I think we all have differing ideas on what changing congress (Government) means. Lets start with something simple. Ask all candidates "what present of an individuals income should they pay in taxes?" It could even be a graduated rate. Then let government do what ever they like with that amount of "Limited" money. No limits on the money they spend seems to be the big problem.
I mean, really - is this a joke?
Repeat after me - "In terms of fundamental human behavior, the internet has not, and will not, change JACK SHIT."
Politics is the way it is because of fundamental human behavior - greed, ambition, and apathy. No "series of tubes" will change that.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
This all depends not so much on what congressmen sign up as it does exposure to the general public. If you can get enough constituents to be aware of this, then you can force the members of congress into it. But unless this is somehow tied to American Idol, I seriously doubt the general American public will care. As long as they have their fast food and idiotic TV shows, they could care less about what happens in government.
What we need are solid, intelligent geeks out there running for congressional seats. We have a plethora of legal-types within our community who are faster at coming up with why things work, and why they don't, than those within Congress itself. We are the force to unify both Conservatives and Liberals. In general we like our personal freedom, but also know how to be individually free *within* a collective, and to use that collective for it's strength. We are the middle road.
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
FTFA: Candidates can signal their intentions to take any one or all of the pledges by filling out a form at the organization's web site, which then formulates code that provides a graphic that the candidates can then place on their election campaign web sites.
This is my suggestion: Make it part of a subtle smear campaign, initially. In other words, all you need is one candidate who will be a part of this and advertise that the other guy isn't. That will imply the other guy is corrupt. Sounds like "clean" politics, but it'll start getting the others on board. I'm too cynical to believe that it will take anything less.
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
I think taxpayer funded elections are the worst idea imaginable, because you ultimately tie the success of any candidate to a commission in government, who approves that finance. Such bodies are always politicized, and even worse, tend to favor established players and existing bodies. Nor do I think earmarks are bad.
First, I would advocate the internet model, with transparent donations. Let anyone donate any amount of money directly to their candidate of choice, and just have full disclosure over how much and who got what. If your candidate is 'Bill Gates boy', then it will be duly noted. But at the same time, if you work for Microsoft and are from that area economy, betting on 'Bill Gates boy', might well be in your interest.
Secondly, I have no problem with earmarks. Earmarks are comparatively small part of the federal budget and generally go towards pet district projects that generally do benefit the community from that district. If you don't like the way your Senator or Congressman does earmarks, don't vote for him or her.
If you want to really attack corruption in Washington, it is time to really dismantle the twin industrial complexes of defense and medicare. The defense industry is hip deep in all sorts of cosey relationships with the few mega-contractors that are left, and medicare is basically a buddy boy of the pharma industry. Any time a cut is threatened on both, we are treated to visions of [fill-in-the-blank country of origin] bombs exploding over all of our cities, or, millions of people dying because they were denied the latest $1000 a day super pill that only has marginally better efficacy than a $10 a day pill.
Sometimes, you just have to cut your risk aversion investments and focus on growth. No matter how much money we spend on security, if someone wants to bomb us, that bad, they are going to bomb us. And, people are going to die, no matter how much we spend.
So let's cap medicare and cut defense.
This is my sig.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
Is like a college's student members of "student-faculty committees:" useless, except for the PR.
Let's use the net to draft legislation as well! Senator Chris Romer of CO has proposed the idea of using a wiki as a way to have the people input their ideas into legislation:
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/jan/29/skiers-might-get-become-citizen-lawmakers/
I think it's a great idea. To me it's one of the greatest ideas for implementing true democracy that I've ever seen.
All things are subject to interpretation, whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and n
IMO the two biggest issues facing the country right now are the war and the assault on civil liberties. Neither one of those, AFAICT, has been affected in any way by lobbyists, campaign contributions, or earmarks. Individual voters wanted security theater after 9/11, and that's what they got, at the expense of civil liberties. Bush got the war he wanted, not because of lobbyists or PACS, but because Congress is too spineless to ask hard questions. They were spineless about it because the idea of going to war was overwhelmingly popular with individual American voters. The basic problem is that absolute power corrupts absolutely, and our government is too big and powerful these days.
Find free books.
