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"Think about the power of bringing our library to little schools in the middle of Africa," Keller said. "Would it make a difference for those who now have their minds closed to the idea of democracy?"

News articles, especially those about government, are always subject to fair use exemptions. Have people forgotten that?

I want to preface this with my views that typical future poling stations will be comprised of a touch screen with a printer, and an optical scan machine, which can scan the ballots produced by the printer. That way, the people who can't mark the ballot can use touch screen, and everyone else can do what Cambridge, Mass. does with Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) and also be able to use the mail.

May 15, 2003

To Register Doubts, Press Here
By SAM LUBELL

FTER the 2000 presidential election, with its disputes over the balloting in Florida and its hanging chad, the federal government moved swiftly to revamp the country's largely paper-based and mechanical voting systems. More than $1 billion has been appropriated for buying electronic voting systems, including optical scanners and touch-screen machines, that eliminate ballots written or punched on paper or tallied by mechanical equipment.

The new systems have already brought what proponents of electronic voting say is a new reliability and efficiency to the process.

"There's no guesswork as far as who you voted for," said Mark Radke, director of voting industry for Diebold Election Systems, which makes the AccuVote-TS, a $3,000 touch-screen machine. Mr. Radke said the unit, which presents voters with choices on an electronic monitor, quickened the voting and counting process and reduced the number of "undervotes," ballots that are not counted because they are unreadable or otherwise defective.

But not everyone likes the switch to electronic balloting. Some of the loudest opposition, in fact, is coming from computer experts who say the new technology could prove more troublesome than its predecessors. They warn of equipment malfunction, unchecked tampering and the lack of secure proof for each vote.

A group of more than 100 technologists, led by David Dill, a professor of computer science at Stanford University, has called for tighter security measures on electronic voting apparatus and a "voter-verifiable audit trail," meaning a permanent record of each vote that can be checked for accuracy even after the election. (The group's "resolution on electronic voting" is at verify.stanford.edu/evote.html.)

Without such a trail, Dr. Dill warned, if a machine is tampered with or malfunctions, "then the votes in question are corrupted and you have no option but to hold another election or accept bad results." Thus the only reliable backup, the group contends, is for the machines to print out paper ballots after each vote, which can be hand-counted if necessary.

Dr. Dill and his counterparts, who in- clude computer science experts in academia and Silicon Valley, also assert that unlike more mechanical machines, electronic systems cannot be opened up to the public for verification. And the only people who know what is encoded on them are computer experts. "I think it's unreasonable for the public to be asked to accept the security of these machines on blind faith," he said. "There's no question the technology is open to tampering."

Members of the group also assert that electronic voting machines have experienced breakdowns in some elections. "We're concerned," said Rebecca Mercuri, formerly a professor of computer science at Bryn Mawr and now the president of Notable Software, a consulting firm. "These machines are showing huge defects."

For their part, election officials and voting machine vendors dispute any notion that the systems have major problems, and caution that the public should not overreact.

Penelope Bonsall, director of the Federal Election Commission's Office of Election Administration, which helps set guidelines for the voting process, said that the possibility of vote tampering has always exi

Instant Runoff Voting - so that people can vote for their favorite candidate instead of having to vote for the lesser of two major-party evils to avoid letting the greater evil win

Public Campaign Financing - so that candidates who aren't rich or beholden to special interests can run competitive campaigns

But didn't the general population vote for Gore?

Judging by the voter turnout, the general population voted to sit on the couch and watch the results on TV, as usual.

Formerly there was a process of online voting, but in the view of the committee it probably hadn't worked as well as it could have," said Twomey. He said the voting process was very vulnerable to "branch stacking", and pointed out that in North America and Europe the number of people who voted was in the thousands, while in South East Asia the number of votes was in the millions.

what we're talking about here is the voting for the board members, which there is to my mind no easy solution for. It's one of those difficult questions: who gets to control the Internet? Nobody wants it to be one person or one organisation- but without some form of organisation, we end up with, well... ok. so we end up with pretty much what we've got now, only without anyone making people play at least somewhere NEAR the same playing field. And how do you assure equal representation among a huge body of people? (I recommend fairvote as a place to start thinking about this one... The internet is one place where how we, as a people overall, decide to run things is going to have long-term ramifications, and i give ICANN credit for at least being aware of that fact.

ICANN will now rely more heavily on the At-Large Advisory Committee, which is charged with talking to other Internet organisations and individual users about how ICANN interacts with them.

