Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
A couple states just put all the names for each office category on the ballot. Sometimes if maybe 5 or 6 names are there, you can vote for 2. The top few get put on the ballot for the general.
Years ago, Lani Guinier suggested cumulative voting. She was widely renounced. Made a lot of sense to me.
The whole party system is corrupt. The nature of politics is that there will always be corruption, but this might minimize it somewhat.
In the elections, too often people vote by party rather than knowledge. However, if they were to remove the parties on the ballot and leave just the name, then people would actually have to know who they were voting for, which would lead to more informed voters (hopefully).
So, would you support a referendum stripping party from the general election ballots?
For local elections, yes. There's no need for political parties to get involved in school board races or small town elections. In Ohio, school boards and township and village boards are non-partisan and there are no primary elections. Larger cities operate their elections in a variety of ways - some non partisan, some partisan - and county-wide elections are partisan.
In Pennsylvania, every race - even school boards and township positions that are basically volunteer jobs - is partisan. What a waste of money and time and effort for these local candidates in small jurisdictions to appear on every primary and general election ballot.
For statewide and national elections, political parties provide structure, good or bad.
The choices presented to each voter would be random each time, ensuring an even distribution of prioritization when averaged across millions of people. There is no "randomized down". IE, you get your ballot - the names on your ballot are in a random order, next guy gets his ballot, his names are in a different random order. Push this out towards a sample size of 10s of millions, allow the randomization algorithm to be open source so anyone can see there are no shenanigans, and you end up with an even distribution for all candidates.
The choices presented to each voter would be random each time, ensuring an even distribution of prioritization when averaged across millions of people. There is no "randomized down". IE, you get your ballot - the names on your ballot are in a random order, next guy gets his ballot, his names are in a different random order. Push this out towards a sample size of 10s of millions, allow the randomization algorithm to be open source so anyone can see there are no shenanigans, and you end up with an even distribution for all candidates.
Maybe that's true where you live, where I live, the ballots are all identical, so the names may be in random order, but the next guy's ballot is in the same exact order. When statistically the first name in random lists is the most likely to be chosen, that means whichever candidate got to go first has the advantage.
Maybe that's true where you live, where I live, the ballots are all identical, so the names may be in random order, but the next guy's ballot is in the same exact order. When statistically the first name in random lists is the most likely to be chosen, that means whichever candidate got to go first has the advantage.
It's a hypothetical way to balance out a bias flaw in the hypothetical proposal that is the topic of this thread. It would not be hard to implement. The whole idea of removing the parties across the board is a hypothetical, therefore it is fair to propose hypothetical solutions to the obvious potential flaws.
Absolutely. I have been saying this for years. People blindly vote on party lines. However, nothing would stop a candidate from marketing themselves as a "Democrat" or "Republican," even if the political party wasn't officially named on the ballot. The media would dissect candidates, and market them as a "Democrat" or "Republican," so while I love the idea in theory, I don't know how effective it would actually be in practice.
In my town, the mayor and city council members are in what are officially non-partisan positions. But actually, the media always describes them as being from one party or the other and their behavior in office, clearly demonstrates their affiliations. Any elected office, is dominated by partisanship and it's useless to pretend otherwise.
Unfortunately, both sides here, when they have gained control in the past, have behaved badly. Even those who might seem to have similar politics to mine, have pushed near-totalitarian policies, that would displease any fair-minded person.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
)