The formation of this watchdog group, or any grassroots organization that aspires to be a movement, assumes that people have an non-short attention span. I think that's a poor assumption and most marketers would agree. It's a long known lesson that most people are far too lazy to pay attention for even a few seconds.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'll reach for my remote control and go back to watching the pablum that network television is spewing. Change Congress? Well, maybe I'll change the channel.
This is continuing a hopeful trend. Lessig is aiming directly at Congress, Pete Ashdown (owner of the ISP www.xmission.com ) ran for Senate, and others are beginning to make their way into the political class. Soon enough ($DIETY willing) we will really see politicians who "get it" for privacy protection, data transparency, Open Source, and the social ramifications that those technologies bring.
davejenkins.com |
I love the idea and sincerely hop it works. I'm critiquing it here in hopes they'll improve it farther. I want this thng to work!
I say "Partially" broken because the Google Map takes so long to load it SEEMS to not work; one would click a page link or the "back" button long before the map loaded. Perhaps I'm mistaken in thinking that this is an IE failure. I'll have to look at it in Firefox later.
More critique on the site:
<script type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8" src="http://media.change-congress.org/jquery-1.2.3.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8" src="http://media.change-congress.org/jquery-form.js"></script>
I'll have to download these scripts later when I have more time to see what they do, but the mouseovers are surely included in one of the scripts. One of my own personal rules (YMMV) is "never use a scripting language unless it's absolutely, positively necessary." Plain vanilla HTML is always best when it is possible. A page that looks like plain vanilla HTML should be plain vanilla HTML.
}
#content {
width: 720px;
padding: 30px 30px 10px 30px;
NEVER use absolute positionng unless absolutely necessary. You don't know your reader's screen size or resolution. My computer at home has a 42 inch monitor set at 512 scan lines; it's a TV set. It also has an old 14 inch monitor that's started malfunctioning, so I can't use the whole 14 inches.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Personally I'd only gotten as far as 1-bad, 2-bad, 3-good, 4-meh. I suspect 25% good ideas is the current state of congress, not an improvement.
Changa hates change.
That can be as simple a thing as replacing the cross-town bridge. It can as complex as providing food, medical care and housing for the elderly.
The winning candidates delivers the goods.
The present mood isn't for political reform as the Geek understands it.
It is a demand for attention to pressing domestic needs and a deep-rooted fatigue with the ideologues of the left and the right.
There, interpreted that for you.
- Humma Kavul, missionary of the Jatravartid people
Although I agree with your sentiment, I deplore your use of the phrase "they could care less".
Realize it or not, the fact that Government is screwing the people is related to the fact that people accept lies as truth. "Could care less" means caring a lot, which is exactly the opposite of what you mean to say. It's the same kind of thing as instituting a program called the PATRIOT act to screw the citizens, or saying "we do not torture" but vetoing a ban on waterboarding. Democracy is damaged when the truth is; and truth is shaped by language. Call me crazy for taking this seriously, but I do.
When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Rel
1. No money from lobbyists or PACs
While we like to think of politicians as corrupt, money-grubbing jerks who'll take money from any lobbyist in order to stay in office, the truth is that most politicians already believe in certain causes and will gladly take money from their allies in those causes. The NRA is not likely to change the mind of an anti-gun senator with promises of money. That senator is likely getting money from an anti-gun group already, since that group's aims match his own. Perhaps this would be less true of corporate lobbying, but transparency could help alleviate this by letting voters see who a politicians allies are. If a politician were known to be taking Archer-Daniels money, and that politician then voted for more ethanol subsidies, I might be less likely to vote for him next time. Long story short, I don't think there is much quid-pro-quo going on, it's more an aligning of interests between pols and PACs. This is not to mention the potential freedom of speech issues of banning lobbying. After all, everyone has the right to petition the government.
2. Vote to end earmarks
This is kind of like laws against profanity - "I know it when I hear it". One man's earmark is another's worthy cause. It would be ideal if we could prevent earmarks, but defining exactly what an earmark is in such a way as to make it difficult or impossible to pass another earmark without also impacting useful legislation is practically impossible. English is a rich language that lets you say one thing and mean another in some cases, and politicians are especially adept at using the language to get what they want. Transparency is the best choice here as well, since the only sure way for "obvious" earmarks to be stopped is if the people are aware that they have been attached to unrelated bills or perverted the intentions of related bills.
