NationStates Jolt Archive


A call for a different and better election model

LuSiD
18-10-2004, 06:33
Ever watching sports? Soccer? Basketball? Your favorite club plays against all other clubs in the poule, right? And the club you played against last time plays against all other clubs too, right?

Its a simple scheme:

1 2 3 4
1|X| | | |
2| |X| | |
3| | |X| |
4| | | |X|


1 plays against 2, 3, 4. 2 plays against 1, 3, 4. 3 plays against 1, 2, 4. 4 plays against 1, 2, 3. Now, they might play 2 times: home and out. This detail ain't important for this discussion though. The scheme itself can be made more complex by adding say 6 more clubs, which means you get a total of 10. Also not important when explaining how it works and why this is important.

Because, why is this important? This scheme means theres a honest outcome after all games are played. Everyone plays against everyone. Perhaps either 1 or 2 times, bu that doesn't matter. To get an approved win, you habe to end up with more points than your opponent. The club which gets the most points wins the cup.

With politics, this works very different. You have to chose 1 person or party. You can't say: 'i like this one most, and this one second' or 'i want this person be first, this one be second and don't have any preference for the order of the rest'. You can only say: 'i want this one' or say nothing at all.

Our current form is 'plurality'. One might define the latter (our current form) as democratic, but there are ways to get it more democratic. Now, whatever your political ideal is, about nobody really opposes democracy, does he? (if you do, STFU ;)).

Now that i've written all the above, i'm gonna quote, which explains in detail why the current election method is not so democratic as it might seem and more important: how we can improve it.

Condorcet: A Better Election Method

In every U.S. election, voters who are dissatisfied with both major parties face the classic dilemma of deciding whether to base their vote on principle or pragmatism. Rather than "wasting" their vote on a candidate with no chance of winning, most end up voting defensively for the "Republicrat" they disagree with least just to oppose the one they disagree with even more. Most voters assume that this dilemma is an inherent fact of democracy, but it is not. It is completely attributable to the inadequacy of our current plurality election method, and a simple expansion of voting rights could end it.

The reason we have a two-party system in the United States is widely misunderstood. It is not because the Democrats and Republicans consistently have the best ideas, nor is it because the media or the debate commission shut out the other parties. We have a two-party system because our plurality voting system does not allow voters to fully specify their preferences. This fact is known as "Duverger's Law (http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duvergers+Law)." To vote for minor parties, voters must effectively withdraw from the races between the two major parties, even though they may have a strong opinion on those races too. Voters who vote for minor parties essentially "waste" their votes and fail to oppose political movements they strongly disagree with. Protest votes may send a "signal," but the unfortunate reality is that they have virtually no direct effect on the actual outcome of elections -- and the indirect effect is usually contrary to the voter's intention.

The right to vote is the foundation of democracy, and a simple expansion of voting rights could improve the democratic process dramatically. Instead of allowing voters to select only a single candidate for each office, they should be allowed to rank the candidates according to preference. Such an expansion of voting rights would allow voters to fully specify their preferences. Although ranked voting may not at first seem important, it could end the two-party system as we know it. It will not make the voters wiser, nor will it guarantee that they will elect better candidates, but it can give them the kind of leaders they really want -- and that is the essence of democracy.

When voters cast their votes in our current plurality system, they are allowed to select only a single candidate for each office. That is far better than no choice at all, of course, but it is nowhere near as good as also being allowed to specify a second and third choice, or beyond. Current voting rights are therefore incomplete. Complete voting rights would allow voters to vote according to their convictions and principles without wasting their vote on a candidate with little or no chance of winning. The rules for determining the winner would be slightly more complicated than they are now, but they would be based on elementary mathematics and should be understandable by virtually anyone old enough to vote.

The proper method of counting ranked votes is called the Condorcet election method, named after the French mathematician who conceived it a couple of centuries ago. The main idea is that each race is conceptually broken down into separate pairwise races between each possible pairing of the candidates. Each ranked ballot is then interpreted as a vote in each of those one-on-one races. If candidate A is ranked above candidate B by a particular voter, that is interpreted as a vote for A over B. If one candidates beats each of the other candidates in their one-on-one races, that candidate wins. Otherwise, the result is ambiguous and a simple procedure is used to resolve the ambiguity. Condorcet voting is explained in more detail elsewhere (http://www.electionmethods.org/CondorcetEx.htm) at this web site.

