Bear with me a second. I’ve got a point here, but I fully intend to ramble my way to it.

Back in 2000 there was a television show called “Son of the Beach”, and I can say without a shred of hesitation that it was just about the worst thing ever conceived by Homo sapiens (this latter term being an erroneous designation, surely). In concept, it was supposed to be a “Baywatch” parody.

Let that sink in a minute.

It was a parody of a show that was, itself, self-parody. But “Son of the Beach” was actually worse than even its schlocky premise would imply—it was sort of like the most groan-inducing moments from every by-the-numbers, bomb-tastic teen movie (you know, the ones that come out like clockwork every year) rolled up into one gloriously intentional small-screen throw-away.

And yet, “Son of the Beach” season one (mercifully, there only was one season of this program) rates 4.5 stars out of 5 on Amazon.com based upon 28 user reviews. You’ll find a single one-star rating there. That’s mine. Three of 61 people found my comment helpful. Fair enough.

My point is that people are stupid.

What? Too harsh? Let me put it this way: some people don’t know…uh…Shinola from something that isn’t Shinola. In any event, I know that was a pretty long preamble to such a simple conclusion, but there you go. I assure you that once you’ve read the remainder of this post, you will find yourself even further confused as to why I chose to relate that to you.

I just wanted to share.

That being said, I still feel that the range style of voting is probably one of the more helpful rating systems currently in use. It is, of course, deceptive when the only people voting upon a thing are roundly demented, but provided a large, representative sample size, it bears out pretty well for neutralizing the skewing factor intrinsic to single winner plurality voting. Which brings me to this:

The Math Behind the Vote
by THERESA BRADLEY, Associated Press Writer

“Gaming the Vote: Why Elections Aren’t Fair (and What We Can Do About It)” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 352 pages, $25), by William Poundstone: Most analysts doubt Ralph Nader’s bid for the White House will divide Democrats and tip the presidency to Republicans in 2008. After all, he received less than 0.4 percent of the vote in 2004, down from nearly 3 percent in 2000.

But according to William Poundstone’s new book on voting, tipping the vote is exactly what Nader has sought to do.

[...]

But spoilers are nothing new, having determined at least five presidential elections since popular voting for the White House widely began in 1828, Poundstone argues. [...]

The problem, it turns out, is that neither plurality voting, nor any other known method, is entirely fair. This depressing notion was proved in 1948 by Nobel Prize-winning economist Kenneth Arrow, whose “impossibility theorem” showed that when three or more candidates compete, no voting system yields truly representative results.

[...]

In an avalanche of quirky anecdotes, Poundstone surveys their alternatives: The so-called “Borda count” lets voters rank choices on a ballot, while “Condorcet voting” pairs every possible combination of candidates in a one-on-one duel. “Approval voting” allows voters to give a thumbs up or down to multiple candidates, while an “instant runoff” redistributes losing votes to stronger, second choice contenders.

All alternatives are flawed, but Poundstone suggests that one method, “range voting” — an internet favorite used, for example, to rate books on Amazon.com — is actually the best among imperfect options, because it allows voters to express their degree of preference with a numerical score, rather than a simple yes or no.

At the moment, we haven’t got Poundstone’s book in our collection, though I fully intend to twist the arm of the librarian responsible for purchasing in this area (you heard me—make it so, Susie!).

Now here’s where I pander to the 21 million Americans who watch American Idol.

Remember this guy? Well, if you don’t, you can visit Sanjaya Malakar’s Wikipedia page. Surely a bit of trivia that we don’t need cluttering up our brains, but then again, what’s one more piece of pop culture refuse up there amongst so much trash?

This guy was alternately either idolized or vilified depending upon to whom you were talking. In essence, Sanjaya was a likable enough kid who just happened to be a pretty poor singer, but regardless, he unseated contestant after contestant who should have, by any objective standards, been favorites to advance to the next round.

