Monday, April 16, 2007

A New Voting System

Thinking about it, if really the purpose of Voting is to allow the people to choose whom they want as their leader (which I believe is the case), then I think our present voting system might not be the best approach to achieving that desired result.

Not that the present voting system is flawed or something of that nature, its just that with our present technological advancement I believe there is a much better system for distilling the leader of choice from the populace.

I was just thinking the other day; Instead of a system that operates by people casting a vote, why not have one that operates in such a way that people lists in other of preference, whom they would want as a leader. Then aggregating the entire list, the leader of choice will be determined.

I feel such a method of sampling will return a more accurate picture.

The question we should ask ourselves is this: why should the voting system be set up in such a way that it is “vote for one, eliminate the others”. What is stopping us from having a voting system that is modeled in such a way that sampling takes a preference-listing fashion?

Of course the weight of each preference will have to be different for this method to be sensible. The weight will have to be determined by some statistical principle.

I feel that with the level of sophistication we have achieved in software/computing and other technological achievement, this idea is not only visible, it an idea that we should start working towards. Nothing is stopping us from rethinking our voting system.

Let me know what you think.


Jim said...

Discover Magazine's November 2000 issue has a great article, about this very topic, called "May the Best Man Lose".

The two scientists who were interviewed for the article are Steven Brams and Donald Saari. Both of them are in favor of different voting methods that are both better than the current plurality method.

David Nelson said...

You might want to take a loot at: