voting i think we should run elections in american politics the same way we pick the winner of dancing with the stars. or other reality tv shows where you vote people off the island. except in this case you'd vote people off the ballot. on election day, you'd rank order your candidates from most favorite to least favorite. and drop it into the box. the list is then turned upside down. the votes for least favorite candidate are counted. and whichever one receives the most least favorite votes is eliminated. and removed from the all of the ballots. the process then repeats with the remaining candidates. until we have a winner. most rank order voting systems drop the candidate with the fewest most popular votes. this fails the voting populace in an easily demonstrated way. suppose you have three candidates: left, center, right. for simplicity, let's say 35% vote left/center/right. 40% vote right/center/left. 10% vote center/left/right. 15% vote center/right/left. by traditional run-off methods, the candidates finish left 35%, center 25%, right 40%. center is eliminated. and right wins a run-off. which is too bad. because 60% of the population would be happier with center. by the reality-tv method, the candidates finish left 55%, center 0%, right 45%. and left is removed from the ballot. and center wins the next round. and yeah, 75% of the voters didn't get their first pick. they got their second pick. and nobody got their worst pick.  ¶ 8:00 AM