Negative Votes

Proposal: In final popular elections, each voter has one vote as usual but can cast that vote either for a desired candidate/issue (a positive vote) or against the one they despise most (a negative vote).

This will

  1. yield near-100% voter turnouts;

  2. put an end to claims of "popular mandates" by least-of-two-evils candidates;

  3. discourage extremists.
Naturally, it will be necessary to retain the traditional "positive votes only" procedure for primaries or caucuses, since otherwise we would frequently be led by unknowns. (I generously assume that this would not be an improvement.)
Jess H. Brewer
Last modified: Sat Jun 30 21:23:35 PDT 2007