[geeks] just to stir things up, a few predictions

[Charles Shannon Hendrix]

Tue, 26 Oct 2004 @ 01:06 -0700, Francisco Javier Mesa-Martinez said:

> As the resident liberal pinko commie, I must ask. What
> would it take for the US to implement an actual
> representative system. So that my hypothetical Green vote,
> nor Mr. Patschke's Libertarian vote are not wasted? I
> understand the two party beast would still be around, as
> most people tend to be centrist. But having third parties
> being actually part of the process and be able to be in a
> position to give them hell would be an interesting
> addition.

As long as we only case a single vote, it's nearly impossible to break
the two party hammerlock.

There are several ways to address this, some of them right out of
computer science and algorithmic voting systems.

In short, this is a solved problem, we just haven't tried to apply it to
voting.

Also, when you have people who can't even understand the current voting
system, anything more complex is bound to cause trouble.

Still, two ideas:

You case a primary vote, and then you can case a yes/no approval
vote for each candidate.

For example, suppose the republican voters split between republican and
libertarian (which actually happens a lot).  They would cast approval
for republican and libertarian, but not democrat.

That way of the democrat wins popular vote, but doesn't get the approval
vote, he cannot take office.  At this point there are various methods
which can be used to break the tie.  Many countries already do something
like this and it seems to work pretty well, though it doesn't often
require voting twice.

Another option is to simply vote multiple times.  Each "round" is a
round of elimination.  This means that if you vote libertarian
and the rank is like this:

    democrat
    republican
    libertarian

Then a second vote is held between democrat and republican: again, it
allows you to more safely cast a non-mainstream vote.

These are hardly the only methods and variations, but you get the idea.


-- 
shannon "AT" widomaker.com -- ["The grieving lords take ship.  With these
our very souls pass overseas." -- Exile]