The Condorcet system allows voters to vote their true preferences without worrying about wasting their vote on a candidate with little or no chance of winning. It frees voters from the possibility that, by voting their true preference, they will neglect to oppose a candidate they strongly disagree with and who could actually win. That is, the Condorcet system eliminates the "horse-race" effect, which forces voters to consider not only which candidate they prefer, but also what each candidate's chances are of winning. It allows voters to vote for the candidate they agree with most rather than against the major-party candidate they disagree with most. In other words, it eliminates the need for defensive or strategic voting.

Distortions such as occurred in the 1992 presidential election could not happen under the Condorcet system. In that election, Ross Perot was a strong third-party candidate and may have taken enough votes from George Bush to allow Bill Clinton to win, despite the fact that most Perot voters may have preferred Bush over Clinton. Clinton received substantially less than a majority of the popular vote, and Bush might have defeated him in a one-on-one race (neglect the electoral college for now, which should be abolished (http://www.electionmethods.org/college.htm)). In a Condorcet voting system, the outcome might have been quite different. With no worry about splitting the vote, more Republicans might have voted for Perot, and Perot might have won, for example. On the other hand, most voters who voted for Perot might have selected Bush as their second choice, and Bush might have won re-election.

The Democratic and Republican parties will probably not like the Condorcet voting system, at least not in general elections, because they could eventually lose their effective duopoly. Competition would be spurred dramatically, and some of the parties now considered minor would become stronger. Voters who believe in laissez faire government could vote Libertarian, for example, and still register their preference for Republicans over Democrats. Similarly, those who believe that the government should provide economic security could vote for their preferred parties and still register their preference for Democrats over Republicans. Although Condorcet voting removes the artificial advantage of the two major parties in general elections, however, it would help them tremendously in their own primary elections.

Our current plurality voting system is particularly inadequate in primary elections with many candidates. Suppose, for purposes of illustration, that the Republican party is predominantly conservative, and their field of candidates consists of six conservatives and one moderate. The conservative candidates are likely to split the conservative vote, but the moderate would presumably get the entire moderate vote and could possibly win with a small plurality much less than a majority of the votes. That outcome would be unfair to the conservative majority. The issue here is completely non-ideological, however, and labels are used as examples only. The same phenomenon could happen to the Democratic party, for example, if the field of candidates consisted of six liberals and one moderate -- or, for that matter, six moderates and one liberal.

Although the examples given for purposes of illustration are simplistic, the basic principle applies in every election. Popular political trends tend to attract more candidates, and candidates with similar platforms tend to split the vote with each other, which is unfair to the voters who wish to support those platforms. This fundamental flaw in our current incomplete plurality voting system makes it very difficult for the majority to consistently get the kind of leaders they really prefer. The Condorcet system is much more likely to give them what they want and is therefore more democratic.

The current system has other deficiencies too. Consider the 1996 Republican presidential primary election as an example. Suppose that a particular voter preferred Alan Keyes and strongly disagreed with Pat Buchanan. He could have voted for Keyes, but if he were rational he would have realized that Keyes had virtually no chance of getting nominated, and that if he voted for Keyes he would be taking the chance of letting Buchanan (who started out strong) win the nomination. Rather than voting for Keyes, his rational vote in the current system would be to vote defensively against Buchanan by voting for Bob Dole, the "highest ranking" Republican. In a Condorcet system, on the other hand, he could have voted exactly as he wished: for Keyes first and Dole second (or at least ahead of Buchanan).

The preceding example shows how the current system strongly favors prominent "insider" candidates and magnifies the inherent disadvantage of less prominent candidates. It is no wonder that the last three Republican presidential nominees were George Bush (then vice-president), Bob Dole (Senate majority leader), and George W. Bush (son of a former president). Nor is it any wonder that sitting presidents rarely, if ever, lose a bid for renomination by their own party. Many voters are willing to settle for familiar but mediocre candidates rather than wasting their votes on "long shots" and taking the chance of letting the nomination go to someone they strongly disagree with. In the Condorcet system, such compromises are unnecessary.

The Condorcet election method is fundamentally different than our current plurality system and obviously cannot be implemented overnight. The public needs to be educated on the inadequacy of our current system and the major advantages of the Condorcet system. Although the rules of the Condorcet system are simple enough, their profound implications are not immediately apparent, and many will mistakenly dismiss the whole idea as unnecessarily complicated. Also, the Condorcet system can easily be tested in a non-binding mode before actually being phased in for real public elections. Such testing can be started immediately by private polling organizations.

