I’m constantly running into pushback from various voting enthusiasts about the terms “strategic”, “tactical”, “dishonest”, and “honest” voting. Arguments like “It’s just a piece of paper. If you mark it to give you your preferred outcome, then it’s honest voting.” and “If the way other voters are voting doesn’t matter, then you would just bullet vote for your favorite.” My response is typically grumbled frustration, but now I think have an actual definition of honest voting that isn’t just based on vibes:

An honest vote is the way an individual voter would vote if they assumed all candidates have roughly equal viability, regardless of the actual viability of the candidates.

I’m likely the thousandth person to think of this, but I haven’t come across it this explicitly before. What are your thoughts?

I think modern democracy would better reflect public will if it worked as a continuously updated system where citizens can adjust their policy preferences over time, rather than only expressing them every few years through elections.

The current system forces people to bundle hundreds of issues into a single vote for a party, which often means their actual views on individual policies are only partially represented.

A better model, in my view, would allow citizens to maintain an ongoing, secure policy profile that reflects their current positions. This would not require constant engagement, but would allow people to update their views whenever they choose.

Under this approach, key policy areas could include things like:

* nuclear energy expansion * tax levels (increase/decrease / maintain) * carbon pricing approaches * immigration targets * spending priorities such as healthcare, housing, defence, education, and debt

The key advantage is that it separates policy preferences from election cycles, allowing governments and policymakers to see a more accurate, real-time distribution of public opinion across issues.

A necessary feature: searchability and filtering

One major challenge would be scale. A system like this could easily contain thousands of policy questions.

To make it usable, it would need to function like a searchable interface rather than a static questionnaire. Citizens could:

* Search topics like “housing,” “taxes,” or “climate” * follow issues they care about * Update only the relevant sections of their profile when needed * Ignore topics they don’t engage with

In my view, the goal should not be constant participation, but fast and optional updating—similar to editing preferences in a profile rather than completing a survey.

Handling question framing bias

One of the biggest weaknesses in any such system is who controls the wording of questions.

If a single institution writes them, it could heavily shape outcomes through framing.

A better approach would be to allow multiple political actors (for example, registered parties or institutions) to submit their own versions of the same issue.

For example, on carbon pricing:

* “Should Canada eliminate the carbon tax to reduce the cost of living?” * “Should Canada maintain carbon pricing to reduce emissions?” * “Should Canada replace the carbon tax with an alternative system?”

All versions would remain visible, and citizens could choose which ones to answer. This would make framing differences explicit rather than hidden.

Why I think this increases democratic responsiveness

In the current system, citizens must accept a bundled set of policies when they vote, even if they strongly disagree with parts of it.

A continuous system would allow more granular expression of preferences, where policy positions are not locked in for years at a time.

This could also reduce the gap between election outcomes and actual public opinion shifts that occur between elections.

The role of the government would still be necessary

Even with continuous feedback, representative government would still matter.

Parliament and elected officials would still need to:

* negotiate and compromise * Respond to emergencies * implement policy * make decisions under uncertainty

However, they would operate with a continuously updated understanding of public preferences rather than relying primarily on election snapshots.

Key challenges

There are still serious issues that would need to be addressed:

* strong security and identity verification * question overload or redundancy across actors * uneven participation (some citizens more engaged than others) * conflicting preferences (e.g., lower taxes and higher spending) * need for strong filtering, categorization, and search tools

Final view

Overall, I believe democracy should evolve toward something more continuous and data-driven, where citizen preferences are not limited to periodic elections but are expressed in an ongoing, searchable system.

This would not eliminate representation, but it could make it significantly more responsive and reflective of real-time public opinion.

I’m not claiming this is fully workable as-is, but I do think it’s worth seriously reconsidering whether election-only democracy is still the best interface between citizens and government in a digital era.

