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One Person, One Vote Should Come First

State contests should winnow the field before we give everyone an equal vote in a national primary

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I like the idea of a National Primary, but don't like the various regional contests or IRV.

Here in NC, we've already had a statewide IRV contest and it was a disaster even though we have one voting machine vendor and use about 60% op-scan and 40% DRE touchscreen. There are no voting systems that have are EAC certified to handle IRV. And I can't imagine the nightmare of trying to do IRV in states where they have many different voting systems and then trying to do IRV across state lines with different vote counting methods. That will make the 2000 Florida recount look like a picnic!

I've always thought that a one-day national primary is a good idea. You've already got national coverage of the Iowa Caucuses and the NH Primary, and all the other debates and such - so why not just have a 6 or 9 month campaign leading up to an April or May national primary?

And if you Rob Richie is essentially calling for two elections in every state - why not just have one election to see who the top two candidates are in each party, then have a runoff election if necessary?

Chris Telesca of NC 2:41PM April 03, 2012

Steve,

Approval Voting is a better solution. It has LOWER ballot spoilage than ordinary Plurality Voting. And it can't punish you for maximally supporting your sincere favorite candidate, like IRV can.

Clay Shentrup of CA 7:18PM March 14, 2012

And I would like to place a colony on the moon. It just ain't gonna happen due to logistics and the disenfranchisement of those that make mistakes. It's Jim Crow all over again.

Steve of MN 3:07AM March 14, 2012

Rob Richie,

To a close approximation, the strategy with Approval Voting is to vote for the same person you would with Plurality Voting, PLUS everyone you like more.

So if you consider the rampant strategic voting that happens with the Plurality system, it would all change to multiple approvals under Approval Voting. For instance, a Nader supporter who strategically voted for Gore back in 2000 would have been able to ALSO vote for Nader, not just Gore.

So your "disagreement" with Jameson (i.e. your espoused view that everyone would "bullet vote" for their favorite with Approval Voting) is utterly bogus. Your argument would be that instead of ADDITIONALLY voting for Nader, those Gore-voting Naderites would have SWITCHED their from from Gore to Nader. As bizarre and totally unrealistic as that is it would at least be a big improvement over ordinary tactical Plurality Voting — it would be SINCERE Plurality Voting, so third party and independent candidates would see a true representation of their level of support.

We have plenty of Approval Voting data from real highly contentious elections. For instance, the German Pirate Party has used Approval Voting extensively to elect their leadership.

www.electology.org/pirate-elections-germany

The Piraty Party is an uber-passionate upstart composed primarily of younger tech-savvy citizens who demand copyright and patent reform as well as greater civil liberties. They are generally supportive of entities such as WikiLeaks and Anonymous, and have held numerous vibrant rallies. Yet you, astonishingly, dismiss these results on the grounds that these contests over the party's leadership aren't sufficiently contentious as to bring out the tactical gamesmanship that we would see in government contests.

This view would only make sense if you were completely biased and unwilling to objectively evaluate evidence like this. Which, it turns out, you are, as evinced in these comments you recently made on Twitter:

www.electology.org/fact-check

Clay Shentrup of CA 2:53PM March 10, 2012

Jameson -- Glad you like most of the proposal. As to voting method choice for the three-candidate national primary, we disagree on how appproval voting and your other proposals would work, given that voter couldn't indicate support for a second candidate without it counting against your first choice.

Instant runoff voting ballots with three candidates would be a snap to create with a precinct-summable design even with today's flawed voting equipment. You would give the voter the option to vote in combinations - -a backer of Candidate A choosing to vote A, AB or AC and so on).

Rob Richie of MD 6:35AM March 10, 2012

I am open to the idea of primary reform, but the federal government should have only a limited role in that process unless there were some kind of enabling Constitutional Amendment.

The term "one man, one vote" does not appear in the U.S. Constitution. Different parts of the federal apparatus give varying weights to what we call the one man one vote principle. The House for example, that's one man one vote with some error for population round-off. For the Senate, all states get two Senators. The President is elected by the Electoral College, not by direct popular vote. We call this balanced structure a republic, it is not a perfect democracy and it was never set up as a perfect democracy.

Regarding Electoral College reform, I personally think the existing structure has served us well since the nation's founding. However, I would have no objection in principle to reform, or even abolition of the Electoral College, if and only if the reform was accomplished via Constitutional Amendment. Reforms such as those being championed by the group National Popular Vote are, lacking a Constitutional Amendment, unconstitutional.

David Foote of CA 10:28PM March 09, 2012

I agree with most of the plan, including using improved voting systems for the primary. However, IRV would be a logistical nightmare for a multi-state election. Even better would be Approval voting, simply letting people vote for more than one if they wish. There are several possible variations to improve Approval even further, such as Bucklin Fallback Approval , an IRV-like system where you give extra approvals in case your preferred candidate doesn't get a majority; or Simple Optionally-Delegated Approval (SODA voting), in which you can choose to allow your favorite candidate to add approvals to your ballot.

Jameson Quinn of CA 6:49PM March 09, 2012