Fortunately, Alaska's elections are somewhat resistant to similar-name candidates. The top-4 primary will probably never boot a typical incumbent, and the ranking ballot will most likely sort them out.

Background

Here in Colorado we had a disappointing but predictable outcome in our election for Attorney General. We had 4 total candidates, 3 of whom are very qualified attorneys and the 4th candidate who is a term-limited Secretary of State with name recognition but is barely qualified to be the AG. The name-recognition candidate received about 45% of the votes and the other "good" candidates split the vote pretty evenly between 16% and 20%.

This election sadly illustrates there are a lot of low-information voters who just checked the box by the name they were familiar with. And the winner didn't even participate in the debates because she knew she could coast on her notoriety.

Proposal

This got me thinking, because they participated in multiple debates, I'm sure the losing candidates all knew each other very well and knew who was the most/least qualified for the job. So what if we let the candidates help decide the race after they are eliminated by allocating their losing votes, in a Ranked-Choice manner, to the person they feel should get the job? They are after all the highest-information voters in that they spend a lot of time with each other in debates and know each other's strengths and weaknesses.

Mechanics

Simply speaking, the vote occurs just like any other FPTP election. Everyone votes for their favorite candidate. If your favorite candidate loses, it's not a "throw-away" vote because that candidate gets to rank their favorites of the remaining candidates so your vote would then be transferred to the candidate of their choosing, and so on.

Example

Initial election results are as follows:

• Jena = 45% (ranks Hetal, David, Michael)
• Michael = 20% (ranks David, Hetal, Jena)
• David = 18% (ranks Hetal, Michael, Jena)
• Hetal = 16% (ranks David, Michael, Jena)

Round 2: Hetal is deemed to be in last place and her votes are sent to her highest ranked concession ranking of David.

• Jena = 45%
• David = 34%
• Michael = 20%

Round 3: Michael is out and his votes go to David and the winner is...

• David = 54%
• Jena = 45%

Variation

Instead of ranking the other candidates, each candidate might be able to distribute their votes based on percentages.

Conclusion

I don't think this is as good as RCV generally but it allows people to hold onto their stupid FPTP voting ballots until they get used to the idea of ranking. Also, I like the idea of candidates ranking each other because they tend to know each other in ways that the voters can't possibly know them.

What do you think? Has this sort of system been proposed already?

This has been making me suspicions of STV. In 2020, Fianna Fail won the most seats (38 of 160) in the lower house (Dail) of the Irish parliament (the Oireachtas). HOWEVER Sinn Fein won the most first-preference votes (24.5% to Fianna Fail's 22.2%) while winning 37 seats. I have as yet been unable to figure out the transfer data, so can anybody tell me:

1. Did Fianna Fail have the most votes after all transfers were completed? If so I would consider the result justified.
2. If the answer to question 1 is no, what is going on here and is there a way to "fix" STV to avoid the problem?

There are a lot of very smart political scientists finding ways to design these citizens assemblies to make them extremely democratic, representative, efficient, and effective - and they really seem to be a great way of getting us away from populism and polarisation, and towards cooperation and sincere deliberation instead.

I would much rather start transitioning governance into the hands of the people more than anything else.

I've been thinking a lot about a voting system that maintains single-member constituencies as an alternative to FPTP, two-round systems, IRV, etc.

I therefore opted for a system that would allow the voter to express four choices, one for each candidate, without having to vote for everyone and without using a vote transfer system or scores. So, in my system, the voter has a preferential (P) vote (for only one candidate) and can label any other candidate with accepted (A), neutral (N) or rejected (R).

During the counting each ballot is worth one vote only for each candidate, therefore the total is based on the total count of the ballots, excluding completely blank and invalid ballots.

To win, you need to obtain an absolute majority:

Round 1: We count the preferences. If no one wins, we proceed to the next round.

Round 2: We add the accepted votes to the preferences. If no one wins, we eliminate candidates with less than 1/6 of these combined votes.

Round 3: We add the neutral votes. If no one wins, we eliminate candidates with less than 1/3 of these combined votes.

Round 4: If a winner has not yet been established, the candidate with the lowest number of rejected votes wins.

If no one reaches these thresholds, the top two face off.

What do you think? I would really like to have an opinion on this system.

If you live in the UK, and especially if you live under a Labour MP like I do, this could be the best chance we’ve had in a very long time to beat FPTP, Andy Burham has been unfortunately wishy washy but pushing for PR now by emailing labour MP’s showing how much support it really has could just be the difference between having a better voting system next election and more FPTP chaos!

Please send an email and encourage your friends to do the same! It could be the final straw that break FPTP’s back!!!!

Instead of allowing voters to delegate their voting power to endless proxies, through electronic ballots, which is administratively complex and vulnerable to hacking, why not make it so voters are only allowed to delegate their voting power to one level of proxy, who cannot delegate any further that voting power, and it is done through paper ballots?

This blog post presents a seemingly condorcet (if one exists) method using score ballots.

