Rating

★★★★☆

Category

non-fiction

Read

2014-01-15

Pages

352

3 stars + 1 for new useful information on a topic I am unread on.

Summary: Ranked voting systems are fundamentally broken (proven with math), plurality vote (American system) is really broken: major parties regularly fund extremist parties on the other side to try and splinter off votes from their main opponent. As a result, democrats regularly win deeply conservative states (and vice versa). Clearly an insane state of affairs. Range voting (i.e. give each candidate 1-5 rating) is the least broken, but politically difficult to enact because it disrupts the status quo of political consultants. Instant run-off voting is still a broken ranked system (what we use in Australia), but probably the most likely reform candidate in the US today because it would still preserve the two-party system - doesn’t change the norm too much but allleviates some of the more egrerious vote splitting cases.