4 ms·

The crux of this is that the majority/plurality system is a winner-takes-all outcome. I would like to propose a completely fair (and totally unacceptable) Voti

The crux of this is that the majority/plurality system is a winner-takes-all outcome. I would like to propose a completely fair (and totally unacceptable) Voting system: Blues and Violets each get a single vote. On election day, everyone puts their vote into a big hat, and one of the ballots is pulled out. Whoever is on that ballot, gets a unilateral victory. This system has numerous good properties: 1. Power never falls into a state where the majority party can stay in control. Gerrymandering is a non-issue. 2. Every vote counts. Instead of a single, tie breaking vote changing the outcome of the election, each additional vote increases the odds. If there are 40% violets and 60% blues, the likelihood of a violet leader is still 40%. 3. Extreme minority votes still matter. If 99% of the population is blue, and 1% of the population is violet, violet supporters still feel their voice can be heard. 4. (edit) Political spending is massively reduced, since there is a diminishing return to spending ever more money trying to tip the 49% into being 51%.

noduerme 4y ago
Assuming that the 1% extreme minority wants to turn it into a dictatorship, you'd be guaranteeing that sooner or later the democracy would fail.
- bumper_crop 4y ago
  Sure, but we could have separate rules for changing how the voting works, compared to the day to day operation of the groups. Also, on the good end, maybe the 1% have some amazingly good ideas that the other side would never implement otherwise.
- Supermancho 4y ago
  > Assuming that the 1% extreme minority wants to turn it into a dictatorship, you'd be guaranteeing that sooner or later the democracy would fail. Luckily a single election isn't enough to make a dictatorship, in the US. There is never a guarantee that a government will stand forever.
- winstonewert 4y ago
  If used to elect something like a president, yeah, that could be problematic. But if used to elect a legislative body then its not really a problem. Sure 1% of the body would be pro-dictatorship, and occasionally a bit more due to the randomness, but its not a serious risk that a majority of the body would turn out to be pro-dictatorship.
edflsafoiewq 4y ago
This is called random dictator: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictatorship_mechanism#Random_dictatorship_and_random_serial_dictatorship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictatorship_mechanism#Random_...
bo1024 4y ago
A variant on this is to pull 3 ballots out and take the majority (if none, keep pulling until there is a plurality then stop). This would make the extreme outlier results less likely, but still maintain most of the properties you said. For example, if there are 40% violets and 60% blues, then chance of a violet winner becomes only 35.2%. If there are 10% violets, their chance of winning is only 2.8%. Depending on how risky you want to be, you can replace 3 with 5, 11, 31, or 101. For example with 11 ballots, 40% violet in the population, their chance of winning is 24.6%; with 10% violets, their winning chance is only 0.03%.
- edflsafoiewq 4y ago
  Reminds me of of the cache eviction strategy 2-random (pick two entries at random and evict whichever is oldest).
jonnycomputer 4y ago
Amend this so that the time in power is proportional to their vote.
colinmhayes 4y ago
Proportional representation has many of the good qualities listed here but is probably more politically feasible.
PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
> Extreme minority votes still matter. If 99% of the population is blue, and 1% of the population is violet, violet supporters still feel their voice can be heard. Why do they feel this?
notriddle 4y ago
Or just use approval voting: you're allowed to checkmark as many candidates as you want (instead of just one), and whoever gets the most points wins. 1. No spoiler effect. If you really want Green to win, but you think Blue is the lesser of two evils, voting Green and Blue at the same time is strictly better than voting only for Blue. 2. It's about as easy to understand as FPTP. No funny business where politicians mislead people about how the voting system actually works. Approval voting has a few downsides, but they are obvious downsides, so everyone is on equal footing. 3. You can still use those nice scantrons and hole punches. 4. No weird questions about "should I give the candidate I want most a 1, or should I give the candidate I want most the 10?" 5. It's a majority rules system and not a dictatorship.
- winstonewert 4y ago
  I don't really get the love that approval voting gets. Approval voting requires the voter to decide whether or not to approve the lesser of two evils. It seems to me that this isn't a simple question it depends on the odds of different outcomes, level of preference between two evils, etc. To me that seems like it would make voting harder for most people, and politicians would absolutely be trying to mislead people about the appropriate strategies for who to approve and not approve.
  - mbg721 4y ago
    Is it worse in that respect than regular "pick-one, winner-take-all" voting? Ironically, it might be the lesser evil.
    - winstonewert 4y ago
      Honestly, I'm not sure. Pick-one, winner-take-all is pretty bad. Approval voting might be slightly better in some ways, but I'm not sure its better enough to make up for being just a little bit more strategically complicated.
      - dane-pgp 4y ago
winstonewert 4y ago
I think an additional neat property is that the representation of a particular district would be proportional in time. I.e. 40% red, 60% blue district would be represented by a red member 40% of the time and a blue member 60% of the time.
dragonwriter 4y ago
> Power never falls into a state where the majority party can stay in control. That usually only happens when power gained by elections is used to change the system, often outside of the formal rules of change. Obviously, no election system can safeguard against this, since it is an effect outside of the electoral system. > Every vote counts. Only one vote counts. This is literally the textbook example of a system than fails the non-dictatorship criterion. > Extreme minority votes still matter Well, again, since only one vote matters, it's only an extreme minority of votes that matters, but it's extremely unlikely to be one from an extreme minority position.
- winstonewert 4y ago
  > Only one vote counts. This is literally the textbook example of a system than fails the non-dictatorship criterion. This depends on how you state the non-dictatorship criterion. Wikipedia's discussion refers to a "single pre-determined person's preferences." But since the dictator is selected randomly, they aren't pre-determined. Further, every vote counts in the sense that every additional vote for a candidate increases the odds of them winning the election. The candidate has an incentive to get additional votes no matter how many votes they currently have. You don't have the situation where its futile to vote because the outcome isn't going to be close.
  - thfuran 4y ago
    In fact, in that scheme, votes for a minority party are more significant than they are in our current system.

