The current voting system, which is often considered to be the only voting system, is flawed. The current voting system is 'single vote, plurality rules". Meaning that each person is given a list of candidates, each voter selects one and the candidates, and the candidate with the most votes wins. The array of possible voting systems is large. Voters may be able to vote multiple times or assign weights to candidates. One of the alternate voting systems is known as 'approval voting'. Under this system, a voter is presented with a list of candidates, and the voter marks approve or disapprove for every candidate. The candidate that wins is the candidate who has the largest approval percentage. This is not perfect, but it shows that there are different voting systems that have significant improvements on the single vote plurality rules system.
For the purposes of this example, all issues will be considered to be boolean (yes or no). An example of such an issue is abortion: people are either opposed to it being legal and those not. A justification of this view is that multisided issues can be view as a combination of multiple Boolean issues (a four sided issue can be viewed as the combination of 2 Boolean issues, and so forth).
Suppose that there are only two candidates, and there are N issues. Some issues they both are against, some they are both opposed to, and some they disagree on. Suppose that there is only one issue of discrepancy. In this case, the candidate on the popular side of the issue wins. Suppose that there are many candidates. Then those on the popular side will tie and those not will lose. Suppose that there are two Boolean issues. Then each voter falls into 1 of 4 categories (yes-yes, yes-no, no-yes, or no-no). Those candidates in the most popular quarter will win. Suppose that there is no correlation between issues*9374, then the candidates on the popular side of both issues will tie for first place.
This result can be extended by induction to apply for an arbitrary number of uncorrelated Boolean issues. Suppose that there are n-1 uncorrelated Boolean issues, then the candidates tied for first place are on the popular side of every issue. If there is an additional uncorrelated outage is added, then the previous winners that are on the unpopular side of the new issue will no longer be a possible winner. Therefore, the candidates that are on the popular side of every uncorrelated boolean issue will tie for first.
Even if the issues that are uncorrelated, and there are n issues, then 2^n issue states, and the candidate in the most popular partition will win. If the set of all issues is partitioned into closed issue sets; meaning that all issues in an issue set are correlated to another issue in the issue set, and not to any issue outside the issue set. In this case, there are multiple stances where some may be on a combination of two stances on two correlated issues that are not the popular stance on each issue. However, in each of these cases, the winning candidate on the popular side of the complex issue will win.
Thus, the candidate on the plurality side of every issue group will be elected. If the issues are uncorrelated and all boolean, then the elected candidate will be on the popular side of EVERY issue. From and idealistic point of view, this is an amazing change from the current system where a 3rd party candidate that differs from one of the other 2 candidates on a singular issue will lose and take the other candidate, even if extremely popular, down with him. This phenomenon is known by more than a few voters, yet nobody calls for change of the system. Instead people discourage a 3rd party candidate and the more subtle the distinction between another candidate, the more threatening.
While flawed, and likely to result in unfortunate and unjust positions on issues to be made into law, it is worth noting that a different voting system could result in a leader on the popular side of EVERY issue. Imagine having a leader who doesn't have a stance on ANY issue that is in the minority. No elected leader has ever been close to this.
People accept that the candidate they support will have positions on issues different than their own. Most everyone votes for a candidate that they disagree with, and they consider this to be normal, expected, and an unfortunate reality. The simplicity of the system is confused to be validity. Even if there is the risk of you being on the wrong side of a single issue, would you rather a leader who agreed with you on every issue with one stance being incorrect, or a candidate who you agree with only 60% of the issues. The chance or you being on the wrong side of an issue is still there. The chance of electing the wrong leader on incorrect information does not go away.
This system is definitely flawed. If any issue group has the majority of people on the wrong side, then elected candidates will reflect this flawed position.
Never act as if the current system is the control case to compare other systems to. In proving a system less than optimal, citing another system that has very few differences from the subject system is usually the easiest way. Choosing a system that differs in many ways requires many arguments. There is no justification for acting as the single vote plurality rules is an origin. Chances are that they is another system
*9374 needs to be justified as being a special case that is able to be extended to a general case while keeping the important conclusions intact.
LCM – v.1.0
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