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Paul Cohen
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Attended college thanks to the generous state support of education in 1960's America. Earned a Ph.D. in mathematics at the University of Illinois followed by post doctoral research positions at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Taught for several years at Lehigh University prior to a short stint at Bell Laboratories but followed by a much longer career at NEC punctuated by ten U.S. and international patents in the general area to semiconductor applications. Now living in a comfortable Maine retirement community and focused on the prospect of upgrading democracy by means of an improved voting system.

OpEd News Member for 926 week(s) and 5 day(s)

130 Articles, 30 Quick Links, 1454 Comments, 12 Diaries, 3 Series, 8 Polls

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Power Lines, From CreativeCommonsPhoto
(4 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Wednesday, April 12, 2023
Perverse Delivery Charges "Delivery" seems to take on a variety of meanings, but we are often charged for it. This article examines what this entails, but particularly for electric power.
Series: Electricity Delivery Charges (4 Articles, 10636 views)
From ImagesAttr
(5 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Who Pays Taxes? This article provides a number of graphs to illustrate how income and income taxes are distributed in the U.S. More emphasis is given to the data than to any attempt to interpret that data.
(11 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Thursday, May 29, 2014
What Might be the Best Voting System? In this third article of a series we introduce Balanced Approval Voting and argue that it is not only a better system of voting but one that we should seriously consider using.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views)
A Good Footing is Important, From MyPhotos
(5 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Monday, December 16, 2019
What Could be Wrong with Ranked-Choice Voting? This is a survey article for the purpose of collecting together all of the deficiencies observed with IRV in earlier articles.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views), Ranked Voting (35 Articles, 43597 views)
(5 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Saturday, June 21, 2008
Liberate Yourself from the Mainstream Media This article is intended as a tutorial on web radio and its potential for spreading the word about progressive ideals and objectives
(1 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Sunday, February 17, 2008
Conservatives Without Conscience Are the neocons destined to return to the Democratic party and to attempt a take-over there? It could happen. A book by John Dean is intended as a study of the conservative movement, but it also provides good food for thought about where the country has been and where it might be headed.
Vote Yes or Yes?, From FlickrPhotos
(8 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Thursday, June 1, 2017
Rethinking Which Voting System is Best Probably no voting system really is best for all situations. Sometimes simplicity is more important than other considerations but sometimes more complexity is in order. This article takes the position that the number of candidates is a prime consideration in this regard.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views)
Borda-family members characterized by assignment shapes, From InText
(10 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Tuesday, October 15, 2019
Older Ranked-Choice Voting Systems The popularity of IRV as an alternative to plurality voting is perplexing. Historically there are many other ranked-choice voting systems that seem, if for no other reason than complexity, preferable to IRV. This article explores those older systems, suggesting reasons for IRV's popularity. Some insight is gained but without really settling that question.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views), Ranked Voting (35 Articles, 43597 views)
Red and blue pill., From WikimediaPhotos
(3 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Thursday, February 20, 2020
Making Choices Deciding which voting system to use in elections is a topic of increasing interest. In an earlier article of this series, two criteria are suggested for making such a selection and this article argues for a third criterion.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views)
Traffic, From FlickrPhotos
(8 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Monday, November 27, 2017
Can Less be Better? Often we use shortcuts to quickly come to a conclusion. Unfortunately, these shortcuts sometimes lead to a wrong conclusion and we never go back to examine the reasoning more closely. In this article we examine a couple instances of this and we show through examples how this shortcut-thinking has been misleading.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views)
Spoiler for Condorcet, From Uploaded
(3 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Saturday, July 8, 2023
Condorcet and the Spoiler Effect This article follows up on a misstatement in the previous article and explores some implications. In particular, it makes some comparisons between several different voting systems and approches to comparing their merits.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views), Ranked Voting (35 Articles, 43597 views)
Free vector graphic: Horizontal, Balance, T, Weigh Out - Free ...678 Ã-- 720 - 60k - png, From GoogleImages
(17 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Monday, November 13, 2017
What's Wrong with Approval Voting This article tries to clear up some of the confusion about claims that Approval Voting is a balanced system.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views)
confuse, From CreativeCommonsPhoto
(1 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Sunday, June 4, 2023
Balanced Condorcet Voting Can Condorcet voting be balanced? There is a way, but it seems confusing and probably not worth applying in real elections. But observations about ranked voting and about Condorcet voting are also found in the article
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views), Ranked Voting (35 Articles, 43597 views)
Michigan House of Representatives.svg., From WikimediaPhotos
(3 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Saturday, May 30, 2020
How Would Balanced Voting Help? This article is intended to give the reader a quick introduction to balanced voting.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views)
From ImagesAttr
(1 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Sunday, December 14, 2008
Who Pays Taxes II This is a follow-up to an earlier article, Who Pays Taxes? It presents charts to illustrate both income and total taxes paid according to income level.
