Our election system that I call “Pick One” will be used to prevent any of your top choices from being elected. It will be used by the “moderates” (RINOs?) to make sure that there are plenty of “Good” candidates for the “Conservatives” to split their vote between to assure that none of them will get a plurality and probably no one will get a majority. This will prove that the winner is not the favorite of the majority of anybody, and the result could easily be that Obama would win the election. For example, Romney is reported to be a 41% favorite. This means that if there are just 6 other candidates, the other 60%, split 6 ways, would be 10% each on average! Do you think Romney can beat Obama? I doubt it.

What we need is a form of “Preferential Voting”, and the form that my reading tells me is the most accurate is called “Range Voting”, which is the same as “Score Voting” which they use at the Olympics. “Accuracy” means that it reflects the approval of the most people. This voting allows you to vote for ALL of the candidates by stating your choice for each one in the range of 0 to 100%. Your vote might be 100%, or 90-95%, etc. You could also leave a person blank if you have no opinion. You can find information about this voting at http://rangevoting.org/ . They claim that the existing voting equipment can count the Range Voting method. This is stated at http://rangevoting.org/rangeVirv.html .

I have written to the Iowa Secretary of State, and the Chairman of the Republican Central Committee asking that they change to this system, but of course I have no hope that they will. But that’s what we need!

By the way, I like your list, but there’s several I know nothing about.

One puzzle: What does “kowalski” have to do with this thread??

Now: gekster said “Our voting system has been working since this country has been founded. Your range voting will only lead to more American Idol selections. And if you look at the primary system, we select the nominee that the majority of the party want.”

My search of the original Constitution shows only ONE place where the people vote for anything, and that is for the Representatives. After that, the Representatives take care of everything, so the people can get back to work, and if they don’t like what the Representative did, they can replace him in 2 years. This means to me the Representative is the most important Branch, and the President, always the potential tyrannical dictator, is less important, and #2 in the Constitution. If push comes to shove, the Representative has his armed constituents to protect him via the 2nd Amendment.

Now look at how the President is elected (Amendment 12). The Electors of each state make a list of their choices for president and send it to the President of the Senate. The President of the Senate opens these in the presence of the House and Senate, and they count the votes. The person with with the greatest number becomes the president IF the number of votes is a MAJORITY! If the number is not a majority, then the House (The People’s Representatives) is to choose from the THREE having the highest number. If the House cannot choose by a MAJORITY, then the vote for President fails, and the Vice President becomes President. If, in turn, the count for Vice President is not a MAJORITY, then the Senate chooses from the top TWO, and that person becomes President.

My point in relating this is that a MAJORITY approval was very important to those who wrote the Constitution. Our Primaries have NOTHING to assure that the one selected is supported by a MAJORITY of the people. If 10 people are candidating, it is possible that any candidate will have only 10% support. My case in point is the Iowa GOP primary for Governor in 2002. We had 3 candidates. You can look it up for the names if you’re curious. Two of these were solid conservatives and dynamic speakers, either of which could have capably challenged Gov. Vilsack. The other was a liberal that couldn’t give a speech without using notes! The primary vote results were 35.88%, 32.37%, and 31.66% in favor of the liberal, and the conservative vote was split. It is my opinion that if we had had Preferential Voting (either Range or IRV), either conservative would have received in the range of 60% of the Primary vote, and could have had a great chance of winning against Vilsack.

acat replied to gekster “Our voting system has been changed several times”. Another very significant one was when, by Amendment 17, Senators are elected by the people rather than the State Legislature. This was a significant move from Representative Republic to Democracy, which was opposed by many of the Founders. For example, Samuel Adams said “Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There never was a democracy that did not commit suicide.”

I will continue to wish for some form of “Preferential” voting so that the person selected will always represent a majority of the people, and NOT be some “American Idol”, whatever that was supposed to mean..

Quote: Using