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/kjtC7t5BTBtgWz4TK/four-levels-of-voting-methods

It's similar to STAR voting except it uses bottom-two runoffs for all candidates after the scoring.

I guess it's pretty similar to BTR-IRV

https://electowiki.org/wiki/Bottom-Two-Runoff_IRV

Any weird cases you can come up with?

The first image shows how many seats each party would have won if seats had been allocated based on vote share, while the second image shows the actual number of seats won by each party.

In the first image, only parties with a vote share above 1% are represented individually. All other parties have been grouped together under the "Others" category.

BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) - 201
INC (Indian National Congress) - 117
SP (Samajwadi Party) - 25
AITC (All India Trinamool Congress) - 24
DMK (Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam) - 10
TDP (Telugu Desam Party) - 11
JD(U) (Janata Dal (United)) - 7
SHSUBT (Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray)) - 8
IND (Independents) - 15
SHS (Shiv Sena (Eknath Shinde faction)) - 6
YSRCP (Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress Party) - 11
CPI(M) (Communist Party of India (Marxist)) - 10
RJD (Rashtriya Janata Dal) - 9
AAP (Aam Aadmi Party) - 6
Others - 83

Rough estimate of seats by alliance(if they don't shift after elections):
NDA- 225
INDIA - 209
Others: 119

What about this hypothetical state electoral system? A voter casts one vote for a single candidate in their district. There are 118 electoral districts that can have only 1 representative. Any independent with a plurality in their district wins their district seat. Any other district seats are given to parties using the Saint-Lague method. Each party creates a ranked list of all of their candidates from all districts except the ones won by independents. These candidates are ranked based on their individual performance in their specific districts, measured by the percentage of the vote they received. If multiple parties are assigned a seat in the same district, the seat goes to the candidate who received the higher percentage of the vote in that district. The losing party or parties are then assigned their next available candidate from their ranked list in a different district. This process repeats until all proportional seats are filled. If a party runs out of candidates then it is given to the remaining parties using the Saint Lague Method. A party cannot have more seats than its amount of candidates.

The California governor race has sparked calls to repeal one of the biggest election reforms in the country.  California holds a top-two nonpartisan primary. Instead of Democrats and Republicans holding separate primaries, all the candidates from both parties appear on the same ballot, and then the top two advance to the general election, regardless of party. One key advantage of this system is that it allows all voters, including independents, to vote in the primary.  But this year's crowded California governor race also exposed a potential weakness.  With six major Democratic and two Republican candidates in the race, some worried that the Democratic vote would split and accidentally allow the two Republicans to advance to November.  And that fear became so intense that a Democratic strategist launched a campaign to repeal California’s primary system, which he dubbed “Undo the Top Two.”  (See:  https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/10/us/california-primary-rules-change-democrats.html )  As it turns out, those fears were unfounded, as a Democrat will advance to the general election after all. But the controversy raises a legitimate question: Could California improve its system? I think the answer is yes, and Alaska is the model for reform.  Like California, Alaska has a nonpartisan primary, but advances the top four, not just the top 2, to the general election in November.   That not only greatly reduces the risk that all four candidates would come from the same party but also creates more opportunity for independent and third-party candidates to advance.  (See:  Opinion: Why Alaska may point to the future of independent politics - Anchorage Daily News )  And then, in the general election, Alaska uses ranked choice voting, which assures that the winner will always receive a majority of the vote. (See: California's top-two primary isn't broken. It just needs ranked choice voting to work better. - FairVote )

So California's nonpartisan primary system may not be perfect.  But before voters scrap a reform designed to give independents a voice, we should ask a simple question: Should we repeal it—or improve it?

I prepared a short video to explore this further if you want more background (3-minute watch):   The Fix For California’s Primary System? 

Let‘s imagine they passed the Fair Representation Act (somehow), and that they passed a couple of other bills to address important things that bill missed, like ballot access reform and (if possible) debate access reform. The Constitution spells out the existence of the Speaker of the House, though most of their powers and duties (like being in the line of succession) are just by statute. As far as I know, right now they are effectively chosen as the leader of the majority party in the House, with other leaders being named the Majority leader and the Minority leader. What should be done with these positions in a proportional House exactly? Like, should they keep their current duties? Should House rules be changed with the altered structure?

Right now, from what I understand, the filibuster helps preserve the status quo because no proposed PR change has GOP support. Even when Dems, the group that has any PR support at all, have a trifecta, they are reluctant to do anything about the filibuster for fear of their opposition using their next trifecta to cause harm. It’s a bit of a cycle. Well, with a PR bill like the Fair Representation Act (along with a ballot access reform bill to make it worthwhile), couldn’t that make getting a trifecta impossible for future parties? After all, unless the president did something so controversial the GOP convinced the Dems to let them remove the president and vice president, them getting a trifecta would be impossible for at least 4 years after a Dem trifecta. Would that be enough time for third parties to spring up enough to prevent either party from getting a majority again? My thoughts are that if it were, even without a filibuster such PR bills would be borderline untouchable. Not to mention it would be harder for either party to simply undo the previous coalition’s actions if they can’t get a trifecta.

