Would you sign an instant runoff voting petition?

[CCS]

You are walking up to walgreens to buy some Nizoral shampoo and minoxidil. You see a sign with an arrow, which asks you to walk around the corner and sign a petition for instant runoff voting. It shows a picture of what the ballot would look like, and explains that if your first choice gets the fewest votes and is eliminated, your vote is transfered to your second choice, until someone gets 51% of the vote and wins.

What do you do? See poll. Suppose it was for a state law petition for voters to use Instant Runoff voting to elect federal house representatives.








What if Nader runs for house of representatives in your state, and Gardener votes for a libertarian, and the vote is 5% Nader, 2% Libertarian, 45% Democrat, and 48% Republican? With plurality voting, the Republican would have won.

What if many people wanted to vote Libertarian with Gardener, but were afraid their vote would be wasted and make it 20% Libertarian and 27% Democrat, with another Republican win? Hell, what if 51% of the population wanted to vote Libertarian, but was afraid to because DonkeyElephant news told them they did a poll that says Libertarians are liked by only 0.5% of the population? Wouldn't you want instant runoff voting so you could rank the candidates and know your vote would not be wasted?

 

[The Gardener]

I really like the concept.

Your idea would allow a viable political environment with several parties comprising a wide variety of thought... but the runoff process would help take the first round results and convert them into more sustainable coalitions with broader consensus. It's a very interesting concept... thumbs up here.

Why not use technology to enhance democracy?

 

[Bryan]

Why not use technology to enhance democracy?

Why don't we start voting by Internet?

No more long lines. No more dangling chads. No more Floridas!

 

[ali777]

You are walking up to walgreens to buy some Nizoral shampoo and minoxidil. You see a sign with an arrow, which asks you to walk around the corner and sign a petition for instant runoff voting. It shows a picture of what the ballot would look like, and explains that if your first choice gets the fewest votes and is eliminated, your vote is transfered to your second choice, until someone gets 51% of the vote and wins.

What do you do? See poll. Suppose it was for a state law petition for voters to use Instant Runoff voting to elect federal house representatives.








What if Nader runs for house of representatives in your state, and Gardener votes for a libertarian, and the vote is 5% Nader, 2% Libertarian, 45% Democrat, and 48% Republican? With plurality voting, the Republican would have won.

What if many people wanted to vote Libertarian with Gardener, but were afraid their vote would be wasted and make it 20% Libertarian and 27% Democrat, with another Republican win? Hell, what if 51% of the population wanted to vote Libertarian, but was afraid to because DonkeyElephant news told them they did a poll that says Libertarians are liked by only 0.5% of the population? Wouldn't you want instant runoff voting so you could rank the candidates and know your vote would not be wasted?

This was the system used for the students' union elections in the universities I attended.

We also had the famous RON (Re-Open Nominations), aka NOTA (none of the above). Let's say in a hypothetical scenario, you don't like any of the candidates. In the existing US voting system, you have 3 choices
1. Choose the lesser evil
2. Intentionally spoil your ballot, ie protest vote
3. Stay at home
The difference between RON and spoiling the ballot is that RON is an active candidate, ie RON can win the election. If RON wins, the whole process needs to be repeated, I presume with new candidates.

Why don't we start voting by Internet?

No more long lines. No more dangling chads. No more Floridas!

The major problem with Internet voting is with authenticating the voter. How would you ensure the person in front of the computer is who he/she says he/she is? Let's say we have a proper security system in place and we manage to safely distribute passwords/secure keys to everyone, but that still doesn't guarantee the correct use of the keys on the election day.

I personally wouldn't trust a system where people would have to vote outside the secure environment of the polling stations. The simplest example is a husband putting pressure on his wife to vote the same way as him. Since, he can be present when she casts her vote, her free choice is taken away from her.

Vote counting, or collecting information from the remote polling stations, etc is already computarised pretty much all over the world. If that's what you mean by more technology, you have to remember that it's already in place.

 

[The Gardener]

Another tactic to protest an election is to vote for a write in candidate. I've resorted to this for state elections, where here in California you really don't have any good choices for offices because they're all corrupt liars. I cast a state senate write in vote for Ted Kazcynski.

They'll probably be coming for me at some point in the future.....

 

[ClayShaw]

Why not use technology to enhance democracy?

Why don't we start voting by Internet?

No more long lines. No more dangling chads. No more Floridas!

No paper trail.