It's a start.

...that a resolution "endorsed by computer scientists" does not propose an instant run-off system, whereby each voter ranks the candidates in order of her preference. (She can vote traditionally by ranking only one candidate 1, and no one higher).

The benefits are enormous. The system is much less open to manipulation, and it is basically the only way for minority voices to be heard.

One cannot overemphasize the fact that today a rational voter will always choose the lesser of two evils, without considering candidates that are not evil, based on the mathematics governing her vote.

Let me repeat this: If you believe that a vote for the democratic candidate is a vote for evil, and you believe that a vote for the republican candidate is a vote for evil, and there is a third candidate whose views you agree with precisely, and who you think could fulfill the office perfectly were she elected (but there is zero probability of this, as there was zero probability of Nader's being elected) then under today's system your only rational choice is to forego your preference for the third candidate and vote instead for the lesser of the two evils. That is, you will be rationally impelled to vote for a candidate with whom you do not agree, when a minority candidate exists who could better represent you.

This is no less than mathematical extortion.

You can either participate in a two-party system, or "throw your vote away." It is, in effect, a mathematical equivalent of having a voting booth in which you are to choose betweeen seven candidates by putting your token either into the republican ballot box, the democrtatic ballot box, or the trash.

Everyone who voted for Nader in our last presidential election placed their vote in the trash, since there was zero probability of Nader's winning. (Exception: vote trading.)

Read more about instant run-offs here, or do a google search.

Nader is not "more centrist" he is just "middle ranked". There is a world of difference between the two.

Well, he is the compromise. If my wording was sloppy, I apologize. (of course, he is only a compromise in your contrived universe where Nader is more acceptable than Gore to all people who most prefered Bush -- I don't think that was the real world of the 2000 election though).

No irrationality involved. It just turns out to be the best way for them to get what they want.

Sorry, no, as you represented it, it does not get them what they want, it -- in your words -- "breaks the system" and elects their least favorite candiate. How does that get them what they want? Unless all Bush people really preferred Nader over Gore, in which case I suppose Nader really deserved to be elected.

I read the page regarding Kenneth Arrow's thereom (and have read his stuff before), and I don't see anything in it that contradicts the notion that some form of ranking is far preferable to simple plurality. (keep in mind Arrow's conclusion is that the perfect solution is a dictatorship!) Ranking systems may not be perfect (which is all he proves, and I never stated otherwise), but they are a heck of a lot better, and you've provided nothing indicating otherwise.

I can tell you that in the election methods mailing list , where people debate the differences between all these different systems day in and day out (I don't participate, but I've followed it for a while), there is *no* question that ranking is way better than plurality. If you want to argue that ranking is more flawed than plurality there, you'd have a real tough audience. BTW, see this or this or this which all discuss Arrow's theorem and all conclude that that plurality is bad, and either Borda count or Approval (both ranking based systems) is best.

i deserve a big "5" for this post. everybody knows why a third party will never win, right?

let's all go to fairvote.org and read about proportional representation and instant runoff voting. It's the shit. Let me paste some for you - I swear it's worth reading.

pasting...

What is Instant Runoff Voting (IRV)

Instant runoff voting is a winner-take-all, constitutionally protected, voting system that ensures a winning candidate will receive an absolute majority of votes rather than a simple plurality. IRV eliminates the need for runoff elections by allowing voters to rank their candidates in order of preference. IRV is not a form of full representation or proportional representation, but the choice voting method of full representation relies on a similar method of casting and counting ballots.

Frequently Asked Questions About Instant Runoff Voting

What is instant runoff voting? Instant runoff voting is a method of electing a single winner. It provides an alternative to plurality and runoff elections. In a plurality election, the highest vote getter wins even if s/he receives less than 50% of the vote. In a runoff election, two candidates advance to a runoff if no candidate receives more than 50% in the first round.

How does it work? Voters rank candidates in order of choice: 1, 2, 3 and so on. It takes a majority to win. If anyone receives a majority of the first choice votes, that candidate is elected. If not, the last place candidate is defeated, just as in a runoff election, and all ballots are counted again, but this time each ballot cast for the defeated candidate counts for the next choice candidate listed on the ballot. The process of eliminating the last place candidate and recounting the ballots continues until one candidate receives a majority of the vote. With modern voting equipment, all of the counting and recounting takes place rapidly and automatically.

IRV acts like a series of runoff elections in which one candidate is eliminated each election. Each time a candidate is eliminated, all voters get to choose among the remaining candidates. This continues until one candidate receives a majority of the vote.