Voters reflected in pond., From CreativeCommonsPhoto
(2 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Monday, November 21, 2022
Reflections on Voters Most considerations of voting systems focus, understandably, on voting systems. Here we take a different perspective on the topic and ask what the voting system says about voters.
Series: Ranked Voting (35 Articles, 43597 views), Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views)
Ranked Choice Voting -- DFL Duluth Exposed, From GoogleImages
(3 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Tuesday, March 7, 2017
Ranked Voting "Ranked Voting" and Instant-Runoff Voting ("IRV") are often used incorrectly as synonyms, but IRV is actually only one of many possible systems of ranked voting. This article points up a curious facet of IRV and it offers a similar system that corrects that curious feature.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views), Ranked Voting (35 Articles, 43597 views)
Sir Winston Churchill, From PixabayPhotos
(4 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Tuesday, June 9, 2020
How Electability Frustrates Democracy Three important features of a good voting system are that it should be logically complete, it should be balanced, and it should be evaluative. In this article we explain the importance to democracy of the last of these features.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views)
An Abstract Model, From WikimediaPhotos
(4 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Monday, July 8, 2019
Two Properties for Categorizing Voting Systems Two properties that may or may not hold for a given voting system are discussed. Being balanced is one of these properties and being logically complete is another.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views), Ranked Voting (35 Articles, 43597 views)
Star-Forming Region NGC 3603, From CreativeCommonsPhoto
(2 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Friday, March 17, 2023
Star Voting on Fabric Star voting has attracted some attention recently. A short video on the subject led me to think about this system and this article sketches a few thoughts about it.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views)
It's Magic, From WikimediaPhotos
(8 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Friday, October 19, 2018
Opposites Some confusion still exists concerning what voting methods are or are not balanced. This article explores one area of reasoning that is a common source of error.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views)
Is Balance Enough?, From CreativeCommonsPhoto
(25 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Friday, August 5, 2022
Does Balance Suffice? A Balanced Evaluative system will end the two-party duopoly. But might balance alone be sufficient? Or maybe just being evaluative?
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views)
It's not engraved in stone, From ImagesAttr
(13 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Wednesday, March 7, 2018
One Man, One Vote How much weight should we give to this old saying? This article argues for not putting much weight at all to it.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views)
From flickr.com/photos/78428166@N00/9395558783/: War. What is it good for?, From ImagesAttr
(7 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Thursday, December 15, 2016
Parties -- What Are They Good For? Using balanced voting methods in our general elections is likely to bring about an end to the two-party duopoly. But these voting methods would also be beneficial in primaries. Primaries may well be the place to start experimenting with better voting methods.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views)
Balanced Voting?, From ImagesAttr
(2 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Monday, November 9, 2015
Approval Voting and Confusing Language Some confusion has developed over the term "balanced voting" that this article tries to clear up.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views)
Preliminary Results of MaineDemocratic Primary 2018, From ImagesAttr
(11 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Wednesday, June 13, 2018
A First Experience with Ranked Voting This article differs from preceding articles in these series in that it is mostly just a report of my own experiences with a voting system that is not widely used.
Series: Ranked Voting (35 Articles, 43597 views), Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views)
Rube Goldberg%27s %22Self-Operating Napkin%22 %28cropped%29., From WikimediaPhotos
(2 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Sunday, November 5, 2023
Spoiled Again The major selling point for ranked-choice voting has always been that it avoids the spoiler effect. This is shown by example. Here we show a different example of a ranked-choice election in which the spoiler effect does happen.
Series: Ranked Voting (35 Articles, 43597 views), Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views)
Waiting to vote, From FlickrPhotos
(7 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Friday, September 30, 2016
Who Will Win this Election? This article provides a quick review of the many different voting systems that have been discussed earlier, in other articles of this series. It considers each system in turn to suggest how an election would or might turn out.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views)
Ballot for a Balanced Election, From ImagesAttr
(4 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Thursday, May 22, 2014
Are More Political Parties Possible Here? Is there some way for this country to ever have more that two parties in serious competition with each other? This article argues that we need only change the way we vote to get such an improvement in our politics.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views)
HNL Wiki Wiki Bus., From WikimediaPhotos
(2 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Monday, July 27, 2020
BAV Now Appears in Wikipedia This article is a review of an entry that recently appeared in Wikipeda. While accurate, the article is terse at times and this article in Op Ed News is intended to clarify some of the points in the Wikipedia article.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views)
What does it mean??, From FlickrPhotos
(16 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Friday, March 23, 2018
Yet Another Balanced Voting Method Elections are really polls of the population. Should we think of them in that light? This article explores that question.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views)
One target at a time, From CreativeCommonsPhoto
(6 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Sunday, May 2, 2021
Shooting Down Ranked Voting Systems Arrow's theorem tells us that no ranked voting system can sensibly be supported for use in elections. And there are an uncountably infinite number of ranked voting systems so it will be impossible to show what is wrong with each one. Still, we can show how some of the seemingly promising ones fails.
