Rather than the traditional one vote-per-person, we urge Unity08 to adopt some form of Preferential Voting (aka "ranked-choice voting"). This enables the community to converge on a candidate that best represents all their values, rather than rewarding those who have the largest partisan following. If you agree, please vote this comment up (and ask about it during the live chat on Thursday, April 12th). Thank you.
Ernest N. Prabhakar, Ph.D.
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Thats no different than waht the Replubicrats and Democans do now!
One Person, One Vote!!!
http://journals.aol.com/kweinschen/Veritas/
I'm sorry, I don't understand your objection. Republicans and Democrats both use -- and like! -- one-vote-per-person in primaries and the general election, so they can brand third-parties as "spoilers." Preferential voting means "one ranking per person", giving voters more power. See, for example, Instant Runoff Voting as used in San Francisco (not ideal, but still a step up from first-past-the-post, which is what we use now).
Ernest N. Prabhakar, Ph.D.
RadicalCentrism.org is a tiny little think tank in Santa Clara, California.
I don't want some stuff shirt elitist sociologist voting for me.
http://journals.aol.com/kweinschen/Veritas/
Hi Kris,
I apologize, perhaps you have a very different understanding of the term "preferential voting." What we're talking about is where each voter lists all the candidates they care about in order of preference. For example, I might vote:
1. Hillary
2. Obama
3. McCain
(not necessarily my actual preference)
This allows me to express my true preferences, rather than having to, say, vote for Obama to prevent McCain from winning, and "lying" about my true preference for Hillary.
That's all we're asking for -- a voting system that makes it easy and safe for everyone to express their true preferences, rather than one that favors voters who vote 'strategically' rather than 'sincerely.' Which, alas, is what the current system does.
As I stated on the front page, I'm all about Instant Run-off Voting. It eliminates the so-called "Nader factor" and gives us a candidate who more accurately represents the views of the people.
What do you mean by "instant run-off" voting?
http://journals.aol.com/kweinschen/Veritas/
As much as I hate it when people cite Wikipedia, they do have a good explanation of how Instant Run-off Voting works:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant_run-off_voting#Examples
It's basically a way of ranking your first, second, third, etc., choices instead of just marking an x next to one person's name. It helps find a consensus candidate. Look at the Wikipedia examples (there's only 2 of them) and you'll get it.
That's bascially what has been proposed. However, I feel once the voting has reduced the candidates to THREE, voting should continue until there is a MAJORITY (as opposed to a plurality). That will ensure a certain amount of compromise in the process.
http://journals.aol.com/kweinschen/Veritas/
True, the "repeated runoff" part for the actual nomination is an improvement over pure "winner take all" (although runoff, including Instant Runoff, does still have some spoiler problems compared to Condorcet methods). My bigger concern is the pre-nomination that only allows a single vote. Even just letting people use Approval ("vote for your top three") would make it much fairer. You did read those links, right Kris?
Instant Run-off Voting requires that the winning candidate receive a majority of the votes.
KrisW is clearly uneasy with this proposal; here are some points for him, and the many others for whom preferential voting is a foreign concept, to consider:
1) This is not what happens in either the general elections in most parts of the US, nor is it what happens in the mainstream parties' nominations. Our election laws and rules are partially to blame for the polarized electorate we have today; they encourage a approach that requires voters to choose one of two sides in any election. If you are serious about supporting a consensus-building political movement, you should seriously consider a nominating process that encourages consensus.
2) What Dr. Ernie & I propose here (See our earlier posts at http://unity08.com/node/963.) is not an attempt to take power away from the voters. Rather its intent is to provide voters with more power by giving them greater ability to convey their opinions in their votes.
I have a proposal for an alternative to preferential voting, particularly if we are fortunate enough to have a large field of candidates that have broad support. If this comes to pass, then it may be more appropriate to use "approval voting," at least for the first few rounds of the nominating process. Rather than having to rank many candidates, in approval voting each delegate can give one vote per candidate to as many candidates as s/he "approves of," presumably meaning candidates the delegate would support as the nominee. If the early rounds eliminate candidates with the lowest number of approval votes, it would naturally tend to narrow the field to the candidates with the broadest appeal, and therefore the candidates in the center.