 

[ClayShaw]

Honestly, I like the two party system.
A generally left wing party and a generally right wing party, with moderates and extremists on both sides.
Multiparty systems seem to empower the fringe parties a little bit too much. Look at the current Israeli gov't. Technically, Kadima won, but since more right wing parties got votes, Olmert asked Likud to form a gov't, and as a consequence, Likud had to include some pretty extreme parties in their governing coalition. Now Netanyahu must agree to some of their demands or the governing coalition will collapse and a new government will have to be formed.
I think the "founding fathers" were geniuses way ahead of their time, and the system they devised is the best in the world.
Just my opinion.
CCS, the poll options are funny as sh*t, and supports my theory that you are a comedic genius in hiding.

 

[CCS]

The problem with our system is the garymandering. It is so wide spread.
And the winner take all districts for president beg for voter fraud.
And with a president swinging left to right every term, the economy never knows what to expect. The electoral college was designed to elect a centrist, but I think we can all agree Obama is not a centrist.

Fact is, for ever extreme group that is allowed in, some centrist groups would be allowed in too since they would not be fighting for their votes. I think political diversity is good. It makes it harder for them to agree on anything, and less likely to pass unneeded laws.

As for instant runoff voting, it is better than plurality, but certainly not that good either. When two extremists run against a centrist, they tend to squeeze the centrist out so that the centrist gets the fewest votes. The only way centrists can win IRV is if extremists compromise vote so the other extremist does not win. People do that with plurality, but we still get vote spliting that elects the least liked candidate. At least with instant runoff, the worse you can get is the second worst candidate.

 

[CCS]

Let me put it to you this way: most people think marijuana should be decriminalized. Yet it is illegal everywhere. Doesn't that say a lot about our voting system?

 

[ClayShaw]

The problem with our system is the garymandering. It is so wide spread.
And the winner take all districts for president beg for voter fraud.
And with a president swinging left to right every term, the economy never knows what to expect. The electoral college was designed to elect a centrist, but I think we can all agree Obama is not a centrist.

Fact is, for ever extreme group that is allowed in, some centrist groups would be allowed in too since they would not be fighting for their votes. I think political diversity is good. It makes it harder for them to agree on anything, and less likely to pass unneeded laws.

As for instant runoff voting, it is better than plurality, but certainly not that good either. When two extremists run against a centrist, they tend to squeeze the centrist out so that the centrist gets the fewest votes. The only way centrists can win IRV is if extremists compromise vote so the other extremist does not win. People do that with plurality, but we still get vote spliting that elects the least liked candidate. At least with instant runoff, the worse you can get is the second worst candidate.

Gerrymandering has made House elections basically pointless, I agree.
Voter fraud will always be a concern. The amount of money that would be involved in a truly national presidential election would be obscene, and would invite outside influence.
I think Obama is relatively centrist. More so than Bush, less so than Clinton. Clinton was the ultimate centrist. His people even had a name for it: triangulation. I think the best gov't. is a centrist gov't. I've never seen any evidence that America is anything other than a centrist country.
I think participation in elections in America is low enough already. If there were IRV elections, turnout would probably drop well below 50% for every subsequent round. When that happens, the people that continue to show up are the people who are really interested in politics, and they tend to be more extreme, one way or the other.

 

[ClayShaw]

Let me put it to you this way: most people think marijuana should be decriminalized. Yet it is illegal everywhere. Doesn't that say a lot about our voting system?

I'm not sure it says as much about the voting system as it does the influence of lobbyists. There is no such thing as a federal ballot proposition. States have decriminalized pot thru ballot props, but the feds can't do that, the Congress has to change the law, and anyone who would try would likely get an earful from alcohol companies, police unions, etc.
I'd love to buy weed a store instead of from some sketchy hippy. f***, I'd love to be able to grow a plant in my house without worried about being arrested for planting a seed in some freaking dirt.

 

[CCS]

I think participation in elections in America is low enough already. If there were IRV elections, turnout would probably drop well below 50% for every subsequent round.

Do you realize that with Instant Runoff Voting, you vote only once? There is only ONE election day. You rank the candidates so you don't have to vote twice for five times.

 

[powersam]

Why not use technology to enhance democracy?

Why don't we start voting by Internet?

No more long lines. No more dangling chads. No more Floridas!

In other news Rick Astley is now President of the world, after a landslide victory in the first world wide internet election.

 

[ClayShaw]

Why not use technology to enhance democracy?

Why don't we start voting by Internet?

No more long lines. No more dangling chads. No more Floridas!

In other news Rick Astley is now President of the world, after a landslide victory in the first world wide internet election.

Awesome.

 

[ClayShaw]

I think participation in elections in America is low enough already. If there were IRV elections, turnout would probably drop well below 50% for every subsequent round.

Do you realize that with Instant Runoff Voting, you vote only once? There is only ONE election day. You rank the candidates so you don't have to vote twice for five times.

ok... that makes more sense.
But we have a two party system, so we already rank candidates.

