Ending the Hidden Unfairness in U.S. Elections: Let's Use VoteFair Ranking to Restore Democracy and Stop the Excessive Influence of Campaign Contributions

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Solutions Through Innovation, 2006 - Political Science - 408 pages
Frustrated voters can now take action to reduce the big gap between what voters want and politicians do. This book explains how VoteFair ranking can eliminate a hidden unfairness in U.S. elections. The unfairness is hidden in primary elections where the winner is always from the correct party, but is often disliked by a majority of the voters. Traditional single-mark ballots don't provide information about secondary preferences, so the frequent lack of majority support for the winner of a primary election typically goes unnoticed. VoteFair ranking makes use of order-of-preference ballots that allow each voter to indicate not only a first choice, but also a second choice, third choice, and so on. VoteFair ranking counts these ballots in a way that not only correctly identifies which candidate is most popular, but also indicates which candidate is second-most popular, which candidate is third-most popular, and so on. An existing voting method called instant runoff voting also uses ballots that collect secondary preferences, but voting experts acknowledge that sometimes instant runoff voting identifies the wrong winner. The book's author, Richard Fobes, says "VoteFair ranking takes into account all the preferences of all the voters, which makes the results fairer than instant runoff voting, which only considers some of the secondary preferences of some of the voters." Ending The Hidden Unfairness In U.S. Elections contains 85 illustrations of candidates, ballots, voters, and voter preferences that clearly show the unfairness of current voting methods and the fairness of VoteFair ranking. The book also contains eight cartoons and a poem. At the front of the book are suggestions for how to read only portions of the book. The suggestions include reading the introductory chapter that summarizes the book's most important points, just reading the two chapters that explain order-of-preference ballots and VoteFair ranking, just reading the chapters that explain how U.S. Presidential elections can be improved, or just reading the closing chapter that takes a peek into the future to reveal the increased economic prosperity that will flourish under fairer voting methods. The longer you wait to tell others about this book and VoteFair ranking, the longer we must put up with special-interest puppets instead of voter-chosen leaders.
 

Contents

Up Front Overview
17
What Does the Money Buy?
41
Why Do We Vote This Way?
61
How Do Other Democracies Vote?
87
Why Election Results
111
Why Runoff Voting Is Unfair
133
Alternate Voting Methods
161
Why Do We Have
173
DecisionMaking
279
Filling A Second Equivalent
289
Voting For Parties
303
Electing Governors Mayors
317
Fixing The Broken Presidential Race
323
Electing U S Senators
337
Going Beyond District Boundaries
343
BoardofDirector Elections
355

Why PartyBalancing Games
185
Solving
207
How To Get Fair Election Results
223
VoteFair Ranking Reveals
237
Fair Elections
267
Putting Words Into Action
361
Whats Ahead?
369
About The Author
389
Hungry Brain Where To Get Additional
395
Copyright

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About the author (2006)

Richard Fobes is the author of "The Creative Problem Solver's Toolbox: A Complete Course in the Art of Creating Solutions to Problems of Any Kind," which is available in nine languages. He is the inventor of VoteFair ranking, and the developer of open-source VoteFair ranking software. The author holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics, and he has worked as a writer, consultant, computer programmer, inventor, electronics technician, hardware store clerk (in his father's hardware store), and dance instructor.

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