3. Support publicly-financed campaigns
To me, this is the worst of all the pledges. Why should we have political welfare for people running for office? Do we really want our tax dollars spent so that some candidates can have an election allegedly free of special interests? Remember, he who controls the gold makes the rules, so public financing could be perverted into an institution that funds only "worthy" candidates, with "worthy" defined by whomever is currently in power. Even with the currently limited system for Presidential candidates, the candidates have to raise a certain amount of money and be subject to other restrictions that they find onerous. This is one reason why many of the present candidates did not accept public funding - it got in the way of raising the real sums they needed to win.
4. Support reform to increase Congressional transparency
This is one pledge I can get behind, but the devil is in the implementation. Every donation to every candidate would need to be disclosed, preferably on the web, and there would need to be dire consequences if anyone was caught trying to hide a donation or the source of a donation. Every bill, including amendments and votes, would need to be available as well. All meetings would need to be open, meaning that the press (at the least) is invited and minutes are taken and made available on-line (with reasonable exceptions for things like national security issues and maybe a few others - of course, this can be perverted as well). There are numerous documents that the government has erroneously (or illegally, if it was to CYA) classified as secret which would need to be declassified, and better oversight for what can be classified should be put into place (perhaps this is a bit beyond the scope of Congress itself). Some of these things already exist, to some degree.
Two simple fixes would be publication on the web of any bill before Congress for at least 5 days before a vote.
The other would be in the new 'virtual' world, have Congress meet virtually like any other organization. They could each get offices in their State complexes and keep them closer to home and make it that much tougher for lobbyists to sway votes.
Plus you would hopefully have fewer unfaithful public servants.
The opposite of progress is congress
3) support reform to increase transparency in Congress.
What the heck does this mean? This is typical political BS, it sounds good but has no meaning.
4) support public financing of public elections.
This will mean that those who are currently in power will control the purse-strings of elections. Is this really a good idea? Do you imagine that the Democrats and Republicans would allow say Greens or Libertarians to get any public financing? If you look at the history of ballot access, you will see that the major parties try to stifle independents and third-parties on a continuous basis. This would only give them another way to keep non-Demopublicans out of office.
Look, we've already had a range of quasi-unconstitutional "campaign finance reform" laws, and while they may limit your freedom of speech, they don't actually work.
What works is people not being idiots when they vote. No amount of "reform" from government is going to fix that problem.
I highly suggest The Myth of the Rational Voter to understand that most voters are misinformed on basic economic points, and thus rather than think more democracy (or "more open","reformed", etc.) can help us, we should understand that the best use of democracy is not micro-managing the country, but simply throwing out the clearly incompetent.
If a politician were known to be taking Archer-Daniels money, and that politician then voted for more ethanol subsidies, I might be less likely to vote for him next time.
If a politician voted for ethanol subsidies, I would be less likely to vote for him or her regardless of where they got their campaign money from, because ethanol subsidies are stupid.
If there weren't billions of dollars being made off of these, then maybe I'd believe that.
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net
Track ALL government people no matter which branch of government they are in at ALL times with Video and Audio Cameras! Only that business which is ON CAMERA and MADE PUBLIC at the time it's recorded is valid government business! POWER TO THE PEOPLE.
REVOKE your governments powers to make war. Revoke your governments powers to make arbitrary laws that impact your rights. Revoke! Take back your government from those who are in it! Record and publish everything online in real time.
Peace.
I think the number one pledge needs to be:
[ ] Support Instant Runoff Voting.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=instant+runoff+voting&btnG=Google+Search
all the best,
drew
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No. Wrong. I'm sorry to be rude, but you really must understand how our government works if you wish to fix it.
1) He didn't say abolish lobbyists. He said we should no longer "accept contributions from registered lobbyists or PACs". Lobbyists are good on some level, but allowing them to bribe is bad.
2) Congress spends the money. The president proposes a budget, but Congress does the actual money funneling. The normal process is for Congress to put money into one of 13 general purpose "bins". These bins are the 13 Congressional Appropriations Committees, which have documented processes for how their money is allocated. When Congress votes to fund a certain project (rather than a Appropriations subcommittee in general), that is called an Earmark.