noduerme 4y ago

Assuming that the 1% extreme minority wants to turn it into a dictatorship, you'd be guaranteeing that sooner or later the democracy would fail.

bumper_crop 4y ago
Sure, but we could have separate rules for changing how the voting works, compared to the day to day operation of the groups. Also, on the good end, maybe the 1% have some amazingly good ideas that the other side would never implement otherwise.
Supermancho 4y ago
> Assuming that the 1% extreme minority wants to turn it into a dictatorship, you'd be guaranteeing that sooner or later the democracy would fail. Luckily a single election isn't enough to make a dictatorship, in the US. There is never a guarantee that a government will stand forever.
winstonewert 4y ago
If used to elect something like a president, yeah, that could be problematic. But if used to elect a legislative body then its not really a problem. Sure 1% of the body would be pro-dictatorship, and occasionally a bit more due to the randomness, but its not a serious risk that a majority of the body would turn out to be pro-dictatorship.

edflsafoiewq 4y ago

This is called random dictator: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictatorship_mechanism#Random_dictatorship_and_random_serial_dictatorship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictatorship_mechanism#Random_...

bo1024 4y ago

A variant on this is to pull 3 ballots out and take the majority (if none, keep pulling until there is a plurality then stop). This would make the extreme outlier results less likely, but still maintain most of the properties you said. For example, if there are 40% violets and 60% blues, then chance of a violet winner becomes only 35.2%. If there are 10% violets, their chance of winning is only 2.8%. Depending on how risky you want to be, you can replace 3 with 5, 11, 31, or 101. For example with 11 ballots, 40% violet in the population, their chance of winning is 24.6%; with 10% violets, their winning chance is only 0.03%.

edflsafoiewq 4y ago
Reminds me of of the cache eviction strategy 2-random (pick two entries at random and evict whichever is oldest).

jonnycomputer 4y ago

Amend this so that the time in power is proportional to their vote.

colinmhayes 4y ago

Proportional representation has many of the good qualities listed here but is probably more politically feasible.

PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago

> Extreme minority votes still matter. If 99% of the population is blue, and 1% of the population is violet, violet supporters still feel their voice can be heard. Why do they feel this?

notriddle 4y ago

Or just use approval voting: you're allowed to checkmark as many candidates as you want (instead of just one), and whoever gets the most points wins. 1. No spoiler effect. If you really want Green to win, but you think Blue is the lesser of two evils, voting Green and Blue at the same time is strictly better than voting only for Blue. 2. It's about as easy to understand as FPTP. No funny business where politicians mislead people about how the voting system actually works. Approval voting has a few downsides, but they are obvious downsides, so everyone is on equal footing. 3. You can still use those nice scantrons and hole punches. 4. No weird questions about "should I give the candidate I want most a 1, or should I give the candidate I want most the 10?" 5. It's a majority rules system and not a dictatorship.

winstonewert 4y ago
I don't really get the love that approval voting gets. Approval voting requires the voter to decide whether or not to approve the lesser of two evils. It seems to me that this isn't a simple question it depends on the odds of different outcomes, level of preference between two evils, etc. To me that seems like it would make voting harder for most people, and politicians would absolutely be trying to mislead people about the appropriate strategies for who to approve and not approve.
- mbg721 4y ago
  Is it worse in that respect than regular "pick-one, winner-take-all" voting? Ironically, it might be the lesser evil.
  - winstonewert 4y ago
    Honestly, I'm not sure. Pick-one, winner-take-all is pretty bad. Approval voting might be slightly better in some ways, but I'm not sure its better enough to make up for being just a little bit more strategically complicated.
    - dane-pgp 4y ago

winstonewert 4y ago

I think an additional neat property is that the representation of a particular district would be proportional in time. I.e. 40% red, 60% blue district would be represented by a red member 40% of the time and a blue member 60% of the time.

dragonwriter 4y ago

> Power never falls into a state where the majority party can stay in control. That usually only happens when power gained by elections is used to change the system, often outside of the formal rules of change. Obviously, no election system can safeguard against this, since it is an effect outside of the electoral system. > Every vote counts. Only one vote counts. This is literally the textbook example of a system than fails the non-dictatorship criterion. > Extreme minority votes still matter Well, again, since only one vote matters, it's only an extreme minority of votes that matters, but it's extremely unlikely to be one from an extreme minority position.

winstonewert 4y ago
> Only one vote counts. This is literally the textbook example of a system than fails the non-dictatorship criterion. This depends on how you state the non-dictatorship criterion. Wikipedia's discussion refers to a "single pre-determined person's preferences." But since the dictator is selected randomly, they aren't pre-determined. Further, every vote counts in the sense that every additional vote for a candidate increases the odds of them winning the election. The candidate has an incentive to get additional votes no matter how many votes they currently have. You don't have the situation where its futile to vote because the outcome isn't going to be close.
- thfuran 4y ago
  In fact, in that scheme, votes for a minority party are more significant than they are in our current system.