[Election-Methods] Poll-posting. Where it's posted.

[Michael Ossipoff]

The following poll-posting has been posted to alt.politics.elections, and 
has been asked as a question at Yahoo Answers, at the elections section. 
It's also been posted to a yahoo group called "AB Progressives". That group 
has over 2000 members.

Hopefully there will soon be more than 5 respondents. So far all I've gotten 
from yahoo answers is two flippant answers from people who answer everything 
to get a scoring point. So far from alt.politics.elections I've only gotten 
a few replies criticizing electoral reform itself.

I tell you where the poll is posted so that you can check for results there 
if you want to. If I don't get results soon, I might quit checking.

I also invite you to post the below-quoted poll-posting anywhere else that 
you might have an idea to post it. Modifiy it as you please. Or, of course, 
post an entirely different poll here and there. But polling is essential, to 
get an idea of what voting systemss(s) people will accept.

Here's the posting:

The single-vote Plurality voting system currently in use in our political 
elections is a peculiar kind of candidate rating system: It lets you give 
top rating to one candidate, but forces you to give bottom rating to all the 
rest. A fairer system, with more voter freedom, would let you  rate _each_ 
candidate as you choose. There are a number of such systems proposed.

We’re so used to the “lesser-of-2-evils problem” that many people believe it 
to be inherent in voting. Actually that problem is an artifact of the 1-vote 
Plurality system,  the rating system that forces you to give bottom rating 
to all the candidates but one.

With any one of the methods described below, no one would ever again have 
any reason to not give top rating to their favorite. No one would ever have 
strategic need to vote someone else over their favorite.

The result would be that we’d elect candidates whom you can like, trust and 
respect, instead of sleazy lesser-evils that you have to hold your nose to 
vote for..

Which one or more of the four methods described below would you accept? By 
that I mean, which would you sign an initiative petition for, or vote for 
the enactment of?:

Approval:

Each voter may mark, on his/her ballot, the names of as many candidates as 
s/he wants to. The winner is the candidate who gets the most marks.

Approval is the same as what we use now, but without  Plurality’s compulsory 
bottom-rating rule. Approval lets you rate every candidate 0 or 1. Top or 
bottom.

Changing to Approval wouldn’t require any new balloting equipment or new 
software. What change is needed? Where the ballot now says “Vote for one”, 
it would instead say “Vote for one or more”. That’s it. Two new words on the 
ballot.

Plus/Minus:

Each voter may give to any candidate either 1 point or -1 point. The 
candidate with the highest positive total wins.

Plus/Minus is equivalent to Approval, but makes it more obvious that your 
bottom rating for candidate Jones exactly cancels out someone else’s top 
rating for Jones. As a result, with both  systems, a ballot with mostly 
bottom ratings exercises just as much power as a ballot with mostly top 
ratings. I mention that because some people mistakenly object to Approval on 
the erroneous grounds that the voter who votes for more candidates exercises 
more power than the voter who votes for fewer candidates.

Three-level:

Each voter may give to any candidate 1 point, -1 point, 0 points.

[If the following system has too wordy a definition, then that could be a 
reason to not accept it]:

Majority Opposition:

Each voter may rank, in order of preference, as many candidates as s/he 
wants to. Voters may rank 2 or more candidates at the same rank position if 
they so wish.

1. Disqualify any candidate over whom another candidate is ranked by a 
majority of the voters (unless that would disqualify all the candidates).

2. Among the undisqualified candidates, elect the candidate ranked on the 
most ballots.

As I said, let me know which of these you’d accept.

Optionally, rank them in order of acceptability, or state your favorite.

Optionally, comment on what you like &/or dislike about them.

Mike Ossipoff