Isn't this too complex for the voter? No. All the voter has to do is rank one or more candidates. It's like renting a video or picking an ice cream: What video (or flavor) do you want? That's your first choice. If they don't have that video (or flavor), what would you like? That's your second choice. If they don't have that, what's your third pick? That's all there is to it. It's as easy as 1-2-3.

Doesn't this give extra votes to supporters of defeated candidates? No. In each round, every voter's ballot counts for exactly one candidate. In this respect, it's just like a two-round runoff election. You vote for your favorite candidate in the first round. If your candidate advances to the second round, you keep supporting that candidate. If not, you get to pick among the remaining candidates. In IRV candidates gets eliminated one at a time, and each time, all voters get to select among the remaining candidates. At each step of the ballot counting, every voter has exactly one vote for a continuing candidate. That's why the Courts have upheld the constitutionality of IRV.

Does IRV eliminate "spoilers" and vote-splitting? Yes. In multiple-candidate races, like-minded constituencies such as Latinos, liberals, conservatives, etc. can split their vote among their own competing candidates, allowing a candidate with less overall support to prevail. IRV allows those voters to rank all of their candidates and watch as votes transfer to their candidate with the most support. In partisan races, IRV prevents the possibility of a third party candidate "spoiling" the race by taking enough votes from one major candidate to elect the other.

Does IRV save money? Yes. IRV eliminates the cost of runoff elections since it determines a majority winner in a single election. In San Francisco, a citywide runoff election costs $1 million. Many states use runoffs in special elections to fill vacated seats. A runoff for a U.S. house seat costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. IRV also saves money for candidates, since they only have to campaign once and raise money once.

Does IRV affect voter turnout? Yes. Turnout generally increases. IRV gives every voter incentive to participate because your vote still counts even if your first choice candidate is defeated. Also, since IRV only requires one election, the decisive election takes place when turnout is highest, typically November.

Does IRV affect campaign debate? Yes. Because IRV may require second and third choice votes to win, candidates have incentive to focus on the issues, to attract voters to their positions and to form coalitions. Negative campaigning and personal attacks are much less effective in an IRV election.

Who uses IRV? Many places. Ireland to elects its president, Australia to elect its House of Representatives, and the American Political Science Association to elect its president. Cambridge MA uses a variant of IRV to elect its city council, and literally hundreds of jurisdictions, organizations and corporations use IRV around the world.

Whom does IRV advantage? IRV advantages the majority, since it ensures that a minority of voters can never defeat a candidate supported by a majority. It also gives the voter more power, since s/he can express a range of choices.

Can the voting equipment handle IRV? Modern voting equipment, such as optical scanners and computer touch screens, can handle IRV at no additional cost. Older technologies such as punch cards and lever machines cannot handle IRV, so it doesn't make sense to adopt IRV until new equipment is purchased. In these cases, we recommend legislation authorizing the use of IRV when the equipment is available. For reasons unrelated to IRV, the trend in voting equipment is away from the older technologies, so more and more jurisdictions are acquiring equipment that can handle IRV.

Why don't more places use IRV? Prior to the advent of modern vote counting equipment, IRV required a time-consuming and costly hand count. Some jurisdictions that used IRV in statewide primaries found that they rarely had plurality (less than majority) winners, so IRV seemed unnecessary. With today's diversity and proliferation of parties and candidates, low plurality winners are more common, and hand counts are unnecessary.

Who opposes IRV? Little organized opposition to IRV exists. Election officials are understandably cautious about a system that may increase their workload, and some incumbents fear any change to the system that elected them. If you can win an election under a plurality or runoff system, however, the odds are that you would also win under IRV. The exceptions are rare but can be important. Examples include several recent House races in New Mexico, where Green Party candidates threw races to Republicans, and state legislative races in Alaska in which Libertarians and Alaskan Independent Party candidates knocked off Republicans.

Some political minorities may believe that they can only win representation in a plurality election. Such groups may oppose IRV, but of course, in such situations, a larger groups stands to gain representation by IRV.

The Canadian Alliance is the official opposition. The Minister, in this case responsible for culture/heritage and a member of the Liberal party, championed the bill for "artist's rights" (I guess) and with the support of the Liberal party, which has a majority, pushed it through. I guess the Liberals also miss the point that independent artists (well, OK, NO artists as of now) are getting any money from the levy.