Series: Ranked Voting (35 Articles, 43597 views), Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views)
LEVELING THE PLAYING FIELD, From CreativeCommonsPhoto
(5 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Friday, January 27, 2023
The Level Election Playing Field Leveling the playing field is needed. But it should not be seen as a scary prospect.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views)
218988_10151229937735272_19641 50006_o, From FlickrPhotos
(3 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Wednesday, September 14, 2016
Counting Votes to Make Voting Count This article suggests some ways that vote-counting in our elections can be made more secure.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views)
Image from page 171 of .A classical dictionary of Greek an. | Flickr890 Ã-- 682 - 198k - jpg, From GoogleImages
(20 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Wednesday, February 14, 2018
What is the Matter with Balanced Voting? What might prevent balanced voting from being adopted? This article examines a few potential problem areas.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views)
Star, From FlickrPhotos
(4 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Tuesday, June 30, 2020
What About STAR Voting? STAR voting has recently been getting a lot of attention, particularly in Oregon. It is a system built on Score Voting by adding an instant runoff stage at the end of counting ballots. This article provides some observations about this voting system, along with a more detailed look at Range (Score) voting and a few words about Approval Voting and Balanced Approval Voting.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views)
Balanced Voting, From Uploaded
(1 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Wednesday, March 25, 2020
Approval Voting Fails to be Balanced This is a survey of past articles in this series that deal with the question of whether approval voting is balanced.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views)
Constitution of the United States%2C page 1., From WikimediaPhotos
(8 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Thursday, February 6, 2020
Does the Constitution need Amending? The last few years have forced us to question the functioning of our government. Solutions to some problems appear to require tinkering with our Constitution, but others do not. This article presents some examples of each.
Choose, From FlickrPhotos
(5 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Monday, December 10, 2018
A Voter's Quandry A voter is faced with making choices and the right path is not always clear. Should a voting system not strive to avoid making the choices difficult?
Series: Ranked Voting (35 Articles, 43597 views), Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views)
Warning - This passage must be kept free of obstruction at all times - sign, From CreativeCommonsPhoto
(3 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Saturday, October 1, 2022
Obstruction of Voter Expression At its root, the spoiler effect is caused by choosing a voting system that overly obstructs voters from adequately expressing their preferences. This problem is well known in the case of plurality voting but it also is a concern for ranked-choice voting (IRV) and for Approval Voting.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views), Ranked Voting (35 Articles, 43597 views)
George Washington, From WikimediaPhotos
(14 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Wednesday, June 15, 2016
Are Political Parties Consistent with Democracy? Here at the end of a primary season, many feel that insider meddling and election fraud have colored the results and that the consequences may be grim. Both major political parties are considering reforms. But this has happened before, but solutions seems illusive. Perhaps it is not the political parties, but the very notion of a political party that needs to change. We explore one vision for such a reform.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views)
(5 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Wednesday, May 16, 2018
Arrow's Theorem and Overstatements Several articles in this series on balanced voting have focused attention on Instant-Runoff Voting (IRV). These articles have been scattered in time and could be challenging to track down without some help. A major purpose of this article is to provide a brief survey of these articles for someone who might be primarily interested in IRV.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views), Ranked Voting (35 Articles, 43597 views)
Apples & Oranges - There is no comparison, From CreativeCommonsPhoto
(17 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Wednesday, September 27, 2023
Comparing BAV with Ranked Choice Voting Compared to BAV, ranked-choice voting asks much more of voters. And it puts much more effort into evaluating the responses, so it is not unreasonable to ponder whether all that extra effort is justified.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views), Ranked Voting (35 Articles, 43597 views)
How to Vote?, From ImagesAttr
(1 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Monday, June 2, 2014
What's Wrong With Instant Runoff Voting? This is the fourth of a series of articles on the concept of balanced voting. This article introduces IRV as a preamble to the fifth article which will describe a balanced improvement to the traditional IRV.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views), Ranked Voting (35 Articles, 43597 views)
How to Vote?, From ImagesAttr
(10 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Wednesday, October 21, 2015
Neither Positive nor Negative but Balanced Voting Our voting system has evolved naturally over time but it clearly delivers less than it should or could. This article is the latest in a series on Balanced Voting and it addresses what seems to be a confusion in some quarters. Specifically, it makes the point that Balanced Voting is not a voting system. Rather, "balanced" is a very desirable characteristic of a voting system.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views)
Power lines, From CreativeCommonsPhoto
(2 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Tuesday, June 20, 2023
Electrical Delivery: The Poor and the Elderly Will Pick Up the Tab The second article in this series shows that because of the way electric bills are now computed, the natural evolution will be for rising prices paid mostly by the poor and the elderly. This argues for a change in how the bills are computed.
