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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?
What they really mean by "fair representation" would be more accurately described as "damn voters won't vote for the people we want them to, so we're screwing with the rules."
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
Yet it's news for nerds. Go figure.
Despite Thomas Jefferson's fantasies, most Americans seem to prefer parties. That's why we need a Bundestag-like proportional representation system at the state Legislature and Congressional levels (BTW, save some money and get rid of the silly state Senates). Any party (or, in our case, add individual) that can gather some significant number of members/petitioners should be placed on the ballot, and the seats of the legislative body apportioned according to the votes cast for the party/individual. That way, maybe we would have some representation of more than two (increasingly lunatic) points of view. California, for example, has several registered parties (American Independent, Democratic, Green, Libertarian, Peace and Freedom, and Republican), but legislators from only two, so a large portion of the registered voters are simply not represented at the state level. Before some idiot says "well, they just need to get enough votes", the district lines are drawn to prohibit any but the Demopublicans from getting a seat (see "Gerrymander") in any district in the state.
The real reason that we don't have such a system is that the corporations that own the Demopublicans ("Big Oil", Hollywood, ...) would have to spread their bribes over a lot more politicians and they will do whatever it takes to prevent that additional expense.
A ranking system is the right solution.
If 50%-something would like A to win, are ok with B, but definitely don't want C, and if the 50%-something others are the exact opposite, then the best candidate should be B, not A or C where it's only down to little percentage different.
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.
It's unfortunate, but... you cant expect people whom have been voted into office will allow others to more easily take their place. I'm glad the judicial system can edge in on the election system (within its limits)...
Though personally I don't think those whom are elected should be able to make/change laws about elections... but that would just make the system more complex and larger... So when the judicial system steps in and tries to keep things constitutionally in line I appreciate it.
Seems to be that the system was expensive and might have been too democratic.
"Black Representation Under Cumulative Voting in IL"
http://archive.fairvote.org/?page=419
Did careerism also play a part?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Here's a 1976 article on cumulative voting in Illinois. The writer saw it as promoting intraparty strife (creating more competition between candidates of the same party than with the candidates of the other party) and was hard for voters to understand.
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
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).
How is this better than ranked voting? The last thing we want is more power for deeply grooved special interests.
So whats your preference? First past the post or Single transferable vote?
http://michaelsmith.id.au
"Cumulative" voting is too prone to abuse. There are better (more mathematically "fair") voting systems. Take instant runoff voting for example. Statistically, it appears to satisfy the most people, most of the time, without too many quirks that some of the others suffer from, like the possibility of a minority winning under some circumstances.
If anyone can cast the votes he wants how can you be right about how many people have voted.
Count the ballot papers.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
But with STV your vote only ever goes to one candidate. Its just a way of saying I want candidate C to win but if it comes down to A and B then I choose B. In this scenario B gets your vote.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
I think the system they're looking for is the single transferable vote. With cumulative voting, various interests have to figure out how many candidates they have the numbers to elect and then organize their voters ahead of the election. With STV, the system itself does this all for them and gives fair, proportional results.
The system you favour inevitably leads to a two party system with conservative policies. That may be okay if you like the status quo, but life generally requires adapting to new conditions and the first past the post system does not encourage new candidates who will propose genuine change.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
You don't need "parties."
Speak your piece on the issues and if your views are in sync with the voters you get their votes.
Abolish political parties, PAC's, and the rest of the their ilk and make the candidates run on their VIEWS alone.
Hi, I Am Joe Idiot and I am running for Mayor of Hooterville. This is what I am going to do: ...................
Candidates need to speak THEIR OPINION not the opinion of some bunch of unelectable puppeteers. See "If I'm Lucky" 1946.
1311393600 - Back to Black
"un-American" is a good thing."
Then "UN-[UK, Irish, French, Spanish, Italian, Swiss, Austrian, Canadian, Russian, Turkish, Lithuanian...." is a GOOD THING!
1311393600 - Back to Black
The main issue with the US voting system (well, apart from "lobbying" which is actually legalized corruption) is gerrymandering, with which outgoing politicians try and tailor constituencies to maximize the probably they'll be reelected, and the numbers of successful candidates on their sides. Apart from the judiciary, who's gonna stop them ?
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Even better would be a system where you could not only vote for certain candidates, but also against them. For example, the same system with 6 votes, but you could choose to give 4 votes to a certain candidate, and 2 votes against another. This could serve to keep racist and other undesirable candidates out. Maybe divide the negative votes by half, though, so you don't get a situation where 49% vote for A and against B, 49% for B against A, and C wins with 2% of the votes. This would also limit tactical abuse of the system, since a vote for a candidate is more productive than a vote against his opponent.
