Should Mild Preferences Have Equal Weight?

[goofball]

Can we think of a specific issue that models this strong minority vs. weak majority concept?

Gay marriage is the only one that comes immediately to mind.

[El Diablo]

David,

Not the same thing or addressing your specific issue, but somewhat related - Ranked-Choice Voting

[limon]

intelligent logical thinkers tend to have strong opinions/facts on many topics/concerns. morons/christians tend to focus or can be easily focused. this is why the democratic party always seems disorganized. this is why if you get a gay ballot measure you can be VERY sure of how the people who show for that measure will vote down the line. getting you avg. liberal to "waste" all thier votes supressing every wacko prayerin school, flag burning , gay issue that comes around will be very hard. getting religious sheep to push them through will be easy.

[James Boston]

[ QUOTE ]
some idiots vote

[/ QUOTE ]

[ QUOTE ]
Only allow people to cast a vote on a fraction of the total candidates/issues to be decided. Say half. They choose how to spread their votes.

[/ QUOTE ]

DS-

Don't you think an idiot voter, who's decision making process is largely influenced by emotion rather than logic, is going to weigh their votes heavily in a direction that has a strong emotional tie to them? Your 2 solutions seem like it would only lead to, for example, fundamentalists voting heavily to ban gay marriage and stop stem cell research, and then not voting for city council.

[Carded]

In a way our system is based on a minority with a stronger preference overwriting a middle of road idiot majority. If you think of the amount of money donated to a campaign as reflection of degree of preference. With more money of course representing stronger preference and higher money in your campaign increases your chance of getting the weak minded to vote yes on your issue.

[IronUnkind]

[ QUOTE ]
intelligent logical thinkers tend to have strong opinions/facts on many topics/concerns. morons/christians tend to focus or can be easily focused. this is why the democratic party always seems disorganized.

[/ QUOTE ]

Does this excuse cover all forms of impotence or just political? It would be quite a relief to the flaccid if they could blame it on their brilliance.

[Mickey Brausch]

[ QUOTE ]
It isn't really fair to defer to the majority in cases where a large minority have a STRONG reason to take the other side and the majority is close to neutral.

[/ QUOTE ] Gauge strength of reason and we can get somewhere.

[ QUOTE ]
Only allow people to cast a vote on a fraction of the total candidates/issues to be decided. Say half. They choose how to spread their votes.


[/ QUOTE ] This would prevent people who have an informed opinion about a lot of issues, eg you-know-who, to have equal say in a number of those issues. And your other option is along the sasme lines.

What you're realy trying to do is give "smarter" people more electoral power --but that can only happen through a system whereby "one man, one vote" does not apply. It has been tried before, with the regimes of aristocracy. (Aristocracy: from ariston + kratos = the best + rule, state.)

[ QUOTE ]
Am I being naive to think that such a suggestion has any chance of ever being implemented?

[/ QUOTE ] I think you're a probabiloptimist.

[EnderIII]

Check out the wiki link to range voting:

Wiki Range Voting
Center for range voting
and this:

MATHEMATICS and DEMOCRACY
Warren D. Smith
Center for Range Voting

1. We argue that "range voting" is the best single-winner voting
method among all commonly proposed alternatives. One argument is the
"Bayesian Regret" yardstick - our measurements and calculations
indicate
that if range voting were adopted instead of the currently most-used
system, "plurality voting," humanity's lot would improve by an amount
comparable to or exceeding the improvement achieved by switching from
undemocratic forms of government to democracy. Estimates in
http://rangevoting.org/LivesSaved.html suggest every day sooner we get
range voting is expected to save 5000 lives.
2. We argue (by analysing an explicit political strategy to get it)
range voting is, in fact, an obtainable dream.
3. Range voting has been used in hundreds of trillions of elections
over the last 20 million years. (Yes, I am aware fewer than 20 billion
humans ever lived. Hint: these elections do not involve humans.)
4. We shall also discuss some other mathematical ideas for improving
democracy such as the "shortest splitline" gerrymandering-abolition
plan, and a plan by Ronald Rivest (as repaired by me) for low-tech
fraud-proof secret ballot voting.

Speaker Bio

MIT math & physics double BS 1984;
Princeton Applied Math PhD 1988;
has worked at Bell Labs, NEC, Temple University;
founded Center for Range Voting in 2005.

[Mickey Brausch]

[ QUOTE ]
Check out the wiki link to range voting:

Wiki Range Voting
Center for range voting
and this:

MATHEMATICS and DEMOCRACY
Warren D. Smith
Center for Range Voting

[/ QUOTE ]Thanks for the abundant info. Will study it.

Mickey Brausch

[LooseCaller]

the issue with suggestion 1 is exactly the same as with our current system. more knowledgeable/interested voters are still only allowed as many votes as people who are generally indifferent. If someone is truly passionate about the majority of the issues/elections on the ballot, they still would feel that they cant have enough of an impact. a young politics-junkie who engages in grassroots campaigning and activism for a large number of issues still only gets to vote on as many things as the guy who never watches/reads the news and cant name the secretary of state.
and on top of that, you get people engaging in this weird system of voter game theory where you try to guess which issues the vast majority of people will vote on (thus reducing the value of your vote) and trying to exploit that by voting on issues where your vote will hold sway.