 

[CCS]

No, we never rank any candidates. We just vote for one candidate, from a list. The candidate that gets the most votes wins. So if you like A, think B is tolerable, but hate C, and you hear on TV that B and C are likely to get 39% and 40% of the vote, and A 21%, most likely you will change your vote to B, even though you really want A to win. You don't want to waste a vote on A if A has not chance. So the TV reporters have the power to tell you which two to pick from.

With instant runoff voting, you rank A1, B2, C3. If A is smallest, your votes are automatically given to your second choice, which is B.

The downside to instant runoff though is what if B gets the fewest votes, and B voters prefer C to A. Then C gets the B votes and A loses, and A voters will wish they had voted for B. This only happens in 1/3 of cases though.

There is no system that lets the populous elect a single winner well. Only an electoral college can change their votes and elect a centrist every time.

 

[ClayShaw]

No, we never rank any candidates. We just vote for one candidate, from a list. The candidate that gets the most votes wins. So if you like A, think B is tolerable, but hate C, and you hear on TV that B and C are likely to get 39% and 40% of the vote, and A 21%, most likely you will change your vote to B, even though you really want A to win. You don't want to waste a vote on A if A has not chance. So the TV reporters have the power to tell you which two to pick from.

With instant runoff voting, you rank A1, B2, C3. If A is smallest, your votes are automatically given to your second choice, which is B.

The downside to instant runoff though is what if B gets the fewest votes, and B voters prefer C to A. Then C gets the B votes and A loses, and A voters will wish they had voted for B. This only happens in 1/3 of cases though.

There is no system that lets the populous elect a single winner well. Only an electoral college can change their votes and elect a centrist every time.

I meant that if you only have 2 candidates to choose from, and you pick the one you like, you are in effect ranking them.

 

[ali777]

I meant that if you only have 2 candidates to choose from, and you pick the one you like, you are in effect ranking them.

That's even worse!!! With two party system, you don't really have choice, the choice is already made for you and you have to choose the lesser evil.

Some might argue that multi-party system fails because governments can't get majority, etc. However, on paper a coalition government should be much better for the people. Ie, a new legislation would pass only and only if two opposite views agree on it, so it would mean that the laws are more universal and they do not favour a certain section.

I do agree that in practice coalition governments are more trouble than good. They end up arguing over every little detail and not much gets done.

The UK multi-party system works rather well. There are about 20 parties but only two of them are big and a third party is sort of big, the rest are just bunch of small parties. So, in effect the votes get split 2.5 way and there is always a majority government. The possibility of coalition government exists, but it doesn't happen. Smaller parties know that they can't really enter the parliement, so they concentrate their efforts on the local elections and they are rather well represented in the local governments. Eg, UKIP got more votes than Labour in the recent European Parliement elections....

 

[ClayShaw]

I meant that if you only have 2 candidates to choose from, and you pick the one you like, you are in effect ranking them.

That's even worse!!! With two party system, you don't really have choice, the choice is already made for you and you have to choose the lesser evil.

Some might argue that multi-party system fails because governments can't get majority, etc. However, on paper a coalition government should be much better for the people. Ie, a new legislation would pass only and only if two opposite views agree on it, so it would mean that the laws are more universal and they do not favour a certain section.

I do agree that in practice coalition governments are more trouble than good. They end up arguing over every little detail and not much gets done.

The UK multi-party system works rather well. There are about 20 parties but only two of them are big and a third party is sort of big, the rest are just bunch of small parties. So, in effect the votes get split 2.5 way and there is always a majority government. The possibility of coalition government exists, but it doesn't happen. Smaller parties know that they can't really enter the parliement, so they concentrate their efforts on the local elections and they are rather well represented in the local governments. Eg, UKIP got more votes than Labour in the recent European Parliement elections....

And you end up giving seats to the BNP.

 

[CCS]

OK, I got a better solution.

Let 20 people run for office. Hell, let 50. Just not more than 60 or so.

Tell everyone to vote for their 1st choice, and NOT compromise vote.

If a candidate gets 51%, he wins automatically.

But if none does, like if they get 5, 10, 20% each, then you let the candidates do the compromise voting for us.

Each candidate is given whatever percent of the vote they won. They are then told that the one with the most votes will win, but they can debate and do practice votes for 6 hours tops, and then have to cast real votes. They can give their votes to other candidates (compromise candidates) so their polar opposite does not win.

This way, a centrist is elected, and the voters don't have guys about the polls. And we get a lot more options this way too!

And if you want PR, just say, "The 5 candidates with the most votes will get elected, and each candidate may split their vote". Then let them trade around a bit and take back their votes until they settle on 5 compromise candidates for each group.