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Activism See other Activism Articles Title: [LWAN]: A More Intelligent Voting System Last week's election results showed strong disapproval of Republican leadership as the Democrats, again, take control of Congress. It wasn't long ago that the Democrat party's complete demise was openly entertained, first after the "Republican Revolution" of 1994, and again six years later with Bush II taking the white house. Public disapproval with the Iraq war turned occupation and turned back into war again has brought the pendulum of control back to the Democrats. But Democrats have hardly earned it, since they've advertised nothing of substance as a party this cycle. They didn't need to. They took control of Congress simply because Republicans dropped the ball, just like the Democrats dropped it in 1994, and soon they'll drop it again giving the Republicans control again. It's always one party or the other. There are "third parties", so called, which voters could sweep into office, but they likely never will be on a large scale for one simple reason -- the current "vote for one -- and only one" voting system. We third partiers call it the "wasted vote syndrome". It's when a voter, in spite of finding a 3rd party candidate most in line with his values, chooses to vote for someone else because he doesn't want to "waste" his vote on a candidate who is not expected to win. It wouldn't be wasted if many others had similar values (which is often the case) and voted accordingly, but it becomes a self fulfilling prophesy when no one votes for the most liked candidate because no one thinks that anyone else will vote for him either. Voting for your most favored candidate is called honest voting. Voting *against* a candidate by voting for the strongest contender is called "strategic voting", and it comes into play when one votes according to how he/she think everyone else will vote instead of voting for his most preferred candidate. Strategic voting is not honest voting, but it's what a lot of people actually do today when they reject an otherwise preferred alternative party candidate in favor of either a Republican or Democrat for fear of "wasting" their vote on a candidate they don't believe can win. The end result is a system that gives artificial advantage to candidates from the 2 biggest parties that unfairly locks out third parties. Losers are not just the third parties and their candidates but the voters themselves since they are often denied their most preferred candidate. The culprit in this strategic voting promotion is the "vote for only one" voting system which needlessly permits voters the opportunity to express an opinion on only one candidate per available seat in any election. In rare instances where third parties can attract an appreciable following, such as Nader did in the 2000 election, the "spoiler effect" comes into play, such as when Green party presidential candidate Ralph Nader was blamed/credited with taking votes away from Gore in the 2000 election which favored Bush. The spoiler effect rewards candidates that are most different from the others through "divide and conquer" of the voting base, which clearly does not reflect the will of the voting majority. The Solution: Approval Voting Approval voting is the same we have now except that it allows people to vote for as many candidates as they want no matter how many seats are open, thus "approving" and disapproving of each candidate. All votes for all candidates are tallied and the highest vote-getter wins. Yes, several candidates may well receive votes from more than 50% of voters, but only the highest vote count matters. One might vote for all candidates, but the effect is the same as voting for none. A vote for all but one would effectively be a vote against that one candidate, or the voter might only approve of one like they do now. There are no run-off elections, instant or otherwise (little known is that run-off election systems of any kind have failed to discourage strategic voting and 2-party monopolies where they've been tried) and no complicated rank voting of candidates to confuse voters as some methods are apt to do. Approval voting works because it permits voters to express opinions about all the candidates instead of the restrictive "vote for one" system we have now. Approval voting grants 3rd party candidates true viability. Stated another way, multiple candidates for a single seat are no longer competing against other candidates for each voter's vote, but instead are competing alone for each voter's approval. When voters can vote for (approve of) multiple candidates they will then have reason to vote honestly, as strategic voting becomes impossible. Third parties become more viable and capable of obtaining double digit approval. Candidates in third parties are more encouraged to run, and ballots becomes populated with more viable candidates which means more ballot competition and higher quality outcomes. Given the merits and ease of which approval voting could be implemented, refusing to do it is really an insult for voters. Why *should* voters be restricted to expressing their views on only a single candidate in a 3 or 5-way race as the current system mandates? In all likelihood it is an archaic system simply left over from the days when people voted by placing cards with hidden names written on them in a ballot box -- obviously it wouldn't do then for someone to stick 2 cards into the box as they might be for the same candidate, so they were restricted to one. But why should we be restricted today to limits required in the days of handwritten ballots 220 years ago? Those days are gone. Let's bring voting up to the modern age. There is NO reason this archaic system should have been brought into the 20th century (much less the 21st). We can make it better than it is and we should. This change is the perfect for state ballot initiatives and could be instituted on a state by state basis, one at a time, without involving anything federal. The present system *IS* unfairly given to a 2 party monopoly and pressures voters to vote strategically and not honestly. That's a fact. Unchanged, it will always be, with very few and rare exceptions, either the Republicans or the Democrats, and as people become disenchanted with one party, they're only viable recourse is to flip to the other. It's happened many times in the past and it will continue as long as the current system remains. It's past time for a change. Neil McIver Copyright 2006 Neil McIver
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