Condorcet Voting

[The Person]

Here in Norway anybody with at least 5000 people behind him/her can start a new political party. This has ended up in a lot of small parties fighting to get in, and no party with a majority of votes, which means that the parties will have to cooperate to get enough votes put together to have a majority. This has ended up in essentially the same system as in the US where nobody can be sure what they're actually voting for. (Of course they know, but the promises won't be kept.) But we choose from a list of persons we can vote for, and we can give one person up to two votes. And you can vote for more persons at a time.

I hope anybody sees my point, since I haven't.

 

[Mariusz]

The reason we have a two-party system in the United States is widely misunderstood. It is not because the Democrats and Republicans consistently have the best ideas, nor is it because the media or the debate commission shut out the other parties. We have a two-party system because our plurality voting system does not allow voters to fully specify their preferences. This fact is known as "Duverger's Law." To vote for minor parties, voters must effectively withdraw from the races between the two major parties, even though they may have a strong opinion on those races too. Voters who vote for minor parties essentially "waste" their votes and fail to oppose political movements they strongly disagree with. Protest votes may send a "signal," but the unfortunate reality is that they have virtually no direct effect on the actual outcome of elections -- and the indirect effect is usually contrary to the voter's intention.

I don't understand why voting for a small party is wasting your vote. I know that my particular vote won't change the results even by 0.01%, so I always vote for the party I agree with most, without thinking about their chances.
In last parlamentary elections (2001) I voted for a party that eventually didn't enter the parliament and I didn't feel that I wasted my vote.

We have the opposite problem in Poland. There are too many parties fighting one another. But that's probably because our democracy is still young.
Someone even once called Poland - the land of a thousand political parties (after Finland - the land of a thousand lakes).

The strangest polish party was probably Polish Party of Beer Lovers - they even had 16 representatives in parliament in years 1991-93.

 

[Kinniken]

I agree with Marla that our presidential system is quite good; much better than the US one IMHO (although I like the US system of primaries). However, Concordet would be a lot better. IRV would be a disater though.
Hitro, I believe that your centrist exemple is somewhat flawed. First, because if a good part of the left-wing and right-wing voters believe that only their own candidate will win and that the centrist candidate is either an exploiter-in-disguise (to left wing voters) or a socialist-in-sheep-clothing (to right-wing voters) and thus only vote for their own candidate, the centrist no longer win. Consider:

20%: left
26%: left > centrist
5%: centrist > left
5%: centrist > right
24%: right > centrist
20%: right

The left-wing candidate now wins. In other words, for the centrist candidate to win, he must truly be acceptable to both side. And if that is the case, then he can beat both of the other candidates in a "one on one" election, and it is normal for him to win.Plus, Condorcet is the only method I know of which would properly handle the rise of a strongly left or right party in a two-party system. Consider a US state with 45% of republican voters and 55% of democrat voters (replace democrat with republican and green with libertarian if you prefer). Such a state would elect a democrat, 55-45. Normal. Now consider that there is a move to the left of some democrat voters, cauisng them to switch to the green party. Normaly, such a move to the left should certainly not cause the state to elect a republican instead of a democrat. However, in the current US plurality system, as soon as the support for the greens rise above 10%, the state elects a republican governor - as a direct consequence of the move to the left of some voters! Clearly, this is nonsense.
A two-round system or a an instant runoff in this case both produces the same result (assuming that all the new green voters still prefer a democrat governor to a republican one, and that democratic voters are equaly split between centrists prefering a republican to a green and left-wing prefering the reverse): as long as the green candidate get a lower score than the democratic one, the democrat continues to win. However, as soon as the green candidate get over 27.5% of the vote and thus beat the democrat in the first round, the republican wins, since he get half of the democratic vote in the second round. In other word, the rise of the green party has once again caused the election of a republican candidate. The only change is that it happens latter.
In a condorcet system however, the rise of the greens will NEVER caused the election of a republican. The democrat candidate will continue to be elected, until the support for the green is strong enough to allow him to be elected.

 

[Dr Jimbo]

What are the chances of the US admitting that their version of democracy is flawed, and introducing a better one invented by a Frenchman?

The FREEDOM system!

 

[Kinniken]

Maybe it would indeed have to be called something else

 

[IglooDame]

Originally posted by Pontiuth Pilate
Third parties don't have support NOW.

But the Dems and the Goppers only stay together as parties because they fight each other. It's the "Who are you going to vote against" syndrome....

No political pluralism, no Republicans or Democrats. I can imagine plenty of people on these boards who would jump overboard and join a new party the moment it was practical. Speedo... Seleucus... Yankee... Me

Me too...

Oh wait, I joined the Libertarians back when it was impractical...

 

[Pirate]

To the people that say third parties do not have support, I say they do in different levels of government. Case in point, an independent (Jesse Ventura) won Governor of Minnesota. There are strong Green party candidates in many state elections. The Presidential elections are the most polarized because they are the most generalized. As you get into smaller races you see a lot more detail in the distibution of political views.

And Marla, It sounds like your solution is simple runoff voting. The advatage if "instant" runoff voting is that it saves the financial expense of another round of voting.

 

[HannibalBarka]

Originally posted by Marla_Singer

Our system is quite easy and I deeply think it could work pretty well in the United States without any necessity to change rules about the electorial college. It's simple, instead of organizing a proportional election in 1 round, just organize a state majority election in 2 rounds.

Sorry Marla, but every system has its cons. The french system of election didn't work fine last election with LePen opposing Chirac. That is the main problem with the french system. And that's why Condorcet system, although a little bit complicated, is better.

