Better Ways to Count Votes
Start Running Better Polls
You can start having a better democratic process in your local organizations.
- Create polls online at BetterPolls.com
- Software for counting votes in Java, C, C++ and perl
- Techniques for hand counting because low tech is sometimes easier and sometimes necessary
Try It
Election Calculator
The Election Calculator is based on the available software for counting votes and simultaneously calculates the results of an election based on a long and growing list of election methods and their variations. It can be used to calculate results for a small election (< 30 votes) or to experiment with what-if scenarios in voting theory.
How well they work
By collecting statistics on millions of simulated elections,
I have tried to measure the relative merits of about a dozen different election methods.
Graphical Simulation shows behavior (and some odd behavior) of elections on a 2D political spectrum.
Change The Laws
Draft Legislation for California
Define several better election methods in terms for the law books.
US Constitution
A Proposed Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America for electing the President without the Electoral College and with Approval Voting.
Advocacy
Election method issues are often left unconsidered. I think most of the advocacy right now needs to be around raising awareness and getting people to the point of "yeah, that would be a good idea". Of course, the laws are being changed in some places and jumping to that step is great if it works. Until then:
- promote the advantages of being able to safely vote your conscience without strategy or compromise
- point out elections that go to a small plurality (less than 40%) and wonder aloud if there might have been a majority which preferred a different outcome.
- run polls on BetterPolls.com to get people used to voting that way
- and I'm always working on my elevator speeches for election reform and I'll add more here if I think I have a good one
Flyer
Not happy with the party machines?
Feel that the "choices" they offer don't really represent you?
Elect Different
also available two and four at a time (print as two or four pages per sheet).
Other Election and Democracy Issues
- Voting Machines - Reliable? Trustworthy? Verifiable? Not worth the cost?
- Campaign Finance - dirty money. clean money
- Fair Districts - Non-partisan. Anti-gerrymandered. Based on simple rules.
- Proportional Representation - Ideological rather than geographical distribution. A 5% party gets 5% of the seats.
- Ballot Access - Just getting on the ballot can be hard.
- Right to Vote - No intimidation. No misinformation. Guarantee the ability to vote of people who are supposed to be able to vote.
- Presidential Primary Schedule - No one should have a more important vote by going early or a less important vote by going late.
- Superdelegates - The Democratic Party machine maintains gives itself 15% of the primary vote.
- Legislative Telecommuting - Keep your representatives at home in their districts. End one-stop-shopping for lobbyists.
- Instant Proxy Representation - Anyone can vote directly or give their vote to a proxy. No elections, you can re-register your proxy at any time.
- Instant Runoff Voting is Weak - It has gained some popularity and name recognition, but isn't nearly the best election method we could use.
Other Resources
RCV Election Data - cast vote record from hundreds of races and millions of votes
Elections Officials Running RCV Elections
House and Senate voting records organized by representative or senator.
BetterPolls.com and the Election Calculator are web tools for running better elections.
Andrew Myers Condorcet Internet Voting Services also runs online polls.
Electowiki is a Wiki at electorama.com maintained by a bunch of amateur-enthusiast election method theorists.
Open Voting Consortium coordinates political efforts and open source vote counting.
