THE PROBLEM – USA VOTING SYSTEM
DEFINITIONS :
"sincere" vote - Vote for the voter's most liked candidate.
"insincere" vote - Vote for someone other than that candidate.
Assume
there are three candidates, A, B, and C.
A and B are both popular, C isn't.
I like C the best, I think B would do kinda alright, and I think A would be
terrible.
Given all of the above and our current voting system, there are 3 available
options:
I could vote for A. This is clearly against my interests.
I could vote for C. This is a sincere vote, as I think he's the best person for the job.
I could vote for B. This would be an insincere vote, as there’s a better candidate.
THE DEBATE :
It is my belief that the general feeling in the USA is that if every voter made only sincere votes, then the result of an election would be a pretty good indicator of what people wanted on the aggregate. But when everyone uses a different paradigm to evaluate their choices, that makes the sincere choices less meaningful. My vote has meaning only when tallied together with everyone elses's. The value of my sincere vote is twofold, it serves to elect my candidate or to indicate my views so that even if my candidate doesn't win, those who did win are aware of the differing viewpoints and how much support those viewpoints have. But if most people aren't voting sincerely, then the votes are no longer an accurate measure of the varying viewpoints and the level of support for them. That means if my candidate looses, my vote wasn't helpful in any way. On the other hand, if I choose another candidate who is more popular and likely to win, even though I like him less, then my vote has made an impact and helped keep people out of power that I very much want to keep out of power.
WHAT IS WRONG IN THE WORLD :
The thing that irritates me about this is that it's a circular argument, albeit one that is generated mostly by what is essentially a circular system. Lots of people don't want to 'throw away their vote' by casting a sincere vote; and so it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Voting with your principles marginalizes you, and the 'compromise' gradually becomes more and more extreme until in order for your vote to 'count', you have to vote for someone who has very little value for you. The compromise eventually eclipses the benefit. So then we get the big impression that this country is basically divided into two nearly identical camps, which isn't true. But it doesn't matter anyway, because the electees who would ideally be considering those viewpoints have terrified everyone into voting for them like good sheep anyway, for fear of 'throwing away their vote' and marginalizing themselves. As far as I'm concerned, as a political system, this is a failure. Either you marginalize yourself by 'throwing away your vote', or you make yourself part of the problem by gravitating to the defined "poles". As a republican government goes, it's an utter and complete sham, an elaborate fiction we go through the motions of periodically in order to preserve the illusion of a democratic republic. It's only a weird sort of cognitive dissonance that pushes me to vote at all.
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I have sworn upon the altar of God,
eternal hostility against every form of
tyranny over the mind of man. -Jefferson
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