Tuesday, June 15, 2004
A More Democratic Way To Vote (or, How To Get Who We Really Want In The White House)
Hello everyone! I’m on a roll this week, blogging more often than in a long time. I also have been experiencing higher traffic than normal at my site, which is a good thing! We are over 600 total hits now, and am averaging a dozen a day. And only one of those is I. : )
On the last blog, I mentioned that I wanted to talk about voting. Then I realized I no longer had my research notes on it. So I will paraphrase what I was going to say. Voting in America is one of our proudest traditions. We use it to symbolize our state of democracy, and pontificate about every citizen having a voice through his or her vote.
Voting turn-outs are very low, and almost nonexistent for many of our votes. Unless it has to do with raising property taxes or electing a President, America seems to have lost the will to vote. The groups who turn out the least are also the groups that had to fight the hardest for voting rights (“blacks” and women).
But there is a reason for some of the apathy. After the last two Presidential elections, we watched as men who the nation at large did not want were elected. We felt betrayed by the process, and felt increasingly duped into believing “one vote” mattered. Politics aside, it is the “one vote” concept that allows mistakes and misrepresentation in the first place.
A while back, some statisticians and scientists crunched the numbers on how we vote. They found that we are not practicing the most democratic type of voting. They presented a system where you vote for a few candidates, ranking them from best to worse. Each slot on your ranked list is assigned a score, and the total score from the national voting determines the winner. It is quite ingenious and makes perfect sense. It does away with so-called “wasted” votes on candidates doomed to failure by our two-party system, as the other candidates get partial credit on the list for being lesser of the remaining evils.
So if we are concerned with democracy, and the vox polloi (voice of the masses), we need to fix our voting system. Not only in how we cast or tally votes, but how we score them. We instituted the electoral college to ensure fairness based on populations, lets take it the next logical step and give the people back their voice… and make sure we get the person we want this time.
If you are interested in how voting in America works, or about the new proposed rank system, email me. I can probably find a web site or two to direct you to. The original article about the alternative system was in an issue of Scientific American earlier this year, but without my research notes, I won’t even attempt to guess which issue!
If you are an American citizen, don't forget to exercise your right to vote. It may be a flawed system, filled with flawed men with flawed ideas, but unless you make your voice heard, it will never change.
See ya!
On the last blog, I mentioned that I wanted to talk about voting. Then I realized I no longer had my research notes on it. So I will paraphrase what I was going to say. Voting in America is one of our proudest traditions. We use it to symbolize our state of democracy, and pontificate about every citizen having a voice through his or her vote.
Voting turn-outs are very low, and almost nonexistent for many of our votes. Unless it has to do with raising property taxes or electing a President, America seems to have lost the will to vote. The groups who turn out the least are also the groups that had to fight the hardest for voting rights (“blacks” and women).
But there is a reason for some of the apathy. After the last two Presidential elections, we watched as men who the nation at large did not want were elected. We felt betrayed by the process, and felt increasingly duped into believing “one vote” mattered. Politics aside, it is the “one vote” concept that allows mistakes and misrepresentation in the first place.
A while back, some statisticians and scientists crunched the numbers on how we vote. They found that we are not practicing the most democratic type of voting. They presented a system where you vote for a few candidates, ranking them from best to worse. Each slot on your ranked list is assigned a score, and the total score from the national voting determines the winner. It is quite ingenious and makes perfect sense. It does away with so-called “wasted” votes on candidates doomed to failure by our two-party system, as the other candidates get partial credit on the list for being lesser of the remaining evils.
So if we are concerned with democracy, and the vox polloi (voice of the masses), we need to fix our voting system. Not only in how we cast or tally votes, but how we score them. We instituted the electoral college to ensure fairness based on populations, lets take it the next logical step and give the people back their voice… and make sure we get the person we want this time.
If you are interested in how voting in America works, or about the new proposed rank system, email me. I can probably find a web site or two to direct you to. The original article about the alternative system was in an issue of Scientific American earlier this year, but without my research notes, I won’t even attempt to guess which issue!
If you are an American citizen, don't forget to exercise your right to vote. It may be a flawed system, filled with flawed men with flawed ideas, but unless you make your voice heard, it will never change.
See ya!
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