r/gato

Single Transferable Vote - STV - Ranked voting.

I appreciate this isn't a meme or anything like that. I also appreciate that this is my perspective, but it's one that all I can do is promise you is thoroughly grounded.

There's a way to make it so that the likes of Nigel Farage can never get into power and that's with something called Single Transferable Vote.

It's a voting mechanism where you rank your preferences from your most preferred candidate to your least preferred candidate. Then with everyone's voting considered all candidates go head to head as if their first choice is counted and the lowest scorer is knocked out - then those folks who's preferred candidate was knocked out then gets their next choices considered and the votes are distributed that way.

There's better explanations of it out there, but that's the tldr. The point is that what ends up happening is that the final candidate/s are the most representative of the actual population. It basically kills any possibility of polarisation or demagoguery. The final winners of such an election is the most agreeable outcome for the most amount of people.

In two party systems like what we have with first-past-the-post, politics will naturally gravitate towards bonkers extremes - whether thats with big brother surveillance Labour or the Billionaire serving Conservatives. With STV you'd get a system where if politicians wanted to keep their jobs they'd actually have to be really damn good at it.

Another advantage to it is that because it requires knowing what each of the candidates stand for, engaging with it kinda requires knowing what your actually voting for (so basically, if you're too much of a dumb cunt to consider what it is your actually voting for, this system will naturally put you off from engaging so you won't jeopardise everyone elses lives because of your half witted moronic shit for brains voting for a fascist mother russia loving fuckface).

I just wanted to put it out there because I think more people should know about it.

Farage wants electoral reform but it's a reform that can be used to manipulate the masses into keeping himself in power - his demagoguery will be rewarded - it's a reform that will serve him. To be fair, we do need electoral reform, but it should be one that serves us and the British people. STV serves the people, and forces the politicians to actually do their fucking jobs - they'll never vote for it in a two party system as they'd be voting for their own loss of control.