Election Reform

Watching the total cock-up known as the presidential election unfold over the last couple of days has actually kindled interest in how your voting system works. If, as seems likely, Gore wins the plurality of the popular vote but Bush ends up in office calls for change will start to clamour.

So here, in all seriousness is an alternative system:

Do away with the electorial college and have a direct vote on who should be president. In fact introduce a preference system, where voters rank their candidates according to their order of preference. For example:

1: Nader
2: Gore
Right the way down to
7(Or whatever number): Bush

If, once all the votes accross the nation have been counted up, no one candidate has a outright majority (ie more than 50%) the candidate who got the least votes is eliminated. Their votes are then redistributed to the second preferences. The process continues until one candidate gets more than half the vote.

Advantages:

First, and biggest of all, the candidate chosen is ultimately one prefered by over half of the voters. In 1992 the right wing vote was split by Perot and Bush Snr, that wouldnt happen under this system. Continuing on this theme, a lot of would be Nader voters were worried about letting Bush in by the back door. Under this system a vote for a minor candidate isn't wasted as it gets reassigned to a majority candidate eventually.

Secondly, this system is just too hard to predict acurately on election night since you cant know where second preferences will go. Thus your networks avoid making fools of themselves.