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The butteryfly ballot was an approved but confusing ballot that almost certainly cost Gore the election. But what is the remedy? There's no other choice but to
by jmyeet 4mo ago
The butteryfly ballot was an approved but confusing ballot that almost certainly cost Gore the election. But what is the remedy? There's no other choice but to have a better ballot next time. "The voters were confused by a legal and approved ballot" can't be the basis to overturn an election or it'll never end.
Another good example of this is how Alaska adopted ranked choice voting. In 2022, the 2 Republican candidates got more combined votes than the Democrat who ultimately won [1]. Do you think That was the intent of the voters? Almost certainly not but the electorate just didn't understand RCV and enough people only ranked 1.
In 2024 there was only a single Republican on the ballot so it wasn't an issue [2].
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_United_States_House_of_Representatives_election_in_Alaska https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_United_States_House_of_Re...
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_House_of_Representatives_election_in_Alaska https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_House_of_Re...
- FeloniousHam 4mo agoApproval voting is the only workable RCV.
- ClayShentrup 4mo agoLOL, it's cardinal (rated) not ordinal (ranked), but yeah.
- rayiner 4mo agoWith a margin that small, there's a good chance that Bush won the election because his name came before Gore's. I bet there's more than 500 people in the electorate who simply pick the first name on the list. What's hilarious to me is that states recognize that ordering of names on the ballot actually makes a difference at the margins, and most states have rules for how to do it: https://ballotpedia.org/Rules_on_ballot_order_and_party_labeling https://ballotpedia.org/Rules_on_ballot_order_and_party_labe.... For example, in 13 states the order of the names on the ballot is decided at random. Given that, it seems foolish to me to pretend that an election with a margin of 500 votes or so produced a discernible winner. I don't know how you fix that in a workable way.