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Should we use an alternative voting system?

Does the current voting system make it too difficult for decent candidates to win? Right now, it seems that we end up with candidates who appeal to the hard core base of the major parties (such as anti-abortion Republicans or hard-left Democrats), while others who might be more reasonable never make it to the general election. So should we use an alternative voting system, such as "approval voting" or "instant runoff voting"?

Links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approval_voting
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting

Anonymous , 05.11.2011, 15:34
Idea status: under consideration

Comments

DianaHsieh, 12.10.2012, 20:48
See http://www.youtube.com/course?list=EC7679C7ACE93A5638
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Michael Hardy, 18.06.2013, 21:59
Let's say three candiates are running: Jones, Smith, and Hitler. 33 percent of voters slightly favor Jones over Smith and hate Hitler. 33 percent slightly favor Smith over Jones and hate Hitler. The other 34 percent slightly favor Hitler over Jones and Smith. Hitler gets slightly more votes than either of the others, so he gets in.

A system called "approval voting" (there's a book of that title analyzing it in some detail) allows a voter to vote for as many candidate as the voter choses. In the situation above, a lot of people might vote for both Jones and Smith, so they would outpoll Hitler.

This isn't far from the truth, both in 1933 in Germany and at least once in the '80s in South Korea, where at the time freedom of speech didn't exist, and the autocrat got re-elected.
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Mike, 21.12.2013, 15:06
Frank Atwood is the primary activist for Approval Voting in Colorado. He even got a bill introduced to the Colorado Senate earlier this year. He would be willing to fill in details to help with this discussion. Let me know if you want his contact info.
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Mike, 21.12.2013, 21:08
For more information on Approval Voting:
The Center for Election Science: http://www.electology.org/approval-voting
Approval Voting USA - http://www.ApprovalVotingUSA.org
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