Unfortunately, we live in a not so benevolent dictatorship where one guy rules the roost. In a majority government, there are no real checks and balances: the Senate is pretty toothless here. Ever read Piet Hein? Majority Rule is a pretty cool poem.

I'm sure that Stand On Guard will give you a better perspective on Canadian politics.

I agree. The problem here is not the Supreme COurt but Congress, and the problem with Congress is that like idiots we continue to vote for lizards to rule us - because otherwise the wrong lizard might wind up in charge.

On occasion, social change in the US has been spearheaded by federal courts. Most of the time, it's just not supposed to be that way. If you don't like decisions like this, don't blame the court (which probably took the most appropriate judicial action). Blame the legislators who enacted the law. Wait, you voted for the other guy, along with 45% of the other voters in your district? Does that happen a lot? Ok, blame the fact that your state elects its representatives according to geographic districts, and every 10 years redraws those lines to make most incumbents "safe" in subsequent elections. Laws like this will continue to be passed by a legislature that does not reflect the will of the people until our election mechanisms change. The zillions of posts we'll be seeing here about corporate money in government are making an important gripe, but no "campaign finance reform" law is going to fix this problem. See The Center for Voting and Democracy for more info.

Change can happen. San Francisco recently adopted Instant Runoff for local elections. It is being considered elsewhere. In particular, the Center for Voting and Democracy is working to bring fair, accurate, modern voting systems to the United States. If you go into the voting booth Tuesday and find yourself frustrated with the lack of choice, please help to make the system better.

Other voting systems abound. One alternative is the instant runoff...
And it's very popular. I was just reading about it because of some person's sig on slashdot in support of it. Hopefully the person will post to this story....
-Robert.

Also, from the faq:
"Who uses IRV? Many places. Ireland to elects its president, Australia to elect its House of Representatives, and the American Political Science Association to elect its president. Cambridge MA uses a variant of IRV to elect its city council, and literally hundreds of jurisdictions, organizations and corporations use IRV around the world."

Other voting systems abound. One alternative is the instant runoff...
And it's very popular. I was just reading about it because of some person's sig on slashdot in support of it. Hopefully the person will post to this story....
-Robert.

Also, from the faq:
"Who uses IRV? Many places. Ireland to elects its president, Australia to elect its House of Representatives, and the American Political Science Association to elect its president. Cambridge MA uses a variant of IRV to elect its city council, and literally hundreds of jurisdictions, organizations and corporations use IRV around the world."

There's so much focus on the tools of voting, that people don't pay much attention to the fact that there are fundamental limits to voting systems themselves.

For example, in 1950 Kenneth Arrow proved that no voting system is fair.

This is know as Arrow's Impossibility Theorem and places fundamental mathmatical limits on what the democratic process is capable of.

Of course, we have the worst of the worst sort of voting system here with its single-member voting districts and "one man - one vote" philosophy.

An improvement would be proportional representation.

This can't overcome Arrow's theorem, but its better than what we have now.

The problem here is the winner-take-all voting system in which essentially your vote doesn't count if you don't vote for a "winner". The U.S. needs to change to something like an instant runoff system in which a voter doesn't have to choose between voting their heart vs. picking the lesser of two evils.

Something else to consider is that our two major parties are too strong. We actually have laws in place that protect and preserve our "two-party system". Why do people believe that a two-party system is better? They use words like "stability". Yes indeed...a system that would allow consumers to rise up and protect their privacy could not be considered a "stable" place for corporations to do business.

Given that our two major parties are each rapidly becoming about as corrupt as the PRI in Mexico, we should welcome any type of progress that would weaken their grip on the country. First, we should establish Instant Runoff Voting.

After that, we could look at other ways for more people to feel like they are represented in government. How about proportional representation? It won't work for every contest, but where it does, it would keep certain groups from feeling so alienated. The constitution is not enough to protect minority rights. Even if it was, somone should be looking out for the *interests* of minority constituencies and balancing them in a proportional way (I'm not talking about racial groups).

Approval voting is widely used in the U.S. for electing corporate boards of directors -- not known as bastions of democracy by any means.

Sorry, your logic doesn't hold. You can't show something to be bad by association. That sentence is related to three logical fallacies: Cum hoc ergo propter hoc, post hoc ergo propter hoc, and Converse accident / Hasty generalization. Probably falls under the first.

Let me provide another example:

The men in Nazi armies ate bread every now and then. Nazi's were not known as bastions for freedom by any means. Therefore, the people of a democracy should eat as much non-bread food as possible.