Against my better judgment, I know, but this riled me up at the time just the same. The problem was and is obvious. You can vote for your favorite, but you can’t vote against the contestant that you most revile. Given any sort of voting system that took into consideration voter preference amongst the entire slate, it is a virtual certainty that Sanjaya Malakar would have plunged at least nearly to the bottom of the barrel every time. Though maybe that is just wishful thinking.

In an interesting response to Poundstone’s book, Farhad Manjoo over at Salon.com ran a range voting analysis based upon the contentious Florida poll results of the 2000 Presidential election. Here is how he set it up.

10-point scale (0 through 9). Voters behind George W. Bush rate him a 9 and Al Gore a 0. For Gore voters, you can reverse those numbers. Naderites assign their man a 9, Gore a 1, and Bush a 0.

Realistic? Well, I make no claims in this regard. Manjoo calls this “being conservative”, though, honestly…who knows? I feel that he probably puts too much stock in the tendency of voters to be predictably antithetical; possibly, in the hard schism assumed by his hypothesis, he implies an acrimony that actually came about later on, once Democratic voters got to know their President a bit better. But perhaps it’s all the same in the end.

Look, let’s be honest—the whole thing is flawed almost from the get-go given the tendency of some voters towards a black or white dichotomy in their political selections, and others towards more nuanced levels of acceptance. A political scientist can have a field day explaining why a scaled voting system might provide a bias to one candidate or the other. And though I’ve studied public policy, I am emphatically not a political scientist—to say nothing of that level of analysis being well beyond the scope of this stupid post. So we’ll just leave it at that and get back to Manjoo.

Here are his results:

• Bush: 4.43
• Nader: 0.64
• Gore: 4.44

Make of that what you will.

Steven Levy picks up this conversation over at Newsweek and I’ll wrap up this discussion with a generous snippet from his review.

Poundstone’s choice aligns him with a mathematician from Cleveland named Warren Smith, who stands as the most passionate advocate of range voting. Smith, 43, who runs an information-packed Web site on the subject, has used all his mathematical chops to compare systems and claims that range voting is demonstrably superior-he’s quoted as saying that a switch the system would “be a larger improvement to ‘democracy’ than the entire invention of democracy.”¹ What’s more, he insisted to me, it’s totally constitutional, and our current voting machines can be altered to handle the new system. Smith thinks that range voting can be particularly effective in primaries, when voters must choose among a long slate of candidates. “It’s in the party’s own interest to switch to range voting,” he says. “There would be a much better chance that the best candidate would win, and then the party would do better in the general election.” Plus, the popularity of range voting on the Internet-not just Hot or Not but innumerable sites that ask people to rate restaurants, movies and books-has made people comfortable with the idea.

Will we ever change from plurality voting? Some groups are working hard to come up with alternatives. Advocates of a system called instant-runoff voting (IRV) have gotten some municipalities (San Francisco) to adopt their system, which asks voters to select, in addition to their preferred choice, their second and even third favorites, which can be used in case no candidate wins a majority. (Poundstone’s book notes flaws in IRV, notably a scenario in which the least-preferred candidate among three could win the election.) As for the possibility of range voting being adopted, I’m not so sure that citizens will necessarily think that effectiveness in choosing hunks and hotties will tilt them toward choosing leaders in the same way. Poundstone, though, is optimistic about the long run. A switch to range voting in, say 50 years, “is something I would say is conceivable,” he says.

In a sense, the battle between those defending our current systems and those who are urging change is emblematic of many problems that have proved intransigent. Those who seek provable, data-driven solutions are frustrated by a resistance to change-and the inertia bolstered by special interests that feast on the dysfunction. It’s enough to drive a mathematician insane. “I find it maddening when people say that Nader was an evil man for running against Gore,” says Warren Smith. “What’s evil is the voting system. It just drives me nuts.” Poundstone’s book raises a big question: how mad do the rest of us have to get before we change a system that just isn’t working?

Tags: american idol, gaming the vote, politics, sanjaya malakar

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