3) At least you aren't wrong on this one.
4) So you feel that J. Q. Public has the appropriate amount of influence? You don't think that maybe the Waltons or Bill Gates has a wee bit more than 1/300,000,000th of a say? Think about what Lessig stands for... do you think he is trying to disenfranchise individuals?
Again, apologies for being snarky, but you are way off base on your points here.
2) support the abolition of "earmarks"
This is a terrible idea. If there are no earmarks then only the President has the ability to direct spending.
You seem to be misunderstanding the concept of earmarks. It refers to riders attached to spending bills that stipulate exactly where the money goes, usually diverting funding to pet projects instead of the original intent of the bill. It does not refer to any spending bill. Congress can still pass funding for public schools, the EPA, whatever. They just can't slide in a small-print line to send X amount of this bill to My Brother Joe's Construction Company, etc.
An earmark is a process by which congress can "go around" the normal process of funding things. Please read a book or Wikipedia or something. This is the third post I've responded to where the parent has been way off base in their understanding of what an Earmark is. Congress, in general, funnels money into one of 13 general. These "pots" (Appropriations Subcommittees) have stated and precise ways for people who know to make decisions on what to fund. When Congress funds the Health/Human Services Subcommittee, and that board decides to put $XM into new hospital initiatives, and that board decides to put a new hospital in BFE - that is the designated process, NOT AN EARMARK. When a politician with a lot of clout decides that his district needs a new hospital and makes it happen, THAT IS AN EARMARK. There is a precise definition of earmark. You can argue whether earmarks are good or bad - but not whether individual legislation is or isn't an earmark. Apologies for being rude. But seriously... +4 Insightful? Larry Lessig is a very smart man who has clearly thought through what is plaguing our government. You don't even seem to know how our government works at a very basic level and you are going to critique the plan? And that gets marked "insightful"? On a completely different topic. Has anyone seen that movie "Idiocracy"?
Well, having spent five years on the hill as a legislative assistant I'm guessing I know more about how this system works than you do. I had simplified it to make my points.
The budget process does not work the way you suggest. The President's budget is a wish list. No where does the President have authority to present a budget.
The House and Senate pass an overall budget. It has the amount of money to be spent, as well as general guidelines.
Authorizations are done by the committees that cover that part of government -- the Committee on Armed Services authorizes Department of Defense spending, for example. This is where individual programs are approved (authorized) for spending.
In addition, all spending bills originate in the House. This is really more by custom as the Constitution only regulates the origin of taxing bills. However, as much as Senators may argue that they have the right to originate spending bills, they do not really do so.
The main point is that, in the end, it is the Congress who is given the obligation to "provide for the common Defence and general Welfare", not the President. It is their job to prioritize spending. That is what earmarks are for. They are where the Congress says "you must spend $5 million fixing this highway". Any money not earmarked is at the discretion of the President.
It should also be noted that the President does not have to spend most of the money being appropriated. He can't spend it on something else, but he doesn't have to spend it at all. (This is in dispute, but in practice this is the current case)
You may not like the fact that Congress designates spending this way, but that is the way it was designed, and it works to balance the power of the President.
Oh, and you were wrong. Just adding that in because you insisted wrongly that you knew better how the system works.
I typo'd an html code and this line got lopped out above the Authorizations line:
The budget is then divided up in two manners -- appropriations and authorizations. The job of the appropriations committee is to peg a number on the budget. They are not supposed to specify spending details any more than by department or branch
All the great reformers of history, of whatever color or background, all had a positive view of what the wanted to do. They had specific laws to pass or repeal. Or, whether you agreed with them or not, they wanted to shrink government, or use government to defined outcomes... Fine. There was a vision there.
This sure looks and smells like a "campaign" - a great big crusade - but the only vision he has is more people using technical processes. The only faith he has, is more people using the internets must be good. So it's a SIM game of politics, with all the (real) politics taken out.
I guess the hyper-real is now realer than the real. Cool. Sign me to er, something. Or whatever! It's got to be good. Right? When can I start pushing buttons on my computer?
