Re:A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive
by roenxi on Friday May 03, 2019 @09:43AM
(#19818345)
This is an interesting debating point in itself. The problem isn't extreme preferences - the extremist wing of any political party tends to be motivated, visible and small. The problem is that the extreme wing wields a lot of power through their persistent and single minded effort.
Quadratic voting weights power away from my-way-or-highway voters towards voters who are willing to consider more than one option. Without thinking too deeply, it would make it easy to tease apart large and awkward alliances. Even if it didn't formally fracture the major parties, it would de-facto moderate politics by increasing the risk of holding extreme positions.
Basically any other form of voting is an improvement over the US FPTP system; FPTP's only advantage is that it is very obvious how it works. Nothing to sneeze at, but not mathematically satisfying.
Quadratic voting weights power away from my-way-or-highway voters towards voters who are willing to consider more than one option. Without thinking too deeply, it would make it easy to tease apart large and awkward alliances. Even if it didn't formally fracture the major parties, it would de-facto moderate politics by increasing the risk of holding extreme positions.
Basically any other form of voting is an improvement over the US FPTP system; FPTP's only advantage is that it is very obvious how it works. Nothing to sneeze at, but not mathematically satisfying.