A progressive blog, I guess.
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Consecutive runoff approval voting was designed to comply with three dominant principles: removal of the black hat syndrome (also called the spoiler syndrome), the ability to count a ballots at the voting station level in such a way as to produce simple numerical sums that can then be added into larger tabulations, thus avoiding any need to send any complex information to the larger tabulations, and achieving a method that provides extreme overall simplicity. It does seem to comply with these principles. The third principle that two-consecutive runoff voting is required to comply with is that it must harbor no black hat (spoiler) syndrome. This method always results in an absolute majority winner, so by some definitions, it may not constitute a “winner take all” method. The structure of the two runoff method is as follows:
TWO-CONSECUTIVE RUNOFF VOTING:
In the first runoff, the approval method is used to choose exactly two candidates to run in the second runoff. The first runoff is simply an approval election; each voter can give just one vote to as many candidates she or he “approves of,” or finds acceptable. There is one practical consideration, however, due to the potential problem of voters casting an inordinate number of votes. So it would seem advantageous to limit the total number of votes that each voter can cast to some arbitrary number. A limit of 20 is suggested, but many people holding currently dominant perspectives seem to prefer a limit of 10. At the end of the polling, all of the votes are simply added up, and only the two candidates with the most votes go on to the second runoff.
The second runoff is quite simple; the two remaining candidates run against each other, and the one who achieves an absolute majority becomes the winner. Obviously, there can be no black hat (spoiler) syndrome, since there can be no third candidate.
The design of this method was undertaken with the express assumption that some interested party will often, if not always, attempt to use the black hat (spoiler) syndrome to circumvent the will of the voters. Therefor, we are not merely attempting to attain a method that precludes “voter strategies,” but to gain a method that precludes the black hat (spoiler) syndrome from being exploited by dominant special interests. This is a somewhat subtle consideration, which only becomes more tricky if it is assumed that special interests will actively attempt to use this syndrome to manipulate elections.
It seems reasonable to assume that any ranked voting method will be susceptible to black hat manipulation, since it appears obvious that if special interests vigorously promote black hat candidates, voters will effectively be forced to cast their highest rank vote for whatever, generally minimally, acceptable candidate is perceived as likely to defeat the black hat candidates. In fact, this writer has engaged in countless discussions, in which it appeared that, with only four, at most, in a race, most (if not all) reasonably simple methods of ranked voting could enable a vote for a white hat candidate, from the perspective of some individual voter, to eventually lead to the actual election of a candidate that that individual voter perceives as a black hat. And this is a result that would have been avoided if the voter had given a gray hat candidate their highest rank vote. But at minimum, it seems reasonable to assume that a voter would tend to cast his or her first rank ballot for a likely-to-win gray hat candidate, rather than a “long shot” candidate, if a strong black hat is in the race. This would eventuate in the evolution of a closed two-party system.
Two-consecutive runoff voting cannot cause the situation in which a voter causes the election of a black hat by giving a high-rank vote a white hat, or even a case in which a voter perceives a need to give a high-rank vote to a gray hat in order to avoid the election of a black hat. And the obvious reason is that there are no ranks involved in this method. However a “gray hat” syndrome is present, in that, if a black hat is in the race, voters may feel some pressure to include some gray hats of “darker shades” in the first runoff if a black hat is in the race. However, this gray hat syndrome is vastly more benign than the black hat syndrome; for example, a voter could still vote for as many white hats as he or she desired.
It seems likely that the gray hat syndrome would be further ameliorated if a three runoff method is employed. On the other hand, this method requires three consecutive runoffs, which present-day online straw poll voters seem to dislike.
Merely by use of this very simple method, the year 2000 election debacle, in which Ralph Nader was blamed for throwing the election to black hat George W. Bush (by being a “spoiler”), could have been entirely eliminated. Gore and Bush would have received the most votes in the first runoff, and would have faced ONLY each other in the second runoff.
However, Nader would undoubtedly have received 10,000 times more votes in an initial approval-style runoff than he ever did in the ultimately futile general “plurality-style” “election.” of 2000.
So it would have been perfectly safe to campaign for Nader, and we would not have become pushed onto the the “two-party” merry-go-round that is now destroying us. There are simple solutions to our problems, but the Ford Foundation types are determined to divert us into solutions that are total dead ends.
THREE-CONSECUTIVE RUNOFF VOTING:
As mentioned above, two-consecutive runoff voting does harbor a “gray hat” syndrome, since, if black hats are inserted in a race, voters will then feel pressure to include some gray hats of “darker shades” in the first runoff, and this is not an ideal condition for the election of the candidates that the voters find most desirable. If we want candidates that the voters truly desire to be elected, we should minimize the gray hat syndrome, and the best way to accomplish that would be to adopt a three-consecutive runoff voting method. It does require three runoff elections, but it seems that voters would still be more inclined to participate if understood that they could have a real say in election outcomes.
In the first runoff of a three-consecutive runoff method, the approval method is used to choose the six candidates with the most votes, who would go on to the second runoff. In the second runoff, only the two candidates with the most votes go on to the third runoff (so no third candidate could become a “spoiler”), and the one candidate who achieves an absolute majority then becomes the winner.
Totally unlike the abstract, ranked voting proposals of academic game theorists, these methods really are just as simple as they appear. All the counting involves nothing more exotic than simple arithmetic. The public is not so ignorant as many game theorists seem to prefer to believe, and people will get out and vote once they realize they really have choices.
There are many steps that could be taken to make voting easier. Why not give the voters two days to vote, say, the first Friday and Saturday in the month of June, when the weather is comfortable? Silly tricks like declaring election days holidays are not likely to reduce the public’s cynicism. Again, election juries should control each voting station, and all results should be announced publicly at each polling station at the end of each day of voting, before being handed up into larger pools of tabulation. And of course, all ballots should be paper ballots, since computers will always be rigged by people who have powerful special interests to promote. People will vote once they are provided with real choices.
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