I like the idea of negative votes.

Mathematically it’s just scale, but psychologically very satisfying, might overcome some apathy.

The mechanics of the voting trouble me. They have to be simple and infallible, such that there’s no chance of someone accidentally scoring two people the same, or scoring them wrongly (for them). They have to be physical, to eliminate the possibility of electronic/digital systems being subverted — there’s a reason why the World still uses paper ballots … and it’s a good one.

I initially imagined a grid … candidates left-to-right, positive-to-negative from top-to-bottom — it’s intuitive. But how to prevent someone inadvertently scoring two candidates the same eludes me, so it clearly isn’t adequate.

Perhaps a better solution would be separate slots in a booth, ordered numerically and each voter has a card for each candidate, which they insert into their chosen slot — once inserted, the slot closes, so that duplicates are impossible.

Don’t know … needs work.

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Also there’s the matter of illiteracy/innumeracy to consider: putting one, and only one, cross next to the picture of your one, and only one, chosen candidate ensures that nobody is disadvantaged … whereas my suggestion introduces a potential risk of the less cognitively adept being so.

Needs work.

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It is still deckchair rearrangement though.

Yes … marshaling the human race to behave sensibly is like herding cats.

But I’m not convinced it will ever be otherwise, so I figure we just have to make the best of it that we can.

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You sold me on the idea of party abolition a few years back. The objection most commonly raised is that it is a politico’s solution. We’re looking to remove tribalism from the system, but is that what attracts most people?

If they can’t define themselves as red or blue or whatever (maybe brexit has mixed that up a bit), would they care?

I guess the candidates would really have to work for it, make an impression, which is good

I don’t think it would eliminate tribalism entirely, no … people will still be subject to in-group peer-pressure and might very well still end up voting for that nice Mr. Disraeli, or that funny Boris Johnson (he’s such a card).

And I don’t, for a moment, allow myself to fantasise that, once elected, MPs wouldn’t form cliques — of course they would … that’s what political parties are.

There’ll still be those prone to graft, duplicity, blackmail, etc. … or even simply peer-pressure — if you’re the only holdout in a room of six hundred people booing and jeering, it’s hard to stand your ground, even if they aren’t part of some unofficial ‘gang’ (just like at school).

But, given the laws of Systemantics, I’m not deluded enough to think that a perfect system can be devised such that there are no unexpected outputs and am, instead, simply looking to limit the negative ones. And to that end, therefore, whilst cliques cannot be guaranteed to be eliminated, at least what I’m suggesting makes it impossible for someone else to decide how much power your chosen candidate wields — there’s no leader, so they can’t whip others into line … they can’t limit the power of MPs to griping on the back-benches and suggesting motions of no confidence, because they have no power to do so … they can’t determine the agenda, because they have no more power to do so than any other MP.

I’s not perfect, no … but that’s why I posted it, warts and all: the more people discuss it, the more potential problems can be spotted and the system designed to ameliorate them.

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