EAC - Voluntary Voting System Guidelines

Name : | Danny Kleinman
Organization : | N/A
Post Date : | 9/30/2005
General Comments
Comment : | Here, I suggest, are some desirable criteria for such a voting system. (3) No Guesswork. It might be argued that under the current American voting system, every voter does have a say. That is, a supporter of Buchanan isn’t required to vote for him. A voter who can predict how other voters will vote may realize that a vote for Buchanan will be “wasted” when the real contest is between Bush and Gore, and can have a say in the real contest by voting for that “front-runner” whom he views as the “lesser evil” candidate: in this example, presumably, Bush. If, however, the level of support for Buchanan approached the level of support for Gore and Bush, Buchanan supporters would face an insoluble dilemma: to vote for Buchanan only to have Gore defeat Bush by a narrow margin; or to vote for Bush when Buchanan would have defeated both rivals if only all who favored Buchanan had voted for him. Every voter should be able to vote his “conscience”; no voter should have to engage in such guesswork.