Elections are the crucial mechanism by which citizens hope to maintain control over their governments. Lots of countries hold elections, but the degree to which citizens actually do control their government varies widely. In Russia, as in quite a few other countries, people have elections, but no control. Not only is it important to hold regular elections, but it really matters how elections are done. Elections are democracy; without elections that citizens can implicitly trust, there is no democracy.
Most people lightheartedly think we do a good job of elections here in the US, the modern “cradle of democracy.” But unfortunately, elections have never functioned as well as we thought they did; there are serious, potentially fatal, problems.
A painfully obvious symptom of problems is the increasingly divisive polarization of both politicians and voters, which has reached unhealthy levels. In at least the 2016, 2020, and 2024 presidential elections, majorities of voters voted for a candidate they didn’t like because they liked the other major candidate even less. It was “vote for the lesser evil” on steroids. That a few million citizens question the integrity of our elections is another obvious symptom.
Election problems fall into two categories, those which prevent elections from functioning as they should, and those which jeopardize the airtight integrity that elections must have. Chapter 8 of this book, Everything, covers the first category thoroughly, while chapter 9 of the same book thoroughly covers the second category. Read those chapters for an in-depth understanding. This webpage will present some shorter material that will serve to introduce some of the most significant problems and their solutions.
Why Election Do Not Work Well
Most experts agree that the plurality voting method we use (“first past the post” or the candidate receiving the most votes is the winner) is seriously flawed. More than 240 years ago, some of plurality’s problems were pointed out. More recently, it has been realized that plurality is far more damaging than previously thought, and that it is actually a cause of the increasing polarization and divisiveness that we are experiencing. Although there are other problems (e.g., gerrymandering), replacing plurality with a very much better voting method is the most important of the fixes needed. Unfortunately, “the voting method problem” is trickier than it seems; it has been confusing people for more than two centuries!
Breakthrough work done in 2019 and 2020 (“Follow-on Election Simulation Leads to Definitive Proposal” ) revealed that, in order to work well, a voting method must empower voters not only to vote for candidates they like, but also to vote against candidates they do not like. A voting method called Approve/Approve/Disapprove Voting (AADV) was proposed which gathers more information from voters and much more accurately and reliably identifies the correct winner — the candidate with which the voters would be most satisfied. AADV empowers each voter to approve of either 0, 1, or 2 candidates and also to disapprove of either 0 or 1 candidate. Here is a short introductory article published by Reason magazine: The End of the Voting Methods Debate
During the 2024 presidential election, some field research was conducted at a large, active polling place. The objective was to compare voting methods using real voters. Here is the paper reporting on those results: Voting Method Field Research
A comprehensive course on voting methods can be found here: home4liberty.org/courses/elections-voting-methods/
Another well-known problem is the practice of gerrymandering — defining electoral districts in a way which favors the election of candidates from a certain political party. Most proposals for reform revolve around attempting to form an “unbiased citizens’ commission,” which then figures out how to draw the boundaries. However, there is a much better, simpler, faster and lower cost solution. It is a straightforward five-step procedure called “Precinct-Preserving Splitline” (PPS). The PPS procedure can be done by either people or a computer. This Testimony given before the Pennsylvania House State Government Committee explains and illustrates PPS.
A comprehensive course on gerrymandering can be found here: home4liberty.org/courses/gerrymandering/
A third serious problem with elections is ballot access. Like gerrymandering, this is a way that career politicians have engineered to help keep themselves in power. They have erected unnecessarily high barriers to keep competing candidates off the ballot. These barriers are mostly invisible to the general public, but any would-be candidate who is not a member of the two old declining parties will quickly discover that it is very hard to get on the general election ballot. Frequently, there is the need for an inordinate number of nominating petition signatures, and other procedural hurdles usually also exist. There are too many races where only one name appears on the ballot. That’s no choice at all!
Guaranteeing Airtight Election Integrity
It is crucial that all citizens implicitly trust all election results. That can happen only when four requirements are all met: 1) all procedures actually are carefully engineered to render undetected fraud impossible; 2) everything about elections that can affect results is understandable by voters; 3) election transparency is good enough that voters can see that all procedures have been followed; 4) if questioned for any reason, it must be possible to quickly and conclusively verify election results. The fact that significant numbers of citizens do question election results and there is no way to quickly and decisively verify that results are correct is prima facie evidence that these requirements are not met.
A central issue is that the absolute secrecy of each voter’s ballot must be guaranteed. There are two equally important aspects to a secret ballot: first, if a voter wishes to keep how they voted a secret, that must be possible; second, if a voter wants to prove to someone else how they voted, that must not be possible.
Chapter 9 of this book, Everything, covers election integrity issues thoroughly.
Here is a one-page summary of key issues: Fixing Election Integrity
A comprehensive course on election integrity can be found here: home4liberty.org/courses/elections-guaranteeing-integrity/
Also, see this website’s page on Election Manager.
You must be logged in to post a comment.