Would you change your vote if it mattered?

Well, that was the question to get you all to sit up and take notice. The real question is:

If Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) was adopted instead of the current winner takes all system, would you then change your vote? You can assume the Electoral College is in place or not, but would you change your vote?



For those of you who need to know:

Essentially IRV is when you elect a president or whatever, you either rank the candidates, in other words, list your candidates from those you would like to the ones you would most dislike, for example, a ballot might look like:

1. Nader ( )
2. Kerry
3... etc...

In which case your vote would be for Nader, but if it came down to Kerry vs. Bush, then you would still be counted as voting for Kerry over Bush.

or

1. Badnarik
2. Bush
3... etc...

In which case your vote would be for Badnarik, but if it came down to Kerry vs. Bush, then you would still be counted as voting for Bush over Kerry.

Thus, the first choice of every voter would be counted first, and whichever the top two were in the election would face off in another round where the ballots would be recounted and whichever of the top two you ranked higher, your vote would count as cast for them,

OR

You put on the ballot the person you would like most, then in a speicial election after this one, you would vote again, this time for whichever of the top two you prefer.

Thus, you could vote how your heart told you to, and still vote for the other guy who is the lesser of the other evils. Like if you were a Nader or Badnarik voter and you really liked them, but didn't want to see one of the two major candidates in office, you could still vote for the lesser of the two evils and thus not feel guilty at stealing votes from one candidate or another.


I think that the above wasn't too clear, but hopefully you get the picture, voting for a third party would not put the other candidate in office.

If it could be implemented and actually work, it would be a great way to reduce corruption in terms of balloting (see Florida).

Regardless, something needs to change.

I'd put my favorite third party guy in second after Bush. When you live in a swing state every little bit helps.

I doubt there is enough awareness of third parties for anything like this to work. THe system is ingrained...

Where votes are ranked like this, it results in a very high proportion being discounted as invalid for silly little errors => eg. not ranking enough candidates, putting in the same ranking number twice, ranking the same candidate twice.

Nightmare.

Well, assuming the system could work, would you change your vote?

No. I would be voting Nader anyway, if I could vote.

I think the Vice President should be elected among the third parties.

Now THAT would be cool.

That system WOULD be murder for election officials to handle, worse than 2000.
It sounds nice and fancy, but also a bit convoluted.

For damn sure.

I totally agree with Nader on most issues. The only reason I really support Kerry well, is because hes not George Bush. Thats the only thing he has going for him.

But I realize that a vote for Nader will only help George W's re-election, so I'm supporting Kerry

1. Nader
2. Kerry
3. Throw away my vote.

Heck yes. (Of course, I'm not American, but we're struggling to adopt proportional representation-- a different form of the same idea-- up here too.) I figure it's about time Canada, the US and Britain join the civilised world of democracies.

No i would not.