Series: Electricity Delivery Charges (4 Articles, 10636 views)
What happens to political consultants?, From CreativeCommonsPhoto
(2 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Friday, August 28, 2020
What Changes with Balanced Approval Voting? Following up on an earlier article that showed how BAV would undermine the two-party duopoly, this article explores what might happen afterward.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views)
NorthAmerica1762-83., From WikimediaPhotos
(1 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Wednesday, May 20, 2020
The Electoral College One of the strongest reasons for adopting a balanced voting system is that doing so will undermine the two-party duopoly. Unfortunately, for presidential elections, the traditional plurality voting system in the Electoral College seems to present a barrier to this particular benefit. In this article we show that this should not be seen as an insurmountable difficulty.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views)
Make it Balance, From FlickrPhotos
(3 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Thursday, April 6, 2017
Instant Runoff - Balanced once Again The voting system described in the previous article, IRRV, was not a balanced system. Here we convert IRRV into a balanced system as a way of illustrating that kind of conversion. And we note that the result is, in essence, IRBV. So IRBV is the balanced version of both IRV and of IRRV.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views), Ranked Voting (35 Articles, 43597 views)
Still Using The Same Old Voting System, From ImagesAttr
(2 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Tuesday, June 3, 2014
Instant Runoff Balanced Voting (IRBV) As promised in the previous article of this series, IRV is modified so as to be balanced and thereby offer minor party candidates a better opportunity.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views), Ranked Voting (35 Articles, 43597 views)
Donald J. Trump at Marriott Marquis NYC September 7th 2016, From CreativeCommonsPhoto
(4 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Sunday, September 3, 2023
How Did Trump Ever Win? Trump owes his nomination in 2016 to plurality voting. This is not news to anyone who has followed this series of articles, but it is a message that is worth repeating. The real purpose of this article is to gather into one short article the important reasons for favoring balanced approval voting.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views)
What's the score?, From CreativeCommonsPhoto
(9 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Saturday, September 17, 2022
The Distraction of Score Voting In discussing Balanced Approval Voting, there may not be need to discuss the paradigm of Score Voting at all. Nonetheless, it is a topic that people keep raising. This article explains that connection and lays out a common error in the common understanding of score voting.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views)
In balance, From FlickrPhotos
(16 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Wednesday, June 15, 2022
Just a Little Off-balance This article takes another look at the notion of Approval Voting being claimed as balanced.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views)
02a.WMATA.RRWNA.VA.18February2 013, From FlickrPhotos
(3 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Sunday, June 18, 2017
Voter Emotions Matter Discussions about voting often become overly technical, accidentally treating voters as machines that will perform in predictable ways. Here we argue by example that this can be very misleading.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views)
These are the only choices., From CreativeCommonsPhoto
(33 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Thursday, February 16, 2023
Escaping Duopoly Republicans are Red Democrats are Blue Must we be stuck With only those two? Can we escape the two-party duopoly? Probably we can, but indications are that neither IRV nor approval voting is the right path.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views), Ranked Voting (35 Articles, 43597 views)
Governor Votes Early, From FlickrPhotos
(1 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Friday, October 7, 2016
Who Will Win this Election? Part II This is a continuation of an earlier article that surveys the consequences, for a particular election, of using each of eight different voting systems.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views)
Gambling Mouse, From MyPhotos
(6 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Tuesday, April 3, 2018
Voting Systems in Action An election scenario is played out in several ways with four different voting systems being used.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views)
Latvia on map, From CreativeCommonsPhoto
(4 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Tuesday, May 24, 2022
Latvia Wisely Chose to Adopt BAV Latvia uses BAV in its elections and this article provides some commentary about the results of one such election.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views)
Balanced Voting for Notation, From Uploaded
(12 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Friday, August 6, 2021
Notation for Voting Systems The great similarity of both the terminology and notation shared by approval voting and balanced approval voting is explored in this article. The article also points out a sometimes troubling assumption behind some common notations for scoring voting systems that can easily be unnoticed. .
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views)
Bill of Rights Pg1of1 AC., From WikimediaPhotos
(6 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Friday, April 26, 2019
Establishment and Exercise Most amendments to our Constitution come through changes in the interpretation of its words by the federal courts. The meanings of the words, so assigned, often drift away from their common usage. This article suggests such a change through a change to the interpretation of the word "religion".
Electric Meters, From CreativeCommonsPhoto
(4 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Tuesday, August 29, 2023
Why Bother to Meter Electric Power? Qui Bono? Who profits from charging end customers for electric power usage? It is the producers of power who produce that electric power by burning fossil fuels. So why peruse policies that perpetuate this approach?
Series: Electricity Delivery Charges (4 Articles, 10636 views)
Looking back, From CreativeCommonsPhoto
(5 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Saturday, July 31, 2021
Retrospective on Balanced Voting Three qualities needed for a good voting system have been identified in this series and this article reviews those important properties.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views)
Polling Station, From PixabayPhotos
(5 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Tuesday, July 5, 2022
The Two-party Duopoly Sure, but What Else is Wrong? Why worry about the voting system when there are so many problems with our elections? This article explores the impact of BAV adoption on what is commonly considered the more serious problems with our elections.
