Approval and Range Voting
Voters over the last several years have been more and more disenfranchised with the democratic process. As the article explains, voter turnout has seen a sharp decline in almost every democratic nation in the world. Even where voting is mandatory countries are struggling to get a majority of their voting population to come out and actually vote. Part of this, the article explains is the candidates themselves; 2/3 of Americans would vote for a none of the above option. However, the article points to larger problems with voting systems in general to explain this huge drop in turn out. It states that the structure of our voting system, the First Past the Post system, allows to minorities of voters to control the election. Adding the that, the Electoral College gives voters swing states more influence in elections, so it’s unsurprising that many voters feel as if their votes do not matter. However, the article points to Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem as to why voting systems are having so much trouble.
We have studied Arrow’s theorem in class when we discussed voting systems. We went over several different voting systems, like simple majority rule and the Borda voting system, but they all have flaws. Ultimately, all democratic systems are doomed to be flawed in some way or another. However, Arrow’s Theorem has several key assumptions. Most importantly, it assumes that voters either vote for only one candidate or rank candidates. But with approval voting, people can vote for multiple candidates so the candidate that appeals to the most people in total will often come out on top. In addition, Range Voting breaks many of the assumptions that Arrow’s Theorem rests on by allowing voters to give score to candidates instead of ranking them or picking just one. With this system of scoring, Arrow’s Theorem simply does not hold. Hopefully new systems like Range Voting can help restore a voter turnout that is close to marginal.
http://www.thenational.ae/uae/government/the-problem-with-the-us-election-isnt-just-the-candidates-but-the-voting-system