Slashdot Mirror

I don't see much activity on this front, but I like the material at rangevoting.org. I wonder what the status is of current efforts to get range voting implemented in the US?

They make an interesting argument that it's better to lobby for range voting than approval voting, because it's a little harder to repeal. The graph at the bottom of the home page, for me, is a shockingly strong argument. With the plurality system, we do not do much better than picking a winner at random. If we actually value democracy, we should place more emphasis on this issue. The electoral college system is also badly flawed, but I'd honesly go after the voting system first.

I think challenging the two-party system (a stable equilibrium of plurality voting) is extremely important for political debate because, for one, mud-slinging is most effective when there are only two viable candidates. At rangevoting.org they argue that range voting helps independents more than any of the other systems considered.

Plurality is consistently bad. AV is somewhat less bad until it blows up spectacularly. Which is better is a matter of debate, but I'm not surprised that the voters would adopt a "better the devil we know" position. It's also rather telling that the Cons-Lib coalition neither went straight to MMP or STV nor ran a New Zealand-style two-stage referendum.

Let's say that domestic spying is your #1 concern - who do you vote for?

If I were unilaterally pick who becomes the next president I'd pick Ron Paul, because I believe he would put a quick end to domestic spying (and because I'm a pretty hardcore libertarian.) However, the rational thing to do is to select from whichever of the (D,R) candidates I believe is infinitesimally least bad, because it is certain that one of them will win.

If we used Range Voting instead of plurality voting then the rational decision would be to cast an honest vote. In my case in the last election it would be something like Hillary=0%, Obama=10%, Romney=15%, GaryJohnson=85%, RonPaul=100%. Range voting not only allows you to express all of your desires, but does away with the need for political parties/primaries.

But in our current system - vote for who?

Someone has already implemented a pretty good algorithm for generating congressional districts.

http://rangevoting.org/SplitLR...

While it does ignore geographic features, the algorithm has the virtue of extreme simplicity and does seem to produce quite reasonable results in all but a few cases.

Sounds like a good start.

Someone has already implemented a pretty good algorithm for generating congressional districts.

http://rangevoting.org/SplitLR...

While it does ignore geographic features, the algorithm has the virtue of extreme simplicity and does seem to produce quite reasonable results in all but a few cases.

Some computer generated maps...
http://rangevoting.org/GerryExamples.html
http://www.maproomblog.com/2006/11/computer-generated_electoral_districts.php
http://igpa.uillinois.edu/content/igpa-releases-computer-generated-legislative-district-map

Not computer generated, but lots of options:
http://web.law.columbia.edu/redistricting

There's no way to eliminate gerrymandering. There will always be someone who draws the boundaries, and whoever draws them, no matter what rules he follows, will be able to find some way to make some districts lean more than they should.

Use a garden variety splitline algorithm - see http://rangevoting.org/GerryExamples.html

This isn't maths: If you vote 3rd party the 3rd party probably still won't get in, but that's not the point. If 5% or 10% of people were to vote 3rd party then it would send a message to the other two and start to affect the debate.

The 3rd party won't get in either way. That isn't the issue. The problem is that with the voting system we have (another issue), if your allegiance is e.g. to the Libertarians, but you prefer the Republicans over the Democrats, voting Libertarian rather than Republican can directly lead to the Democrats winning the election. You're sending a completely hypothetical message at the expense of losing some very real representation. Maybe you don't agree with the Republicans on every issue, but they're more likely to vote the way you'd prefer than the Democrats. This sort of strategic voting is like a informal version of the Instant Runoff election process; based on the polls, voters recognize that the 3rd parties aren't going to win and eliminate them from consideration.

The solution isn't telling people to vote for 3rd parties. Under the current system that can only make minority opinions even less relevant to the political process. Fixing this problem requires a change to the voting system itself. Range voting, for example, is easy to understand and works best when voters answer honestly.

