An idea I had for a voting system

[tpfkaw]

I'm sure there's a name for this, but I'm too lazy to look it up.

What if, on each ballot, you could vote for as many candidates as you wanted to? You could check the box next to every candidate you would find acceptable. This could even mean that you check the box next to every candidate, although that would be the functional equivalent of not voting at all. Whoever has the most votes at the end is declared the winner.

This would fully eliminate any "spoiler effect," while allowing as much ideological rigidity or pragmatism as people feel like, and produce something pretty darn close to the most-preferred Condorcet winner, without having a ridiculously complicated voting and/or counting system. It would essentially be more fair for everyone.

[tpfkaw]

That's called approval voting. It definitely has its merits, though I think range voting (where you rate each candidate from 0 to 100) would be preferable.

Eh - sounds like it would be too subjective and emotional, too complicated, and far too susceptible to tactical voting.

[tpfkaw]

How would it be any more susceptible to tactical voting than approval voting? It's basically the same thing only with options for opinions between full approve & full disapprove.

If people give their chosen candidate 100% and every other candidate 0%, which violates the spirit of the idea (that people honestly give their appraisal of each candidate). The idea behind approval voting is not hurt as much by such tactical voting, since it's an up/down approve/don't approve thing, rather than asking people how much they approve of each candidate. Plus, people will feel significant pressure to vote tactically (for example, if I only agree with John Kerry 70%, but he's my most preferred candidate, I'll rate him 100%, not 70%).

[tpfkaw]

Condorcet would probably be ideal in the United States, actually, due to the lack of a centrist party to make it boring.

But it's too complex, both in voting and counting. Plus nobody can agree how to count it, or what constitutes a winner. This is far simpler, yet leads to roughly the same outcome.