There are a few alternative voting systems to chose from, for how elections will work in democracies. Scoring seems to be the best one. But I haven’t heard anybody discuss negative votes.

f people could turn up just to vote against a candidate, or against all candidates, then a lie more people would turn up to vote.

Additionally, very unpopular candidates would no longer win elections.

Take Trump vs Clinton for a good example. Both were very unpopular. Many people were not really voting for one, but against the other.

In a system with negative votes, both of them would have finished with negative totals. A third party candidate with the most broad support would have won.

This shows how a system with negative votes could lead to a better (and more democratic) outcome. But is there a flaw or drawback? Why is this type of system not more favoured?

  • pingveno
    41·
    2 years ago

    A third party candidate with the most broad support would have won.

    I think this would be susceptible to strategic vote. That is, if you dislike Hillary but you absolutely will do anything to keep Trump out of office, you should vote for Hillary and give a negative vote to Trump. Mathematically, it really just turns a single vote split across two candidates.

    Approval voting does something similar where you check all candidates that you find acceptable, then the votes are simply tallied up. The most universally acceptable candidate should in theory get the most votes.

    Something is more specific to the US’s situation is that there isn’t some bloc of voters out there ripe for the right third party candidate. 538 covered the situation. In short, there are three groups that have some overlap with each other: independents, moderates, and undecided. The problem is that you can’t just stick all of these groups together and expect anything resembling a stable party. “Independent” would include not just people who feel Republicans are liberal commies, but also communists who are champing at the bit to slaughter the capitalist class and people who are apolitical. Good luck getting a third party out of that and combining it with moderates (which may have their own reasons for loyalty to one party or the other).

    • roastpotatothiefOP
      2·
      2 years ago

      I think this would be susceptible to strategic vote. That is, if you dislike Hillary but you absolutely will do anything to keep Trump out of office, you should vote for Hillary and give a negative vote to Trump.

      That sounds like a fine way to vote. Score voting like a generalisation of other types. The voter can chose to rank his choices 2, 1, 0 like STV. He can give all the acceptable candidates the maximum score like approval. He can just give one vote to a single candidate like FPTP. It still works fine whatever way voters are most comfortable using it.

      vote for Hillary and give a negative vote to Trump

      Except that the independents would get 0 while Trump gets -1. So the hated candidates get a lot of negative votes. They are at a big disadvantage compared with today. So the result is just like Approval and the most universally acceptable candidate gets the most votes.