Once the number of candidates is down to a manageable number (certainly three is manageable), the ballots could change to preferential, so that delegates could get a sense of the strength of support for the remaining candidates. But by avoiding preferential ballots with large numbers of candidates, approval voting would simplify the process of narrowing a wide field.
Rob Root
How EXACTLY does your method give "more power by giving them greater ability to convey their opinions in their votes" when one person presupposes to vote for a whole block of people????
http://journals.aol.com/kweinschen/Veritas/
I don't understand what you mean by "one person presupposes to vote for a whole block of people." This doesn't seem to describe anything that is being proposed here. My point is that by allowing people to cast "approval votes" or "preferential votes" the nominating process would allow every voter to express more clearly his/her opinion about the pool of candidates.
Specifically, approval voting allows a voter to indicate "these are the candidates that I could support in the general election," and presumably the remainder are candidates that the voter would not support.
Preferential voting allows the voter to indicate the candidates in order that they support as the nominee.
In both cases, the votes cast convey information not available through a single vote. A traditional vote can only convey: "this is my favorite candidate."
Approval voting might not include the same information, although it could. (Casting a single approval vote says "This is my favorite candidate, and the only one I could support.") But the point of approval voting as I propose it is to aid in narrowing a large field.
When it is time to choose a single nominee, the use of preferential voting allows a voter to indicate a favorite candidate, a next favorite, and so forth, for as many as the voter cares to indicate. This allows the voter's opinion to be expressed more clearly than a single vote can allow.
I could back your approach.
Thank you, NotASouldier. I think that using approval voting for earlier rounds might make delegates feel more comfortable casting ballots without worrying about exactly which candidate is #9 and which is #10. Instead a delegate needs to ask, "Do I think I could support the candidate?" and answer that question with a simple yes or no.
On the other hand, it may be that this technique of changing from approval to preferential is too confusing for many delegates to appreciate. In that case, I would argue, dump approval voting and use preferential in every round.
But your support is heartening, and so--for the time being--I stand behind my two-step voting proposal.
C'mon, robroot, give us more credit! Anyone who can't understand that eliminating too many candidates by approval/disapproval saves precious time, doesn't DESERVE to vote! Then, when we have a few candidates we can all possibly support, we WILL be much more empowered to choose the one the MAJORITY of us can agree on. We would be empowered in that we'd already be UNIFIED in agreement that we can support the 2nd step candidates...empowered to choose the one who MOST CLOSELY personifies what's important to us. This seems like a much more accurate, precise and representative result to me, and I don't think my brand new 18-year-old voter daughter will be confused by the process!
Umm... thank you, I think! You've got the idea, alright, and I don't mean to question anyone's intelligence. At the same time, good voting procedures are delicate things, and reading the posts in this thread, you can see that the ideas being tossed around are not universally understood. What's really important to me is that the final narrowing be made using a Condorcet-type method. This is a way of counting preferential ballots that is regarded as more reliable than instant run-off (IRV). That said, there is no perfect form of voting. An economist named Kenneth Arrow proved this (a mathematical proof) back in the 1950s, and earned a Nobel prize as a result.
The point is, voting procedures are very tricky things, and there is more here than meets the eye.
Dear robroot:
Maybe instead of "confusing", you meant "more work to become informed delegates". This is one of the costs of having the privilege of a democratic republic as our form of government. I absolutely LOVE that we're free to TRY to make ANY changes...AND WE'RE DOING IT! GO USA!!
This seems to be a good process for a large field of candidates, as it will quickly eliminate those for whom there is not broad support. Once the field is narrowed to three, preferential voting makes more sense and is easier.
I think that your method is still affected by 3rd Parties. If your method had been used in the 2024 General Election, the voting would have been affected by whether people put Bush and Kerry as the top two choices or whether they put one of them first and the other one last.