Preferential voting is a step in the right direction, but there are problems. Arrow's impossibility theorem shows that with any ranked system there is certain desirable qualities that will always be mutually exculsive. So, mathematically IRV will always have that weakness (although first past the post is categorically worse). Some even argue that IRV pathologies makes it not as effective at nuturing more than two parties compared to other systems.

However, with range voting, you don't *order* the candidates, you score them and multiple candidates can have the same score. It works this way: score as many candidates as you want to 1 - 10 and the highest average wins.

This system has lots of benefits over IRV. Also, check out the analysis of IRV during Australia's 2007 elections.

Preferential voting is a step in the right direction, but there are problems. Arrow's impossibility theorem shows that with any ranked system there is certain desirable qualities that will always be mutually exculsive. So, mathematically IRV will always have that weakness (although first past the post is categorically worse). Some even argue that IRV pathologies makes it not as effective at nuturing more than two parties compared to other systems.

However, with range voting, you don't *order* the candidates, you score them and multiple candidates can have the same score. It works this way: score as many candidates as you want to 1 - 10 and the highest average wins.

This system has lots of benefits over IRV. Also, check out the analysis of IRV during Australia's 2007 elections.

Preferential voting is a step in the right direction, but there are problems. Arrow's impossibility theorem shows that with any ranked system there is certain desirable qualities that will always be mutually exculsive. So, mathematically IRV will always have that weakness (although first past the post is categorically worse). Some even argue that IRV pathologies makes it not as effective at nuturing more than two parties compared to other systems.

However, with range voting, you don't *order* the candidates, you score them and multiple candidates can have the same score. It works this way: score as many candidates as you want to 1 - 10 and the highest average wins.

This system has lots of benefits over IRV. Also, check out the analysis of IRV during Australia's 2007 elections.

Have you heard of range voting? It could solve some of these problems.

Range voting is a system where you score as many candidates as you want to 1 - 10 and the highest average wins. It is nice for several reasons.

There are fewer spoiled ballots: Since candidates can be ranked the same value or not at all, ballots aren't spoiled as often as in other systems

No benefit from betraying your favorite: You can *always* rank your true favorite with the highest mark without causing an undesirable outcome. You will never cause a candidate you don't want to win to do better by voting for your true favorite.

There are other benefits, but since we are talking about Australia. Check out the article about range voting vs IRV.

Have you heard of range voting? It could solve some of these problems.

Range voting is a system where you score as many candidates as you want to 1 - 10 and the highest average wins. It is nice for several reasons.

There are fewer spoiled ballots: Since candidates can be ranked the same value or not at all, ballots aren't spoiled as often as in other systems

No benefit from betraying your favorite: You can *always* rank your true favorite with the highest mark without causing an undesirable outcome. You will never cause a candidate you don't want to win to do better by voting for your true favorite.

There are other benefits, but since we are talking about Australia. Check out the article about range voting vs IRV.

So? Let's say you voted to not be heard instead? What are you going to do instead? Right now the most realistic battle is to fix house elections with automatically drawn superdistricts implemented through state referendums. Complaining about the fact that it's hard to elect an "independent" (no one independent gets anywhere, some just have smaller dependencies) into a single person position isn't just pointless, it's not even wrong! All you can do is do the least damage there, period. You can either pick your battles or yearn for a magical place where political realities will go away due to being righteously ignored. The system has plenty of leverage, it's just being thrown away on shit like making gay marriage unconstitutional in North Carolina and irrelevant crap in California.

Here is open letter to IRV supporters.

What points do you disagree with in this open letter to IRV and why?

http://rangevoting.org/TarrIrvSumm.html. Also, check the "more detailed look" link at the bottom. This lays out the case that IRV leads to a two party system.

Thank you for the links. I am eager to read up on how your system works.

I have been reading on various voting systems and also on things like PR. I would be very curious to hear what you think about http://rangevoting.org/AustralianPol.html which purports that IRV yields the same duopoly we have in the US. I would also like your take on this http://rangevoting.org/AusIRV.html which talks about it in a different context. And this http://rangevoting.org/WhyThirdRange.html which uses the 2007 election to say IRV doesn't help third parties as much as it should.

