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New Hampshire Bill Could Lead To Adoption of Approval Voting
Okian Warrior writes "The people at FreeKeene report: 'Four Republican state representatives have sponsored a bill that would replace first-past-the-post voting with approval voting for all state offices and presidential primaries. Under this system, voters would select every candidate they approve of (regardless of party), and the candidate with the highest overall vote total wins. This reduces strategic voting, and would often make elections easier for moderate and libertarian candidates. The bill, HB240, will have a public hearing Tuesday, February 1st, with the House Election Law committee.'"
Instead of the 2 "pre-selected" candidates, we get more choices. I think this system would give non mainstream candidates a better chance.
Save a Life. Donate Blood. Please.
The Legislature would still be dominated by the Rep and Dem monopoly.
BTW in the late 1800s it was pretty common for neither the R or D party to have a dominant majority. And they had the same kind of voting we do now. What's changed is the Reps and Dems have rigged the ballot so other parties have to waste efforts trying to get approval to appear. (Which is ridiculous because there's plenty of room on the computer ballot to list everyone.)
Information wants to be expensive AND wants to be free. So you have Value vs. Cheap distribution fighting each other.
This is a WONDERFUL start. I have been saying, for so many years, that until the electoral college is removed and things are switched to approval voting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approval_voting like Instant Runoff or similar: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRV we will NEVER see any real change. The "two party system" ("Republicrats") we have is one of several factors that is slowly ruining the country.
Citizens deserve more choice, more power, and more say in who is elected. People should not be forced to throw away their vote by voting their true position OR vote defensively for someone they see as the "lesser of two evils"... which is often their only choice right now.
what you think as left there is WAY too much to the right of anything that is considered left in any other part of the world
Perhaps you're right. Or perhaps the rest of the world is way too much to the left. Have you ever thought about that? It's a matter of perspective.
I hadn't known there were so many idiots in the world until I started using the Internet -Stanislaw Lem
Left?
Well we have a Communist party.
And a Nazi party.
And the Liberal party - all of these are pro-big government and pro-maximum control by a central authority.
If you think a Nazi party belongs to the left you should get your definitions of left and right straight.
Wow, 70+ years later and their propaganda still gets you.
The NAZIs are about as National Socialist as North Korea is the Democratic Peoples Republic.
The problem with the schulze method is that it is too difficult for the average voter to wrap their head around. People have a difficult time understanding how votes are counted with the systems in place today. At least with approval voting the method of tabulation is still clear cut and easy to understand. Nevermind the the fact that the Schulze method has a lot room for human error when it comes time to actually apply it.
I agree that the schulze method is preferential to approval voting, however I prefer approval voting over our current process in any election.
Collector's Edition
I have to point out that politics, like everything else, is not "left" or "right". Trying to describe anything political in one measure is doing nobody any service. It is like trying to describe music, personality, biology as being left or right; or existing as only a single point on a line - it is crazy.
Case in point- Libertarians MIGHT be described as "left" for civil liberties and mixing religion with state, and yet "right" for foreign policy or spending, center on environment, and off in some other direction regarding defense. Where does one place THEM on a single line?
That's not entirely fair. The nazis were certainly nationally oriented, for a certain extremely restrictive conception of nation.
Even presented like that, I wouldn't necessarily say it's a step backwards. I'd rather have a party that everybody is fine with, even if it is not their first choice, than a party that 40% of the population despises. Over time, the net effect would be a depolarization of politics, which I would say is a good thing.
The curious thing about many of Europe's "right-wing" parties is that they are really only on the right when it comes to immigration and cultural issues. Many nonetheless support a strong welfare state, which puts them squarely on the left. So even with the rise of the new European right, I'd say Europe continues to be tilted considerably more to the left than the US.
I think a lot of the problems with the current voting system could be fixed if states would quit officially recognizing political parties, and quit pandering to them by sponsoring and financing party primary elections, and quit registering voters as members of parties.
Let the parties maintain their own membership lists, and if the parties want to have primaries to decide who their representative will be in the general election, let them finance and run them privately.
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
If I had to guess, I'd say that it's a way to keep the Tea Party from splitting the Republican vote. The guy probably figures that, as it stands, those who would want to vote for a far right candidate would end up costing a more mainstream Republican the election because they can't approve of both candidates. With a system like this, they could.
However, you can get other interesting outcomes. Suppose, for example, that you had an independent, centrist candidate that many people liked but that they were afraid to vote for because they aren't sure he can win. Currently, they'd likely hold their noses and vote for the major party that they object least to, figuring that, at least that way, the party they dislike most won't win. With a system like the one proposed, the independent candidate would stand a better chance because people could vote both for him and a major party candidate as a fallback position.
Actually, that is the correct and desired outcome. 49% of the voters considered the D candidate to be "Satan incarnate" and the other 51% considered the R candidate to be "Son of Hitler". 100% considered the 3rd party candidate to be "OK", so he won.
The objective is to find a reasonably acceptable candidate, not to enforce the tyranny of the (barely) majority. The alternative is to split up into the Red States of America and the Blue States of America and put up a wall between them.