So, would you therefore agree that corn is better than bread?

People like to pick a first choice as "their" candidate. Approval makes you say yes to some set, and no to the rest.

No more than one-person-one-vote makes a voter say "yes" to one candidate and "no" to the rest. You know the details of approval voting, right? You can cast as many equal votes as you want. If you only want to vote for one candidate (for fear of your second choice winning), then only vote for "your" candidate. Personally, I don't like the concept of having to rank any candidate I hate over any other candidate I hate.

I agree it has some mathematical elegances,

Mathematical elegances? How about actual results? It allows for far better representation than either One-Person-One-Vote or IRV.

but I prefer IRV and so do the majority of reform activists judging by the initiative measures which have actually made it onto the ballots.

Logical fallacy: Argumentum Ad Populum

Another example of Argumentum Ad Populum: I am a fan of sports team A. Sports team A has the largest following of any team. Therefore, Sports Team A is the best team.

Do all the people who support IRV know about the other systems out there? Have they educated themselves on the pass-or-fail criteria for judging fair voting? Are they just on board because it is the biggest group working towards electoral reform? And would having everybody in the world agree on IRV make it the best system?

Do some research on the many alternative voting systems out there. Find a chart of what passes and what fails certain tests. You'll see that IRV doesn't hold a candle to Approval or Condorcet. Like I said, IRV is a step in the right direction, but think how much simpler Approval voting would be to implement than either IRV or Condorcet and how much more effective it can be than either IRV or one-person-one-vote.

What really matters is that they use Instant Runoff Voting; please see:

The Center for Voting and Democracy

the Instantrunoff mailing list

and the California Instant Runoff Voting Coalition for an example of a good local activism site.

P.S. You can create your own web-based IRV web surveys with DemoChoice.org (also includes free downloadable php scripts for your own site.)

The democratic and anti-corporate nature of the Green movement is very much in line with the values of the free software/OSS movement.

As for not winning elections, over 100 Greens hold local office throughout the US. The two things that stand between us and higher office are the fact that we are actively prevented from taking part in public debates and the "first past the post" voting system (which has many fully Constitutional alternatives).

What about the people?
>>>
The people stopped caring a long time ago. You really can't blame the congress people. When the turnout rates for congressional elections hover around 36% why SHOULD they care what the public wants? It's strange. I'd like to have more faith in the public than this. Honestly, not everyone out there is like the cattle-brained "average american" stereotype. Most people are entirely decent and reasonably intelligent. Perhaps its just the prevalent lifestyle, which consists mainly of working, eating, and sleeping, which gives people that extremely narrow outlook on life. One key difference, though, I think that makes it seem like the U.S. is worse off than other countries with respect to its population's intelligence is its media. We have this history of glorifying the common person, and this is reflected in our media. Other cultures tend to glorify the exemplery members of their societies instead, which gives people the impression that the society is smarter as a whole.

before the libertarians mouth off, please not that this is private industry pushing hollings for this law. bad gov't typically gets bought by "free enterprise" when people don't pay any fucking attention to their gov't.

too many people in america complain that their gov't doesn't work right, maybe they should get off their ass and vote a better one in.

ah, rant done, feel better.

hey, go visit fairvote.org

More info here for those of you who aren't familiar with the case. Short story: Canadian citizen living in the US was convicted of the horrible crime of selling water filters to Cuba.

A damn shame. If only he sold guns to South American terrorists, he'd have been fine.

I used to have sympathy for you Americans. Sept 11 was a terrible crime, and hurt so many people. But between the Cuban embargo, crippling our industries for being too efficient and too high-quality, and violating the basic human rights of our citizens because they're not Americans, continuuing to use anti-personnel land mines, and basically pissing all over the Kyoto treaty and anti-ballistic missle treaty, you're doing your damnest to screw the world. You can all go fuck yourselves. (For those of you who actually vote and try to change how the US government acts, I apologize. But you're in the minority.)

And that's not even mentioning the DMCA and SSSCA, which have gotten plenty of airing here and don't even need explaining.

Do your worst moderation, you jingoistic sheep. I've got plenty of karma to burn.

I'll give you a hint -- the cure for a Republican isn't to replace him with a Democrat, or vice versa. The Democrats and the Republicans are both bought and paid for by the same corporations, and they merely play a game of good-cop/bad-cop to get you to vote for one party or the other -- but no matter which of the two parties wins, the corporations are in control. Hence the SSSCA, DMCA, etc.

