As regards just the mechanics of voting systems, there is a voting system in existence which is IMHO better than approval or Borda voting (and way better than the current system in the U.S.). It's called proportional representation, and in the case where there is only one position being voted for, that's a special case called instant runoff voting.
A ballot consists of a list of candidates, except instead of voting for one candidate, all the candidates are ranked in order of preference (this much is like the Borda system). All the ballots are collected, and put into piles corresponding to the #1 choice. All ballots marked with Candidate A as #1 are put in pile A, all ballots marked with candidate B as #1 choice are put in pile B, etc. If one pile has more than 50% of the ballots, that candidate wins and the count is over. Otherwise, all the ballots from the smallest pile are taken, the #1 preference is crossed off the top of each ballot and it gets put on the pile of the #2 preference. So if there is no winner and candidate D has the smallest number of votes, then ballots marked D #1 and A #2 are put in pile A, ballots marked D #1 B #2 are put in pile B, etc. If someone now has over 50% of the votes, that person is elected. If not, the smallest pile is taken and redistributed again. If B is eliminated, then ballots marked B #1 A #2 go to pile A, ballots marked B #1 C #2 go to pile C, ballots marked D #1 B #2 A #3 go to pile A (because D is already eliminated), ballots marked D #1 B #2 C #3 go to pile C, etc.
This has two distinct advantages over the current system - a voter can never complain 'I don't want to waste my vote', because the only way to waste a vote is by choosing to not rank every candidate, and a voter can never complain 'A vote for candidate X is a vote for candidate Y' because every vote goes where it does the most good in reflecting the wishes of the voter.
This has one distinct advantage over every other voting system that I am aware of - if there are more people who rank Daffy above Goofy than there are people who rank Goofy over Daffy, then Goofy will never beat Daffy. Think about that for a minute. Goofy can get elected even though more people have ranked Daffy above Goofy. I don't know about anyone else, but this seems to me to be a fatal flaw, that exists in some form in all the other voting systems. The flaw can be eliminated with another way of casting and counting votes.
I have heard two comments related to the election that absolutely stunned me. One is "I don't want to waste my vote", and the other was "A vote for Nader is a vote for Gore" (or maybe it was Bush... I don't remember). And you think this is a democracy??? It is inconcievable to me that anyone can even consider saying such things, and at the same time think that they are in a democracy.
I come from Ireland, and there is a system called Proportional Representation that we use there. It has the property that if there are more people who say that they believe candidate A will do a better job than candidate B, than there are people who say that they believe candidate B will do a better job than candidate A, - then B will never beat A. (I have seen several other voting systems and I don't believe this very fundamental property applies to any of them.) This quality IMHO is the most important quality a voting system can have - indeed, a quality a voting system must have in order to be considered a democracy. The U.S. voting system does not have this quality.
This is a very good point. There are new input devices for programming becoming available. I am an embedded systems programmer, and I recently got a CD from IAR Systems which contains a demo of a state-chart graphing program that also creates source code to match the structures drawn on-screen. A company called TogetherSoft makes a product called Together, which draws UML documents (diagrams?) including state charts and umm... whatever you call those diagrams that look like state charts but show objects instead of states. I believe it also does some of the (most of the? all of the?) source code generation. IAR works on products for embedded systems, TogetherSoft works on products for larger systems. (I don't work for either IAR Systems or TogetherSoft, BTW.)
The flow of graphs is a lot easier to perceive (imagine, create, manipulate, debug) than a one-dimensional sequence of statements. Productivity can be boosted significantly by using such tools. I don't think there's a tool out there that can, (for all applications and under all circumstances,) surpass the power, directness, control that you get from hand-writing assembly code (which is what I spend most of my time doing). But I definitely believe these can be very useful, powerful, time-saving tools in themselves, under the right circumstances.
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As regards just the mechanics of voting systems, there is a voting system in existence which is IMHO better than approval or Borda voting (and way better than the current system in the U.S.). It's called proportional representation, and in the case where there is only one position being voted for, that's a special case called instant runoff voting.
A ballot consists of a list of candidates, except instead of voting for one candidate, all the candidates are ranked in order of preference (this much is like the Borda system). All the ballots are collected, and put into piles corresponding to the #1 choice. All ballots marked with Candidate A as #1 are put in pile A, all ballots marked with candidate B as #1 choice are put in pile B, etc. If one pile has more than 50% of the ballots, that candidate wins and the count is over. Otherwise, all the ballots from the smallest pile are taken, the #1 preference is crossed off the top of each ballot and it gets put on the pile of the #2 preference. So if there is no winner and candidate D has the smallest number of votes, then ballots marked D #1 and A #2 are put in pile A, ballots marked D #1 B #2 are put in pile B, etc. If someone now has over 50% of the votes, that person is elected. If not, the smallest pile is taken and redistributed again. If B is eliminated, then ballots marked B #1 A #2 go to pile A, ballots marked B #1 C #2 go to pile C, ballots marked D #1 B #2 A #3 go to pile A (because D is already eliminated), ballots marked D #1 B #2 C #3 go to pile C, etc.
This has two distinct advantages over the current system - a voter can never complain 'I don't want to waste my vote', because the only way to waste a vote is by choosing to not rank every candidate, and a voter can never complain 'A vote for candidate X is a vote for candidate Y' because every vote goes where it does the most good in reflecting the wishes of the voter.
This has one distinct advantage over every other voting system that I am aware of - if there are more people who rank Daffy above Goofy than there are people who rank Goofy over Daffy, then Goofy will never beat Daffy. Think about that for a minute. Goofy can get elected even though more people have ranked Daffy above Goofy. I don't know about anyone else, but this seems to me to be a fatal flaw, that exists in some form in all the other voting systems. The flaw can be eliminated with another way of casting and counting votes.
I have heard two comments related to the election that absolutely stunned me. One is "I don't want to waste my vote", and the other was "A vote for Nader is a vote for Gore" (or maybe it was Bush... I don't remember). And you think this is a democracy??? It is inconcievable to me that anyone can even consider saying such things, and at the same time think that they are in a democracy.
I come from Ireland, and there is a system called Proportional Representation that we use there. It has the property that if there are more people who say that they believe candidate A will do a better job than candidate B, than there are people who say that they believe candidate B will do a better job than candidate A, - then B will never beat A. (I have seen several other voting systems and I don't believe this very fundamental property applies to any of them.) This quality IMHO is the most important quality a voting system can have - indeed, a quality a voting system must have in order to be considered a democracy. The U.S. voting system does not have this quality.
This is a very good point. There are new input devices for programming becoming available. I am an embedded systems programmer, and I recently got a CD from IAR Systems which contains a demo of a state-chart graphing program that also creates source code to match the structures drawn on-screen. A company called TogetherSoft makes a product called Together, which draws UML documents (diagrams?) including state charts and umm... whatever you call those diagrams that look like state charts but show objects instead of states. I believe it also does some of the (most of the? all of the?) source code generation. IAR works on products for embedded systems, TogetherSoft works on products for larger systems. (I don't work for either IAR Systems or TogetherSoft, BTW.)
The flow of graphs is a lot easier to perceive (imagine, create, manipulate, debug) than a one-dimensional sequence of statements. Productivity can be boosted significantly by using such tools. I don't think there's a tool out there that can, (for all applications and under all circumstances,) surpass the power, directness, control that you get from hand-writing assembly code (which is what I spend most of my time doing). But I definitely believe these can be very useful, powerful, time-saving tools in themselves, under the right circumstances.