"Cumulative Voting" Method Gaining Attention 375
Posted
by
kdawson
from the vote-early-and-often dept.
from the vote-early-and-often dept.
Local ID10T writes "The AP reports on a system of voting, called 'cumulative voting,' which was just used under court order in Port Chester, NY. Under this system, voters can apportion their votes as they wish — all to one candidate, one to each candidate, or any combination. The system, which has been used in Alabama, Illinois, South Dakota, Texas, and New York, allows a political minority to gain representation if it organizes behind specific candidates. Courts are increasingly mandating cumulative voting when they deem it necessary to provide fair representation." Wikipedia notes that cumulative voting "was used to elect the Illinois House of Representatives from 1870 until its repeal in 1980," without saying why the system was abandoned.
not proportional voting, rather representation (Score:3, Interesting)
Despite Thomas Jefferson's fantasies, most Americans seem to prefer parties. That's why we need a Bundestag-like proportional representation system at the state Legislature and Congressional levels (BTW, save some money and get rid of the silly state Senates). Any party (or, in our case, add individual) that can gather some significant number of members/petitioners should be placed on the ballot, and the seats of the legislative body apportioned according to the votes cast for the party/individual. That way, maybe we would have some representation of more than two (increasingly lunatic) points of view. California, for example, has several registered parties (American Independent, Democratic, Green, Libertarian, Peace and Freedom, and Republican), but legislators from only two, so a large portion of the registered voters are simply not represented at the state level. Before some idiot says "well, they just need to get enough votes", the district lines are drawn to prohibit any but the Demopublicans from getting a seat (see "Gerrymander") in any district in the state.
The real reason that we don't have such a system is that the corporations that own the Demopublicans ("Big Oil", Hollywood, ...) would have to spread their bribes over a lot more politicians and they will do whatever it takes to prevent that additional expense.
Ranking system (Score:5, Interesting)
A ranking system is the right solution.
If 50%-something would like A to win, are ok with B, but definitely don't want C, and if the 50%-something others are the exact opposite, then the best candidate should be B, not A or C where it's only down to little percentage different.
Re:phew (Score:3, Interesting)
Though personally I don't think those whom are elected should be able to make/change laws about elections... but that would just make the system more complex and larger... So when the judicial system steps in and tries to keep things constitutionally in line I appreciate it.
Some interesting stats (Score:3, Interesting)
"Black Representation Under Cumulative Voting in IL"
http://archive.fairvote.org/?page=419 [fairvote.org]
Did careerism also play a part?
The Illinois experience (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:"Fair representation" (Score:3, Interesting)
What they really mean by "fair representation" would be more accurately described as "damn voters won't vote for the people we want them to, so we're screwing with the rules."
Well, it's pretty much the opposite. Cumulative voting is a system for elections involving party lists (such as city councils, in some jurisdictions). The point is that you get to assign your votes to the candidates you actually want to elect, rather than having to vote for a list of candidates that some party drew up for you, while still giving the parties a chance to nominate candidates and suggest to (not force upon) the voter a ranking among them.
This system is commonly used in local elections in Switzerland and Germany. Works well there.
Single Transferable Vote (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Single Transferable Vote (Score:5, Interesting)
Take a look at Australia. They've used IRV for over 100 years, and their house of representatives has two parties (well; one party and one 60+ year long two-member coalition that never oppose incumbent members of the other coalition-member; close enough.)
But approval voting and score voting really CAN allow third-parties a foothold. http://rangevoting.org/ [rangevoting.org]
Re:"Fair representation" (Score:2, Interesting)
What they really mean by "fair representation" would be more accurately described as "damn voters won't vote for the people we want them to, so we're screwing with the rules."
A more fair representation would allow the "No Confidence" vote and a "Recall" vote box for each and every candidate in office every two years whether they are running or not. Then and only then will the *employees* of this nation take notice of their true employers. Also, no pay raise for any politician unless approved by 75% of the voting populace. And just like all the commercial businesses, the politicians should start paying a greater portion of their health benefits themselves and get off the free gravy train.
Re:Negative votes (Score:2, Interesting)
Personally I like proportional voting systems; example: Say there are 100 seats in the legislature, party "A" gets 40% of the votes party "B" gets 30% of the votes, party "C" gets 25% and party "D" gets 5%. So they get a number of seats proportional to the votes they receive. Party A gets 40 seats and so on. Party D however doesn't get any seats as there is an 8% minimum you have to reach to get in the legislature, to help prevent radical minorities getting a foot hold. (last part is just kinda in-theory)
But I think a system like this would benefit the US a lot, would really get 3rd parties on the map.
Re:Sigh... (Score:3, Interesting)
Personally, I'd be in favor of a Condorcet method for single-winner and a proportional representation method like STV for multiple winners. The Condorcet criterion simply says that if one candidate is preferred to every other one-on-one, then that candidate should win. It's like sports: if a team beats every other team outright, it should win. The Schulze method [wikipedia.org], which is a pretty good Condorcet method, is being used by Wikimedia, the Pirate Party of Sweden, and KDE already. It's not very easy to explain, however; if that's a goal, Ranked Pairs [jyte.com] is pretty easy and good, too.
Unlike the above, STV has actually been tried in America. New York used it [archive.org] in the 1930s-1940s until the established party machines abolished it by Red Scare tactics. STV's problem wasn't that it didn't work, its problem was that it worked too well. It is indeed interesting that the Republicans, who had no chance of winning pre-STV, actually opposed STV.
One should be very careful about turning the multiwinner system, STV, into a single-winner system (IRV). Some groups in the US are trying to do so, most notably FairVote, and they are linking the concept of the ranked ballot to IRV itself. IRV is not a very good method: while it is more fair than Plurality, as another post here stated, Australia has been using IRV for a very long time and still has a two-party system.
There is such a thing as a type of STV that becomes a Condorcet method when only electing a single winner: Schulze STV [wikipedia.org], but it is very complex; about the only chance one would have to implement it would be if the voting population could trust the method on performance alone, like a computer or other machine (which most people don't know how works, yet use).
Re:The Illinois experience (Score:4, Interesting)
Why should a stupid person have any less right to choose his representative than a smart person?
Re:The Illinois experience (Score:3, Interesting)
Seriously. If you can't understand this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cumballot.gif [wikipedia.org]
then maybe you shouldn't be voting.
Intelligence as a requirement for voting has been fought for a long time see voting tests.
Voting? Useless. (Score:4, Interesting)
Sorry.
The system is broken. You get to choose charming and evil or just plain evil.
The government is bought and paid for. Voting is a charade.
For voting to work as we'd all like it to work, first we'd have to...
1. Have an independent media not owned by the oligarchs. This way real debate can happen.
2. Test candidates and sitting leaders for psychopathy and remove those who fail the tests from the system.
3. Make corporate sponsorship/lobbying a crime with real punishments which stop the crimes from repeating.
4. Fix the money system so that we are not all debt slaves in the giant pyramid scheme which is the global economy.
Since none of those things are going to come about, debating how to vote is pointless.
The system is collapsing, and a LOT of people are going to suffer horribly.
The only thing you can realistically do is to find your neighbors and figure out how to help and support each other through the hard times, because the government is an evil leach which is here to feed on you and enslave you. Disengage from it.
-FL