Perhaps, in the future, we might consider the concept of cumulative
voting. Designed to protect minority interests, works pretty well in practice.
Briefly: if there are 11 candidates, each voter gets 11 votes - but the
voter is not required to vote for 11 separate candidates.
Example 1: voter casts two votes each for five candidates, 1 vote for a
sixth candidate;
Example 2: voter casts all 11 votes for 1 candidate.
The ability to "accumulate" votes helps to ensure the election of those
who the voter most strongly is in favor of. Fairly common in this part of
the world in corporate elections (I would not presume to know about other
parts), works pretty well.
At 07:05 PM 5/26/2003 -0400, Ron Sherwood wrote:
Please excuse this corrected copy of my previous message. I stupidly
sent the original without re-reading what I had typed, and sent a message
with omissions that reversed the meaning of my text. This version is correct.
Sorry, Ron
Walter Schmidt wrote:
> From my point of view, if you do not vote for 11, and vote (say) for only
> four, all you are doing is letting someone else determine who are the
> "other 7"
>
> The concept of a "bullet vote" sounds like a concept one might foist on a
> group in an attempt to "steal the majority" of seats.
Exactly, Walter:
If there are 100 candidates, 90 of whom I do not know enough about to
want them to represent me on our Panel, why would you want me to damage
your chance if electing a candidate that YOU want to be on the Panel,
simply because I am expected to vote for 11 people?
You may really want # 99 but I, and possibly a few others, may vote for
#98, not because we think she is the right person but because you feel
that we have to vote for 11 candidates. The result may well be that my
(or our) votes caused the person that I did not want anyway, to be
elected in place of the person that you really did want to see on the
Panel. I can think of no good reason for voting for a candidate that I
do have any reason to see elected, but I am
very happy to see you elect anyone that you feel will be good for the job.
That my friend is democracy. To encourage people to vote for candidates
that they don't know enough about to warrant their support (on the
pretext that it is bad for someone else to choose their own
representatives) does not
make for good representation.
Please explain to me how this could possibly amount to "stealing the
majority of seats".
Regards, Ron
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