The Root Cause is Wasted Votes
The Root Cause: Wasted Votes
Voting manipulation do one thing: waste the votes of the other side.
If no votes could be wasted, these operation would be impossible.
What is a Wasted Vote?
There are two ways a vote is wasted in a Winner-Take-All system:
- Votes for the Loser: Any vote for a candidate who does not win the district is discarded.
- Excess Votes for the Winner: Any vote for the winning candidate beyond the bare majority needed to win is also discarded.
These votes are worthless. They do not translate into representation.
How Wasted Votes Enable Manipulation
Gerrymandering is the art of wasting votes. By drawing district lines, politicians can ensure their opponent's votes are wasted while their own are not.
- They "pack" the other side's voters into a few districts, creating huge, inefficient wins. The excess votes are wasted.
- They "crack" their own voters across many districts, creating slim, efficient wins. No votes are wasted.
Pay-to-Win politics also thrives on wasted votes. By pouring money into a race, a candidate can overcome a disadvantage and win by a narrow margin, automatically wasting all the votes for their opponent.
The Solution: No Wasted Votes
A system with no wasted votes is a system that cannot be manipulated. The solution, therefore, is to adopt a voting system where every vote contributes to the outcome.
This means abandoning the Winner-Take-All model and moving to a system of proportional representation.
When every vote counts, the power returns to the voters.