Thank you for the links. I am eager to read up on how your system works.

I have been reading on various voting systems and also on things like PR. I would be very curious to hear what you think about http://rangevoting.org/AustralianPol.html which purports that IRV yields the same duopoly we have in the US. I would also like your take on this http://rangevoting.org/AusIRV.html which talks about it in a different context. And this http://rangevoting.org/WhyThirdRange.html which uses the 2007 election to say IRV doesn't help third parties as much as it should.

Thank you for the links. I am eager to read up on how your system works.

I have been reading on various voting systems and also on things like PR. I would be very curious to hear what you think about http://rangevoting.org/AustralianPol.html which purports that IRV yields the same duopoly we have in the US. I would also like your take on this http://rangevoting.org/AusIRV.html which talks about it in a different context. And this http://rangevoting.org/WhyThirdRange.html which uses the 2007 election to say IRV doesn't help third parties as much as it should.

Is there a reason you prefer it over Range Voting? What I have read leads me to conlude Range Voting is better. See http://rangevoting.org/rangeVirv.html. But, I am definitely interested in opposing views.

For what it's worth, I'm neither a Democrat or Republican - I have no dog in that fight. In my view, the correct way to handle redistricting is something along the lines of shortest-splitline or University of Illinois' mathematical districts.

IRV sounds good, but it's actually rather bad in some non-obvious ways.

(I apologize in advance for the wall o' text, but I don't like linking to things without explaining them. There are explanations on the linked pages, so if you want to just click the links in order, you'll figure it out. I just like my explanations better...)

Yee diagrams are the simplest way to see this. They work by modeling a population of voters and candidates as occupying a two-dimensional issue space, say from -1 to +1 in each direction. (Of course higher and lower dimensions are possible, but 2D makes nice graphics that can easily be comprehended, and is high enough to demonstrate the pathologies and good behavior that apply in general.) Let N candidates occupy discrete points in the issue space, and are identified by unique colors; the voters are assumed to be distributed in a gaussian distribution about some point X in the issue space. (Yes, that's an unrealistic assumption -- voters are likely to be clumped in more interesting distributions. But if a voting system behaves for a simple gaussian distribution of voters about some middle position, it might work well for more complex cases -- if it breaks down into a pathological mess in the simple case, you know it's worthless for the complicated case.) Finally, assume each voter prefers candidates in order of their distance from his position -- and for voting methods involving strength of preferences in addition to ordering, preferences are a decreasing function of distance.

Now you run a simulated election for some large number of voters for each possible X -- that is, for every point in the rectangle from (-1,-1) to (+1,+1), at some discrete interval of your choosing. Each election is simulated, and the pixel at X is colored with the winning candidate's color. The candidate closest to X should win. (Obvious, right?) So the resulting diagram, for a good election method, should be composed of one contiguous, convex region around each candidate, matching the color of that candidate. (For the most extreme candidate in any direction, the region will extend to the edge of the diagram). AKA a Voronoi diagram, if you know what that is.

You can select the candidates' positions carefully to make a point (e.g. a simple case of 3 or 4 equidistant candidates, where one can intuitively predict the exact regions of an ideal election), or randomly. Yee's site has some of both, and I think you'll be surprised how IRV compares.

More at rangevoting.org for several methods and particularly for IRV. Note that the ones at rangevoting.org use fewer voters than Yee's simulations, thus resulting in more close-call elections going "the wrong way" compared to the limit with infinite voters following the same Gaussian distribution. While this may seem like a bug, it's actually a feature, as you can still mostly see the effects for large populations, but the stippled regions where some elections going either way reveal the relative sensitivity of voting methods, and thus which ones behave worse in real-life elections with small numbers of voters (e.g. county or town elections). While misbehaving for 5000-voter elections doesn't disqualify a method for federal or state-wide elections, all else being equal we'd certainly like to be able to use the same system for local, state and federal elections.