Aside from irrational fear of change, the only reason to oppose complete voting rights is to protect the current political duopoly from outside competition. Such protection obviously cannot be good for democracy. Unfortunately, it is those very "Republicrats" who currently have the power to change the voting system, so democracy will undoubtedly have some difficulty evolving. Rest assured that they will ridicule Condorcet voting as too complicated, but they will only be insulting the intelligence of the American public. They will also characterize it as radical, but so was the concept of voting itself when first introduced. With a proper understanding of what is at stake, however, rationality can ultimately prevail. Source: Electionmethods.org - Condorcet: A Better Election Method (http://www.electionmethods.org/Condorcet.htm)

More related subjects, such as Condorcet explained, Approval analysis, technical evaluation of election methods, the problems with electronic voting analyzed, the problems with IRV analyzed, etc on Electionmethods.org (http://www.electionmethods.org).

PS: I believe a more democratic system would also mean there's a lot less polarisation than right now.
Phaiakia
18-10-2004, 06:49
Hmm...ranking...sounds like the Single Transferable Vote system, in which you rank as many candidates as you like according to your preference.
We've just used that system here (here being New Zealand) for the first time in local body elections. It definitely is an improvement on FPP.

Though, I think you've also pointed out a problem which is not necessarily a fault in the method itself. That being that it might work better if the attitude that there are only two real options were changed. If people felt that they could vote for the other parties and it would count then maybe they would.
That's sort of the idea behind our system of MMP I guess, every vote counts no matter who it's for. Although the two major parties still dominate, there is representation from several other parties and the party with the most votes often has to combine with a smaller party to get a clear majority.

Then again, no system can ever be truly democratic. Some systems are more democratic than others, but none are in actuality democratic.
Vacant Planets
18-10-2004, 07:32
Interesting system... but there's a problem with it.

1) It's too expensive, confuse and not expedite enough to guarantee fast results wich affects greatly on the stability of a nation during election time.

2) There are no true incentives for the general voting population to do the due diligence necesary to make an informed rank. So in the end you'll end up with ballots that look like... "Republicans #1 and Democrats #10 the rest of ranks are left up empty..." making the whole rank system pointless and a general waste of time being that independent parties are not going to gain any objective strenght.

Right now, the primary system inside the two parties is too strong and pilar leadership too weak, so big divitions of the big parties is not likely. This is common in most other democracies in the world, where dispute for leadership forces a big party to break into 2 or 3 different parties... the right to dissent in the american parties is mostly dismissed, so until some huge breakup occurs inside the parties themselves, it's very hard for an important 3rd party to rise.

Also, the campaign funds have a LOT to do in the level of influence one party can use over the public, Dems and Reps control the big majority of campaign funds, so they dont have any real competition, they have a cartel of their own.

If a 3rd party is going to emerge, it's going to have to start by sneaking seats in the Congress and NOT trying to win a presidential campaign (because that's impossible), once a decent congress presence is built, then they can consider taking over the presidency, in a process that might take between 8 or 12 years, and would cost millions and millions of dollars.
THE LOST PLANET
18-10-2004, 08:01
Jeez, it's not that complicated. I'm to tired to explain it right now but if you want a simple practical solution google 'Instant Runoff Elections'. New Zealands system is a version of it, but the original concept is American and dates back a century (unfortunately it never caught on). Of course since it makes Independant candidates viable alternatives instead of spoilers, the entrenched parties won't back this reform, and would probably fight it to the bitter end.
Vacant Planets
18-10-2004, 08:14
Jeez, it's not that complicated. I'm to tired to explain it right now but if you want a simple practical solution google 'Instant Runoff Elections'. New Zealands system is a version of it, but the original concept is American and dates back a century (unfortunately it never caught on). Of course since it makes Independant candidates viable alternatives instead of spoilers, the entrenched parties won't back this reform, and would probably fight it to the bitter end.

I dont say it's complicated because of me... but if you cant guarantee that at least 95-99% of the population (wich include people with no education, elders, etc) can understand it, then it's a very uneffective and very dangerus method of voting.

People had problems making 1 hole in a piece of paper four years ago, you really want to make them analize every party then place them in ranks?
Monkeypimp
18-10-2004, 08:25
That's just STV. We have that.
Igwanarno
18-10-2004, 08:30
I dont say it's complicated because of me... but if you cant guarantee that at least 95-99% of the population (wich include people with no education, elders, etc) can understand it, then it's a very uneffective and very dangerus method of voting.

People had problems making 1 hole in a piece of paper four years ago, you really want to make them analize every party then place them in ranks?

Four years ago people also had trouble because the ballot had enough candidates that it was in butterfly form to save space. I suppose to solve this problem we shouldn't have on the ballot any candidates except the two that matter.


You can't cripple democracy just because people are dumb. They don't have to understand the exact mechanism by which elections are decided because the Condorcet method guarantees that it is always in one's best interests to rank candidates in order of preference. And it's not hard for someone to rank candidates in order.