Is There a Better Way of Choosing Our President?

Rethinking our voting system.

Sal

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Photo by Colin Lloyd on Unsplash

Historically, the US has used plurality voting in all its electoral events, even though many people and organizations are against it. Simply put, it involves ensuring that the candidate with the most votes wins the elections by means of a majority. The 2020 Presidential Elections are a prime example of how Joe Biden won the Presidency via plurality voting.

There are other tested methods of voting as well, such as approval, score, ranked-choice, and STAR voting, which have been backed by various electoral organizations such as The Center For Election Science, FairVote, and Equal.Vote. Let’s get into what each of these voting methods consists of and which one out of all of them is the best.

You can ‘Approve’ of more than one candidate.

Approval voting, much like the name suggests, lists down a certain number of candidates, out of which the voter has to put a tick right next to each of the candidates they approve of. There can be multiple candidates chosen, and if there are no suitable candidates listed, then the voter has the option to leave the tick boxes blank. In this method, the approvals are totaled after getting to know each voter’s preferences, and the candidate with the most approvals wins the

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Sal

I am a History Educator and a Lifelong Learner with a Masters in Global History.