[ale] OT: Go Vote!

[A LeDonne]

On 7/18/06, James P. Kinney III <jkinney at localnetsolutions.com> wrote:
> I also like the voting system of allocating a ranking score to all the
> candidates.  example:
> For each office I am allowed to designate a first choice, a second
> choice and a "do not want". The counting gets fun too: A person can win
> with a simple majority of "first choice" votes. If no simple majority,
> the a simple majority of "first OR second choice" votes. If STILL no
> majority, then each candidate has a first choice subtracted for each "do
> not want" vote and the fist choice majority is tested followed by the
> first or second choice majority.
>
> Clearly the purpose is to find the least offensive candidate.

The catch is that ranking systems only work if people rank HONESTLY
and don't try to "vote against" on party lines, or if there are a
significant number of viable, non-whack job candidates. What could
happen is something like this:

Hypothetical ballot has 3 candidates: R = moderately evil Republican,
D = moderately evil Democrat, W = whack job who advocates things like
restoring slavery and slaughtering babies for sport.

If, for example, Dems try to "vote against" the Republican and vice
versa, imagine you might get ballots distributed more or less like:

48%: 1: R, 2: W, don't want: D
46%: 1: D, 2: W, don't want: R
4%: 1:W, 2 & don't want don't really matter
2%: other, with the caveat that not all of these have R ranked first.

So, no candidate has a simple majority. And when you look at first OR
second choice votes, blammo: the whack job wins, appearing as 1 or 2
on 98+% of the ballots.


So the question is: Do you trust the electorate to rank HONESTLY and
in a non-partisan way?

My answer, by the way, is: Yes, but only if we make ballot access for
other parties/candidates WAY easier so there are enough reasonable
choices as to drown out the whack jobs.

-A