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.
Um, what?
Where's the -1, Wrong mod when you need it?
You get six votes. You DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO with them. Don't use them at all. Give all six to one candidate. Give them to six different candidates. Any other distribution of those six votes among less candidates. Your choice.
Either way, your voice gets heard equally, no matter who you are. It's just that you can weakly say you prefer all of these candidates, or strongly say you prefer one candidate, or moderately say you prefer a smaller group of candidates.
I read 'cumulative vomiting' and thought it was some new artsy thing people do in the States.
-- Cheers!
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.
They say that cumulative voting will give the Hispanics in the area, who make roughly half the population, equal representation. However, according to articles I've read about this area, only a quarter of that half of the population vote. Then they wonder why a White candidate wins and there is no Hispanic on the 6 seat board? We can't vote for you. Why is the idea of splitting up that area into 6 seats "a bad idea", like you would your county commissioners in most American areas? One area would be predominately Hispanic, which would ensure atleast one seat would be for a candidate with the Hispanics' interest, but they won't do it that way.
I don't understand how giving 6 votes to a quarter of the actual voting population is going to help and yet the judges and election officials give each other pats on the back because one Hispanic candidate actually won a seat after you give voters 6 votes? Am I missing something?
There is no such principle, at least not in general. The purpose of a voting system is to map the expressed desires of the electorate onto a small number of representatives. There are several different methods of deciding whether such a mapping is a "good" one, and each of these criterion is to some extent mutually incompatible.
[FUCK BETA]
1/6th the vote of people "selected" by the government? ;)
Your first vote counts as one if your over 50%.
The rest is coalition building in the hands of the people.
Not some closed room political machine, pundit or cleric.
Malicious tampering is more in the counting by computer without a paper trail
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
You are rather misrepresenting the liberal position on positive discrimination. The point is not that one group is *inherently* smarter than another; it is that the entrenched disparity due to socio-economic factors is such that simple equality of treatment will not erode the differences between these groups over any meaningful timescale. Personally, I would prefer to see other solutions than simply applying skewed tests, but I do believe it is a problem that ought to be addressed in some way. What has your party done to deal with it?
[FUCK BETA]
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.
The strength of a civilization is not measured by its ability to fight wars, but rather by its ability to prevent them.
voters can apportion their votes as they wish -- all to one candidate, one to each candidate, or any combination.
According to this, there will be more ballots than voters.
Math is beautiful... e^(pi*i)+1=0
While you are right, the system itself is very, very, wrong.
We are supposed to be a democratic republic, where every legal voter gets one vote for each set of candidates. In this system, one gets six votes, one vote for each candidate and can vote multiple times for a single candidate.
The proper thing to do was to break the town in to districts. Another thing that could have been done was have all the trustees elected at the same time, with the top six as the winners.
The judge should be removed from the bench. Unfortunately, he can not be charged with election fraud as he so richly deserves.
Cumulative voting is great for allowing a specific minority to elect officials. It is also great for election fraud. It is undemocratic and it is unamerican.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
If hispanics made up half the population and Hispanics wanted representation, then all that had to happen was for all the hispanics to vote. I guarantee that some other minorities and some whites would end up voting for an hispanic candidate if said candidate was an issue candidate and not a race candidate.
This is nothing but a way for a specific race, to get someone elected. Special rules designed to benefit a certain race? That sounds like racism to me.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
I would imagine given a state and the location of all of the people in that state you could design an algorithm to solve for district boundaries that minimized total perimeter and minimized standard deviation in the number of people in each district. Then you if you could pass such a law you could use that system to automate the creation of district boundaries and it would completely non-partisan.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
I prefer approval voting. For every candidate on the ballot, you can either vote for him or not vote for him. That would fix the tactical voting problem, since voting for a non-mainstream candidate doesn't affect your ability to choose between the 2 largest parties, so the weaker parties would see more popularity. Also, it would encourage politicians to campaign positively, proposing solutions to problems, rather than relying on a smear campaign against their opponents.
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.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Range reduces to Approval, since you want to give every candidate either maximum if you support him or minimum if you don't so your chance of affecting the outcome is as great as possible. Approval, in turn, requires polling and strategy so you can know where to put the cutoff.
