103
votes
Accepted
What is it called when someone votes for an option that's not their first choice?
It’s called tactical voting.
From Wikipedia:
In voting methods, tactical voting (or strategic voting or sophisticated voting or insincere voting) occurs, in elections with more than two candidates,...
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83
votes
How could I build a political system immune to gerrymandering yet still giving local representation?
Multiple, proportionally weighted, representatives per district.
Gerrymandering is only an issue because a 50.001% majority for a precinct and an 80% majority are considered equivariant. We also ...
- 1,670
81
votes
What arguments are there against ranked-choice voting?
This problem can be solved by a system called ranked-choice voting, aka instant-runoff voting
First off, there are multiple voting systems based on ranking your choices. The system you're describing ...
- 3,514
66
votes
What are the fundamental reasons for indirect presidential vote in the US?
The people weren't trusted
It'll take a bit to get to the titular statement, as we need to discuss the history leading up to the Constitution to understand and justify it.
Between the war for ...
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57
votes
Why does ranked-choice voting give such high preference to the second choice of the least-favored candidate's voters?
There's three main reasons:
It's simple. Voters are giving instructions, "I want this candidate, and if I can't have them, I want this one instead, .... n." Voters understand how their vote ...
- 16.4k
54
votes
Has negative voting ever been officially implemented in elections, or seriously proposed, or even studied?
This is functionally identical to range voting
Mathematically, it is irrelevant which range you pick of a given size, be that 1 to 3, -1 to 1, or -997 to -995.
Let's run your sample election at two ...
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52
votes
What is it called when someone votes for an option that's not their first choice?
As Andrew Grimm correctly pointed out it is tactical voting you are looking for. However, I would avoid harsh terms such as dishonest since Wikipedia also mentioned that:
It has been shown by the ...
- 52.5k
50
votes
Why do referendums use a binary choice rather than a numerical score?
Because the system highly incentivises strategic voting. The voting system you describe is more commonly known as score voting, although it has plenty of other names. It's been used before in the USA -...
CDJB♦
- 102k
47
votes
Accepted
How did Alaska "change its primary system recently" and was it "to dilute the possibility of a conservative or Trump-inspired challenger"?
Alaska Ballot Measure 2 made two big changes to elections, both of which are expected to reduce the power of the main parties:
Party-run primary elections are replaced with non-partisan primary ...
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46
votes
Why doesn't the UK Labour Party push for proportional representation?
Because Labour gets more seats with regional representation. Even the famed Tony Blair landslide majorities were never actually a popular majority.
In 2005, Labour won 55% of the seats with 35% of ...
- 2,264
46
votes
Accepted
What are the disadvantages to 2-round elections where the top candidates from the first round compete head-to-head in the second round?
In no particular order:
Cost. Elections cost in time and money. Having a run-off election means that you have to pay twice.
Not Condorcet. A candidate who would win in a head to head against every ...
- 113k
44
votes
Why is the new German parliament 12 % bigger?
The planned size of the Bundestag is 598 members: One directly elected member from each of the 299 electoral districts plus equally many members chosen from party lists in order to achieve a total ...
- 5,782
42
votes
Is it possible to use blockchain or public ledgers for voting?
you could be given a randomly generated GUID which can identify your vote, but cannot be reversed engineered to identify you, unless you tell someone else what your vote GUID
This seems absurd to me, ...
- 1,203
40
votes
Why does ranked-choice voting give such high preference to the second choice of the least-favored candidate's voters?
This type of ranked-choice voting is effectively like doing a bunch of run-off elections all at once. In other words, assuming there are five candidates (A, B, C, D, and E), we could do the following:
...
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39
votes
How could I build a political system immune to gerrymandering yet still giving local representation?
Note: This answer was written when the question was on Worldbuilding SE, the site for building consistent fictional worlds.
The German System (simplified):
Germany uses a form of Mixed-member ...
- 104k
37
votes
How will New York City physically implement the ranked choice voting algorithm with thousands of unique mayoral votings possible?
How ranked choice voting ballots can be counted by hand
I think the counting can be done by hand (using several 'passes' if necessary). For example, in Canada, according to CBC.ca (on ranked voting in ...
JJJ♦
- 38.7k
36
votes
Accepted
Has negative voting ever been officially implemented in elections, or seriously proposed, or even studied?
Yes, this is called "Combined Approval Voting", "evaluative voting", or "dis&approval voting" and has been proposed and studied by a number of people, including exit ...
- 3,514
36
votes
Voting system with two votes as a defense against fear of voting for a loser - is it anywhere in the world?
This sounds like a variant of the single transferable vote (STV) system, except you're only allowing one "backup preference"; quoting Wikipedia:
Under STV, each elector (voter) casts a ...
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35
votes
Is there an operating political system in which an election can be invalidated because of a too little participation?
Yes, Article 81 of the Macedonian constitution (found here in Macedonian, or here in English) provides that the successful candidate in a Presidential election is elected by majority vote, provided ...
CDJB♦
- 102k
34
votes
What electoral mechanisms might prevent the rise of a demagogue?
This was actually a big concern of the authors of the Constitution. They were thinking in particular of the example of Oliver Cromwell from their own father's generation. He gained power as Prime ...
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33
votes
How could I build a political system immune to gerrymandering yet still giving local representation?
Mediaeval Iceland style:
Throw out the geographical restrictions entirely. Anyone who gets the backing of a certain number of people becomes a representative entitled to speak and vote at the ...
- 705
31
votes
What electoral mechanisms might prevent the rise of a demagogue?
The possibility of populist demagogues rising to power is unfortunately a drawback of any democratic election system. Any system where you have an institution which is able to overrule a democratic ...
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30
votes
Accepted
Name of a voting system where you can transfer your vote to anyone at any time
What you're describing sounds like a form of liquid democracy - described by Blum & Zuber (2016)1 as:
a procedure for collective decision-making that combines direct
democratic participation with ...
CDJB♦
- 102k
29
votes
Has negative voting ever been officially implemented in elections, or seriously proposed, or even studied?
A certain kind of this voting actually happens in all elections in Latvia.
The Central Election Commission’s website seems to have been redesigned recently and I can’t find descriptions/infographics ...
- 499
28
votes
Accepted
Why isn't a Condorcet method used?
There are lots of arguments which could be made against a voting system, like being too complicated to understand for the average voter or requiring so much work to fill out that many voters will ...
- 74.6k
28
votes
Accepted
Is there a name for a voting system that is based on issues rather than people?
I'm not aware of any official name for what you're proposing (which basically combines referendum with candidate-matching). The closest - which isn't very close - I can think of is voting for party ...
- 91.2k
28
votes
What are the fundamental reasons for indirect presidential vote in the US?
The reason why this was established is that the United States was originally conceived as, well, a union of states. The United States Constitution is, in some sense, a treaty between 13 sovereign ...
- 7,859
27
votes
Ranked voting by a committee when some members cannot vote for a particular candidate because of a conflict of interest
they may not vote for that candidate (but they will rank the other candidates)
This is a highly problematic stipulation. A voter could be accused of tactically voting for the "weakest" ...
- 4,333
26
votes
Why doesn't the UK Labour Party push for proportional representation?
There is a strategic reason, and a philosophical reason, but they are related:
With something like the current range of views in the UK, it is very unlikely that Labour could ever win a majority under ...
- 113k
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