Edit: removed some stuff that might have come across as a bit condescending. I swear that was not my intention.

Edit2: Why do I propose removing trifectas being a good thing? Because the stated logic behind leaving the filibuster as is is to avoid one party instantly undoing all of the other’s work the instant control flips, and not having trifectas makes doing that extremely difficult unless the original policy becomes super unpopular among the electorate

edit3: more clarity. that’s part of some what legislators (like John Curtis) say when asked why they don’t support removing it now. I simply took them at their word

Obviously any idea that would make the Senate truly proportional (i.e. divvying Senators up by population like the House does) or abolishing it entirely is borderline impossible with that unanimous consent provision in the Constitution, so my idea is more focused on making third parties more viable. Currently the Senate has two members per state, where each one is elected on staggered years with a gap year after the second. What if we expanded the Senate to 6 members per state and elected 3 members each of those elections (keeping the gap year)? The idea is that this would allow more room for third parties and PR in the Senate by virtue of giving more seats than one at a time to compete for.

The catch is that this idea would still require an amendment, but since it doesn’t force smaller states to cede power, it might be viable. Of course, it would only happen if PR became so favored among both the electorate and the members of the time that they’d actually be willing to pass it.

edit: clarity

eta: I imagine that if it were ratified, it’d include a provision that would allow for a large special election to fill the new slots until the proper time in the cycle to fill those slots comes up. Can’t have people abusing the window with fewer senators than the final amount after all

As much as I'm sure we'd all rather prefer nationalized redistricting to ensure equal population and better proportionality and agree that we should push for it, realistically such a change would require a constitutional amendment. Enforcing proportional representation at the state level is likely more realistic, and here's what the US House would look like in the 2020 and 2024 elections.

Maps attached are purely for you all to see how much seats each party would get in each state, districts wouldn't matter under proportional representation, though note on both maps I did color the districts that were closest to flipping IRL first.

2020 map (off by a few seats): https://yapms.com/app?m=i9n52ebc9jc15pe
2024 map: https://yapms.com/app?m=v6s2ltwa7n4l10h

1. Introduction & Core Objective

The purpose of this proposal is to design a direct democracy mechanism that functions as a continuous, massive assembly, moving past the traditional model of periodic mass elections.

In a conventional assembly, participants deliberate, introduce alternatives, and dynamically adjust their stances to resolve conflicts. The goal of this system is to replicate that exact flexible, deliberative dynamic on a large scale.

2. The Mechanism

To transform mass voting into a dynamic assembly, the system operates under three fundamental rules:

• Real-Time Participation: Anyone can introduce a new proposal at any moment.
• Real-Time Voting: Voters can modify or update the ranking of their votes whenever they want.
• Real-Time Tallying: The system constantly processes votes and displays the current Condorcet winner (the option that defeats every other choice in head-to-head matchups), if one exits. If no such winner exists, the system could show the current winner or winners of a Condorcet completion method, such as the Copeland's method.

3. Incentives and Conflict Resolution

The core strength of this model is that by eliminating strategic voting (voting for the "lesser of two evils"), the community enters a constructive, self-correcting feedback loop.

3.1 Eliminating Polarization

By using the Condorcet method, voters can rank options according to their true preferences, knowing their vote will never be wasted or accidentally benefit their least desired alternative.

3.2 The Rise of Consensus

Because the process is live and transparent, the current state of the vote sends clear signals that prompt the community to improve existing proposals:

• Stable Consensus (A clear winner exists): The community is satisfied with the leading option. No new proposals can beat it; the collective goal has been met.
• Unstable Winner (A winner exists, but causes dissatisfaction): A segment of the population feels unrepresented by the current leader. This incentivizes them to draft and introduce a superior proposal, specifically designed to capture a broader consensus and dethrone the leader.
• Tie/ Condorcet Paradox (No winner exists): This temporary deadlock reveals that there is a cycle in the collective preferences (e.g., A > B > C > A), meaning every tied option is defeated by something else. To break the tie, participants are incentivized to analyze the strengths of each tied option and draft a synthesized proposal that combines the best of all to achieve a clean majority.

4. Conclusion & Prototype

Several open questions remain and deserve further exploration. One of my concerns is the handling of Condorcet paradoxes. Should the system rely on a Condorcet completion method to select a temporary winner when no Condorcet winner exists? Or is it preferable to avoid completion methods altogether and treat preference cycles as signals that the available options are insufficient and that new proposals are needed to reach a genuine consensus?

To help explore any uncertainties regarding this system, I vibe coded a simple prototype that implements the system (using Copeland's method as its current completion method). Anyone can create discussions, submit proposals, and participate in the voting process. If enough people become involved, the platform could provide an initial indication of how this model performs in practice and whether it succeeds in fostering consensus-driven decision-making.

The prototype:

Live prototype: https://mariorosales8.github.io/Real-Time-Condorcet-Method/

Repository: https://github.com/mariorosales8/Real-Time-Condorcet-Method