If you don't like this situation, I suggest you vote for one of our fine third parties, and/or support a transition to instant runoff voting to help break the Democrat and Republican parties' lock on elections.

The reason that there are no Libertarians (or other 3rd parties) in office is because the so-called "democratic process" is biased against them.

• In most localities, it is extremely difficult to get on the ballot unless your party got a certain % of the vote last time. But you can't get % of the electorate if you can't get on the ballot! Chicken and egg...
• Strategic voting, aka "I don't want to throw my vote away." The current "plurality vote" system allows someone that almost 2/3 of the voters did not want to win. (May the Best Man Lose.) This encourages betraying your conscience to vote for the "lesser of two evils" to keep the worse guy out. There are alternatives, such as the Condorcet Method, which is essentially an improved IRV. If you don't have liberty of conscience...what do you have?
• "Winner-takes-all" voting in single-seat elections (like president) is also a problem. It hampers minor parties from being visible at all if you have to carry a whole state to get noticed.

Third parties often unite on these causes, regardless how divergent their platform on other issues. Vote third party on the principle of it. If you can't trust Dems and Reps to be fair during the process of getting into office, how can you trust them once they are in office?

Get informed. Push for change.

• In current society, access to computers is not evenly spread throughout all socioeconomic and racial classes. Poorer people are less likely to own home PCs than richer people. Even ignoring this effect, white people and asians of any given income level are more likely to own PCs than black and latino/a people of the same income. For statistics and pointers to sources, google turned up this; plenty more info exists on the 'net.

  It's no brilliant observation to note that people of different classes and races tend to vote for different candidates. So, any voting mechanism that makes it easier for some given type of people, who are likely to vote in a certain way, will have an "unfair" bias on the election's results.

• With Net voting, the anonymity and "sanctity" of the ballot box can be entirely lost. Imagine either of the following scenarios:
  • Since many of its workers are low-income and do not own home PCs, Company X sets up terminals for its workers to use to vote when they come to work. However, there are posters around for the favorite candidate of X's CEO and managers. The bosses clearly make it known who their favorite is. Do we have a fair election here? (What we have is, in effect, the privitization of the polling place. This frightens me.)
  • [blatent gender stereotypes ensue. switch the genders or make the people the same gender if you like in this example.] Mr. & Mrs. Y have been married for n years; however, recently there has been some trouble in the relationship and Mr. Y has been beating Mrs. Y. Mr. Y favors some kind of conservative, "traditional values" candidate. Mrs. Y would really rather vote for a candidate more supportive of women's rights. However, Mr. and Mrs. Y sit down to vote together, perhaps because Mr. Y thinks he has to show Mrs. Y how to use the computer or whatever. As Mr. Y stands over Mrs. Y's shoulder, perhaps after having had a drink or two on his way home from work, who do you think Mrs. Y is going to vote for?

Now, I love technology. I'm working this summer to bring technology to people who might not otherwise have access. But the problems with Net voting extend far beyond the ones that technology alone can solve, and my desire to see a fair election far outweighs my desire to avoid trekking over to the polling place. Net voting is not a good solution. The study refernced in the article makes some better ones, as does the Center for Voting and Democracy.

I hope any system they create can support Instant Runoff Voting.

See http://www.fairvote.org/irv/

A quick snippet:

"Instant runoff voting is a winner-take-all system that ensures that a winning candidate will receive a majority of votes rather than a simple plurality. In plurality voting -- as used in most U.S. elections -- candidates can win with less than a majority when there are more than two candidates running for the office. In contrast, IRV elects a majority candidate while still allowing voters to support a candidate who is not a front-runner. IRV is a sensible method in single winner elections."

What's more important than "counting votes" is what to do with the count.

The US Collegiate system is a skewed way of dealing with what could be much simpler.
In the UK, they use a system called "First past the post", which means they count all the votes in local elections for local representatives, and whoever gets the most votes wins that seat. The party with the most seats in parliament runs that government, and their leader becomes the Prime Minister.

But even this is not really fair. In Ireland, we use a similar parliamentary seat count to choose the ruling party, but the seats are voted using Proportional Representation which means the most popular guy probably still gets in, but no-one unpopular gets in - said another way, you get to choose your first, second preferences - if your first doesn't qualify, then your vote goes to your second choice, and so on. This way, only the candidates with some measure of universal appeal get in - none of this two-party polarisation.