A method I prefer is for everybody to make an up or down vote on each candidate. If there is a slate of ten candidates, and I like three of them, then I should be able to vote for three of them. If I like eight of them, then I should be able to vote for eight of them. This method is not affected by the Naders of the world because someone's level of support for a minor candidate has no impact on their vote for a major candidate. Also, people don't have to worry about being practical with their vote--they can vote honestly.
That's fine for narrowing the field of nominees, but for the actual selection of THE candidate. One person, one vote is the way to go.
http://journals.aol.com/kweinschen/Veritas/
What if we get down to 15 final candidates, and that group includes 13 candidates that are right of center and 2 that are left of center? If everybody votes for one candidate, then the 2 that are left of center will have a huge advantage because the right vote would be split into little pieces. This happens if every delegate is given one vote or if the delegates rank the candidates.
If everybody gives each candidate an up or down vote, the problem is eliminated. The most popular candidate wins.
What makes you think the potential candidate pool will be so one sided?
http://journals.aol.com/kweinschen/Veritas/
It probably won't be, but we should have a system that picks the best candidate whether the field is balanced, slightly off, or way off.
The method described by reino is called approval voting, and is discussed in my earlier post. I agree with KrisW that it is appropriate for narrowing a wide field, but I would argue that preferential voting would be better for the final rounds of votes leading to the choice of nominee. Preferential voting allows the convention more insight into the opinions of the delegates than approval voting, and this might be critical to selecting an effective nominee from the small pool of final contenders.
I agree that voting preferences is actually more democratic. I would even favor if there are 15 candidates everyone can vote for all 15 IN ORDER of preference. The candidates receiving the top 3, 5 or 10 positions would have another round where we would revote again by preference. I think this will be particulary important as I believe more time will be required to really get to know the positions of the candidates.
I still think the way the rules are cureently written is the way to go.
http://journals.aol.com/kweinschen/Veritas/
You are entitled to your opinion, of course, but if you offer a basis for it, there might be a point to further discussion.
If you want to see how the voting would look using IRV, I have created a sample poll that you can vote on. I have 32 name using candidates suggested by people on this site. Go here http://www.demochoice.org/dcballot.html?poll=U08 and vote for your favoites. You will see how preferential voting than a winner takes all approach.
Where there will be a list of candidates, selection needs to be by a Borda or Condorcet system. Two party systems like we have now lead to what we have now, which is "candidates" chosen by the military industrial complex corporations and the obscenely wealthy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borda_count
Hal von Luebbert
I don't know how the Replubicrats and the Democans vote now, but the Republicans and Democrats are not doing the same thing.
A simple IRV system would choose a ticket with strong support, and it would allow voters to vote their true preferences decreasing the incentive to vote strategically tremendously. And Kris, this is still one person, one vote.
For the Qualifying Round, have each delegate rank as many candidates as she wishes, and then start a round of voting.
In each round of voting, determine the five candidates with the most votes. If these five candidates always remain the top five candidates no matter how all votes for other candidates were reassigned, then these five candidates are chosen. If not, eliminate the weakest candidate with the fewest votes and start another round of voting.
No matter how candidates we start with, this allows us to have only one Qualifying Round and still select a strong set of five candidates.
For the Virtual Convention, have each delegate rank each Presidential ticket, and then start a round of voting.
In each round of voting, determine the candidate with the most votes. If this candidate always remains the top candidate no matter how all votes for other candidates were reassigned (that is, if she receives a majority), then this ticket is chosen. If not, eliminate the weakest candidate with the fewest votes and start another round of voting.
Note also that this suggestion for voting in the Convention eliminates the option of a Presidential candidate selecting a different VP running mate during the voting. A reason for having this option is to allow a strong ticket still in the race by substituting a strong VP candidate that was on an eliminated ticket. This option would not be necessary, though, if VP candidates could be on several tickets. Each Pres. candidate selects who she believes is the best Qualified VP candidate for her.
The aims of the proposed voting system can be met in a simpler way with these changes.
Call it "preferential," "ranked," or "instant runoff" voting, it's a good idea. It is used in some other countries and by some organizations in America (just not in our governmental voting).
Allowing delegates to choose a 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th choice will make the process more democratic and more representative of the entire group's wishes.