Series: Ranked Voting (35 Articles, 43597 views), Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views)
Balance Scales (Ethics), From CreativeCommonsPhoto
(6 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Tuesday, December 14, 2021
Voting Systems Without Bias The term "balanced" is explored and an alternative term is suggested.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views)
Voting, From ImagesAttr
(4 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Thursday, May 22, 2014
What's Wrong with First-Choice Voting? This is the second article in a series on voting. This article takes a critical look at our traditional way of voting.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views)
Voting is a Local Matter, From ImagesAttr
(15 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Monday, September 17, 2012
Let's Have More Political Parties Is another electoral system possible? In the U.S. might it be possible to adopt an electoral system that insists on more than two polarized parties? This article suggests that the answer is yes.
scrooge-mcduck-make-it-rain, From CreativeCommonsPhoto
(1 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Thursday, May 25, 2023
Coping with Big Wealth Trying to tax away concentrations of great wealth is politically difficult and historically it does not seem to work. Here, we suggest a possible alternative.
J.H. Lynch: Sir Winston Churchill, From CreativeCommonsPhoto
(17 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Thursday, January 7, 2021
Is Democracy Worth Saving? In earlier articles we have assumed, without much explanation, that more political parties would improve democracy and that would be a good thing. Not everyone accepts this premise, however.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views)
Suicide, From CreativeCommonsPhoto
SHARE More Sharing        Sunday, January 15, 2023
Suicide is an Indicator of What? Why do we no longer hear about the high rate of suicide in Sweden? That used to demonstrate how inferior socialism must be to capitalism. But what does it say now?
IRV Ballot, From MyPhotos
(10 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Sunday, April 10, 2016
Isn't IRV a Great System for Voting? A basic flaw in the concept behind IRV is presented.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views), Ranked Voting (35 Articles, 43597 views)
Atlanta Womens March John Lewis., From WikimediaPhotos
(1 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Thursday, October 19, 2023
Good Strategic Voting IRV is such a complex voting system it might seem that strategic voting simply could not happen. But this article shows that it could become a concern.
Series: Ranked Voting (35 Articles, 43597 views), Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views)
Know your limits, From CreativeCommonsPhoto
(6 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Wednesday, December 14, 2022
Balanced Approval Limitations In recent articles we have tried to show BAV to improve on approval voting, probably the best of the widely promoted alternative voting systems. In this article we ask, but not entirely answer, whether we might improve on BAV.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views)
State Opening of Parliament, From ImagesAttr
(11 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Wednesday, June 25, 2014
A Parliament in Washington? The twelfth Amendment to our Constitution requires that the Electoral College must choose presidents by a majority vote. While a truly deliberative body might be expected to reach a majority decision, our present-day Electoral College no longer deliberates. This poses interesting implications for a true multiple-party democracy in the U.S.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views)
What is the score?, From CreativeCommonsPhoto
(21 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Monday, July 25, 2022
Why is Balanced Approval Voting so Hard to Understand? Voting experts have had particular difficulty understanding BAV. This article shows why that happened.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views)
Ballot for Balanced Approval Vote, From MyPhotos
(2 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Tuesday, February 23, 2016
Balanced Ration Voting The virtues of balanced voting are reviewed, leading up to the introduction of a new balanced voting system that, like range voting and IRV, allow a voter to distinguish between favored candidates (and between disfavored ones). Unique to this system is that it takes into consideration that voters cannot typically be very familiar with an unlimited number of candidates.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views)
Twinkling twigs, From CreativeCommonsPhoto
(25 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Monday, January 9, 2023
Star-like Voting These are just some thoughts about Condorcet voting, particularly in connection to balanced approval voting.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views)
Desert Factory, From CreativeCommonsPhoto
(1 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Thursday, July 20, 2023
Taking Advantage (of a Foolish Electrical Billing Policy) This is a fictional illustration of what might go wrong as a result of charging for delivery of each KWH of electric power.
Series: Electricity Delivery Charges (4 Articles, 10636 views)
(8 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Friday, January 14, 2011
Incendiary Speech As hesitant as we should all be to restrict our freedom of speech, there are times it has been done in the past. It is argued here that today it is again appropriate to place a further restriction on this important First Amendment right.
From ImagesAttr
(3 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Thursday, October 27, 2016
Who Can Compete in Our Elections? In the previous two articles in this series, we looked at a single election to see how the election would likely turn out. In this article we continue that exercise with a different makeup of candidates and voter attitudes. A purpose of this exercise is to contrast the behavior of traditional voting systems with balanced systems.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views)
Electability Raises its Ugly Head, From Uploaded
(2 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Monday, July 5, 2021
The Perfect Voting System Strategic voting can occur using any voting system and people can be pretty inventive about it. In this article we take a look as how strategic voting might affect balanced-approval voting and we see that though it will happen, the damage will not be severe. .
