Cameron Rohr
Professor Howard
12/10/2016
FSEM 176
Voting Opinion Piece
In today's society voting systems are used to determine a winner in both debates
and elections and offer a fair way to decide who or what is the most favorable choice.
These voting systems are used to decide debates as small as what restaurant to go to
for dinner but also as large as voting for the next president of the United States. There
are many different types of voting systems out there but the four main systems used
today are top two runoff system, borda count, plurality and the elimination method. All of
these systems will effectively decide a winning candidate when used but each of these
systems offer a varying degree of fairness. Borda Count is the fairest voting system
because it allows all candidates to have a fighting chance to win in comparison to other
systems.
The Top Two runoff system is a voting system used to elect a single winner in an
election. It begins with a first round of voting where each voter will cast a single vote for
their selected candidate. After the votes are tallied, if there is not a single candidate that
has received the required number of votes a second round of voting then occurs. The
second round is only between the top two candidates who received the most votes in
the first round of voting. With just two candidates in the left in election whoever receives
the majority is the victor. An advantage to this voting system is that the winner will have
a clear majority of the population in favor of their vote. A disadvantage to this system is
that it cuts other candidates out of the election, that under other voting systems could
potentially win. For example, suppose there was an election between four candidates
one, two, three, and four and they each received the percentage of votes that follows.
One- 24.7%, Two- 25.0% Three- 25.1% and Four- 25.2% of the votes. These results
show that each of the candidates are within 1% of each other so the election is relatively
close. Although the election is tight under the top two runoff system candidates one and
two would be cut from the election even though they have almost half of the populations
votes. This is unfair because candidates one and two account for a large number of
votes and under a different system such as elimination vote they could potentially win.
The elimination method is similar to top two runoff voting system but instead of
taking the top two candidates and dropping the rest only the candidate with the least
amount of votes is dropped and another round of voting is done with the remaining
candidates. The advantage to this system is it allows the trailing candidates to still have
a chance and not let the top two steal the election. If previous example shows
candidate One would be dropped because it received the least amount of votes. But
candidate Two would stay in for another round of voting under the elimination method
opposed to being dropped in the top two runoff system....