More relevant to reality, we can model more complex, and more realistic, voter populations, but since they can no longer be represented by a single coordinate pair, we can't just run it out into a intuitively readable diagram. But we can tally up the aggregate cost to society of each election result -- each voter suffers proportionately to the distance between the elected candidate's position and his own (or according to some other function than a n-dimensional isssue space -- e.g. some voters might

IRV sounds good, but it's actually rather bad in some non-obvious ways.

(I apologize in advance for the wall o' text, but I don't like linking to things without explaining them. There are explanations on the linked pages, so if you want to just click the links in order, you'll figure it out. I just like my explanations better...)

Yee diagrams are the simplest way to see this. They work by modeling a population of voters and candidates as occupying a two-dimensional issue space, say from -1 to +1 in each direction. (Of course higher and lower dimensions are possible, but 2D makes nice graphics that can easily be comprehended, and is high enough to demonstrate the pathologies and good behavior that apply in general.) Let N candidates occupy discrete points in the issue space, and are identified by unique colors; the voters are assumed to be distributed in a gaussian distribution about some point X in the issue space. (Yes, that's an unrealistic assumption -- voters are likely to be clumped in more interesting distributions. But if a voting system behaves for a simple gaussian distribution of voters about some middle position, it might work well for more complex cases -- if it breaks down into a pathological mess in the simple case, you know it's worthless for the complicated case.) Finally, assume each voter prefers candidates in order of their distance from his position -- and for voting methods involving strength of preferences in addition to ordering, preferences are a decreasing function of distance.

Now you run a simulated election for some large number of voters for each possible X -- that is, for every point in the rectangle from (-1,-1) to (+1,+1), at some discrete interval of your choosing. Each election is simulated, and the pixel at X is colored with the winning candidate's color. The candidate closest to X should win. (Obvious, right?) So the resulting diagram, for a good election method, should be composed of one contiguous, convex region around each candidate, matching the color of that candidate. (For the most extreme candidate in any direction, the region will extend to the edge of the diagram). AKA a Voronoi diagram, if you know what that is.

You can select the candidates' positions carefully to make a point (e.g. a simple case of 3 or 4 equidistant candidates, where one can intuitively predict the exact regions of an ideal election), or randomly. Yee's site has some of both, and I think you'll be surprised how IRV compares.

More at rangevoting.org for several methods and particularly for IRV. Note that the ones at rangevoting.org use fewer voters than Yee's simulations, thus resulting in more close-call elections going "the wrong way" compared to the limit with infinite voters following the same Gaussian distribution. While this may seem like a bug, it's actually a feature, as you can still mostly see the effects for large populations, but the stippled regions where some elections going either way reveal the relative sensitivity of voting methods, and thus which ones behave worse in real-life elections with small numbers of voters (e.g. county or town elections). While misbehaving for 5000-voter elections doesn't disqualify a method for federal or state-wide elections, all else being equal we'd certainly like to be able to use the same system for local, state and federal elections.

More relevant to reality, we can model more complex, and more realistic, voter populations, but since they can no longer be represented by a single coordinate pair, we can't just run it out into a intuitively readable diagram. But we can tally up the aggregate cost to society of each election result -- each voter suffers proportionately to the distance between the elected candidate's position and his own (or according to some other function than a n-dimensional isssue space -- e.g. some voters might

Something you might find interesting: http://www.rangevoting.org/rangeVirv.html

Having two major parties is the stable state emerging from our one-person-one-vote system. Scoring each candidate (kind of like Olympic judges do) would allow voters to "vote for" "third parties" without "throwing their vote away". It would require a little (more?) thinking on the part of the voters. See rangevoting.org.

Don't get me wrong, a good-enough plan that's moving forward beats a perfect plan stalled in its tracks, but...