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views)
I don't understand it., From CreativeCommonsPhoto
(5 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Thursday, September 9, 2021
Voters Need to Understand How Votes are Counted The number 0 is special in that adding in a tally does not change the tally; it is the appropriate number for representing abstention where a voter wants to avoid doing anything. This choice of 0 is not essential, but it does help voters to understand and appreciate even small details about how votes are tallied. Examples of why this is important are provided in this article.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views), Ranked Voting (35 Articles, 43597 views)
IRV Ballot, From GoogleImages
(1 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Tuesday, February 16, 2016
Self-Expression Versus Actual Effectiveness in Voting IRV is used as an example of some important criteria for a good voting system.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views), Ranked Voting (35 Articles, 43597 views)
Polls at a primary election, From CreativeCommonsPhoto
(3 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Thursday, May 13, 2021
What is Wrong with our Primaries? We tend to think of primaries as just another election. But presidential primaries have some special characteristics that make them worthy of special attention.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views), Ranked Voting (35 Articles, 43597 views)
The United States of the Popular Vote, From CreativeCommonsPhoto
(3 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Wednesday, March 23, 2022
The National Popular Vote Presidential elections present some special problems for adopting a different voting system. NPV only makes matters worse in this regard.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views)
(8 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Monday, July 12, 2010
Centralized Power is Always a Danger Conservatives always focus on the dangers of government power while liberals tend to focus on corporate power. Both present a danger.
Stealth Candidate, From CreativeCommonsPhoto
(1 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Thursday, August 25, 2022
Could a Stealth Candidate Endanger a Balanced Approval Election? Any voting system is likely to come under attack by people or organizations seeking a favorable outcome from their own perspective. This article discusses how this might happen to Balanced Approval Voting and efforts that might be considered to make this kind of attack unsuccessful.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views)
rebranding a bad idea, From CreativeCommonsPhoto
(6 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Tuesday, February 22, 2022
Ranked Voting: The Good, The Bad and the Ugly Initially intended as a review of past articles, this article goes a bit further by adding some perspective to the flaws of IRV.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views), Ranked Voting (35 Articles, 43597 views)
Plurality Voting inventor?, From CreativeCommonsPhoto
(4 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Saturday, August 21, 2021
What is Right about Plurality Voting? Where did plurality voting come from? It's been with us for a long while.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views), Ranked Voting (35 Articles, 43597 views)
The worst of all deceptions is self-deception., From CreativeCommonsPhoto
(1 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Monday, October 24, 2022
Words Perpetuating the Two-Party System Something that we lose when there are more than two candidates in an election is a way to express opposition to one of the candidates. This important aspect of how voters feel is given no means of expression, either with ranked-choice voting or with approval voting. That is a serious flaw in these voting systems.
Series: Ranked Voting (35 Articles, 43597 views), Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views)
To Be Simple, From CreativeCommonsPhoto
(13 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Friday, February 4, 2022
'Tis a Gift to be Simple: One Man, One Vote Balanced Voting can be as simple as Balanced Plurality Voting and even that system is surely an improvement over plurality voting. Still, it leaves room for improvement and this article draws a comparison between BAV and BPV.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views)
ELECTORAL SYSTEMS, From CreativeCommonsPhoto
(7 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Friday, November 5, 2021
Proportional Voting and BAV Proportional voting and balanced-approval voting have similar benefits, but proportional voting fits better with parliamentary systems. That is a big advantage BAV has for the U.S. .
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views)
I Think, or Sometimes not Enough, From CreativeCommonsPhoto
(5 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Tuesday, February 23, 2021
Just Think about Runoff Voting IRV, sometimes referred to as simply "ranked voting" has gained considerable popularity. In this article we attend to some details about this voting system that perhaps have not been so widely noticed.
Series: Ranked Voting (35 Articles, 43597 views), Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views)
We The People Light Brigade, From CreativeCommonsPhoto
(4 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Tuesday, April 5, 2022
The Second Interstate Vote Initiative When a new and better voting system is adopted, it will surely be one state at a time. But this is particularly difficult for presidential elections. Does this mean that for presidential elections we will be forever forced to use plurality voting?
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views)
Partisans, From CreativeCommonsPhoto
(1 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Thursday, February 11, 2021
Partisanship Would more political parties improve our politics? People do argue both sides of this question. Trump's impeachment trials provide some food for thought on this question.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views)
apples and oranges and..., From CreativeCommonsPhoto
SHARE More Sharing        Wednesday, April 20, 2022
Contending with the NPV Dilemma Generally we can find some way, if not to solve a problem, then at least accommodate to it. This should be the case with the dilemma of defining what we mean by the national popular vote even when different states adopt distinct voting systems. This article proposes a possible such an accommodation.
