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Standard "winner-takes-all" plurality election, but with a
twist: If the winning candidate outstrips the next highest
candidate by a certain margin (say, 2-to-1), he is
disqualified and the election goes to the second place
candidate. The idea here is that if too many people agree
on something,
chances are it's not a good idea.
This would also make elections that are a foregone
conclusion much more interesting, as people who are on the
losing side would see their only chance of winning is to vote
for the candidate they DON'T like. Of course, those who
would be voting for the winner would have to do the same
thing... but not too many of them, because if everyone
switches sides it has the same effect as only voters for the
projected loser doing so. Consequently, pre-election polls
would be effectively useless for projecting the winner, since
the poll itself could likely have a very real effect on the
outcome of the election.
At any rate, it's got to be better than what we have now.
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Other interesting ideas include: the ballot paper has only numbers: candidate 1; candidate 2; etc. up to 6. After all votes have been cast, but before the count, a die is rolled to allocate actual candidates to numbers. |
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better in that it will be completely dickish and arbitrary. If candidate 2 is a wacko and nobody else is running for district 8 port commissioner then the port district will be run by a wacko nobody voted for. |
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This is half of a good idea. The other half would be a
way of imposing the first half on authoritarian
governments who falsify elections clumsily. |
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Because they'd have a harder time cooking the
books, and a slip-up would elect the opposition. |
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/better in that it will be completely dickish and arbitrary./ |
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How is that different from the current system? |
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/the port district will be run by a wacko nobody voted for/ |
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As opposed to the country being run by one? |
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However you twist it around, the concept of 'democratically elected government' is fatally flawed. |
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Whatever the mechanism of the ballot, the candidates are all individuals who think they know what's best for the rest of us and are seeking to enforce their ideas by gaining political power. It is these individuals who are least suited to be in any position of authority. |
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Elections give us the apparent opportunity to pick one of the wackos. |
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I suggest our politicians should be randomly selected to serve a limited term. Statistically, this can only be better than the current systems. |
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