in reply to Voting Help in the US

Discover magazine has an interesting article on different methods of voting, and how our system pretty much dictates a two-party (majority) system, because of the splitting votes problem. It's fluffy, like most of Discover's pieces, but interesting nonetheless.

SwiftOne, who will be voting for Nader, and would prefer an approval voting method.

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
RE: RE: Voting Help in the US
by amelinda (Friar) on Oct 21, 2000 at 00:31 UTC
    Not only is this system, as Borda says, a system only for honest men, it is also a system only for informed men. While it's a kinda cool idea, I just don't see it gaining a lot of popular support because, well, it's hard1. Ok, it's harder than going to the voting booth and pushing the "vote all [democrat|republican]" button. Given that that is too much trouble for a large number of people2, what's going to make this appealing enough to overcome their apathy?

    man, I'm gonna run out of pfennigs if this keeps up. :grin:

    1 I'm not talking about hard for you, or for me. I'm talking about the average citizen. PM ain't exactly average.
    2 Anyone got numbers handy on the percentage of people who vote in this country? How about broken down by age?
[reply]
      Not only is this system, as Borda says

      Well, don't forget that I want the approval vote, which is less complicated than the Borda system. The approval vote simple says "vote for any and all that you would be willing to run the country". Certainly different people will set the limit in different places, but overall it guarantees that the candidate with the greatest general appeal will be elected. (While this may result in a wave of mediocrity, welcome to democracy).

      I don't like the Broda system, as it assumes that the amount of difference between pick one and two is the same as between pick three and four. Another way to do it is to offer y votes, where y=Number of candidates * some constant, and let you split those votes amongst the candidates. This wouldn't make much change in the single-candidate voters, but would change the results of those who are split between two or more candidates. It's much more complex though, and overall I prefer the approval vote.

[reply]
RE: RE: Voting Help in the US
by extremely (Priest) on Oct 21, 2000 at 04:19 UTC
    I've always like the single-transferable vote system. You pick candidates in order preference and your vote goes to the first pick.

    Then, all the votes are tallied and the lowest man is booted and all of his votes are passed on or dropped in the case of those who didn't list a second preference.

    The tally and drop procedure continues till one candidate has more than 50% of the votes remaining. Bam, winner.

    --
    $you = new YOU;
    honk() if $you->love(perl)

[reply]
      extremely said:
      I've always like the single-transferable vote system
      The STV system can be used for trading votes among different factions. This may not be a problem in full-scale general election but I know anecdotically about a case where one large country's candidates wondered what hit them (they didn't get any people on the board, because the other countries traded votes).

      They know how to play the game now.

      A good electoral system must also be easy to grasp.

      /jeorgen

[reply]

In Section Meditations