Hey all. My first post. Very happy to see so many people who support libertarian ideas, although I'm not really all that surprised. The advanced online community (ie ppl who would be posting on message boards) have always been more freedom-orientated than "mainstream" society.
Anyways, in reading through some libertarian material online I found some very interesting ideas on how we could reform our election system in order for it to more accurately represent the beliefs of the people.
the first is called Instant Runoff Voting (IRV). Basically the idea is that instead of just voting for one person, you rank the people that you want to vote for in order of your preference. For example, say you support Nader. On the ballot you would mark "1" next to Nader. Your next highest preference is Kerry, so you write "2" next to his name on the ballot. After that you don't really care. Come time to tally the votes, in the first round the person with the least amount of votes would be eliminated and the second choices of all the people who had voted for him/her would be tallied.
Lets say for sake of simplicity that only Kerry, Bush, Nader, and Badnarik (the libertarian) are running for presidentt. After tallying first choices of everyone, you find:
Kerry: 46%
Bush: 47%
Nader : 3%
Badnarik: 4%
Nader is eliminated and the second choices of all people that voted for him are tallied. Of the total vote, 1.5% voted nader as first choice with kerry as their second choice. .5% voted nader first, bush second. 1% voted nader first, badnarik second. The tally is now:
Kerry: 47.5%
Bush: 47.5%
Badnarik: 5%
Badnarik is eliminated, and the second choice of the people who voted first for him are tallied again. This would actually include the third choice of people that had badnarik first anf nader second since nader has already been eliminated. It also includes the third choice of people who had nader first and badnarik second. Of the people who liked badnarik best, half went to kerry and bush respectively (2% of the total vote each). However, of the people that were transferred to badnarik after Nader was eliminated, all (1% of the total vote) went for kerry. The final tally:
Kerry: 50.5%
Bush: 49.5%
The idea is that you get one vote, but you can assure if you like that its never wasted. You don't have to rank every candidate, and you probably wont because there are some candidates that you definatley dont want to vote for. for example, I would probably vote badnarik, nader, kerry, bush. Even though i hate bush, I would prefer him to the reform or constitution party candidates, so I would want my vote transferred to him if (by some act of satan for sure) kerry was eliminated while the reform or constitution party candidate was still in the race.
Why do we need IRV? Because there is a mathematical reason why we have two dominant parties. Say in a race there are 5 parties that are actually pretty close in size It will soon become apparent that 2 of the parties have slightly more support that the others (because they all are slightly different in size). People who believe most in the smaller 3 parties will have to make a choice- of the 2 large parties, they see that they like one better than the other. Since the way things currently stand, one of those 2 large parties will win, they will choose to try to make the party that they prefer win by voting for them. Now you have 2 dominant parties from what was once 5 parties of only slightly different size.
With IRV, there is no need to ever fear "wasting your vote", because supposing that the candidate that you like the best is eliminated, you can still choose to have your vote transferred to other candidates.
This type of voting system would greatly increase the influence of 3rd parties, if not get any of them elected to the house, senate, or presidency. I just read a factoid on lp.org a few weeks ago. In a state where the LP is pretty strong (i think it was new mexico) Badnarik is actually the second choice of 46% of the voting people. Why second choice? I understand that a few of those people might honestly prefer kerry or bush to badnarik, but theres no doubt in my mind that for the vast majority, badnarik is the second choice because they are afraid of wasting their vote. Just imagine, if IRV was enacted in this state Badnarik might be able to win it. Cool eh?
The second way to get the populcae more accurately represented would be with Proportional Representation. For example, I live in illinois where there are 20 conngressman. They are chosen by sepreate elections in 20 different electoral districts. Unlike state lines which I dont believe have ever changed, electoral districts are extremely arbitrary. They are often shifted not only because of changes in population, but also because of scheming by democrats and republicans over election advantages. For example, democrats might realize that they have one district that they are very strong in next to another district where they get narrowly beaten. By shifting the boundaries a bit, they won't win their original district by as much (but they still would win it) and they could pick up the other district.
So whats Proportional Representation (PR)? maybe instead of electing congressmanin seperate elections by district, all 20 could be elected in a single election. Why? Because while libertarians or greens would have a hard time gaining the plurality of any single district, a lib or green candidate would only need 5% of the total vote in order to win a seat if a single election elected 20 congresspeople. In such a situation, it really wouldnt be hard for for 1 or 2 libertarians and maybe a green to get elected. There are lots of reasons that this is a superior system. Firstly it more accurately portrays the beliefs of the people. Secondly, right now people are elected to congress by carefully balancing their stances based on the demographics of people who live in their district. If your beliefs are in the minority in your district, then you dont have good representation. With a PR system a person could run for congress unafraid that people in a small subset of a state wouldn't agree with their views as long as they fel that at least 5% of the total population did.
