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All the Perl that's Practical to Extract and Report

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Arbitrariness in social constructs, allure, and special hats 4 Comments More | Login | Reply /

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  • Do you make a distinction between a true majority and a plurality?
    • Actually I was just pondering that the other day. Electoral systems are a complicated topic, but I basically think that, at least for single-member districts (i.e., positions where you only get to elect one person), plurality is not good enough. If nothing else, it does a poor job at manufacturing consensus, because you end up with everyone having to put up with a minority's choices -- the fact it was the largest minority's choice is not much of a consolation. So I think that if, in an election, there is

      • One of the issues with our (U.S.) current voting system is that it's binary -- your vote counts just as much whether you think a candidate is the lesser of two evils or if you'd follow her into battle against Megatron. This is great for mindless robots who vote with the party, but stinks for everyone else, particularly since parties are much less powerful (and meaningful) than they once were.

        There are lots of academics talking about this issue. IMO one of the more implementable (and non-radical) proposals is cumulative voting [fairvote.org]. Basically, if there are three candidates in an election you get three votes. If you're very strong for one candidate you can put all three toward her; otherwise you can divide them up as you choose. An unfortunate (?) side-effect of such a system is that the slogan "One person one vote!" would have to be cast aside for something like "One person one vote multiplexed" :-)

        Chris

        • What would happen if the cumulative voting proposal also allowed "none of the above"?

          We had a mayoral election here last November, with seven candidates ranging from Mr. Cannot Be Trusted with a Stapler to Ms. Literary Deconstructionism Ate My Brain. Unfortunately, of the two serious candidates, the incumbent had a questionable run-in with the police as well as the odd timing of pushing a foggily explained tax increase referendum a mere week before everyone discovered their property tax for the year had

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