If no candidate receives more than 50 percent of the vote on counting of the first choice votes (let's say there's a 30, 30, 20, 20 split), then the second choice votes are added to the total. No one gets to vote a second time for the same candidate (but they can if they want choose to not make second, third, or more choices, their first choice vote would still count during the first round). This continues until someone goes over the 50 percent mark.
If America used this voting system, we would likely see significant rise in the number of 3rd party candidates who are elected or can seriously challenge for office without being "spoiler" candidates. It would significantly help our political landscape, working against polarization and giving the voter more viable choices. (Spoiler candidates are 3rd party candidates who are blamed for taking votes from their nearest major-party sibling when a major party candidate loses by a low margin of votes that could theoretically could have been made up if the 3rd party candidate had not been in the race.)
Candidates from major parties are familiar with this idea of instant runoff voting, as 3rd parties have worked hard to bring it to their attention after Democrats took the opportunity to unfairly skewer Greens and claim Nader caused Gore's defeat in Florida. We all know that is not why Gore "lost" in Florida, but how convenient it is to forget 90,000 black people were illegally denied their right to vote when you can use the outcome to undercut and disrupt your competitor's growing support. Third parties of all types support IRV, though, not just the Greens.
There is some support for IRV in the major parties, but also major parties are against it because of course they want to protect their positions as the major parties.
http://360.yahoo.com/reynoldseblacas
This method allows each voter to cast a vote for their most desired candiate. If that candidate does not get enough votes to get into the second round, then each voter's second choice is considered (and so on). The final winner would recieve more than 50% of the votes and voters are not stuck with a candiate that is not desired but was believed to be more likely to win than the candidate that the majority of voters may have actually preferred. This is common sense democracy.
I'm glad to see the interest in Preferential Voting. While Instant Runoff has its strong points, I would encourage you to also consider Condorcet-compatible methods, which are like an Instant Round Robin. Rather than simply eliminating the candidates with the weakest "first-place" support, it picks the candidate with the broadest overall support. Hence, it is even better reducing the spoiler effect than IRV (cf. this analysis, but uses the exact same type of balloting, and (in some cases) is actually simpler to calculate.
To be sure, as someone else pointed out, Approval voting is actually almost as good (and, in some ways, simpler and more accurate than IRV). At any rate, either of these would be an improvement over "Plurality", which is what the rules currently state. That's why my primary concern is simply that Unity08 adopt some form of preferential voting.
Here's hoping they hire at least one competent mathematician to help them define the rules...
Ernest N. Prabhakar, Ph.D.
RadicalCentrism.org is a tiny little think tank in Santa Clara, California.
Some form of preferential voting would be a wonderful precedent for the Unity 08 convention to set. My personal experience is with Condorcet voting. A friend of mine who is a condorcet-voting proselytizer wrote up some code that allowed us to use this method to decide which book to read for our book club. I was really impressed with the way it repeatedly found books that we all agreed on.
Preferential voting gives everyone more votes and more of a say than the one person - one vote system. Not only does your choice matter, but your aversion to a candidate matters, too.
all of these ideas sound better than and endless day of voting and revoting.
I couldn't agree more - our current election outcomes are always polarized for this very reason and it forces people to vote for who they think will "win" instead of who we can all agree on.
I still think it is a bad idea.
This is an election for a presidential candidate, not a baseball draft.
http://journals.aol.com/kweinschen/Veritas/
If we are going to choose a candidate, why not choose the one with the widest support base? Single-candidate voting loses this power and forces people to choose the most-likely winner. We will get a better candidate if we allow people to vote their conscience.
The problem I see with preferential voting is the likelyhood you will get milque toast candidate. For example, a strong candidate may get a lot of first place votes, and alot of last place votes. Yet, someone with a tepid sert of views can get alot of 3rd and 4th place votes and win the nomination.
