Voting Theory and Reform

Many people erroneously think that the Constitution requires the present system of plurality, winner-take-all voting, but except for votes of the Electoral College and some votes in Congress, the method of voting is left to legislation, and other methods could be adopted.

Documentation

• The Mathematics of Voting
• Properties, Standards & Criteria for Evaluating & Comparing Multi-Alternative Single-Winner Social Choice Methods, by Mike Ossipoff
• Proxy Voting — An alternative to single-member districts for legislature houses based on population.
• A Proposed Voting System Alternative: Multiple-Selection, Winner-Take-All
• New Democracy Comparison of Alternative Methods
• Donald G. Saari Home Page — Voting theorist.
• Borda Voting — Named for Jean Charles Borda (1733-1799), French mathematician, aided American War of Independence, proposed system of preference voting used today to rank teams in leagues.
  • The Borda Count Method
  • Britannica Article
  • De Borda Institute
  • Article by J J O'Connor and E F Robertson
  • References for Jean Borda
  • Borda Method Lesson
• Approval Voting — Method in which voters cast votes to approve or disapprove candidates, with election going to those with most approval votes.
  • Approval Voting Home Page.
  • Approval Voting, by Robert J. Weber.
  • Voting systems: Approval voting.
  • A Proposed Voting System Alternative: Multiple-Selection, Winner-Take-All.
  • Instant runoff voting — If no candidate gets a majority, the votes of those who voted for him as their second choice would be added to his count, and so forth until one candidate emerges as acceptible by the largest majority. This could result in the election of a candidate that was everybody's second choice, such as a minor party candidate.
  • Range voting — Each voter rates his approval of each candiate on a scale, and the ratings are averaged, with the candidate having the highest average (perhaps above a certain threshhold to allow for rejection of all candidates) being deemed the winner.
• Vote Aggregation Methods, by Lorrie Cranor.
• A Matter of Preference? Defending the Single Transferable Vote, by Thomas Round.
• "Basic Rule" Voting: The Impact of Campaigns on Party and Approval-Based Voting, by Shanto Iyengar and John R. Petrocik.
• A review of several systems of voting in symmetric democratic elections
• Scientific American: Ask the Experts
• Fairer Way to Vote, Donald Saari.
• Center for Voting and Democracy — Advocate fair and representative elections.
• DemoChoice — Demonstration of preference voting.
• Direct Representation — Advocate a kind of proxy voting by representatives in legislatures.
• Analysis of an Electronic Voting System, by Tadayoshi Kohno, Adam Stubblefield, Aviel D. Rubin and Dan S. Wallach.
• Voting Technology & Democracy, by Paul M. Schwartz.

Organizations & Publications

• Project Vote Smart — Seek reform of voting processes.
• Voting Integrity Project — Seek reform of voting processes.
• Center for Responsive Politics — Focus on electoral approaches.
• National Committee for an Effective Congress (NCEC) — Promotes campaign finance reform.
• Public Campaign — Promotes public campaign financing.
• Real Campaign Reform — Opposes counterproductive campaign "reform" measures.
• Center for Voting and Democracy (CVD)
• Election Guardians — Seeks to restore and institutionalize a voting system in the State of California that is free of fraud and manipulation.
• Black Box Voting: Ballot-Tampering in the 21st Century — Book and organization.
• Verified Voting — Work for paper audit trails for voting machines.
• Texas Safe Voting — Work for voting systems not susceptible to tampering.
• EFF E-Voting Archive — Collection of articles on electronic voting.
• Ballot Access News — Non-partisan newsletter reporting on the trials and tribulations of folks trying to put candidates on the ballot.
• Citizens for Approval Voting — An educational nonprofit that extolls the benefiys of Approval Voting.
• Americans for Approval Voting — A lobbying and political action nonprofit working for the enactment of Approval Voting for single winner elections in the USA.
• Patriots Assuring Clean Elections — Determined that electronic voting machines produce voter-verifiable paper ballots.
• ElectionMethods.org — Extensive discussion of alternative methods.
• PR Library — Readings in proportional representation.
• EPIC on Voting — Page of link from Electronic Privacy Information Center.
• Peter Neumann's Home Page — Includes writings on computer voting issues.
• Douglas W. Jones on Voting and Elections — Collection of documents and links.
• Rebecca Mercuri on Electronic Voting — Collection of documents and links.
• Bruce Schneier's Home Page — Includes writings on computer voting issues.

Standards

• Voting System Standards, Final Draft — FEC proposed standard, for public comment.
• Problems with Voting System Standards — U.S. House report.

Vendors

Inclusion here is not an endorsement. We advise everyone to check out each offering with extreme skepticism.

• Vendors of Computerized Vote Tabulation Systems — List maintained by Federal Election Commission (FEC).
• AccuPoll — Voting machines that claim to be anonymous, accurate and trustworthy, provide a paper audit trail.
• Sequoia Voting Systems, Inc. — Recently added paper audit trail feature to their offering.
• Diebold Election Systems
  • AccuVote-OS™ — Optical scan voting machine, provide paper audit trail.
  • AccuVote-TS™ — Touch-screen voting machine, no paper audit trail.
• Election Systems and Software, Inc. (ES&S) — Offer iVotronic touchscreen voting machine, no paper audit trail.
• Hart InterCivic — Offer eSlate voting machines, without paper audit trail. Used in Central Texas.

Also see Approaches to Electoral Reform and The Sortition Option