"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.

Comments

Sigh...

[Antony-Kyre]

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

Re:Sigh...

[Gadzeus]

We should represent our greatest heros with care. Churchill was by no means perfect but he was one of the best of us and is still held in the highest regard in Britain. There's no reason to sully his reputation with truncated quotations:

“I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes,”...

let our hero continue: ... “making his eyes water by means of lachrymatory [i.e., tear] gas.”

The theme is concluded thus:

“The moral effect should be so good as to keep loss of life reduced to a minimum” and “Gasses can be used which cause great inconvenience and would spread a lively terror yet would leave no serious permanent effect on most of those affected.”

I think you'll agree that the full text befits his reputation as Britain's visionary saviour, whereas the person who first sought to sully his reputation by offering up into popular currency the truncated misrepresentation of his view deserves shame.

Single Transferable Vote

[lul_wat]

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

Re:Single Transferable Vote

[LambdaWolf]

It really is unfortunate that STV, proportional or otherwise, hasn't caught on more. You can sell instant-runoff voting in three sentences: "You can vote the new way or continue voting the old way. To vote the new way, number the candidates from 1 to n in your order of preference. To vote the old way, mark the candidate you want to vote for as 1 and leave the rest blank." There's really no disadvantage to it... except that it would give third parties a foothold against the entrenched two-party system, so why would any politician in power bother to support it? (Sorry to sound so cynical, on Slashdot no less.)

Sadly, the notion that right-versus-left is American politics is getting more entrenched as well. The voters in my home state of California unfortunately just passed a ballot measure that will allow only two candidates on the ballot for any state general election. So long, third parties. Granted, most voters were probably taken in by the promise of open primaries, which was wrapped up in the same proposition and dominated the discussion. But that's just what was so outrageous about it: no one bothers to think that politics can be more subtle than Democrats versus Republicans.

Re:Single Transferable Vote

[PatHMV]

Well, you omit 2 crucial facts about California. First, none of those 3rd parties getting onto the "general election" ballot had any chance of winning to begin with, correct? Second, ALL of those 3rd parties can participate equally in the new primary election, a non-partisan primary which results in the 2 highest vote getters, regardless of party, going to the general election.

Thus, if a 3rd party has sufficient support to have any chance of prevailing in the general election, it must certainly have sufficient support to come in first or second in the primary election, yes? Or are you seriously arguing that a 3rd party might be able to garner 51% of the vote when running against the 2 major party candidates, but can't manage to get about 30% of the people to vote for it in a wide-open primary election?

Cumulative Voting and Vote-Splitting

[prefec2]

Cumulative voting and vote-splitting is largely used in Germany on municipal contexts. So you could say that it has been evaluated now at least for 60 years and it worked perfectly. However, it is not used on state and federal level, but as we can vote there for different parties and not (only) for representatives which belong to parties, different social groups can vote for their party and get a fair share in the parliament.

• CDU = conservatives/right wing/traditionalists
• SPD = social democrats/becoming more and more conservative
• Grüne = green party/for liberals and ecological motivated people
• Linke = socialist party/party for the poor and for pacifists
• FDP = neo liberal party/for those who have money and do not want to share their wealth as they do not see that they are also responsible for the poor in the country (as stated in the German constitution)
• DVU/REP/NDP = very right wing nationalists/only present in parliaments in some eastern states of Germany

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).

Re:not proportional voting, rather representation

[taniwha]

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.

Re:not proportional voting, rather representation

[bhtooefr]

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.

Re:The "fairest" thing since affirmative action

[Noonian Soong]

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.