Do you realize just how pathological IRV is? Are you sure it's really good-enough, that a few publicized failures due entirely to the mechanics of IRV won't poison the voting-reform well for decades?

I like full-on range voting for its expressiveness, though approval voting (the 1-bit version of range voting) is nearly as good practically, but I'm not married to them -- if you value, say, moderation* over range voting's slavish representation of actual preferences, then pick a method like Borda that's ill-behaved (particularly, Borda is weak with regard to cloning) but biased in favor of moderates, not IRV, which (in addition to its nonmotonic pathologies), is biased in favor of extremists (if slightly less so than plurality/FPTP). See these Monte Carlo simulations of several voting methods.

  *Fundamentally, any bias is a risk -- if your voting system prefers moderates, a political machine can set up straw candidates to pull an Overton window stretch, not on the voters, but on the election itself.

The solution to this is to hold our elections with Range Voting instead of the current plurality voting. With Range Voting a hypothetical candidate that is just-like-Obama, except on marijuana legalization, would beat him. Knowing this, Obama would likely change his position to align with the majority of his supporters (and in this case, the majority of Americans.)

No voting system is immune to tactical voting:
http://rangevoting.org/BayRegsFig.html
but the current Plurality Voting system *encourages* it. Voters are frequently faced with the wasted-vote dilemma, and often enough vote their true preference, split the vote, and cost the overall preferred candidate the election (e.g. Nader cost Gore the 2000 US presidential election).
Approval Voting is a good system theoretically, and its practical simplicity makes it the best system for our next step in the evolution of voting.

>It would be much better to draw the lines such that there are two or three winners for each district.
>If you did that than even first past the fence voting would be tolerable.

You would still have vote-splitting. How about a proportional system?

Well duh, instant runoff voting is CRAP. After FPTP, it's the worst possible choice. Approval though, is one of the best options available. Simulation results are pretty conclusive.

Arrow's theorem only applies to rank-order based methods. Approval is not a rank-order based method, and, under a naive extension of his axioms to cover non-rank-order methods (including range voting and approval voting), approval satisfies all of them. In beats the impossibility theorem. Now, it's still not perfect, but it's probably the best.

Oh, I should have replied to your "5" instead of your "2". Same parent, same reply: In the face of tactical voters, approval voting is more-likely to elect the true Condorcet winner than any "real" Condorcet method, including Schlze.

In the face of tactical voters, approval voting is more-likely to elect the true Condorcet winner than any "real" Condorcet method, including Schlze.

Take a look at Australia. They've used IRV for over 100 years, and their house of representatives has two parties (well; one party and one 60+ year long two-member coalition that never oppose incumbent members of the other coalition-member; close enough.)

But approval voting and score voting really CAN allow third-parties a foothold. http://rangevoting.org/

What would work better is a rating-based system, not a ranking-based one.

The two best-known rating-based systems are approval voting (give every candidate a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down) and score voting (AKA range voting; give each candidate any score from within a given range, like 0-5 or 0-10.) If 50% of voters gave A 10 points, B 6 or more points, and C 0 points, and 50% reversed A and C, then B wins; as you think they should.

More information about score and approval voting is available at The Center for Range Voting

I've been mistaken as to physicists role in this but I've found an article dealing with this split votes problem (Arrow's impossibility theorem). It shows that range voting was given as a remedy for exactly this problem.

I get to say I voted for a party I believe in.

And I get to say I actually did something to reduce the amount of evil in the world. I'll take that over a sentimental cliche any day.

(You know who else felt smug about doing what he believed in even though he was actually making things worse? George W. Bush. Just sayin'. ;)

Hate to break it to you, but, we can indeed vote for our true preferences without penalty.

I hate to break it to you too, but IRV is seriously flawed (as is plurality + delayed runoff), and there are surprisingly common scenarios where voting your true preferences will work against you. Here are real-life examples from Vermont (2009) and Peru (2006). You're lucky it hasn't happened in Australia yet, but that doesn't mean it never will.

