The ‘Hot or Not’ Solution

misterharban:
There is strong evidence that a switch to Range Voting would lead to a much larger improvement in our democracy than the elimination of election fraud. See: http://rangevoting.org/RelImport.html

And I've done exit polling in Beaumont, Texas. Average middle Americans had no problem with it. In fact it experimentally leads to fewer spoiled ballots than our current voting system. So in some sense, voters find it easier to use, not harder.

tomruen:
You have it completely backward. Strategic voters are also rewarded in IRV and other systems, and in fact the result is even _worse_. This issue is given rigorous consideration by Poundstone and proponents of Range Voting. See http://rangevoting.org/StratHonMix.html

The simple fact is that IRV is one of the worst voting methods, according to extensive Bayesian regret calculations by Princeton math Ph.D. Warren D. Smith (and those same metrics show Range Voting to be effectively the best).

Range Voting is also cheaper/easier to administer and count, and does not incentivize the adoption of fraud-prone electronic voting machines like IRV does. And it can be counted in precincts, whereas IRV requires central counting, which is another open invitation to a central fraud conspiracy, and a loss of transparency.

Range Voting is just a hands down radically better system than other methods that have been proposed. It's high time this simple and brilliant reform came to light.

Technically speaking our disgraceful voting system is very easy, and relatively inexpensive to fix. Though no expense should be considered to much to assure our democracy. And the integrity of each of our votes.

One way to fix it is for everyone to cast a paper ballot like they do in Germany that is hand counted by civil servants over an approximately two week period. Preliminary election results are called the night of the election based on exit polling. The Germans have shown this method to be highly accurate, and relatively secure.

Of course in the US exit polling does not work well. And is used to assist in the commission of massive voting fraud. As was done in our past two national elections. In the US we use the highly accurate exit polling to determine how many pre-punched fraudulent votes need to be substituted for legitimate votes for the loosing party to win.

The other way is to use electronic means to produce, and mark a ballot. But regardless of what electronic system is used. It is critical that the end product be the creation of a paper ballot that can be easily reviewed by the voter before that paper ballot is cast by the voter. So that the voter can change, or discard that ballot if it was not marked as they wanted to vote. Ideally the paper ballot would be hand counted as in the German example above.

If the paper ballot is machine counted, then random hand counting of a representative number of each batch of votes must be done to assure the accuracy of the electronic totals. Plus very careful exit polling. If there is any discrepancy, all paper ballots should be counted by hand. And electronic equipment, and software checked for failures. 1 of 2

First it is interesting that the article refers to the 2000 election rather than a the 1992 or 1996 election where Peroit most likely influenced the outcome of the election. More importantly, the range voting seems to over simplify the nature of American politics by pretty eliminating the power of third party candidates. What influence would they have in a system where one could vote for them but also vote for a viable candidate. What insentive would major party candidates have to move their positions towards that of a third party candidate if they could still receive a "4" instead of a "5"?

brokenladder said: If they want to vote out of ignorance, they will pay the price for that by possibly helping to elect a sub-optimal candidate."

Umm, won't society as a whole pay the price for errors of an individual? You say that as if "that'll teach him not to do that again".

Is this supposedly a benefit of Range Voting that if the voter hasn't done his homework, he'll basically vote randomly? Because that's true. Voters who haven't followed the polls closely are not going to be sure whether their votes will help or hurt their cause.

brokenladder said: "It's not vote splitting because if 51% of the voters are Democrats, let's say, and 100 Democrats run, and 1 Republican runs, there's no reason that the Republican must automatically win."

That is a weird contrived case. 100 Democrats and 1 Republican? What? Anyway, the Repulican wouldn't NECESSARILY win, but he'd have a hell of an advantage, unless all the Democrats were in a very unlikely agreement.

Regardless, I gave a basic REAL WORLD case, the same one mentioned in the article .... the 2000 election. If it was Range, what would have happened? It seems downright obvious that with Range, adding Nader to the race would push Gore's average downward, significantly.

The effect is strong enough that we would be stuck with a two party system as people try to avoid that sort of splitting.

Can you really not see this?

For all the sour grapes about the so called unintended outcomes resulting from vote splitting, I am under the distinct impression that the electorate has voiced more concerns in the last two elections about perceived misdeeds by one party or the other with regard to voting procedures and vote tallying than with what we do with the numbers once we get them. Before any system will work, the voters must be confident that no one, either through cupidity or incompetence, will be able to distort the system. Based on the lack of confidence expressed in outcomes of the last two elections, I cannot imagine that adding another layer of calculations or relying on exit polls will, in any way, increase voter confidence. If we believe that someone fixed the outcome of the last two elections, consider the permutations for imagining fraud with more layers of calculations or relying on pollsters who are trusted less than used car salesmen.

Nader, Perot and Wallace were all essentially products of a two party system where neither party adequately addressed the concerns of some significant part of the electorate. It seems to me that as time has passed, the parties have become more and more strident and, as a consequence, more likely to totally alienate groups outside the so called party bases. Range voting would certainly be attractive to the two main parties because it would allow the establishments in both parties to further ignore the constituencies which have, in the past, been the basis for third party candidacies.

The range voting proposed in this article is no more than sleight of hand to marginalize the only tool that voters disenfranchised by the two established parties currently have to express their disgust for the poor choices the parties offer up. The authors could have saved a lot of ink by simply proposing to eliminate third party candidates. I don???t like third party candidates. But more and more voters are being disenfranchised by both Republicans and Democrats who seem concerned only with satisfying the needs of their core constituencies and not reaching out to those outside that narrow group.

To both Republicans and Democrats who are concerned that our method of counting votes is the reason they are not succeeding, I would suggest that they try something really radical. Try to give us good quality choices. The fact that the Democrats could not find someone capable of beating George Bush was much more a reflection of the poor quality of candidates from both parties than it was from our election process.

If the Democrats do not find a way to certify the vote, then another election could be stolen.

The current Electoral College system is evil and should be scrapped at once. The range voting system described in this article sounds like an ideal replacement. This country must never again elect an unmitigated disaster like George W. Bush to the nation's highest office.

misterharban, what you are talking about is a different issue. I would argue that vote splitting, and the polarization it causes (i.e. the two party system), has much more serious consequenses than fraud. But regardless, it is just a different issue....what you are saying is like saying we shouldn't fix potholes before we stop people from being murdered. Two different things.

tiffsthoughts, they picked the 2000 election because a) it was more recent, and b) it was more clear that Nader through it to Bush, while the Perot situation is much more speculative.

Anyway, here is shorter (and hppefully easier to understant) version of my complaint about Range voting being susceptable to vote splitting...

Without Nader in the race, I might vote:
Gore: 100
Bush: 0

With Nader in the race, I might vote:
Nader: 100
Gore: 75
Bush: 0

A Bush voter would have likely done this:

Without Nader:
Gore: 0
Bush: 100

With Nader:
Nader: 0
Gore: 0
Bush: 100


So with me and the Bush fan, it would have been a tie in the first case, but with Nader, Bush wins.

How in the world is that not vote splitting?

tomruen, I am no fan of Range voting, but I don't understand the requirement for "majority choice". Especially if you mean the majority (more than 50%) have the candidate as their very first choice out of all people on the planet. Because I don't think that is very likely.

Even if you are limiting it to mean "more than 50% of people have the candidate as their very first choice out of all people on the *ballot*....the more people on the ballot, the less likely that is. And the more likely for the vote to be distorted in weird ways by the presenc