ok, humor me...

[DrTodd13]

What Helene is describing is called Condorcet voting. The theorem that all systems of voting (except dictatorship) violate some basic desirable principle of elections is called Arrow's Theorem. In practice, while it is theoretically possible to not vote your true preference and have that influence the election (under Condorcet), the information necessary to determine how to manipulate is extremely difficult to get and even if most people had it they couldn't figure out how to use it. The stupid approach of putting Obama first and McCain last with super-whackos in the middle is not guaranteed to increase Obama's chance of winning. In this sense, it is good that the obvious tactic will often fail. I don't think it makes a lot of sense to combine Condorcet with an electoral college. For it to be really useful I think you'd want to have it a unified national vote rather than spread out via states. Plurality voting (you get one vote among tens or hundreds of candidates) is close to the dumbest possible voting system. A revolution is a necessary but insufficient condition for Condorcet to be instituted because as long as they are in power the two party duopoly have no interest in allowing people to express their true preferences.

 

There are several good and justifiable mechanisms to use should there not be a clear Condorcet winner.

[luke warm]

at the time hillary had her interview on o'reilly, the dem nomination was still very much in doubt... i watched because i wanted to see how she handled that arrogant egomaniac, and i came away convinced that i'd vote for her.. i was very impressed and still think she would have made the best president of the bunch... i actually think she's politically as close (if not closer) to mccain than she is to obamba, and i believe she'd be a more formidable commander in chief

[jdonn]

I still find the way she does politics extremely dispicible, but you may be glad to know it's looking very likely she will be secretary of state.

[akhare]

What Helene is describing is called Condorcet voting.

I smell a conspiracy here :).

 

The latest Microsoft MSDN magazine has a very good feature on a voting methods and one that satisfies the Condorcet technique as well:

 

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/dd148646.aspx

 

Condorcet Technique and Schulze Method

The Condorcet technique for collaboratively determining the best option from a set of choices was developed primarily as a reaction to the head-to-head paring problem of the Borda count method. The Condorcet method is very simple. It requires evaluators to rank all alternatives, and then a comparison of the results between each possible pair of alternatives is performed.

...

One of the most interesting systems that satisfies the Condorcet principle has a variety of names, including the Schulze method, the clone-proof Schwartz sequential dropping technique, and the beat-path method. I will call this technique the Schulze method.

[pclayton]

Vote for who you want to. There's no agenda here, except your own personal choice. If you like Nader, Perot, or Bob Barr better than the top 2, then its your prerogative.

 

What I can't stand is those that say you have to vote for 'x', because the 'x' party needs you. You aren't throwing away anything, since your vote is yours to begin with.