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Ask Slashdot: How Would You Use Computers To Make Elections Better?
shanen writes: Regarding politics, is there anything that Americans agree on? If so, it's probably something negative like "The system is broken," or "The leading candidates are terrible," or even "Your state is a shithole." With all our fancy technology, what's going wrong? Our computers are creating problems, not solutions. For example, gerrymandering relies on fancy computers to rig the maps. Negative campaigning increasingly relies on computers to target the attacks on specific voters. Even international attacks exploit the internet to intrude into elections around the world. Here are three of my suggested solutions, though I can't imagine any of today's politicians would ever support anything along these lines:
(1) Guest voting: If you hate your district, you could vote in a neighboring district. The more they gerrymander, the less predictable the election results.
(2) Results-based weighting: The winning candidates get more voting power in the legislature, reflecting how many people actually voted for them. If you win a boring and uncontested election where few people vote, then part of your vote in the legislature would be transferred to the winners who also had more real votes.
(3) Negative voting: A voter could use an electronic ballot to make it explicit that the vote is negative, not positive. The candidate with the most positive or fewest negative votes still wins, but if the election has too many negative votes, then that "winner" would be penalized, perhaps with a half term rather than a full term.
What wild and crazy ideas do you have for using computers to make elections better, not worse?
(1) Guest voting: If you hate your district, you could vote in a neighboring district. The more they gerrymander, the less predictable the election results.
(2) Results-based weighting: The winning candidates get more voting power in the legislature, reflecting how many people actually voted for them. If you win a boring and uncontested election where few people vote, then part of your vote in the legislature would be transferred to the winners who also had more real votes.
(3) Negative voting: A voter could use an electronic ballot to make it explicit that the vote is negative, not positive. The candidate with the most positive or fewest negative votes still wins, but if the election has too many negative votes, then that "winner" would be penalized, perhaps with a half term rather than a full term.
What wild and crazy ideas do you have for using computers to make elections better, not worse?
We need to vote for whichever candidate cheated on his wife with the hottest porn star. I have to say, I'm a little bit disappointed that Benedict Donald decided to choose Stormy Daniels, who has done interracial scenes. I didn't think Trump would like following a black guy.
And at $130,000.00, I think he may have overpaid. I thought he was a better negotiator than that.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Stack computers on top of one another until you have a surface tall enough to fill out a paper ballot.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Has anyone asked Bennett Haselton? I'll wager he has an idea or three...