Improving democracy with Negative voting.

Asst. Asst. Lt. Cmdr. Smi · Post by **Asst. Asst. Lt. Cmdr. Smi** » 2005-06-07 03:51pm

I had the thought that in this system, most of the people on one side might, instead of voting for their guy, cast a negative vote for the other, and vice versa. This results in all the major parties recieving a large number of negative votes. Because of this, someone obscure extremist party might win with the small number of votes it got, because nobody voted against it. Would this be likely, and if so, would there be some safeguard against it?

wolveraptor · Post by **wolveraptor** » 2005-06-07 03:56pm

..oooh, that'd be horrible. They'd have to make sure to have every party on the ballot in every state. And, you'd have to be able to cast more than one vote.

Like Spoonist said earlier, it really doesn't work well for a two-party electoral system.

Lord Zentei · Post by **Lord Zentei** » 2005-06-07 04:00pm

It's not even relevant in a two party system such as that of the US, at least when you have a "highest vote tally wins electoral seats", since it is the difference between the two scores that determine the victor. Adding a posetive vote to "A" or a negative vote to "B" is equivalent for the purposes of determining whether or not "A > B".

wolveraptor · Post by **wolveraptor** » 2005-06-07 04:03pm

It is too relavent, especially if you only have 1 vote. See Asst. Asst. Lt. Cmdr. Smi's post.

wolveraptor · Post by **wolveraptor** » 2005-06-07 04:05pm

Ghetto edit: By two party system, I mean a system where there are 2 major parties, and a couple of wacko extremist factions, ones that could potentially be ignored.

Lord Zentei · Post by **Lord Zentei** » 2005-06-07 05:15pm

wolveraptor wrote:Ghetto edit: By two party system, I mean a system where there are 2 major parties, and a couple of wacko extremist factions, ones that could potentially be ignored.

OK, that's fair enough then. I do beleive I mentioned extreme positions being benefitted more than mainstream ones myself in an earlier post:

Lord Zentei wrote:It might increase the power of radical voters who are those most likely not to be represented by the large parties, that's the main disadvantage I can see with this system. Though it would be a far better "protest mechanism" for disillusioned voters than abstainging or staying at home, I'll grant that.