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"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.
This one has flaws too, but at least it's better than FPTP hopefully.
Some important things regarding the flaw of this voting method...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumulative_voting#Voting_systems_criteria
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumulative_voting#Tactical_voting
allows a political minority to gain representation if it organizes behind specific candidates
I'm pretty sure that's how most voting systems work.
It's too bad that a proportional STV (Single Transferable Vote) isn't more widely used, then there would truely be no wasted votes
Divide a cake by zero. Is it still a cake?
Well then it's a good thing that it's the judiciary's role to enact public policy!
No, but it is the judiciary's duty to enforce the current law: the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
There are also a lot of other parties, however they didn't make it in any parliament. But there are parties for families, "true to the Bible"-Christians, or a party with yogic flyer called natural law party (however they dissolved 2004).
Most of the World's democracies work with proportional representation, AFAIK. The American system of giving all the representatives of one state to the most voted party (national election) always looked odd to me. If I understand it correctly, a party getting 30% of the votes gets all the representatives if the other (hypothetical) parties get 29%, 29% and 12%. Doesn't seem fair.
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I think you're misinformed about how such things work. Here in New Zealand we use something very like the German system - while the tiny details may be different the basic idea is the same.
Parliament or whatever has N seats, everyone gets two votes:
- the first is for a local representative elected using FPP almost exactly as you do for the House in the US - there are N/2 local representative seats.
- the second is for a party, after the first set of votes are counted and the number of party representatives with local seats are determined the total party votes for the country are tallied - the second N/2 seats are allocated to representatives off of party nominated lists so that when added to the first N/2 the party seat count in parliament comes out according to the second vote
There are various details around minimum votes to get party seats and various rules for strange overhang situations that those can create that are different from system to system.
And yes we haven't had a single government since we changed to this system where a single party got 50% or more of the vote - all governments have been coalitions - it means politicians have to make public agreements and compromises which result in them acting more constrained in their actions than they would have been if they'd gotten 30% of the votes in an FPP election but 60% of the seats - it's a wonderful thing - many of the politicians, especially the old school ones, hate it.
that one is harder
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/3/3e/Wcumballot.gif/160px-Wcumballot.gif
I have problems with additions when I'm tired :-p
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and that one
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/e/e7/FracCumBallot.gif/180px-FracCumBallot.gif
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No, don't get rid of the state legislatures.
They're some of the last fragments of the way the US was supposed to work, before Lincoln screwed it all up with his ham-fisted approach to ending slavery, that ended up giving colossal power to the federal government.
The states were supposed to have all the power, and to have that, you need your own governmental system.
That's also why there's the electoral college - it's counterproductive in a federal-centric system, but it makes sense in a state-centric system. And the US Senate - which should be elected by the governments of the states, IIRC, NOT the people - that was an attempt to prevent mob rule, and represent the states themselves in US government - the House of Representatives was intended to represent the people.
Tthey always got 6 votes. All that has changed is that before they had to vote for 6 different candidates, but now they can combine their votes.
So how does benefit minority groups? Well say there were 6+ white candidates but only one black candidate. Then voters could spend their votes only on white candidates, but did not have the option of spending their votes only on black candidates. So under the new system, if one sixth of the population wants a black representative, they get one. In principle this doesn't give them real political power, since the 5 white representatives could still out-vote them; however, for various reasons having a non-white representative gives some people warm fuzzies. For example a representative is meant to represent people as well as cast votes, so black people may be glad to have a black representative even if this doesn't directly increase their political power.
No, looks like everyone gets six votes.
What it looks like to me is that, under the old system, there was one candidate being elected at a time. So, 25% of the people wanted a Hispanic in office, apparently, but everyone else didn't.
Under the new system, all six candidates get elected at a time. Those 25% of the people now got their wishes heard, because everyone was running against everyone, and not some crap like being pre-assigned a seat, and having to fight for that seat (at least that's how things work here in Ohio, if there's multiple seats in the same position up for grabs, things might work differently there) - and, if someone didn't mind the hispanic guy, they could say that, even if they were really voting for someone else.
it's making everyone else's vote count as 1/6th the vote of people "selected" by the government.
If that was the case, cumulative voting would be bad, yes. But it doesn't work that way. What cumulative voting is, it gives everyone more votes to distribute among candidates. So everyone's vote is basically split into fractions, but everyone's ballot has the same weight overall. So if I (and everyone else) got 10 votes, I might chose to give 3 (respectively 3/10 of my vote) votes to candidate A, 2 (2/10) to candidate C, D, and J and 1 (1/10) vote to candidate X. This way, I can show that I like candidate A the most, but I'm also ok with candidates C, D, J, and X, but not with everyone else on the ballot.
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This is the first article I have seen that actually thoroughly explains the new system. Up until now, I had a problem with it, however after reading what is actually going on I no longer do.
Under the old system, two of the seats were up for vote at a time and you got to vote for which person you wanted in each seat, but you had to choose a different person for each seat. Under the new system, all six seats are up for election at a time and you get to vote for which person you want in each seat, but you can choose the same person for all six seats. The six candidates who get the most votes get the seats (even if they did not get all of their votes for the same seat). Also, this is the first article I have seen that mentions that the town suggested this solution.
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While there are advantages and disadvantages to various voting systems, isn't it the case that in theory, there is no panacea to the voting problem? Arrow's impossibility theorem
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