Approval Voting

I was just made aware of this article talking about how some of Bush's contributors are starting to give money to Ralph Nader, presumably hoping that Nader will "steal" votes away from the Democratic candidate, which many people (myself included) feel happened during the 2000 election (not that it mattered - the antiquated use of an electoral college did more to hinder that process, since Gore did win the popular vote).

Well, not that any politician would push for a major change to how voting works (no matter how much one is needed), I'd like to add my support for an Approval Voting system. Basically, in this system, people can vote for as many candidates as they want. Thus, I could vote for Ralph Nader (whose politics I generally agree with), but he couldn't be accused of stealing votes from John Kerry, because I would also be able to submit a vote for him (since he's the lesser evil in a choice between likely winning candidates).

What does it take to wake people up to the fact that we need a change? After the farce of the last presidential election, people were up in arms about wanting and needing a change, but true to the form of their apathy and short attention spans, once Bush took power, everything went back to the way it was, at least as far as opinions about voting go.

Posted on October 14th 2004