Slashdot Mirror
"Cumulative Voting" Method Gaining Attention
Local ID10T writes "The AP reports on a system of voting, called 'cumulative voting,' which was just used under court order in Port Chester, NY. Under this system, voters can apportion their votes as they wish — all to one candidate, one to each candidate, or any combination. The system, which has been used in Alabama, Illinois, South Dakota, Texas, and New York, allows a political minority to gain representation if it organizes behind specific candidates. Courts are increasingly mandating cumulative voting when they deem it necessary to provide fair representation." Wikipedia notes that cumulative voting "was used to elect the Illinois House of Representatives from 1870 until its repeal in 1980," without saying why the system was abandoned.
I would like to point out that it's not just counting someone 6 times, it's making everyone else's vote count as 1/6th the vote of people "selected" by the government. What a great way to bring people together. This will just infuriate the people who are now worth a fraction of a vote and further isolate "selected" groups from the mainstream.
Since the government selects the multiplier and the "victim" group of people, it will be no surprise that the group will vote for a larger and more authoritarian government that gave them this power over the "regular" people. What obvious and malicious tampering, why secretly steel votes when you can just make a new law that does it for you!
And why stop at 6? Why not 10? Why not 100? Why not 1000? Once you have made the leap of logic that one person's vote is worth more than another person's vote there is no limit to how much you can alter the outcomes of elections to favor whatever candidate the controlling party likes. This is just pure banana republic, Hugo Chavez style lawlessness.
And this is from the same folks that think that a different test for everyone depending on their skin color is fair, but the same test for everyone regardless of skin color is unfair. More liberal logic: These people, what the liberals have forced me to call them, are not smart enough to take the same tests as "regular" people. But they should be given a vote that is worth 6x the vote as "regular" people, which by the liberal's standards, are smarter than them? That's just as stupid and contradictory as the two ideas on their own!
In this country, as it should be everywhere, everyone should be treated exactly the same regardless of their skin color, gender, age, religion. "These people" are "regular" people. It is only a label given to them by liberals and the government (ever fill out a government form?). There should be no arbitrarily payoffs by power hungry politicians of this group and that group. We are all humans. We live together in a society of laws that cannot be arbitrarily tossed aside when you want to get a few more votes.
To say, as liberals do, that one race is inferior to another is a crime against nature but it's said over and over by these people in the guise of helping. But the only result, and their only real interest, is a more authoritarian and power hungry government that has more interest in tricking, hiding and asserting total control over the people than helping the people.