"The NRA is not likely to change the mind of an anti-gun senator with promises of money. That senator is likely getting money from an anti-gun group already, since that group's aims match his own."
This is really bad reasoning, because it assumes that every issue has lobbyists and PACs for both sides of the issue, and that both sides are about equally well-heeled. This simply isn't the case, as anyone who's paid attention to politics for the past 7 (okay, 70) years will notice. Large corporations that pollute, injure people, mistreat their workers, lie to consumers, etc. have a lot more money that citizens' groups that oppose those things.
As a relatively minor example, take Comcast. They're pretty much a government-empowered monopoly in many places, and yet the government (to a large degree) lets them run rampant. Why? Because Comcast (obviously) has a large team of lobbyists and lots of funding, whereas pissed off customers have maybe a couple guys from poorly-funded consumer watchdog groups who also have 500 other corporate swindles to try to take care of.
Congress is directed by the Constitution to provide for the "general welfare". If it believes that fixing Highway 1 is in the general welfare, and is not certain that the Department of Transportation agrees, it writes in an earmark for that project. That is its job.
So what Lessig proposes is to just give every department a sum of money and depend on that department to spend it. I guess if you think that this is a good idea you might oppose earmarks.
Of course, earmarks are the right and obligation of Congress to meet its duty to provide for the general welfare, regardless of the opinions of the President.
In the end, eliminating earmarks is bad for spending, bad for oversight, a violation of the duties of Congress, and maybe unconstitutional.
So what Lessig proposes is to just give every department a sum of money and depend on that department to spend it. I guess if you think that this is a good idea you might oppose earmarks.
That's my thinking, yes. If you have a problem with your local transportation department, then you should take it up with them. The idea of our system of government is dividing power between the Federal, State, and Local levels. Earmarking breaches this principle by micromanaging the appropriation process, or doing the state/local levels' jobs for them.
To me, it's a question of who you trust. I'd prefer to keep some degree (not all, mind you) of authority in the local levels of government, since they are much more accessible to me. Thus, it's easier for me to hold those officials accountable.
I apologize kcurtis. There were quite a few people who were way off base on this point and I accidentally grouped you in with them. Specifically, I read "...then only the President has the ability to direct spending" as meaning "...then only the President has the ability to control spending" (or something along those lines). I thought that you meant the President spends however much he wants on whatever he wants. So once more: apologies. Hopefully you can at least see how someone might make the mistake.
Back to an on-topic discussion...
1) Do you really think that congressmen need to be able to accept contributions from lobbyists for the citizens to get their voices heard
2) I seem to remember that the system wasn't necessarily "designed" with earmarks in mind. Who knows what the founders of the nation had in mind, but you would think that if the they had earmarks in mind the first earmark would have been used before the early 1800s and they would have come into popular use before the 1970s. I agree that Earmarks can be used for good, but I do believe that pork shouldn't be a primary goal of our Legislative branch. Rather than being judged on how a legislator represents his or her constituents, Congressman are being judged on how much money they can direct to their district. Having no direct say on how money is spent is a potentially bad thing, but having too much say is arguably worse. Do you think it is a good thing that Earmarks have ballooned (in number and amount) in the past decade (I couldn't find a chart that went back to the 70s, but in the 70s and prior the number per year was in the tens IIRC). Don't you think that this is an alarming trend that should be controlled somehow?
3)
4) You believe that you, Bill Gates, and random single mother of 2 have appropriate and proportional control over elections?
>> The four pledges (which are not numbered 0 through 3)
Oh man... what did they do? Put the pledges in a Lua table or something?!?!
Federal employees are a tiny faction of the US electorate.
Are you talking about just pay for Congress? What do they care? Most of them are well off and would accept whatever fluctuations in their income resulted however lame their policies were.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
Move. Welfare through earmarks or welfare through the official welfare system is still welfare. If you live where all the jobs have dried up then move to where you can have a decent job. Lots of people do it.
In fact, I can give you a number of good reasons the government should allow earmarks in rural areas.
1. National Security. In the event of a general nuclear war, all major cities and the suburbs would be completely destroyed. By having a population in the rural areas, we avoid overconcentrating ourselves in rural areas and thus have a population suitably trained and inclined to fight a guerilla war against a hypothetical invader.
