3 ms·

Dan Carlin (hardcore history - which is awesome btw, and common sense) mentioned a couple of ideas that sounded interesting. I’m sure he’s not the inventor of t

by jwally 8y ago

Dan Carlin (hardcore history - which is awesome btw, and common sense) mentioned a couple of ideas that sounded interesting. I’m sure he’s not the inventor of the concepts and I have no idea how they’d actually work, but sounded similar to what you’re talking about. One would work where you have 1 vote per ballot item. If there were 24 ballot items, you get 24 votes. You can allocate your votes across the ballot however you saw fit. If you thought president and senate were more important than city council and an infrastructure bond; you could put 18 votes for president, 6 votes for senate, and nothing for local issues. No idea how this would be normalized but it’s a novel concept. Another idea is to rank options in each issue, and if my first option loses; my votes go to the second option. Say I wanted to vote libertarian for president in the US but was afraid it was a protest vote that wouldn’t win so I voted Democrat because I didn’t like the GOP candidate. Under this system I could say I want the libertarian candidate first, democrat second, and not pick the gop candidate. After the votes were counted and the libertarian lost, my vote would be reallocated to the democrat; and the votes would be re-tallied. This would encourage people to vote for a non binary political candidate since they knew their vote wouldn’t be “thrown away”.

leetcrew 8y ago
> No idea how this would be normalized but it’s a novel concept. interesting concept indeed, but i think the normalization function would be a serious vulnerability. most state and national level elections in the US tend to be pretty close, so the normalization function would pretty much end up deciding the winner. people who realize this would fight hard to get a biased function implemented, and you would be stuck trying to explain statistics to the general public. basically the gerrymandering situation, but even harder for the public to understand.
hermitdev 8y ago
How would this work across different voting districts? It's highly improbable that all districts have the same number of ballot items. Seems that if it were to work the way as you describe, some districts would get more votes than others. I could see districts gaming this by putting up BS ballot initiates to stuff the vote.
moate 8y ago
..One would work where you have 1 vote per ballot item. That seems extremely problematic to have votes determined by ballot items. It's impossible to normalize it. Even if you just determined that "each voter nationwide gets X voting points" you'd have politicians that would try to dilute or concentrate their ballots in order to game things.
dgzl 8y ago
> vote Libertarian Yeeeyaw The voting system sounds reasonable, except local, state and national elections are much more independent than you're describing. The Constitution specifically and purposefully separates these entities, and trying to sew the legislation together would be more of a nightmare than it's worth.

by jwally 8y ago

leetcrew 8y ago

> No idea how this would be normalized but it’s a novel concept. interesting concept indeed, but i think the normalization function would be a serious vulnerability. most state and national level elections in the US tend to be pretty close, so the normalization function would pretty much end up deciding the winner. people who realize this would fight hard to get a biased function implemented, and you would be stuck trying to explain statistics to the general public. basically the gerrymandering situation, but even harder for the public to understand.

hermitdev 8y ago

How would this work across different voting districts? It's highly improbable that all districts have the same number of ballot items. Seems that if it were to work the way as you describe, some districts would get more votes than others. I could see districts gaming this by putting up BS ballot initiates to stuff the vote.

moate 8y ago

..One would work where you have 1 vote per ballot item. That seems extremely problematic to have votes determined by ballot items. It's impossible to normalize it. Even if you just determined that "each voter nationwide gets X voting points" you'd have politicians that would try to dilute or concentrate their ballots in order to game things.

dgzl 8y ago

> vote Libertarian Yeeeyaw The voting system sounds reasonable, except local, state and national elections are much more independent than you're describing. The Constitution specifically and purposefully separates these entities, and trying to sew the legislation together would be more of a nightmare than it's worth.