An idea that’s been thrown around recently — both online and in news magazines that I read — is that people should not vote for third parties. The reason goes like this: There is no chance that a third parties will get elected, especially to the presidency. They get too few votes. The votes placed on them are lost. And this robs votes from other candidates who hold similar, but more popular, views. In effect, voting for third parties aids the opposition parties. Here is a simplified example of how this might happen:

Imagine a campaign revolving around a single platform issue, which we’ll call Issue 1. There are also platform Issues 2 and 3, but they are not as important. There are several persons running for office: Democrat A, who opposes Issue 1. Republican B, who supports Issue 1. And Independent C, who supports Issue 1.

Democrat A: Opposes
Republican B: Supports
Independent C: Supports

Say there are 1500 voters. It’s a close race. Let’s imagine the people vote like this:

Democrat A: 700 votes
Republican B: 650 votes
Independent C: 150 votes

Obviously Democrat A wins, if we were deciding the election simply by popular vote. This means that the election falls on the side opposing Issue 1. However, if you count up the votes, you will see that more people voted for a politician supporting Issue 1 (800 votes total, versus 700). When Issue 1 comes up in Congress, you can imagine the media trumpeting, “A majority of people oppose Issue 1. A majority elected a politician who opposes Issue 1.” When in reality, it’s just the opposite.

Of course, in the real world there will be people who vote for someone based on their secondary platform positions. But this will be true across all parties.

This is a very real concern, because there is this limitation in the U.S. voting system. A single vote works best when there are only two choices. In a strictly two-party government, that’s fine. But when you start adding additional parties to the mix, allowing only a single Yes vote for one candidate hobbles the ability of people to express what they want. And it’s why people are discouraged from voting for third parties, even when they strongly favor a third party. What can be done about it?

Well, mathematically you can get much more accurate results by allowing 1st, 2nd, and perhaps even 3rd choices. For example, in such a system, people might vote like this if given a 1st and 2nd choice:

Democrat A: 700 votes, 1st choice … 200, 2nd choice
Republican B: 650 votes, 1st choice … 450, 2nd choice
Independent C: 150 votes, 1st choice … 850, 2nd choice

The above second choices are based on these assumptions: People who voted first choice for Democrat A will divide their votes fairly evenly for their second choices; people who voted for Republican B will mostly choose as a second choice Independent C simply because of the platform similarity; and likewise most people who chose Independent C will mostly vote for Republican B as a second choice.

In such a simple scenario there is a somewhat high chance of ties, etc. But in the real world with many more voters, and more candidates, and more platform issues, the chance of a tie is much smaller.

If you score 1st choice votes with a value of 2, and 2nd choice with a value of 1, you get:

Democrat A: 1400 + 200 = 1600 points
Republican B: 1300 + 450 = 1750 points
Independent C: 300 + 850 = 1150 points

Not only does another candidate win, but you can see that the election more clearly represents the will of the people in regards to the issues at stake in the election. (Of course, it’s also possible that, if more people from the Republican B and Independent C camps voted for Democrat A as their second choice, Democrat A would still win. But at least it would be a more representative vote.)

There is a degree of added complexity in making multiple choices. Ranking each candidate on a score of 1 to 10, or -5 to +5, with a no opinion option, would perhaps be an even more accurate method, but would also be more difficult to administer. But I think we can all agree that even elementary school children are, generally speaking, able to understand 1st and 2nd choices. In our age of technology, tabulating the results should not be too difficult.

It can be argued that this system forces people to vote for candidates they don’t support, and consequently for platforms they don’t support. But that happens anyway.

In summary, allowing a series of choices (1st, 2nd, etc.), would increase the accuracy of the results, and allow people the freedom to vote for the person they want without fear that they are just tossing votes and thus effectively aiding a party they oppose.