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'This vote-for-however-many-you-want feature means voters can support their honest favorite no matter what,' Hamlin says. As each name is called you either hold up a green card, meaning this person is 'okay by me,' or a red card which means 'no way.' It's range voting with only two choices: 0 or 1. Instead of having 10 cards with numbers 1 through 10 on them, you have a green card and a red card. Once again, imagine you're in the giant auditorium on election night with all candidates seated on stage. Approval VotingДЄpproval voting is a style of range voting that is easier to implement. If there's a candidate you're not familiar with, you don't have to give any number to that person. There's no longer the much-lamented imperative to vote for your second-favorite candidate simply to avoid vote splitting.

You can show support for secondary candidates you like without wasting your vote, while giving more points to your most favored candidate. Range voting offers some key benefits compared to the current way. You can vote for several candidates and assign different weights to different candidates. In real life, of course, range voting would take place by mail or in the voting booth, but the idea is the same. The candidate with the highest score wins. At the end, each candidate's total average score is calculated.

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Voters are free to do as they wish: they can hold up any number they choose, or none at all. As each candidate's name is read, the each voter has the option to raise a scorecard. Each person has 10 cards, numbered 1 through 10. Imagine an election night where all the candidates are seated on a stage facing an audience made up of every voter.

#Alternative to system mechanic how to#

Here's a look at a few other, perhaps better ideas for how to count votes. 'It handles the spoiler effect so terribly that voters regularly vote against their favorite candidates.'Д«ut, hey, don't give up on voting yet. These defects create bad winners and persuade otherwise good candidates not to run because they fear getting hit with the spoiler label.' 'It handles the spoiler effect so terribly that voters regularly vote against their favorite candidates. 'Plurality voting's vote-for-one restriction makes it hypersensitive to the spoiler effect,' says Hamlin.

This is the issue we're seeing the current presidential election, where supporters of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton fear third-party nominees like Gary Johnson or Jill Stein will siphon off enough votes to let their opponent steal a state or even the entire Electoral College. Among them is Aaron Hamlin, the executive director of the Center for Election Science, who considers plurality systems are as bad as they get.ДЇrom the point of view that the political will of the people should be represented as accurately as possible, one of the biggest problems with plurality voting is the so-called spoiler effect. Plenty of people think our system just plain stinks. Voting is a math problem, as voters try to express their political opinions within the confines of an imperfect system. But if you follow the Nate Silvers of the world, you know that casting and counting votes is an endlessly complicated matter of statistic and strategy.

That is the United States' method for electing government officials, known as plurality voting, and it sounds perfectly simple and logical. This article from November 1 explains ranked choice and other alternative ways to count votes. Update, November 9: Lost in the fallout of Donald Trump's victory last night was the fact that Maine narrowly approved the use of ranked choice voting-a way of counting the votes that, Slate argues, perhaps could have negated the third party spoiler effect and found Hillary Clinton to be the winner.