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February 12, 2004
Reforming Elections (Hare ballotting)
I have long been a supporter of Hare/Australian/Instant Runoff ballotting and figured I should post something here especially as a friend pointed out a nice site on the issue. The concept is perhaps best expressed in that everyone has a single transferrable vote which is excercised by ranking all or some of the candidates on a ballot. The effect is that you are voting for only your first choice candidate unless she is eliminated in which case your vote gets transferred to your second place candidate and so on. For eample, in 2000 probably most voters for Nader would have chosen Gore as a second choice so if Nader were eliminated (due to none of Gore, Nader or Bush having more than 50% of the vote [this can be on a per-state basis or nationwide] and Nader having the least votes of the three), his votes would have moved to each of his voter's second choices (probably overwhelmingly Gore).
I am a strong supporter of having a political system involving more than two parties where parties could advocate on real issues rather than just shifting around to try to be in the middle and get 51% of the vote as our current system is. Third parties will continue to fail horribly with our current system for exactly the reason of what happened in 2000. People who voted for Nader and got Bush will now switch to the Democrats. With the Hare system, they could support Nader in all good conscience, knowing their votes would transfer if he lost. With a good 3rd party, votes would then probably increase at each election. With our current system, no 3rd party has almost any chance, in the short or long term. Of course, for this very reason, this change will likely never happen as there will be broad agreement among the Republicans and Democrats to fight it and maintain their power.
Both the Hugo awards for SF and the International Gamers Awards also use the Hare ballotting system so at least my hobbies are on the ball.
Posted by aarondf at February 12, 2004 05:33 PM
Comments
I also love the idea of IRV ballot, and the website that is referenced is really informative.
Posted by: David Barrett at March 4, 2004 08:41 PM
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