Hi, This message isn't about a new idea, but I believe the idea is important enough to repeat. It's a way to simplify voting, to sharply reduce the campaign costs for good compromise candidates, and to guard against the risk that a significant number of voters will neglect to rank some good compromise candidate capable of defeating a "greater evil."
1. Before election day, each candidate publishes a top-to-bottom ordering of the candidates. 2. On election day, each voter votes by selecting a candidate. (What could be simpler?) 3. To tally the election, each vote is treated as if it's the ordering published by its selected candidate. These orderings are tallied by a good voting method, such as Maximize Affirmed Majorities (MAM). The orderings may be "weak." (Also known as a "non-strict.") This means candidates may be ranked as equals. Candidates omitted from an ordering will be treated as if they'd been ranked at the bottom (less preferred than the candidates not omitted). The reason I believe this would reduce the campaign costs for good compromise candidates is that they would succeed by persuading other candidates they are better than "greater evils." Here are a couple of variations: If the voting technology permits, display the selected ordering to the voter, and allow the voter to modify the ordering (perhaps by drag and drop) before submitting it. Allow the voter to select an ordering of candidates published by anyone. For example, if the Los Angeles Weekly published their recommended ordering of the candidates, the voter could vote that ordering by selecting the L.A. Weekly. I'll conclude by opining that a good tallying algorithm (e.g., MAM) is not too complex to be adopted by the public. Someday there'll be far more resources available to explain how it works, why it's a fairly straight-forward generalization of majority rule, and why it will be good for society. Educational videos with high production values, for instance. (Hopefully, narrated by an assortment of celebrity voices.) Best wishes, Steve ---- election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info