Series: Ranked Voting (35 Articles, 43597 views), Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views)
Spoiled-Elections, From CreativeCommonsPhoto
(5 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Tuesday, November 17, 2020
What Could Go Wrong With Balanced Plurality Voting? Evaluative voting systems are preferred for many reasons but one good reason is to avoid the spoiler effect. This is the message of this article, which also shows by example how the spoiler effect can take an unfamiliar form.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views)
(4 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Tuesday, August 21, 2012
Should Nader have Won the 2000 Election in Florida? As often as a voter likes one candidate another voter may dislike one of the candidates for an office. So why are voters never asked about their dislikes and what would elections look like if we did?
The Decision, From CreativeCommonsPhoto
(7 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Sunday, January 2, 2022
How Biased is IRV? Several earlier articles in this series have examined problems with instant-runoff voting, but generally the issues have been with the complexity of the system or how the vote tally might fail in some way. This article looks at IRV from the standpoint of flaws in how it collects the opinions of voters.
Series: Ranked Voting (35 Articles, 43597 views), Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views)
1959 cover boy: King of the road, Jimmy Hoffa, From CreativeCommonsPhoto
SHARE More Sharing        Sunday, April 25, 2021
Partisanship and Trade Unions Is the media and BLM missing an important ingredient in the behavior of police? This article simply asks this question.
US Constitution, From CreativeCommonsPhoto
SHARE More Sharing        Friday, March 11, 2022
Against the Partisan Divide A podcast about polarization is recommended and the topic developed as it relates to mouse traps and to voting.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views)
Tis a gift to be simple, From CreativeCommonsPhoto
(8 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Friday, February 5, 2021
Should Balanced Approval Voting be Simplified? In earlier articles of this series, the first criticism I offered against instant runoff voting was that it was too complex. Although there are other problems with IRV and more generally with ranked voting systems, it is a problem. BAV is much simpler to explain and to use as a voter. And BAV is much easier than IRV for those who tally votes. Still, it is worth re-visiting this issue of complexity, asking now about BAV.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views)
Paul Weyrich - Undertaker for the American Dream, From CreativeCommonsPhoto
(2 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Wednesday, October 14, 2020
Can Vote Suppression be Suppressed? A promising voting system that applies a statistical approach is seen to suffer from a tendency to discourage voting. Modifying election procedures to help diminish this tendency leads to a way to make vote suppression ineffective.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views)
Voting is the Issue, From ImagesAttr
(3 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Tuesday, June 17, 2014
Instant Runoff or Approval? Among the voting methods that have been proposed to reform our two-party system are two that stand out - Approval Voting and Instant Runoff Voting. In this series we have proposed improvements to both of these systems and in this article we discuss how it might be possible to choose between them.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views), Ranked Voting (35 Articles, 43597 views)
(3 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Maine's Moderate Republican Senators The two moderate Republicans that Maine has sent to the Senate have played a critical role in the health-care reform efforts. This article examines the effects of their positions on health reform.
(4 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Thursday, November 6, 2008
Now What? More Piracy? The slightly larger number of Democratic Senators in the next Congress will not eliminate the threat of filibuster that has so crippled the current Congress. This article suggests some changes to Senate rules that could help with this problem
SHARE More Sharing        Tuesday, October 27, 2009
A Review of Thom Hartmanns Book: Screwed This is a review of a book by Thom Hartmann
Dessert, From PixabayPhotos
(1 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Monday, October 11, 2021
Can We End the Two-Party System? Most articles in this series focus on one or two voting methods and this can be viewed as getting too much into the weeds. This article serves as a reminder that the ultimate objective is to improve our democracy by putting an end to the two-party duopoly. .
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views), Ranked Voting (35 Articles, 43597 views)
(2 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Tuesday, February 5, 2008
A Funny Story? A story making the rounds of right-wing conversation reveals some interesting assumptions.
From opednews.com/populum/uploadphotos/s_300_farm2_static_flickr_com_40790_5139407571_1c81d07a8c_n_874.gif: Voting, From Images
(1 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Friday, February 19, 2016
Range Voting Range voting is described in two different ways to show it offers little real advantage over approval voting. The great advantage of balanced voting remains, however, and that is illustrated in what may be found an amusing example.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views)
P012710CK-0328, From FlickrPhotos
(1 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Wednesday, January 13, 2016
Polarization is the Problem - and Balance is the Solution The fundamental problem in Washington is our two-party system. Balanced voting is the solution.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views)
(1 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Monday, May 5, 2008
Must Lapel Pins Remain Only the Refuge of Scoundrels The flap about Obama not wearing a flag lapel pin is part of a more general attack that conservatives have long made on liberals. A way to fight back is proposed for discussion.
(2 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Saturday, May 15, 2010
Skin in the Game Why are corporate executives so free to take risks for our environment, for our economy and for innocent bystanders without taking any personal risk? What can be done about changing this? This article is an invitation to discuss these issues.