 

[Marla_Singer]

Well yes and no Hannibal. If it screwed up in France, it's mostly because Jospin didn't manage the opposition and because extremist parties are strong in France. In the US, it's not at all this way.

Actually, if we were using the current system in America, it would be even easier for Le Pen to BE elected and not only to be the second. What is the American system ? It's simply just like the first round of the French system... with the first candidate being elected. There were only 3% of difference between Chirac and Le Pen on the first round, and a 64% margin for Chirac on the second round, which proves our system in two rounds is better to avoid extremist candidates than the american system.

I just want to add my idea isn't to copy and paste the French system on America, but to adapt it to the current federal system in the US. It will still be the US "winner takes all" system, the only thing which would change would be how each state determines its own "winner".

 

[Martacus]

I personally don't like the concept of political parties in general. Make everyone run independently on their own merits and views rather than on those of some impersonal political entity. I know political parties have been with us since the beginning of this country, but I still don't like them.

Personally, I think the system currently in place could work alright wtih the following changes:

A) eliminate the "winner takes all delegates" method used in the electoral college by most states (Nebraska ad Maine being the exceptions, I believe; Nebraska I know for sure)--have the elector for each district vote independently of other districts.

B) as I said above, get rid of the party system. Parties don't tell voters what to do or believe, why should they tell candidates these things?

 

[IglooDame]

Originally posted by Pirate
To the people that say third parties do not have support, I say they do in different levels of government. Case in point, an independent (Jesse Ventura) won Governor of Minnesota. There are strong Green party candidates in many state elections. The Presidential elections are the most polarized because they are the most generalized. As you get into smaller races you see a lot more detail in the distibution of political views.

Jesse Ventura was a bit of a statistical anomaly because of his extremely high name recognition. U.S. Rep. Bernie Sanders (Vermont Independent, really a Progressive) is another. What percentage of state governors/Congressional legislators have been independent/3rd party in the last 50 years? What percentage of state legislators? I'd wager that it's less than one percent, and yet the voting population probably consists of more than 20% independent voters (and if anyone can find actual figures I'd appreciate it). The overwhelming majority of races at the national and state level are classic Rep vs Dem contests, and giving 80% (or whatever it is) of the population 99% of the representation at those levels is a problem that should be rectified.

 

[cgannon64]

The one problem with this:

How many parties get on the ballot? You can't have people chose their top 75 candidates... But you also can't leave certain third parties out, or else there will be a controversy...

 

[WillJ]

Originally posted by cgannon64
The one problem with this:

How many parties get on the ballot? You can't have people chose their top 75 candidates... But you also can't leave certain third parties out, or else there will be a controversy...

Yes, I also started thinking that.

If I'm not mistaken, with 5 candidates, there would be 24 one-on-one decisions. With 8, there would be 5040 decisions to make. Just imagine if there were 50! There would be over a million. I must be missing something here...

 

[Pontiuth Pilate]

You don't have to mark all your preferences.

For example, five candidates [ABCDE].

A vote EABDC indicates that you rank them in that order. But a vote EA indicates that B, D, and C tie and that they all deserve bottom ranking [not defeating each other, all defeated by E and A].

So, voters could choose only to rank the candidates they wanted and could give all the miniscule parties the bottom ranking by not listing them.

If I'm not mistaken this solves the "Centrist wins" problem posed by Hitro.

 

[Mariusz]

Originally posted by Pontiuth Pilate
You don't have to mark all your preferences.

For example, five candidates [ABCDE].

A vote EABDC indicates that you rank them in that order. But a vote EA indicates that B, D, and C tie and that they all deserve bottom ranking [not defeating each other, all defeated by E and A].

So, voters could choose only to rank the candidates they wanted and could give all the miniscule parties the bottom ranking by not listing them.

In that case I think it would be good to have a special mark (like "*") for "the other candidates". In your example the vote would look like this: EA*.

It would allow to rank "the others" at any place in the voter's ranking.

For example if there are five candidates ABCDE, and you like E and A but you really hate C you could vote EA*C. It would place B and D below EA and above C.

 

[cgannon64]

Hey, this system just gets better don't it.

 

[Archer 007]

I dont quite under this system, even after reading. Can someone give a dumbed down version.

 

[cgannon64]

Instead of picking one candidate, you pick your order of preference. So, for example...

1. Nader.
2. Gore.
3. Bush.

Instead of just: Nader.

This way people can vote for third-parties without worrying about their vote inadvertantly helping a candidate they hate. Under the normal system, a vote for Nader in 2000 would have helped Bush since it is almost positive that if only Gore and Bush were running, the voter would have voted Gore - so every vote for Nader is one less vote from Gore, helping Bush.

But under this you can vote for your third-party while still expressing your distate for a certain candidate.

 

[Archer 007]

What makes that system different from IRV?

 

[WillJ]

If I'm not mistaken, according to your article, Pointuith Pilate, you (and cgannon) are wrong. You don't rank the candidates by forming a nice little list. You answer a series of questions pairing up every single combination of two candidates possible. For example, if you were to decide whether to elect one of the current democratic candidates or the current republican one, the ballot would be like:

Which do you prefer, Bush or Dean?
Bush or Kerry?
Bush or Edwards?
Kerry or Dean?
Kerry or Edwards?

And so on.

So then that brings me back to my proposed problem with the system. Now, you could say that if you don't feel like answering five million questions you could only answer the "main" matchups, but then that really doesn't improve on the current system, does it?