Background

Here in Colorado we had a disappointing but predictable outcome in our election for Attorney General. We had 4 total candidates, 3 of whom are very qualified attorneys and the 4th candidate who is a term-limited Secretary of State with name recognition but is barely qualified to be the AG. The name-recognition candidate received about 45% of the votes and the other "good" candidates split the vote pretty evenly between 16% and 20%.

This election sadly illustrates there are a lot of low-information voters who just checked the box by the name they were familiar with. And the winner didn't even participate in the debates because she knew she could coast on her notoriety.

Proposal

This got me thinking, because they participated in multiple debates, I'm sure the losing candidates all knew each other very well and knew who was the most/least qualified for the job. So what if we let the candidates help decide the race after they are eliminated by allocating their losing votes, in a Ranked-Choice manner, to the person they feel should get the job? They are after all the highest-information voters in that they spend a lot of time with each other in debates and know each other's strengths and weaknesses.

Mechanics

Simply speaking, the vote occurs just like any other FPTP election. Everyone votes for their favorite candidate. If your favorite candidate loses, it's not a "throw-away" vote because that candidate gets to rank their favorites of the remaining candidates so your vote would then be transferred to the candidate of their choosing, and so on.

Example

Initial election results are as follows:

• Jena = 45% (ranks Hetal, David, Michael)
• Michael = 20% (ranks David, Hetal, Jena)
• David = 18% (ranks Hetal, Michael, Jena)
• Hetal = 16% (ranks David, Michael, Jena)

Round 2: Hetal is deemed to be in last place and her votes are sent to her highest ranked concession ranking of David.

• Jena = 45%
• David = 34%
• Michael = 20%

Round 3: Michael is out and his votes go to David and the winner is...

• David = 54%
• Jena = 45%

Variation

Instead of ranking the other candidates, each candidate might be able to distribute their votes based on percentages.

Conclusion

I don't think this is as good as RCV generally but it allows people to hold onto their stupid FPTP voting ballots until they get used to the idea of ranking. Also, I like the idea of candidates ranking each other because they tend to know each other in ways that the voters can't possibly know them.

What do you think? Has this sort of system been proposed already?

Fortunately, Alaska's elections are somewhat resistant to similar-name candidates. The top-4 primary will probably never boot a typical incumbent, and the ranking ballot will most likely sort them out.

I've been thinking a lot about a voting system that maintains single-member constituencies as an alternative to FPTP, two-round systems, IRV, etc.

I therefore opted for a system that would allow the voter to express four choices, one for each candidate, without having to vote for everyone and without using a vote transfer system or scores. So, in my system, the voter has a preferential (P) vote (for only one candidate) and can label any other candidate with accepted (A), neutral (N) or rejected (R).

During the counting each ballot is worth one vote only for each candidate, therefore the total is based on the total count of the ballots, excluding completely blank and invalid ballots.

To win, you need to obtain an absolute majority:

Round 1: We count the preferences. If no one wins, we eliminate candidates with less than 1/6 of the vote.

Round 2: We add the accepted votes to the preferences. If no one wins, we eliminate candidates with less than 1/4 of these combined votes.

Round 3: We add the neutral votes. If no one wins, we eliminate candidates with less than 1/3 of these combined votes.

Round 4: If a winner has not yet been established, the candidate with the lowest number of rejected votes wins.

If no one reaches these thresholds, the top two face off.

What do you think? I would really like to have an opinion on this system.

There are a lot of very smart political scientists finding ways to design these citizens assemblies to make them extremely democratic, representative, efficient, and effective - and they really seem to be a great way of getting us away from populism and polarisation, and towards cooperation and sincere deliberation instead.

I would much rather start transitioning governance into the hands of the people more than anything else.

If you live in the UK, and especially if you live under a Labour MP like I do, this could be the best chance we’ve had in a very long time to beat FPTP, Andy Burham has been unfortunately wishy washy but pushing for PR now by emailing labour MP’s showing how much support it really has could just be the difference between having a better voting system next election and more FPTP chaos!

Please send an email and encourage your friends to do the same! It could be the final straw that break FPTP’s back!!!!