That leads to the current almost farcical situation of a "rainbow coalition", a multi-party leadership with many differing policies, all in power together.

*sigh*
--
We may be human, but we're still animals.

Thanks, but just mod me up if you're running out of points :-)

However, "Condorcet" is not a descriptive name for a voting system. Call it "Instant Pairwise Runoff Voting". That way it sounds more palatable to IRV supporters.

That's an interesting point. I wrote to the people at fairvote.org, who favor IRV. Maybe I would have had better luck using that term (you might want to try; they did reply). Though, as for descriptiveness, the "Pairwise" is accurate, but there's no "Runoff" I can see. I'm going to try Instant Pairwise Voting, for now.

You add other good points--the logistical issue seemed rather academic to me, until this Florida business. I can't believe, in this day, that we can't even conduct a simple majority vote! There are still more reasons to favor IPV at electionmethods.com and elsewhere (eg, what happens if the first place votes are split, but one candidate gets lots of second place votes?).

My city uses IRV for city council elections, and my school uses IRV for student council. I used to assume because of this that IRV was the best alternative--surely, nobody would bother switching without researching the best choice. Now, I realize that IRV was chosen simply because it permits filling multiple seats with one vote. Overall fairness probably wasn't given much thought.

The phrase "Tyranny of the Majority" refers to the oppression of the minority by the majority. Democracy is built upon majority rule, but when the majority use their voting power to marginalize and oppress, that is tyranny.

Don't get me wrong, i disagree with Natapoff as well, but the Tyranny issue is an aside. I just don't think his analysis matches the reality. There are better options than simple majority. Natapoff fails to acknowledge this.

Who's throwing away those votes? In my view, it is not the people who cast them, but the people who count them. This result points out more clearly than ever the need for ranked ballots, where nobody's vote would get thrown away.

(The best-known ranked ballot system is IRV, which is indeed far superior to the current plurality system. However, I'm disappointed that more /.ers don't see the geeky reasons why Condorcet voting is even better.)

(As a response to your "I hope you're happy" flamebait: I am happy. Democracy means you don't get to second-guess anybody else's vote, but since you asked, I'll tell you about my vote. I think Gore is better than Bush by a razor-thin margin, although on several issues (encryption, military interventionism) Bush is actually better. But far more important than the tiny differences between Bush and Gore - far more important even than any message my Nader vote may have sent on issues such as fair trade and military spending - is the long-term health of our democracy. If this election leads to electoral reform, it will be easily worth it. I respect your reasons for your vote, I respect the supporters of Bush and Brown and Buchanan, now how about we stop pointing fingers and fix what's broken.)

It's been a while since there's been any race this significant that was this close, and i think it might prompt people to push for political reform.

Everyone knows the electoral college is an outdated affectation that no longer represents the views of the people. It's high time we changed it.

We might even be able to push for things like proportional representation and instant-runoff voting while we're at it. (More info on PR and IRV.) Nader might not have gotten his 5%, but his message on these topics might get heard anyway.

Wouldn't Instant Runoff Voting work better? I think so.

You really should visit Center for Voting and Democracy...there's probably a name for this already. I don't think it's quite a Borda count, but similar.

The problem is that I may mark my feeling of "sorta like him/tolerable" as a 4, but you mark it as 6. Who's to say which is right? What's the standard?

A much simpler method is Instant Runoff Voting. No need to assign a rating, as you suggest, simply ordering them by preference does the trick. If enough first-choice votes give a majority, fine, we have a president. If not, eliminate the lowest candidate and consider the second-choice votes of those voters. Repeat until one candidate does have a majority. This encourages everyone to vote their conscience (a good thing) yet doesn't give the election to someone you can't tolerate if your candidate loses (also a good thing).

1. Phillips (the "Constitution guy")
2. Bush
3. Buchanan
4. Dodge
5. Gore

This systems works equally well for voters that know one, two, or twenty candidates, unlike the Borda count or your method, which require the voters to be very well informed. How so? Let's say you like Bush but hate Gore, and don't know anybody else. Using your system you'd give Bush 10, Gore 0. Fine so far...but reasoning out of ignorance you might say, "Well anybody else has got to be better than Gore!" So you rank Nader, Buchanan, everybody else, etc, somewhere in the middle. If enough people do this, we might discover a totally random candidate will be living in the White House next year, because of ill-informed second choices.

You're wrong. The fault is not that a 3rd party is running (and making a strong showing), the problem is the voting system itself. We need Instant Runoff Voting to avoid the "spoiler" effect.

