New Voting System

[All Seeing Eye]

With the latest Euro election it got me thinking about a new way to vote.

My idea is instead of sending out voting cards to voters they send out questionnaires. Each questionnaire contains 100 questions with multiple choice answers and have little boxes on them similar to what you find on a lottery ticket.

Each political party has their own questionnaire filled out based on their parties policies.

Now after each questionnaire is filled out by voters these questionnaires are sent to the place they get "counted" and are all put through a machines that scans them (like the machines that check lottery tickets) and all answers are logged on the system.

After all questionnaires are on the system it determines which party has the closest match and that party wins the election.

There is a catch though. Whatever the winning party put down in the answers on the questionnaire they must adhere to it. They cannot contradict what was on the questionnaire.

 

[Emher]

^Totally fails because of the last bit. I mean it's politcians we're talking about here!

 

[RJDiogenes]

Sort of like the "Computer Dating" approach to voting. Some people may be surprised who they vote for.

 

[Rii]

The eHarmony approach to representative democracy.

 

[iguana_tonante]

It's very similar to the way popular online political tests work, e.g. Political Compass and such. It may work, even if it's a bit overcomplicated. But it would actually require people to think instead of digesting talking points, so it's doomed to fail.

 

[ShamelessMcBundy]

But i really like going down to the voting booth.

 

[Rii]

eCitizen

Sorry, your application to vote in the Federal Election has been rejected.

You failed question #17: "What is your favourite television show?"

"Australian Idol" was not an acceptable answer.

 

[Garrovick]

Questionnaire??

Dumpster food.

 

[Canadave]

Cool idea, but it would kill voter participation because it would take so long. Something like Single Transferable Vote makes more sense to me.

 

[iguana_tonante]

Cool idea, but it would kill voter participation because it would take so long.

I agree, but I also find it incredibly sad that people could not devote ten minutes to the exercise of democracy. I can understand voiding your ballot (you despise them all and do not want to vote anyone of them), but not voting (or voting without knowing what you are voting for or against) is almost unthinkable to me.

 

[Faranight]

This would also make it impossible to do "tactical voting" or voting on a single issue. For example, in this EU-election I threw all issues away and put my vote only on the privacy issue, i.e. voted on the pirate party here in Sweden.
With a questionairy system such things would be impossible (since the pirate party for example does not take a stance on any issue besides privacy issues).

 

[All Seeing Eye]

Well it's just a basic idea for a new voting system, clearly it does need more work to it and needs to evolve but I feel it would work better than what we have now.

Another possible method would be "choice" of how you wish to vote. You could either choose to vote as normal OR if you don't know for sure which party shares your views you fill out the 100 (or less) questionnaire and when it's put into the system it chooses the party/candidate for you based on the answers you gave.

 

[RJDiogenes]

This would also make it impossible to do "tactical voting" or voting on a single issue. For example, in this EU-election I threw all issues away and put my vote only on the privacy issue, i.e. voted on the pirate party here in Sweden.
With a questionairy system such things would be impossible (since the pirate party for example does not take a stance on any issue besides privacy issues).

But what if people didn't answer every question?

The type of Voting reform that I'd like to see is the ranking of the candidates. Instead of just Voting for one guy, you could give your second, third, and so on, choice. That would give independent and small party candidates a real chance, and break the back of the two-party system.