SODA voting (Simple Optionally-Delegated Approval): Difference between revisions

"SODA encourages most voters to vote for a single candidate, just as they do today. So an average joe, who wants to put as little thought as possible into his ballot, will still be voting for one of the major parties. With the large majority of ballots in the same two-party split as today, the minor parties will have essentially no choice but to delegate their vote to one of the majors, or relegate themselves to irrelevance. So all this will do is removemake it so that the Libertarians (Libertarian/Greenfor a Rebublican)/Greens thorn(for froma Democrat) are your sideallies, not spoilers.

"Any other system is more of a danger to you. You ever heard of a Condorcet Winner? No? Well, most systems try to elect a Condorcet Winner, and lemme tell you something: H. Ross Perot, that's what a Condorcet winner is. Somebody who comes up in the center, in between the two parties, and it doesn't matter how incompetent or unexperienced he is, because the Democratic voters prefer him to a Republican, and the Republican voters prefer him to a Democrat, so it doesn't matter, he could be two wheels short of a tricycle, there's still no way to beat him. Well, look at how SODA handles that. The Democrat and the Republican, they don't plan to delegate their votes, so they don't announce a preference order,. soAnd then it's pointless for himthe centrist, the Perot, to ask them to delegate their votes to him - they can't. So if the Perot guy wants to be in the game and delegate to someone - whoever he pre-announced before the election, if anybody - he can do that; if he wants to be outjust ofa theprotest gamecandidate, he doesn't announce a delegation order up front, so he either wins or loses on his own. In the first case, he's just a minor candidate, like a Green or a Libertarian, and you don't have to worry about him any more than about them. In the second case, he's irrelevant, at worst a spoiler, just as under plurality. So either way, you're at least as well-off as you are today."