Say the three candidate for President is Bush, Gore, and Nader. You like Nader but don't want Bush. If Nader has negligible support, you would vote for Gore and Nader, so that your vote still helps Gore keep Bush away. However, if Nader has substantial support, any vote for both will help Gore win at the expense of Nader, so you might want to reconsider and put the cutoff after Nader rather than after Gore.
I can see no reason why we should burden voters with having to vote tactically in such a manner. If you absolutely have to have Range or Approval, make a computer find out the poll and vote tactically according to the voter's sincere wishes given on a ranked (or rated) ballot. This idea is called Declared Strategy Voting. Warren himself claims that his DSV version of Range does better than Range.
Furthermore, while IRV behaves badly here, that's just a blemish (among a million others) on IRV, not on ranked voting as a whole. Condorcet methods would do the right thing: if 50% rank A above B above C and 50% rank C above B above A, then B beats A, then B ties both A and C one-on-one. A single voter preferring the broad support candidate B, would then be enough to make B win against both A and C, and so be the victor.
Well in that case, since the court knows who should have won, why are they bothering asking the subjects^H voters, just ennoble the candidate directly!
This method does make sense when you are voting for the members of an elected body , like a city council or school board (or a parliament). Suppose there are 10 positions to be filled, and a couple dozen candiates then you get 10 votes, which you could spread out over a number of candidates, or just one if thats the only one you like. The top 10 vote getters get seats on the council.
It does not make sense if you are voting for just one position (like the president of the USA.) If you are splitting your votes there, then essentially you are cancelling yourself out.
One result of this would be e.g. the USA splitting into two groups.
The only time that has ever happened, hoop skirts were in fashion.
"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 'selector group' in office, apparently, but everyone else didn't."
And so that particular "selector group" needed a better candidate that had better solutions on ALL the issues not just the selector groups.
Just because "selector group" exists doesn't mean they get a seat a the "legislative body."
One person, one vote, the candidate that gets the MAJORITY Of the votes wins. Morality and fairness have nothing to do with life, except being fantasies that humans want to apply to areas they have no purpose.
1311393600 - Back to Black
Approval voting is possibly even easier for voters to understand than fptp, since you can still just vote for whoever you like the most.
This post is long, late, and buried, but proxy voting would work work better than either plurality or cumulative voting. Each person gets a single vote, but each representative (in this case, the six trustees) would get voting power equivalent to the number of people who voted for them. It's no more difficult for voters than first past the post (plurality) voting, and it's much more representative of voters actual wishes.
As an example, let's assume a Zipfian (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipf's_law) distribution. There are seven candidates -- A, B, C, D, E, F, and G -- the distribution is 1/1, 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/5, 1/6, and 1/7. Normalizing, you A=38.57%, B=19.28%, C=12.86%, D=9.64%, E=7.71%, F=6.43%, and G=5.51%.
Since only six can be elected, candidate G will be left out. You are not representing the first choice of 5.51% of the voters, but more important, the first choice of the voters has six times the support as the last seated candidate. How on earth is it fair to give each the same voting power? Both plurality and cumulative ignore this problem.
Completing the example above, let's assume G's supporters have their second choices spread among the remaining candidates in the same Zipfian distribution. Taking out the 1/7 and normalizing, you have A=40.82%, B=20.41%, C=13.61%, D=10.2%, E=8.16%, and F=6.8%. You have the following minimum voting blocks that can pass any legislation they want:
Two people:
A&B = 61.22% of the voting power
A&C = 54.42%
A&D = 51.02%
Three people:
A&E&F = 55.78%
Four people:
B&C&D&E = 52.38%
B&C&D&F = 51.02%
A is necessary in 4 of these groups
B,C, and D in 3 of them,
E is necessary in 2 of them
F is necessary in 1
The remaining possibilities require one of the above subgroups.
This should give an indication of how voter preference translates into the proxy system more accurately than in proxy or cumulative voting.
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Only Veterans should vote.
Would you like to learn more?
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
surely. except they're not doing it, so it seems, as usual, that the way the get closer to The True Right Way is a sneaky roundabout.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
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
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
That is the sanest way to go. That way I know for a fact that the products and services which I prefer are the ones being supported.
The districts in California are horribly drawn, hence the recent proposition that appoints a non-legislative group to draw the lines. I, personally, would have preferred a simple computer system with a limited number of rules (such as "make the shortest possible outlines" and "follow natural boundaries such as rivers and highways when possible") and required NO input as to voting registration, racial demographics, etc. But I'll take this system. The results won't be obvious until after the lines are redrawn as a result of this year's census but with any luck we'll get districts that are less gerrymandered.
