Letters to the Editor
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End the plurality vote
I would not have expected to read a column in Salon which castigates the plurality system of election.
Here in the South, we had required majority votes for elections forever, until the Voting Rights Act came along. Since that time, civil rights groups and the U.S. Civil Rights section of the Justice Department have waged an unending war on majority rule. For years, the NAACP and Justice Department have waged a war to end majority rule here in Georgia, and with Zell Miller's help they finally got it done in 1994. The excuse used, and which the voters bought, was that runoff elections are so expensive they should be done away with. The point is to elect minority candidates who could not get a majority of the vote in an election.
Since that time, the state has been subjected to the possibility and actuality of people being elected with far fewer than a majority to the votes cast.
I note this Presidential Primary Season. Typically, fewer than half the people eligible to vote even register, which leaves only a minority of those eligible who can vote. Even if you have a majority requirement for election, that means a minority of the population chooses officials. But when you reduce that further with a plurality, then a minority of those casting ballots in multi candidate races are chosen. That's how we have degenerated into a presidential election based on "identity"--a woman, a black, and a veteran this year.
Look at MCcain. He has "won" most of his victorious primaries with less than one in three of the votes cast. A minority ( less than half of those eligible but unregistered to vote), of a minority (those actually registered), of a minority (those actually went to the polls) has picked the Repblican candidate for President. And these candidates are spending over a billion dollars in the process, and only have a minority of a minority of a minority's support.
But you can't change the system. The Justice Department and Voting rights act won't let you. Unless the Supreme Court continues to declare sections of the VR Act unconstitutional. Fat chance if we elect a democrat who will restore the Warren Court, or probably McCain, for that matter.
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Gratuitous sexism
Really, was the sorority girl comment necessary? Manjoo, couldn't you get a date in college? Is this why you feel it necessary to objectify women? Or is it your fear that because your article is a bit nerdy, without objectifying women, your readers would assume you are asexual and a nerd? The skin comment is particulary eery.
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Ralph Nader lost the presidency?
Damn Farhad, I didn't take you to be that kind of chump.
You know who lost the presidency in 2000? His name is Al Gore. What a crappy campaign that was. And the mistakes he made have been repeated by John Kerry and now Hillary Clinton. The presidency was theirs to lose and they did it. Lord knows that the Democrat's power in America is so tenuous, so contrived, that a third party candidate can cause a revolution. (Not to mention whining and bitching for a decade.)
You know what Gore might have done that would have changed the opinions of thousands and thousands of voters? He might have met with Nader on his own terms. He might have insisted that a candidate get to send his message on national television (as Ron Paul did in this election.) He might have practiced what he preached. Instead, Gore turned his back on Nader and his message, because woe be it to anybody who goes against the machine of the two-party system.
The Al Gore that we know and love today is not exactly the same man who won a Nobel prize. That man had to lose a presidency in order to gain some perspective.
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Manjoo - riding same hobby horse
As Michael Moore wryly noted, if Monica Moorhead of the Worker's World Party had not run in Florida in 2000, her several thousands of votes would mostly have gone to Gore, and Gore would have won.
Manjoo should be blaming Monica Moorhead and those damn commies! Not our fucked up voting and party system. Although maybe it is dawning on him with this article...
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confused
about the Hot or Not voting system.
According to this system, if I am not mistaken, a candidate with 3 10/10 votes will win over a candidate with 50,000 9/10 votes.
Tell me again how this is fair?
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Why does Manjoo still work for Salon?
This guy writes the stupidest articles. And someone at Salon apparently pays him. Why?
He could have written about the Republicans stopping the count of votes in Washington State, essentially stealing the election for McCain. But that would actually require him to do some reporting and maybe move a little away from his "everything's A-OK with our election system" position. Or he could have written about voters turning up at polls and finding out that that someone has switched their parties, thus leaving them without an ability to vote in their primary. Over a hundred thousand in Los Angeles alone. More in Louisiana.
But, no, Manjoo has a stupid article about who's the hottest candidate. Why am I a subscriber to Salon? Joan, explain to me.
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Thanks for making the election jump the shark!
Now the superbowl, that had some real issues and real players in it. Far more serious than the buffonery that the media presents as coverage of the election.
Nader didn't blow the election, having two establishment candidates that had cartoon voices, Gore and Lieberman, may have had more to do with it than the republican opponent, but Nader was the only choice.
Now if Clinton and Obama supporters decided to sit the election out if their corporate shill doesn't win the nomination, are you mainstream media drones going to blem them for the result, or still blame Nader?
It takes a whole lot of stupid to vote for any of these clowns.
Except for Nader, that just takes a sense of smell.
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Rosenkavalier
If it were actually done the way Mr. Manjoo describes it, then yes, If you were to vote for yourself for President, and give yourself a 10, you'd win.
However, if you click the link he provides, there's a badly described procedure to prevent this. Apparently for a candidate to win, he or she would have to receive at least 1/2 the "score sum" of the candidate that garners the highest "score sum".
While they don't bother to provide examples of this on the site or define "Score sum", I believe they mean that if candidate A received the highest total, despite everyone ranking him a 1 and thus garnered 500,000 points with an average of 1, candidate B would have to have at least a total of 250,000 points or, taken to an extreme 25,000 people voting for him or her at a level of 10.
There's also a section on tie-breaking on the site.
And going to this site provides a good example of why "Instant Runoff" is a better, more acceptable solution than "Range Voting". "Range Voting" is too math intensive for the general public to embrace it.
Examples quoted from the site
Quorum rule (addressing your stated concern about averages): Candidate A "cannot win unless he gets at least half the score-sum garnered by the candidate with the greatest score-sum. (And note, at least one candidate surpasses this hurdle!) "
One example of the 5 tie-breaking options on the site:
"Each tied candidate receives one point for each voter who rates him above her arithmetic mean score for all the tied candidates. Ratings at or below the arithmetic mean receive zero points. The candidate with the most points wins. We shall call this method Votes Exceeding Arithmetic Mean or VEAM."
Yeah, that's easy to explain to the average voter.