A good article from the latest issue of Discover Magazine: http://www.discover.com/nov_00/gthere.html?article=featbestman.html The system of voting used in the United States is known as a plurality vote, meaning that each voter gets one vote, and the candidate with the most votes wins. This style of voting can be bad in the sense that people don't want to "waste" their votes. Some alternative candidates that the majority would be satisfied with don't get elected with plurality votes. The article talks about two other methods and their tradeoffs: -- Approval voting: In an approval vote, a person casts one vote for every candidate he or she considers qualified for the office. It's like an opinion poll, only the results are added up to determine a winner. -- Borda count: In a Borda count election, each voter ranks all of the candidates from top to bottom. If there are, say, five candidates, then a voter's top-ranked candidate gets 5 points, his second-ranked candidate gets 4, and so on. Finally, the points from all the voters are added up to determine the winner. Jeff --- http://www.netjeff.com/