Actually I am a lab rat in an elaborate plot to take over the world.
Ooops... I think you would get zero something percent for your math...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Unfortunately, the liberal tendency to attempt to dictate results directly ignores certain 'socio-economic factors' that are inconvenient. First and foremost is that some societies or cultures are simply better than others, and practitioners of those better cultures will fare better in most ways than practitioners of backwards cultures. This readily observable fact is clear to anyone who hasn't had their head muddled up with multiculturalist nonsense (Yes, Japanese society is clearly superior to African tribal societies that still kill albinos for witch doctor potions and cut off little girl's clitorises.)
By artificially propping up participants of sub-standard subcultures in the United States, only destruction is spread.
Now it's very common at this point for someone to yell 'racist!', but note that I have been talking about cultures- which is an identifiable set of practices and behaviors- and not skin color. I will not pretend that behavior is dictated by skin color- will you?
I seem to recall something about judging folks by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. Accordingly, folks like me (party notwithstanding) want to see people succeed or fail based on engaging in positive behaviors that will ensure their success going forward. Propping up the unqualified only leads them to early and more embarrassing failure, while calling the credentials of qualified people of the same 'disadvantaged' group into question.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
I think cumulative voting could work if a voter could apply one vote to each candidate she preferred, rather than having a set number of votes to spread over the candidates. The candidate who accumulated the most votes would win. If you had several identical open positions, the candidates with the most votes could win them (rather than splitting up the positions into separate campaigns.)
I've thought for some years that a fair voting system should not only allow one to vote for a candidate, but also to vote against him/her. Maybe it is just me, but I think that there are people I do not want to represent me, but since others have voted them, I have a little say, other than voted someone else who I may not like but have some chance to beat the guy I do not like/trust. Perhaps being able to vote for or against every candidate in an election will express in a more clearly way the will of the people.
Cumulative voting probably works better than it sounds and would be easier than ranking candidates. But what it does it is shows that a number of people fanatical about a candidate.
I believe a much more interesting way to do things is to allow voters one vote for each candidate that they like, but no more than one. This system would show general like of the population instead of the work of activists. When people use more votes than someone else, in the grand scheme of things it actually diminishes the value of their vote.
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
Sorry.
The system is broken. You get to choose charming and evil or just plain evil.
The government is bought and paid for. Voting is a charade.
For voting to work as we'd all like it to work, first we'd have to...
1. Have an independent media not owned by the oligarchs. This way real debate can happen.
2. Test candidates and sitting leaders for psychopathy and remove those who fail the tests from the system.
3. Make corporate sponsorship/lobbying a crime with real punishments which stop the crimes from repeating.
4. Fix the money system so that we are not all debt slaves in the giant pyramid scheme which is the global economy.
Since none of those things are going to come about, debating how to vote is pointless.
The system is collapsing, and a LOT of people are going to suffer horribly.
The only thing you can realistically do is to find your neighbors and figure out how to help and support each other through the hard times, because the government is an evil leach which is here to feed on you and enslave you. Disengage from it.
-FL
The system you describe is a version of approval voting.
You mark the candidates you approve of and leave the ones you don't unmarked. The one with the highest number of marks gets the first seat, the next gets the second, and so on.
If there exists a third party candidate that supporters of both parties like, he (or she) is likely to have the most votes and win. That is desirable.
It avoids the problem of spoiler candidates, assuming the voter votes for both the would-be spoiler and the likely winner.
However it has downsides. If there were for example two republicans and one democrat on the ballot (in addition to other candidates), the republican voters would feel the need to vote for both of the candidates,to avoid the spoiler problem, that would allow the democrat to win even if most of the population would support a republican over a Democrat. However, when doing so they have no way of expressing a preference for one of the two republican candidates over the other. That is not ideal. (Obviously, the scenario works equally as well if you swap the party names.)
The results that approval voting has in cases of multi-seat elections is unlikely to be proportional, but the type of results to be expected depend on the number of seats, and the number of clones (a technical term in voting theory, here it candidates that virtually always get the same vote on any ballot (i.e. if one is marked, all are marked)).
Stylish sheet to fix many problems in Slashdot's D3: https://gist.github.com/801524
Again, I don't disagree with you on positive discrimination; I just want to know whether you think there is an issue to be addressed and what you think should be done about it?
[FUCK BETA]
Iowa has detailed rules on how district lines are drawn, and therefore well known for preventing Gerrymandering. In contrast, Illinois has some interesting Gerrymandering going on.