(6 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Sunday, July 5, 2009
Why I Am Not a Liberal Conservatives have taken much from us in the last thirty years. One important item is the very meaning of the word "liberal". We should take it back.
Spoiled-Elections, From CreativeCommonsPhoto
(21 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Thursday, November 30, 2023
Do IRV Voters Just Need Training? Revised to fix tables: A second example is presented of an IRV election being subjected to the spoiler effect. This second example does not depend on the odd handling of abstentions in IRV elections.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views), Ranked Voting (35 Articles, 43597 views)
Local Election Ballot #ds444, From CreativeCommonsPhoto
(5 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Tuesday, February 6, 2024
Can We Reform our Polarized Two-Party Politics? There are many reasons to favor balanced approval voting, and high on the list is that it would give voters more candidates to choose from. This purpose here is to consolidate the most important advantages of this voting system within a single article.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views)
Balanced Approval Voting, From Uploaded
(3 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Thursday, December 28, 2023
Bottom-up Electoral Reform This article is really a plea for help with spreading the word about BAV. There are a few people who support this method of voting but that number is now quite small compared to the number who are completely unaware of it. So long as that is true, it will not even be a candidate for adoption. Changing that will not be easy, but the article proposes a strategy.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views)
Water cooler discussions, From CreativeCommonsPhoto
SHARE More Sharing        Tuesday, January 2, 2024
Top-down Bias in Podcasting Technological changes can cause cultural problems that require us to adapt. It may be impossible to return to what worked in the past and so new solutions may be needed. Polarization and the consequent limitations on civil discussions may in part be a consequence of social media. It seems impossible for us to eliminate social media but here we suggest another way to bring back civil discussions of important issues.
Family, From CreativeCommonsPhoto
(1 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Monday, March 11, 2024
Families of Voting Systems Just because two voting systems use the same ballots does not mean they are the same. How the votes are counted and how the winner is determined are equally important. This article describes such variations of balanced approval voting.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views), Ranked Voting (35 Articles, 43597 views)
2 Dollar bills, From ImagesAttr
(9 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Tuesday, July 8, 2014
A $2 Bill One of the curious old habits we cling to is the denominations of our coins. It may not be the most important facet of how we resist change but surely it says something about how we cling to the past.
... or the highway, From Uploaded
(2 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Sunday, February 25, 2024
Illusions of Ending the Two-Party Duopoly If ending the two-party duopoly is what we want to accomplish then the options for a new voting system seem quite limited.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views), Ranked Voting (35 Articles, 43597 views)
(5 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Thursday, September 11, 2008
Sinister Forces Most of us think of elections as an opportunity to choose the best candidate for an office. In normal times this may be a good approach, but these are anything but normal times. Today we must look at elections as an opportunity to keep sinister forces out of government.
(2 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Thursday, October 9, 2008
Illegal? So What? What good is a law if it cannot or will not be enforced?
(2 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Relics of a Buddhist Temple II What has the Supreme Court done to us? This article explores some implications of the Citizen's United decision.
(2 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Friday, December 15, 2023
Less Democracy Should Not Be an Option A podcast discusses the wisdom of returning to smoke-filled rooms (well, maybe no cigars) to decide on nominations for our leaders. Here we argue that there are better alternatives.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views)
(5 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Sunday, March 9, 2008
Delegates Count Statistical anomalies in the New Hampshire primary led some to question the integrity of the vote count there. There are other anomalies to consider when comparing caucus results with primary results.
(1 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Saturday, May 29, 2010
Protecting our environment Future oil spills need not be as severe a catastrophe as the Deepwater Horizon spill is apt to be. Here is a proposal of an approach to this problem.
(2 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Sunday, July 13, 2008
Face Value or Saving Face Should we take at face value John McCain's claim that he was tortured in Viet Nam. Certainly if this is held up as an important qualification for his becoming President then it should be considered more carefully.
Electoral-College_DEC2020_1045, From FlickrPhotos
(6 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Wednesday, January 10, 2024
Is BAV Compatible with the Electoral College? The Electoral College now seems an anachronism, but it is enshrined in the Constitution and seems very hard to eliminate. This article suggests a couple of ways to improve matters without resorting to eliminating it.
Series: Balanced Voting (97 Articles, 120811 views)
SHARE More Sharing        Monday, January 28, 2008
Relics of a Buddhist Temple Globalization and unprecedented borrowing by the United States has turned many formerly American companies to have questionable citizenship. This article questions whether representatives of companies with foreign ownership should be allowed to make political contributions in the United States.
(2 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Wednesday, May 14, 2008
The Strongest Democratic Candidate The MSM has often focused on the fraction of Clinton voters who might fail to vote for Obama when he becomes the Democratic candidate. Here we focus on whether Clinton voters might vote Republican even if Clinton became the candidate.

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