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Tuesday, 14 November 2006 14:30 |
 | | Carl S. Milsted, Jr. |
Another year, another election, another set of unsatisfying choices...
On the one hand, we had Charles Taylor, a stalwart member of an increasingly corrupt Republican Party, a party which has gone on the warpath, chewed away at the Bill of Rights, run up huge deficits, created a complicated new entitlement program and federalized education.
On the other hand, we had Heath Shuler, a relative unknown politically, who might not be too bad, but represents a party bent on federalizing medicine, increasing unemployment for unskilled workers and destroying the American auto industry.
I held my nose and voted for Shuler. The Republicans deserved a spanking for recent behavior ÇƒÓ and got it.
Conversely, I
know some liberals who were also quite unhappy with the choices
presented. They considered Shuler to be too conservative, a stealth
Republican.
Wouldnët it be
nice to have more than two choices? Wouldnët it be nice to have a
voting system where you could wholeheartedly support your favorite
choice without worrying that doing so would put your least favorite
choice in power?
Guess what? There is such a voting system, and you have seen it in action. Itës called range voting.
Have you ever
watched a figure skating competition? How about diving? Gymnastics? If
so, you have seen range voting in action. In such competitions each
judge gives a numerical score to each contender. The scores are
averaged, and the athlete with the highest average score wins.
It works. There is no lesser of two evils dilemma.
For those rare
individuals who havenët watched these sports, consider your high school
days. Your class valedictorian was chosen by range voting. Teachers
typically "vote" on each candidate using a 0-4 scale (F-A). The scores
are averaged (GPA), and the student with the highest score wins. Every
student is a "candidate."
We could do
something similar for choosing our government leaders. Suppose we put
ten dots by each candidateës name, corresponding to a score of 1-10.
You give a 10 to your favorite candidate(s), a 1 to your least
favorite(s) and in-between scores for you backup candidates. For
example, a Nader supporter could give Nader a 10, Gore a 7 and Bush a 1.
This system
works even if we have 20 or more candidates on the ballot. (It would
have been very handy for the California special election when Gray
Davis was recalled.)
The system is
not perfect. No voting system is. But it is vastly superior to our
current system of pick-one plurality voting or even instant run-off
voting. Iëll leave it for future columns to show in more detail why.
For those who are impatient, see the excellent Wikipedia articles on
range voting and many other voting systems. Also see
www.rangevoting.org.
ï
Carl Milsted Jr. is chairman of the Libertarian Party of Buncombe County.
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