Although only tangentially related to this article, the big thing I see missing from discussions of voting systems in the US (and UK) is the fact that you are only allowed to express a single top preference for one candidate.<p>What is the Buchanan supporter to do in 2000? Vote for their top preference in the knowledge that they have no chance of getting elected (given that he is well behind in third or worse place in the polls), or vote for their least worst candidate from the two front runners.<p>If instead, the voter was allowed rank their candidates in order of preference, with their vote going to their #2 preference after Buchanan is eliminated, their voting intent could be clearly recorded.<p>Imagine if there was no need for republican or democrat primaries, as each party could field multiple candidates, as e.g. all republican votes would still end up going to the top republican candidate after less popular (to the public) republican candidates are eliminated.<p>The system I'm most familiar with which implements this is Single Transferrable Vote [1] and isn't a pipe dream but is used effectively in multiple countries (albeit not in a presidential vote that I know of).<p>If such a system were in place in the US I believe it would reduce the extreme polarisation that is obvious to me in U.S politics and also I think could enable a third major party to grow slowly over the course of multiple election cycles, or indeed make it conceivable that e.g. (current election) a major pro-immigration faction within the Republican Party could split to form a new party without the prospect of electoral annihilation, which I believe is why that is inconceivable.<p>There are degrees of democracy and for me the STV system is just vastly more democratic, more akin to how people initially express their ideal position at the start of a debate, but then <i>still get a say</i> as the debate progresses and they realise they need to compromise and support the next best outcome of their first preference is untenable to a majority of others.<p>[edit]
To get back to the point of the article, I think that entering '1', '2', '3' beside candidates names is a lot clearer than the traditional tick or 'X' (which could be reasonably interpreted to mean NOT this candidate!). Filling up every space with a number is a great way to ensure someone can't easily modify/spoil your vote by e.g. adding an extra 'x' in one of the remaining empty spaces.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote</a>