2. Economic Stability. Having millions of people roaming the nation chasing jobs creates enormous dynamic pressures on local infrastructures. Imagine a ball passing through a rubber hose. Local resources are streched, then, expensive new construction is undertaken to meet the need for roads, schools, water, fuel and communications, and then, before the bonds have even been paid, shifting economic pressures cause that same population to suddenly deflate, leaving the remaining the residents with bankrupt blight.
3. Natural resource banking. Many of these rural areas are places where globalization has made resource extraction uncompetitive. The resources are still there, just uneconomical. In a world with changing times, rampant terrorism, we're only one civil war away from losing an important source of minerals. Keeping a small population in a resource extraction area provides an excellent way to allow sufficient infrastructure to be maintained for quick rampup in the event of a national emergency.
That's just three. I've not even gotten to epidemic management, selective breeding of humans, and all sorts of other good stuff.
This is my sig.
Approval Voting FTW. It's a lot simpler to explain to people than IRV, and has all of the good characteristics that IRV was created to promote.
"Approval Voting FTW. It's a lot simpler to explain to people than IRV, and has all of the good characteristics that IRV was created to promote."
If you say so, I will look into it some. In any case, such a pledge should be above the ones I see suggested in my opinion.
You have any links to simple explanations?
all the best,
drew
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I think the best way to stop earmarks turning up is to limit new bills to have one specific stated purpose and that all sections of the bill be directly related to that purpose. Then, if funding for a bridge to nowhere turns up in a bill about health care, it would be disallowed. And if someone tried to get a bill in which the stated purpose is build a bridge in Alaska that goes nowhere, no-one not from Alaska would vote for it. As to public finance, this along with many other aspects of elections would be made more transparent if they were run by a body that is independent of political parties. The Australian Electoral Commission is the best such example I know (I'm Australian and don't know much about the electoral systems of countries other than Australia and America). The AEC determines electorate boundaries, determines the amount of public funding given (which is based on the number of votes a candidate receives, subject to certain minimum vote), and the registration of voters.
Considering Phlebas, whoever the hell he is.
I pretty much did the same as you did(Google Search):
http://bcn.boulder.co.us/government/approvalvote/center.htm
The first sentence pretty much covers the fundamental principle of Approval Voting.
There are lots of web pages which discuss the relative merits of different kinds of voting, but Approval Voting seemed to me to be the easiest to explain to other people, felt very intuitive to them, and still had most of the advantages of IRV.
(Also, would probably not be too hard to implement just by tweaking existing voting procedures.)
So yeah, that chunk of the seven deadly sins won't change, but how you actually see it happening in the world already has.
OK,
I checked it out.
I still think I prefer IRV. I think because it does not treat the choices equally.
What problems do you run into trying to explain IRV to people?
all the best,
drew
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You might check out Range Voting then (Approval Voting is a subset version of Range Voting), where you can express preferences between candidates, but that's also more complicated to explain to people. I still prefer Approval Voting myself.
As far as difficulty in explaining to people, try and imagine explaining IRV to a 5-year old (just old enough to count & compare how big numbers are).
I can probably explain plurality voting easily (everyone picks one candidate, the candidate with the most votes wins), and I can probably explain approval voting easily (everyone picks every the candidates they like, the candidate with the most votes wins), but trying to explain any voting system with multiple voting rounds & shifting 1st-2nd-3rd-etc rankings is going to take a while.
When you multiply that by a large # of voters, I don't think the possible extra benefit of other voting schemes is worth it.
In case you don't think you have to have something simple enough to explain to a 5-year old, I could make a cynical comment about Floridians & butterfly ballots. Also, given how badly the various voting machine companies have done at counting simple majority ballots, can you imagine how much worse they could make a voting machine that was supposed to do IRV? And it would be even harder to figure out whether the counting was being done correctly.
From a less cynical viewpoint, I usually go for the "can I explain the voting scheme to my family members & friends who don't normally care about stuff like politics"? They don't really care about all the relative benefits of different voting schemes. They're kind of aware that plurality voting doesn't work right when you've got more than one candidate, but they don't want a voting scheme that's any more complicated than plurality voting. Approval Voting fits that description pretty well, and it makes an intuitive sense to them.