A Modest Proposal
All ballots should give voters the option of either voting for their favorite candidate or against their least-favorite. Every vote against a candidate cancels out one vote for that candidate. If no candidate garners a majority of the net positive votes, a run-off will be held among the candidates who ended up with positive vote totals.
Discuss.
May 19th, 2008 at 6:52 am
Is there any punishment in your plan for candidates ending up with negative vote totals? Or is the humiliation enough?
May 19th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
Humiliation plus exclusion from any run-offs. The latter is not so much a punishment as the logical conclusion of the fact that if you get a negative vote toll, “not you” won the election.
May 19th, 2008 at 7:09 pm
Approval voting is simpler–people can “vote” for as many candidates as they like (approve or disapprove) and then you’re left with only the most-approved candidates to choose from.
Your method is way too complicated for voters–just look at how much trouble the “butterfly ballots” caused in Florida. Remember: Approximately 5% of voters are in the bottom 5%, IQ-wise, of this country. That’s a lot of bad ballots.
May 19th, 2008 at 10:05 pm
The problem with approval voting is that voters who disapprove of all candidates will likely sit the election out. As for the bottom 5%, to hell with them. The more opportunities the idiots who shouldn’t be voting anyway have to spoil their own ballots, the better. The butterfly ballot controversy was a joke anyway; they’ve had them in Cook County, IL for as long as I can remember, and yet at least one Daley had the chutzpah to publicly complain about them being used in Palm Beach County, FL.
May 22nd, 2008 at 6:00 pm
Just vote like we’ve done in Australia for the past 70 years. Put a 1 next to your favourite candidate, a 2 next to your second choice, and so down the list, numbering your least-favoured candidate last. It really isn’t complicated; even little old ladies and immigrants who can barely read English manage it, and the parties hand out helpful “how to vote” cards with their recommendations for what numbers to put where, so all you have to do is copy your party’s card onto the ballot. If you can’t do that, you shouldn’t be voting.
May 23rd, 2008 at 3:38 pm
If you are in favor of run-offs, then disapproving of one candidate is pretty much equivalent to voting in favor of another. Ultimately, you ensure that that person is forced into a run-off (assuming that they are doing well).