Opinion of this voting system

[John Dule]

I think most people on here are dissatisfied with our current two-party, winner-take-all voting system. That probably goes for the rest of America as well. But how do we fix it? After all, American political institutions are completely skewed towards a system that creates two-party politics. Everyone wants a third party, but when you sit down in that voting booth, you always feel the immense pressure to do the utilitarian calculus of voting for the lesser evil. Simply put, to fix this, we have to change the way we vote.

Some have suggested a ranked-choice voting system. While I do like this idea, it has its problems. In Maine, Bruce Poliquin tried to halt the ranked-choice retabulation after he won the first round. When the first-round "winner" is announced, it awards them an unearned credibility. Secondly, if the system requires voters to rank every candidate, some voters may choose the first two or three candidates they prefer and then fill in the rest of the numbers at random-- especially if there are a lot of candidates in the race. Finally, the order in which the votes are reapportioned is somewhat arbitrary, as it ultimately depends on the preferences of the people who voted for the last-place candidate (see here):



So here's the hypothetical ballot I'm proposing:



In this system, you could cast a vote for as many candidates as you want. You would vote "Yes" if you would be satisfied with that candidate serving as president, and "No" if you would not be. If you were indifferent to a candidate, you could leave that box blank. For example, here's how I'd have filled out my 2016 ballot:



This system allows me to vote for Hillary Clinton and Gary Johnson-- the candidate who I begrudgingly supported due to the lesser-of-two-evils problem, and the candidate who I actually preferred. In this way, I can maximize the amount of information I communicate when I vote (in a way that I can't under a ranked-choice system), allowing for preferential tabulation to better reflect what I want as a voter (and thereby, what all voters in the country want). Maybe Trump would've still won a lot of votes in this system-- but if everyone else in the country hated him and wanted to vote against him, perhaps he'd have ended up in the negative digits!

Over time, as people begin to realize that non-Republicans and non-Democrats could conceivably win in this system, we would gravitate towards including more and more third-party candidates on the stage. Even better, this would solve our polarization problems by ending the dichotomy of the two-party system and ushering in a multipolar system of many diverse political parties.

What do you guys think? Better than what we have now? Better than the ranked-choice system?

[John Dule]

Most elections are about finding the least terrible candidate, not someone that would actually satisfy you.

That's exactly what this would do. The candidate who people hate the least would win.

[John Dule]

My tendency is towards preferring IRV to this because IRV has more of a proven track record in other countries, but yes, this would be a massive improvement over the current system.

Do you agree with my problems with it, though? This system would communicate more information about each voter's preferences, which is why I think it's superior.