On 15 Jun 2005 at 14:25 UTC-0700, Abd ulRahman Lomax wrote: > It *might* be a much easier reform to accomplish. Approval is > extremely simple to understand and, as often noted, no ballot > changes are needed, beyond some changes in ballot instructions. The > fact appears to be that these changes would simply make the real > conditions of voting more closely correspond to what people who are > not informed would already expect. You have to know that overvotes > will be discarded, and many voters don't know that, and I have never > seen the fact printed on a ballot. Without specific knowledge, I > would simply assume that all votes would be counted, and, indeed, it > appears that many voters do have that idea. > > Any reform at all might break the logjam. This one would probably > change outcomes gradually, not all at once, except possibly in some > close races.
Approval voting is a reasonable first step. But what do you do about current top-two runoffs, or primaries in general? Most of the highly-regarded single-winner methods discussed here involve eliminating the primary in addition to changing the ballot and tally methods. Q -- araucaria dot araucana at gmail dot com http://www.metafilter.com/user/23101 http://wiki.electorama.com/wiki/User:Araucaria Q = Qoph = "monkey/knot" -- see http://www.ship.edu/~cgboeree/alphabet.html ---- Election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