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How does this allow a specific minority to elect officials? It sounds like MULTIPLE minorities benefitted from this.
And, what's wrong with minorities electing officials to represent their share of the population? Arguably, that's more fair, and the point of this move.
OK, then don't call it six votes.
You get one vote, and can divide it six ways.
One person, one vote. Applied six different ways, yes, but it's still one person, one vote.
Well, let's look at what actually happened. This was done specifically so an hispanic person would be elected. An hispanic person was elected.
Sure, it could help multiple minorities get elected, but you know what, that is not democratic either.
This is political correctness and affirmative action applied to elections and it is wrong.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
May I suggest Personal Representation, in which each citizen can choose their own personal representative who will vote on their behalf, in much the same way that shares are voted at a stockholder's meeting. Alternately, a person could hold on to their own vote and vote as they like, but only representatives with a minimum number of votes would be allowed a seat in Congress or allowed to sponsor a bill - everyone else would have to submit their votes remotely.
With this system, almost everyone would have a representative that they approve of. Persons with multiple, conflicting personalities would still be out of luck.
I tried to stir up some interest on Facebook, but didn't have much luck:
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/pages/I-want-Personal-Representation-in-Congress/109651832401918
Cumulative Taxation. Taxpayers are 'given' a number of 'dollars' equal to the amount they owe the IRS, and on their tax form are allowed to specify how much of what they're paying goes to what agency or purpose. One possible outcome could be the rich, who often arrange tax havens, instead paying taxes to make sure they don't lose perks only they can afford to use but haven't had to subsidize. Another might be the realization of the bumper sticker favored by many educators and education supporters, where "textbooks are paid for by taxes and the Pentagon has to hold bake sales to buy bombs". Maybe more interesting to contemplate: what government departments or agencies would go bankrupt and have to close?
Of mine, NASA would get every dime.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Perhaps an improvement to approval voting would be to number the candidates as in ranked systems, so that if two or more candidates achieve an equal number of votes the one with the lower total score (who is more preferred) would get the seat.
Description on Wikipedia sounds complicated. Why not just give each voter three (say) ballot papers. Much easier to count and still provides most of the benefit.
Yes, and that's it.
With the current systems in use, what determines whether it's A or C is an infinitesimal epsilon.
Did I just see "Carly Fiorina" and "considerable accomplishments" in the same post?
If she mentions anything about synergies, economies of scale or anything that sounds remotely like merging with any nearby state I suggest you run to the hills.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I voted for EVERYONE
You have a mental schema about evil liberal conspiracies taking over the word that causes you to see it everywhere, kind of like how we can all see faces in things that aren't faces. If you want to see the world accurately, you have to kill that schema. Start by avoiding the propaganda. Your reading comprehension will improve.
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
The first link mentions that the "Independence of irrelevant alternatives" criteria is not satisfied by this voting method, which I've also seen called the "3rd-party spoiler effect." There are several other voting systems that do avoid this effect and more, and are equally simple. The simplest is an approval vote, where each voter gives a thumbs-up or down vote for each candidate (or a score from 1-10, or whatever). It's hot-or-not style voting, which people seem to understand quite easily. Another is an instant-runoff election where you rank your 1st, 2nd, and 3rd choice candidates. This doesn't work for multiple-seat elections. If by counting up all top votes one candidate gets a majority, they win. Otherwise the lowest vote-getter drops out of the running and their votes go to the 2nd choice listed. The process iterates until there is a majority winner. This got some good attention a while ago (including support early in Obama's political career), but is probably more complicated and no better than approval voting.
I believe, but can't prove because I'm too lazy, that a 2-party system is a stable equilibrium with the most common voting system in the US, plurality. Any 3rd-party works against its own interest, precisely because of this spoiler effect.
The only way that would happen is if the results are heavily in the majority party's favor.
Sure, but we've got a million of these potential show-stoppers here, like complex butterfly ballots. We need a system where we can admit errors and fix things rather than one where we've painfully avoided features trying for radical simplicity.
Perhaps I should have said "deemed qualified to vote".As in the people who determined who was "qualified to vote" were in part the slave owners. It's little surprise they decided that slaves weren't "qualified to vote".
No I understand. My point is that while they slave-owners already would try to prevent the slaves from voting on emancipation (or anything else) a system of tests for voting would have simpler tests for simpler issues. This is already a problem and my ideas would make it vanishingly worse, if at all.
And, of course, there's the secret bonus level of democracy where the slaves rise up and vote with fire...