Condorcet Voting Method

[El Barto]

The purpose of voting is to elect a winning candidate. Anything that detracts from that is not a good thing.

All these ranking type plans do is encourage people to engage in fantasies and single issue candidacies.

A simple past the post system is the best. It forces people to form a broad coalition with people they do not agree with even 80% of the time. Both of the two major parties are good examples of such broad coalitions.

We aren't voting to indulge ourselves, we are voting to pick a winner. We should discourage third parties and who cares if someone does not win a majority?

We can get a new person in office for the next election, we are not electing a person for life. Rotating between the parties is more effective than trying to pick the absolute "perfect" candidate each time. The very idea of condorcet voting is based on a flawed assumption about what an election is all about.

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The purpose of voting is to elect a winning candidate. Anything that detracts from that is not a good thing.

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I think the purpose of voting is to voice your opinion/preference in the candidates, and have the winner be the one that satisfies most people's preferences. Any system that prohibits people from voicing thier true candidate preference, is not a good thing.

[El Barto]

Unfortunately most people agree with you about voting, but opinion polls are for you to express yourself, elections are for picking candidates.

The founders set up an electoral college (non-direct selection - originally electors were picked by state legislatures not voters). They also set up a Senate picked by state legislatures not voters.

This is our government not a psychiatrist's couch. It doesn't matter if you feel good about voting, just that the government positions are filled.

All your fancy voting systems are just exercises in game playing. Go ahead have your fun theorizing, but please don't screw up our system.

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The founders set up an electoral college (non-direct selection - originally electors were picked by state legislatures not voters).
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All your fancy voting systems are just exercises in game playing. Go ahead have your fun theorizing, but please don't screw up our system.

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What's funny, is that the system is already screwed up. Originally, the electoral college was not bound to vote for a particular candidate. There was no "winner take all" like almost all of the states use today. People would choose electorates, and those people would vote for 2 people. After all the electoral votes were tallied in Congress, the person with the most votes would be president, and the runner-up would be vice president.

I think this system is far better than the one we have today. The Framers didn't trust a direct popular vote for president, and they didn't foresee the power of political parties. The system is now messed up, and it needs to be fixed.

To say the Condorcet system, or discussing voting methods in general is "game playing" is ironic. Obviously the system we have today is plagued by political games -- and the Presidential election is one of the worst.

Reference: http://www.usconstitution.net/consttop_elec.html

[El Barto]

Perhaps you just don't like the result, but each election is a contest between two compromise candidates (with few exceptions). The electorate gets to nudge the country's direction one way or the other.

Adding a bunch of one-issue candidates adds nothing to the process.

Obviously, you are not a Libertarian. My guess... Republican?

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We should discourage third parties

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I totally agree. If they thought that 150 years ago we wouldn't have the Republican Party.

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[El Barto]

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We should discourage third parties

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I totally agree. If they thought that 150 years ago we wouldn't have the Republican Party.

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Good one, but an interesting point of history is that the GOP was never a third party in any Presidential election. The Whig Party died so completely (from their inherent inconsistency dealing with the Kansas/Nebraska Act of 1854) that the GOP was one of the two major parties in their very first Presidential election (1856).

The only time third parties succeed is when one of the major parties literally implodes. The Federalists imploded over the War of 1812, and the Whigs imploded over Kansas. All other third parties that gain any strength get absorbed by one or both of the major parties (Such as the Progressives in the early 20th Century).

[Jedster]

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Perhaps you just don't like the result, but each election is a contest between two compromise candidates (with few exceptions). The electorate gets to nudge the country's direction one way or the other.

Adding a bunch of one-issue candidates adds nothing to the process.

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I don't know if I'd put it so starkly -- perhaps that is just my liberal sensibilities -- but I basically argue with El Barto.

The biggest problem that I see with Condorcet is that it would likely decrease participation in major party primaries without significantly increasing the likelihood of 3rd parties getting elected.

Sure, you could easily vote for Ralph Nader and then vote for Gore when your Nader vote got thrown out, or you could vote for Buchanan or whoever the Libraterian (sic) candidate was, and then vote for Bush.

But by declining to participate in the primaries you actually end up playing a less signficant role in choosing whomever actually ends up getting elected because you leave it to a small fringe of party activists to choose the party nominee.

Politics is already insular enough in this country and I think that Condorcet, as counterintuitive as it sounds, would actually further insulate the political parties from other voices.

Of course, the counter argument is that leading candidates would have to pursue the "2nd choice" votes of supporters of lower tier candidates. But I don't much stock in that. (A) Most of those who would pick a candidate second will do so regardless of pandering from that candidate. (B) The candidates already need to pay some attention to those voters so that they don't lose their votes altogether. (C) There are many more "independent" voters in the "middle" and candidates will not be able to afford to ignore them to pursue second place votes of fringe voters.

Bottom-line: You can have a lot more impact in the primary. If you don't think there is a difference between Howard Dean and Joe Lieberman, you may disagree, but you're wrong.

That makes sense. In my opinion, though, having more than 2 candidates is a good thing. And, with the current system, no 3rd party can do anything other than swing votes away from one of the 2 major parties. If we can't do that, I'd rather go back to the Framers' original system -- and get rid of the "winner takes all" system where the EC is forced to vote by what the popular election decided.

My cynical side thinks that would be better than having a popularly elected president, actually. But, my hopeful, idealistic, side would like to see people make informed voting decisions, and be able to voice their preferences honestly.