[b]Greetings[/b]

Yesterday I discussed how to improve the current voting system that we currently use in erepublik, this can be found here.Today I conclude my two part article with an [b]alternative[/b]  way to have a fairer vote that will represent in my opinion the voting community better.

[b][u]The current voting system?[/u][/b]

For  elections, it’s First-Past-The-Post. The candidate who gets the most votes in their constituency is elected as the congressman.If the elections end up as a draw the player with the most experience gets into congress.

[b][u]The Alternative Vote.[/u][/b]

The Alternative Vote - widely referred to as AV - system sees voters rank candidates in order of preference. Anyone getting more than 50% of votes in the first round in a constituency is elected as MP. If that doesn’t happen, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and their second choices allocated to the remaining candidates. If one candidate then has more than 50% of the votes in this round they are elected. If not, the remaining candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and their second preferences (or third preferences if they were the second choice of someone who voted for the first candidate to be eliminated) reallocated. This continues until one candidate has 50% or more of the vote in that round.

[b][u]How would this of changed the last congress elections?[/u][/b]

The AV would of changed the congress elections phenomenally in terms of how actually got a place in congress, I doubt very much the amount of votes would of changed. In last months elections no region finished with the winning candidates having more than 50% of the votes. Since the original is used when there is only one candidate in each constituency, I have adopted the same principle but made the notion “erepublik friendly”.

[b][u]The Multiple Alternative Vote[/u][/b

This system has the initial aspects of the normal version of the AV but instead of just the one winner, we have a number of winners ; hence multiple.For example we take British Columbia, which has 3 seats last month (due to the wild card) each of theses 3 candidates would of will need at least 50% of the  votes to begin with.If this is managed by the leader ( the person with the most votes) then he/she is granted their place in congress and secondary votes are distributed , if that doesn’t happen then the candidate with the least amount of votes is eliminated and their secondary votes and re-distributed like a normal AV system would work. If one candidate then has more than 50% of the votes in this round they are elected and there secondary votes are distributed (or third preferences if they were the second choice of someone who voted for the first candidate to be eliminated).If not then the next candidate with the lowest votes are eliminated.This will continue until all the available congress seats are taken in that region.

Did you get all that?
Yes this system can be seen as complicated but you wont need to know the above in detail, your job is to just tick boxes to personal preference.Lets face it if you can’t count up to 10 then you might find this difficult. MAV eliminates the need for this tactical voting as first-choice candidates can be backed without fear of a wasted vote and discourages negative campaigning as candidates need to secure the second-choice votes of others.