I get to say I voted for a party I believe in.

And I get to say I actually did something to reduce the amount of evil in the world. I'll take that over a sentimental cliche any day.

(You know who else felt smug about doing what he believed in even though he was actually making things worse? George W. Bush. Just sayin'. ;)

Hate to break it to you, but, we can indeed vote for our true preferences without penalty.

I hate to break it to you too, but IRV is seriously flawed (as is plurality + delayed runoff), and there are surprisingly common scenarios where voting your true preferences will work against you. Here are real-life examples from Vermont (2009) and Peru (2006). You're lucky it hasn't happened in Australia yet, but that doesn't mean it never will.

Actually, preferential voting (where you rank canidates) still keeps one big problem from our current system: the possibility of "throwing away your vote." You'd have to decide who to rank first: the candidate you really like, or the one you think can win. You don't want your vote for The Ideal Party to take votes away from The Tolerable Party and throw the election to The Horrid Party.

Not necessarily. You really should look up the Condorcet Principle (and corresponding methods, yes plural). The real problem with ranked choice voting is Arrow's Theorem. However you want to deal with Arrow's, I stand by the Condorcet Principle.

Range voting, on the other hand, lets you say "here's how much I like each candidate on a numerical scale." The "practical" candidate isn't hurt at all by your preference for an idealistic one.

This site gives a lot of info on why range voting tends to give the best outcome for the largest number of voters. They advocate for range voting to be used in any election - even school elections. I'd love to see it "trickle up," since it's clearly a better system.

Range Voting reduces down to approval voting. The failure to vote 100% for "Tolerable Party" Winds up hindering them in the same way that abstaining would. Smart voters would always vote 100% and 0% (most dumb voters would too). Now I'm not opposed to approval voting. It would be a major step in the right direction. Just don't kid yourself that range voting is all that special. It's just more confusing than it needs to be.

Actually, preferential voting (where you rank canidates) still keeps one big problem from our current system: the possibility of "throwing away your vote." You'd have to decide who to rank first: the candidate you really like, or the one you think can win. You don't want your vote for The Ideal Party to take votes away from The Tolerable Party and throw the election to The Horrid Party.

Range voting, on the other hand, lets you say "here's how much I like each candidate on a numerical scale." The "practical" candidate isn't hurt at all by your preference for an idealistic one.

This site gives a lot of info on why range voting tends to give the best outcome for the largest number of voters. They advocate for range voting to be used in any election - even school elections. I'd love to see it "trickle up," since it's clearly a better system.

That's interesting... it looks like Arrow's impossibility theorem doesn't apply to that.

OffTopic:Slashcode is borken again! It stripped out the spaces on that url so I had to use underscores instead! *Rant rant rant*!!!

Actually, preferential voting (where you rank canidates) still keeps one big problem from our current system: the possibility of "throwing away your vote." You'd have to decide who to rank first: the candidate you really like, or the one you think can win. You don't want your vote for The Ideal Party to take votes away from The Tolerable Party and throw the election to The Horrid Party.

Range voting, on the other hand, lets you say "here's how much I like each candidate on a numerical scale." The "practical" candidate isn't hurt at all by your preference for an idealistic one.

This site gives a lot of info on why range voting tends to give the best outcome for the largest number of voters. They advocate for range voting to be used in any election - even school elections. I'd love to see it "trickle up," since it's clearly a better system.

I'm glad you mentioned range voting. I Googled it and found this site: http://rangevoting.org/

This, to me, is the single dumbest thing about our democracy: that our current voting system makes you vote for who you can tolerate and think can win, as opposed to who you actually like.

I encourage everyone to visit the link above to read about a better voting system.

Our party system evolved for one reason and one reason only

...because voting with single-member plurality districts naturally gravitates towards two parties as described by Maurice Duveger in the 70s?

If we don't want a two-party system, we need to use an electoral system that Duverger's law doesn't apply to; either single-member districts with score- or approval-voting (and no, not instant runoff voting), or proportional representation.

