Idea for a different type of voting

[Black Dude]

Not sure if this has been mentioned before.

I was thinking that a much better way to handle US elections would be to rank the candidates. This would majorly empower 3rd parties.
Maybe set it up so that if there were 4 candidates on the ballot, the dude you give a number 1 will get 4 points, the number 2 ranked gets 3 points, number 3 gets 1 point, etc.
Only one person on the ballot per party also.

The person with the most points wins.
Perhaps have the no. 2 dude be the Vice Prez for the Presidential election.

Would this be a better system than the current one? Any major flaws? With a little effort, could this be started at the local level? They'd probably have to get new voting machines and such.

[yongrel]

That's how the Baseball Writers of American vote for MVP, Rookie of the Year, Cy Young, etc.

[Akus]

And why does the answer to this matter?

That's like asking would it be better if trees were made of chocolate so you'd have a desert on your way to work. Sure it would but what is the point of that fantasy?

[Carole]

I say have several clear glass jelly bean jars. Each candidate's vote is recorded by dropping a red jelly bean in the Republican jar, a blue jelly bean in the Democrat jar, and so on until all candidates jars have their jelly beans.

The one with the most jelly beans wins!!! :D No possible way to diebold the votes and no swapping of votes due to different colored jelly beans, no vote early and often. :D

Actually, this is very similar to haow the Greeks or Romans voted.

In other words, keep it simple. :)

[Conza88]

This is how Australia votes. It's called PREFERENTIAL voting...

You have the House of Representatives (and there is usually 7 candidates all from different parties on the ballot) You label them from 1 - 7.

The best being #1. And it works, so essentially the LEAST HATED candidate wins.. If you think someone doesn't have a hope; i.e A PRINCIPLED CANDIDATE you PUT him/her first, and then your preference 2nd...etc etc. and it works so that if they don't get near winning, they take your second preference, and if they aren't coming close to winning, they go for your third choice etc..

So I pretty much put the main parties at 6 & 7. So evidently my vote may trickle down to either one. But thats only because all the other numb skulls have voted one of the main parties so many times.

We also vote for the Senate on the same day... but in the election, only half and ever up for re-election (so say after a crisis or something) and socialists all get in or whatever, there is still some balance or defence. Anyway, Senate you can vote ABOVE the line (with a #1 for your party - and they have preselected parties that they can help, trade votes with etc... so the Socialist party, teams up with the Workers Party etc... or the Liberty & Democracy Party teams up with the Shooters Party...) Anyway, so you can go for the ones the party has picked...

OR - you can go through 65 candidates and parties, and list them in order.... HAHAHAH. I chose that one. :cool:

Anyway, the system OWNS! I really don't know why the founding fathers didn't come up with it, or whatever.

[amy31416]

And why does the answer to this matter?

That's like asking would it be better if trees were made of chocolate so you'd have a desert on your way to work. Sure it would but what is the point of that fantasy?

There may be no point, but I found it to be an interesting concept. I kinda like it.

[rp08orbust]

How about this: At the same time across the entire country (like maybe 3pm EST), within each precinct everyone climbs on a giant scale representing their candidate at a specified time. Weights are recorded and totaled across the district, state, etc. The candidate with the greatest weight wins.

In order to prevent Diebolding of the scales, the parties could flip a coin right before using them to determine who gets which scale within a precinct.

One flaw would be that candidates would have an incentive to pander to fat people. Also, you might need voters to pass through metal detectors to make sure people haven't loaded themselves up with lead.

However, this would eliminate the problems of multiple voting, dead people voting etc, because you could only be on one scale at a time.