Guthrie Voting
"The current voting system produces monsters. Proof by demonstration. Something needs to change."
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"This voting system kills fascism"
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The largest cudgel the powerful have in their toolbox they use to hammer politicians into toeing the party line is the threat of a primary challenge. Guthrie voting mitigates, if not outright eliminates, this threat.
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Most people believe the job of a politician is to serve the people. With all due respect, it is not. The job of a politician is to be elected. Promising to serve the people is a good strategy for getting elected. The job of politician is powerful. It pays well. It has great benefits and awesome perks. This is why the primary challenge hammer is so effective. Nobody wants to lose this job once they have it. It's really not surprising the threat of a well-funded primary challenge can separate a politician from both their spine and their conscience. Proof by demonstration. Guthrie voting can re-unite politicians with their spines and more importantly, their consciences.
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The United States is the only country with two parties. Others either have many parties or only one. The problem with our two party system is the optimal strategy is mud-slinging - make your opponent look as bad as possible. Campaigns are very negative. A weak candidate can overcome a strong candidate if they can get the voters to believe what the bad candidate says the good candidate says instead of what the good candidate actually says. It doesn't take much imagination to see this is bad. Some places have implemented Ranked Choice Voting. This helps. Voters no longer feel like their votes are wasted on a candidate that can't win because their vote will transfer to their next choice. More importantly, the entire tenor of the election changes. Mud-slinging is no longer the optimal strategy. Instead, candidates spend their time and money painting themselves in the best possible light. Elections become more positive. Again, it doesn't take much imagination to see this is a good thing. Guthrie voting puts more than two people on the ballot. The spoiler effect is eliminated. Guthrie voting enables a path towards viable third parties - not just providing a safe bucket in which to throw protest votes.
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Sounds good. How does it work?
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As normal, there is a primary. The purpose of the primary is to reduce the number of candidates down to a manageable number - minimum three. California has an open primary where the top two vote winners advance to the general election. Guthrie voting would expand this to three or more candidates advance. An open primary isn't necessary. There are many options available. Please refer to the white paper linked above for examples.​
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In the general election, every voter casts a vote for their favorite candidate. If any candidate wins a majority of the votes, they win the election. Congratulations! Otherwise, we go to a contingent election.
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The magic of Guthrie voting happens in the contingent election. It builds on the concept of a republic. We cast our votes for a representative. That representative will vote for laws we like and against laws we don't. We trust the candidate with this power. The first novel idea for Guthrie voting is to trust and empower the candidate we voted for to transfer our votes in our best interest. In this sense Guthrie voting is similar to rank choice voting except we vote for a candidate with compatible rankings instead of ranking them ourselves. There are variations on this. Please see the white paper linked above for examples.
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The second novel idea for Guthrie voting is for the contingent election to use elimination (or survivor) voting. We are all familiar with this. It's how winners are selected on reality TV. Every episode the least popular contestant is voted off the show. In a contingent election, the candidates become proxy-candidates. They take the votes of the people who voted for them and use them to vote against another candidate. The candidate with the most votes against is eliminated from the ballot. They are still a proxy. In subsequent rounds, the eliminated proxies and the remaining proxy-candidates repeat the process until there is a sole survivor who wins the election.
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This is the semi-technical justification for Guthrie voting. There is a mathematical theorem that states no voting system can have all of the features you want. Most of the features are not negotiable. The only one that can practically be dropped in real world elections where literally people's lives are at stake is strategic voting. You want people to vote honestly. You want people to vote for their favorite candidate and not vote for someone else because their favorite has no chance of winning. Guthrie voting meets this criteria - at least for the primary and the general election. ​Strategic voting is confined to the contingent election. It is done by our representative who are literally professional voters - people we trust to horse trade to get us the best outcomes possible. This is literally how a republic works.