Forgive me for blogging out of turn, but I just read this article on Salon “you are a dork who reads political blogs” dot com and thought this might be a dharma issue for One City peeps to ponder. As a Florida native and reluctant Gore voter in 2000, this is a biggie for me: is there a way to make voting more fair? You know, without the electoral college, butterfly ballots and hackable voting machines, or the spoiler effect, where third party candidates like Nader or Perot (or, egad, Bloomberg) siphon votes from otherwise more popular candidates?
Before I complain further, I’d like to point out that our electoral system, as much as we may hate it, could be worse. It could be more like the first past the post system, which I think has something to do with how early in the morning people vote. Or it could be, you know, more like the kind they have in Cuba, where everyone wins! (unopposed, that is).
Ever since 2000 I’ve wished there were a way to make our voting system more reflective of the will of the people, however idiotic I might think some of the people are (sorry, condescension = judgment, I know), but I didn’t think it was realistically possible. But this guy, in Gaming the Vote: Why Elections Aren’t Fair (And What We Can Do About Them), claims to have a way: the Hot or Not system, apparently, where voters rank each candidate according to a range.
Could this work? Is he serious? I have no idea, because I haven’t read the book, only the reviews (like most of us), and I’m no expert in politics or math (or segues: here’s an interview with the author in Mother Jones). But I can say that Hot or Not is a retardedly addictive site, in a cruel, un-Buddhist way (can we choose not to pass judgment on any of the pictures? Or should we just give everyone a 10? What about the ethics of those mail-order bridal ads? I can’t decide!!). But maybe, just maybe, range voting is an idea that might work.
Or not. Here’s a picture of a wombat. You decide.