"Your vote is the currency of your virtue." You're supposed to vote on principle, not politics. If everyone voted this way there wouldn't be a problem, but as soon as one person starts voting politics, everyone else feels compelled to in order to keep out the less desirable outcome. "If you don't vote for what you believe, you won't get what you want."

Quotes above from Howard Phillips.

It means that the Electoral Votes would be divided between the candidates in proportion to the popular vote.

Let's take Minnesota as an example, because the math is easy: 10 EVs. If the vote goes 57% Bush, 41% Gore, that's 6 votes to Bush and 4 to Gore. On the current system Bush would get all 10. If the vote goes 42% Gore, 41% Bush, 16% Nader, that's 4 Gore, 4 Bush, 2 Nader. Currently Gore would get all 10.

This alone will not solve the perceived problem we have in our elections...that 3rd parties have a "spoiler" effect. To fix that we need Instant Runoff Voting.

Who on the web will publish early exit polls so we can carry out this strategy effectively?

(Of course, if Alaska or New Mexico (or Washington or Vermont) starts a state-by-state stampede to instant-runoff voting or other non-plurality system, we won't have to rely on such contorted tactics.)

Of course, the real problem is the voting system, as Katz points out. Until we get this sorted out, nobody has a chance of making a meaningful change to the American political landscape. All those third parties with such interesting thoughts? Forget about it until it's actually possible to get them elected, and that means removing the fear aspect* from voting.

I don't know if it will make a whit of difference, but I wrote a letter to the editor (Des Moines Register) yesterday concerning this very issue. We need to change the system, and get Instant Runoff Voting in place by 2004. Only then will the machinery be in place to effect real change. Maybe the letter will actually get printed. We'll see. In any case, I urge you to do the same. Get involved, even if it's only in a small way. Go to the polls November 7.

*Fear aspect: Being afraid that supporting a third party candidate as a matter of conscience will help elect the "mainstream" with ideals most unlike your own, a direct consequence of our stupid plurality-wins voting system.

Anyone interested in the Electoral College and alternate voting and/or election methods should check out The Center for Voting and Democracy The have a lot of great information on alternative voting methods including those listed in the Discover article, but in much more detail.

Our system is not a two-party system. The Constitution intentionally has no mention of political parties at all.

A one-party system is a farcical democracy where no choice exists. A two-party system is only one choice bettern than none at all, and the Republicrats are trying to make this de-facto for the US.

Our system has been corrupted by two-party collusion to exclude other parties. These are the same two parties that will never support preferential voting* because they know it would cut into their power base.

The only way we can get it is by voting for third-party candidates like Nader who are pushing for political reforms.

* aka: Proportional Representation, Instant Runoff Elections, etc.
For more info, check out The Center for Voting and Democracy

I would LOVE to see Instant Runoff Voting implemented instead of the current plurality voting. I continualy 'waste' my vote on third party candidates, but I'm one of those that won't vote for the lesser of two evils.

I'd also love to see Cummulative Voting or Proportional Representation take over for single member district voting. It would be nice to elect my elected officials, instead of them choosing me when they gerrymander districts.

I've asked the question of electoral reform to every local official running and so far only the libertarians seem to believe in answering e-mail and they are for reform.

NOTE: Of course the minor parties are on the outside looking in and thus want change, while those who feel served by the current process don't want to change. Only in the cases noted (namely Vermont, New Mex and Washington) is change being sought because a strong Green party is helping elect Republican after Republican. (LOL! those are the last folks strong greens would vote for!)

Two Pass voting is great, but Instant Runoff Voting (aka Preference Voting) is an easier, quicker and cheaper method of getting things done.

If you really want to learn more about alternative voting and election methods take a look at www.fairvote.org. It's quite shocking to find out that America is one of three 'Major' democracies not to have some form of proportional representation at a national level (Jamaica and Canada are the other two).

It's really a shame that the issue of Election Reform (as opposed to Campaign Reform) gets so little press. It's also a reason few even bother voting when the system is rigged in favor of those already in power.

PS. There are other threads dealing specifically with the Electoral College, but not any dealing with general election reform. Correct me if I'm wrong...I'd love to read them :)

I think you forgot your link. But here's one: fairvote.org. Also see Open Directory Project's listing on voting systems and the Voting Systems FAQ.

Sort of like the IRV, but not as good. Instead of casting a negative, I'd rather cast ranked positives. (See Instant Runoff Voting for more info)

-beme