IMO, One thing that the US should perhaps do is to have 2 rounds, like they do in Finland, when electing a president. If no candidate gets > 50% in the first round, the top 2 advance to the second round. This way you could vote for what you really want in the first round and one day an outsider might stand the slightest chance.

Or they could just implement range voting and get the same or better result with only one election.

Yeah, don't support instant runoff voting. Support range voting. It's better math.

I really don't get the "write in your own candidate" thing you guys have. If someone wanted to stand for office in an area, wouldn't they just register to do so, and so be on the voting slip?

Nope. Ballot access laws are determined by the individual state, and most of them are skewed against allowing minority runners on the ballot. If you aren't a member of a major party (I think it's 3% of the national vote in the previous election to qualify), then you're looking at needing 3-5% of the electorate to sign a petition. Also, it's expensive to get on the ballot - usually between $8-10k. You can check out a few of the worst ballot access laws here.

You'd do well to look at the French system for inspiration.

Yes. Condorcet seems like the most fair and useful, even more so than instant runoff.

I'm not sure what the best solution is, but Condorcet voting has problems since strategic voting means people have an incentive to rank rivals to their favorites artificially low and rank unwanted entities higher, as seen in this example.

Long Version: (See bottom for short version)
While your sarcasm makes a good point, there is definitely a need to change the method of voting. With the current system, his point stands. If I like candidates B and A, in that order, and you like candidates B and C, in that order, but I hate candidate C's position on many things (and you hate candidate A's position on many things), and candidate B is neither Republican, nor Democrat, and doesn't have enough money to run a campaign because of it, who will each of us vote for?

If I vote for B and you vote for B, great, we get the person we both wanted into office. The thing is, we both know that isn't how it works. If A and C are the Republican and Democratic options, then I will vote A and you will vote C. Why?

Well, take a look at this scenario:
I vote my conscience (B), and you, not wanting A to even have a chance, vote defensively (C, as opposed to your preferred B), and the general populace simply votes party line, then A and C will get the most votes, my B vote disappears in the mix, and your C vote tips the balance.

The result of this is that not too many people vote their conscience, because they are smart enough to see that the vote will end up swallowed up in the mix.

This leads to an ever tightening grip by one or two parties, eliminating any valid options unless you want to "throw away" your vote.

Solution? I'm not an expert, but Range (or Score) Voting seems to be a seriously well thought out alternative that has relatively few issues with it (far less ways to manipulate it than our current system).

Yes, the first 2 or three presidential elections would end up still with a majority going to the current top two candidates, but you might see a surprising number of "minor" parties jumping up as realistic contenders as people get used to being able to cast their intentions as opposed to their defense against another candidate.

More exposure to different party ideals is a good thing for everyone, and there are dozens of parties with varying ideologies, one of which likely matches you better than the party you've effectively been forced to conform to (of course there will be many who find their current party still their best option, but more realistic choices is always better).


tl;dr:
Current plurality voting system favors the top two parties. Range Voting (or some other solution) is needed to provide real alternatives to the current habit of defensively voting for the lesser of two evils - this will bring about greater awareness of other party options beyond the top 2, and mitigate the issues surrounding "throw away" votes.

I have seen some good ideas to change things. For example to allow voters to say yes to more than one candidate - so they can vote for the third or fourth party and can still have a say in the fight between the two strongest. Here is one such site: http://www.rangevoting.org/

But the real problem with voting is the One Vote, Plurality wins counting system, which drives out third parties and means that in a multi-contestant election, the winner almost never gets a majority. This is known to be a bad system. It may indeed be true that all voting systems may have problems, but one vote, plurality wins has very bad problems.

There are much better counting systems-- approval voting is simple and easy, for example, and much much better. Range voting also has a lot to say for it-- mathematically it's similar to approval, but hey, if you can rate your local restaurant on a scale of 1 to 5, you can learn to rate politicians the same way.