I still oppose preferential voting. It would be OK to to use to narrow down the candiates to say 5-10, but once that level is reached, we should use one person, one vote, until there is a CLEAR MAJORITY. I don't think it is too much to ask of delegates to spend 5-10 minutes each night for two weeks to do this. If dlegates aren't THAT committed to the effort, they shouldn't bother being delegates anyhow.
http://journals.aol.com/kweinschen/Veritas/
The goal of Unity 08 is just that, unity. Single candidate voting tends toward the most polarizing figure not the most unifying one. Preferential voting is the only way to get the candidate we all can agree on.
By your comment "milque toast" followed by "a strong candidate", I gather that a candidate's personality is important to you. Also, "tepid"...views isn't really clear, but you must mean something like "flip-flopping" or being vague or refusing to take a stand on something. By an up/down approval vote in a first round, you would attempt to eliminate someone like this. If they were to remain in the race for a second round of preferential voting, you would have another chance to eliminate them, but only if enough delegates agree with you. This is what Unity08 means to me. Otherwise, you will still have the choice to vote for another candidate in the final election. Don't worry, Be happy!
The "widest support base" could still be a minority vote in a preferential voting method with more than three candidates. Unity 08 is not about that. We will need a vote that establishs an absolute majority are we will be ignored in the general election. A minority candidate from within new party would be easy to laugh off.
The preferential vote may be very effective in many circumstance and particularly when used as a balloting referendum to narrow the candidates with a crowded field in the internet application. But a final ballot must establish and absolute majority to continue an effective election strategy.
Bill"for what we are together"
IRV always ends with someone getting a majority of the votes, which is not true of single candidate voting. In the single-candidate vote, a majority is only assured if there are only 2 candidates and you are forced to vote for one or the other. IRV will return a majority no matter how many candidates are in the field. If majority is want you want, then IRV or another preferential method is the way to go.
I'm not convinced adding second or third choice votes to first choice votes is a sound definition of majority. It tells you who is least popular. I'm not stuck-in-the-mud on IRV if U08 takes an actual interest in it. It doesn't derail the main objectives for me.
Bill"for what we are together"
I agree.
THere could be several candidates that get a "majority" since one person is actaully casting several votes.
http://journals.aol.com/kweinschen/Veritas/
Apparently you don't know how IRV works. Only one vote per person is counted and only one person can end up with a majority of the votes. Visit www.fairvote.org or www.demochoice.org and read up on the mechanics of IRV.
Any voting system that ranks candidates via the voter's preference will NOT produce a majority. As I'll state for the umpteenth time, a candidate who receieves quite a few high and low rankings could potentially be beat by a candidate who is ranked 3rd, 4th or 5th on every ballot. This DOES NOT represent a "majority"
It's nothing but a glorified poll.
http://journals.aol.com/kweinschen/Veritas/
Ok. Let's look at that. Say we vote your way and get the following results:
A: 40%
B: 30%
C: 20%
D: 10%
A has quite a few high rankings, but he didn't get a majority. So what happens? We vote again without D correct? This means the people who voted for D are on their second choice. And what happens if all the people who voted for D hate A?
A: 40%
B: 35%
C: 25%
Still no majority after two days of voting. Day three, now without C. Note that the people who voted for D on day 1 and C on day 2 are now on their third choice:
A: 40%
B: 60%
B wins after 3 days of voting, even though A had strong support on day 1. This is how your voting would work right? Correct me if I'm wrong, but even your way it is possible for a strongly supported candidate to lose once people get to their third and fourth choices.
BTW: every ellection is "a glorified poll" that's why they call the election booths "polls".
Borrowing from your example, look at what could happen with IPV voting....
A: rated 1 on 30%, 2 on 25%, 3 on 10% and 4 on 35%
B: rated 1 on 20%, 2 on 30%, 3 on 40%, and 4 on 10%
C: rated 1 on 25%, 2 on 20%, 3 on 30%, and 4 on 15%
D: rated 1 on 25%, 2 on 25%, 3 on 20% and 4 on 40%
B beats A even though a MAJORITY of voters ranked "A" 1 or 2 and B recieved the LEAST number of "first" votes".
In fact, A comes in third behind B and D, depsite having the most first place votes.
Care to check my math? I came up with this example in about 10 minutes.
http://journals.aol.com/kweinschen/Veritas/