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I've been wishing the US had a score based voting system for a while now, but there are considerable obstacles: -Two dominant, incumbent parties that have no in
by ericd 17y ago
I've been wishing the US had a score based voting system for a while now, but there are considerable obstacles:
-Two dominant, incumbent parties that have no incentive to make it easier for more parties.
-A populace that is unlikely to understand why one would even want to change the voting system, and why score-based voting would enable more parties to rise.
-Millions of dollars or more invested in the current voting system.
to name a few.
Not to discourage you, though, I think it's great.
Education might be a good place to start, and that seems to be what you're dabbling with in writing this web app. I'd be very interested to hear your ideas regarding the other issues, though (and any other issues you think of).
I don't believe the current system is codified in the US constitution, though I could be wrong - a friend and I couldn't find anything specifically prescribing the choose one candidate ballot system of voting in the national constitution when we looked. The specific methods might be decided at the state level.
- bradbeattie 17y agoNote that while the ballots are ratings ballots, they're interpreted as preference orderings with ties. So a ballot for five candidates with 5/3/3/3/3 is the same as a ballot with 4/1/1/1/1.
- wlievens 17y agoNot to rain on your parade here, but a multi-party system isn't paradise either. I'm not saying the duopoly is better, but multi-party systems are plagued with immobility, compromise for the sake of compromise, and lack of differentiation. Any European cynic will repeat that for you.
- bradbeattie 17y agoSimilar things could be said when moving from despotism to a democracy. No system's perfect, but some are demonstratively better than others.
- ericd 17y agoI didn't say that I wanted a 3+ party system, the biggest advantage would be that you wouldn't get a situation where voting for your favorite candidate screws over your close second favorite but much more likely to win candidate, as happened with Gore in 2000 when a percentage of his would-be supporters voted for Nader instead.