New Campaign
People are starting to digest the effects of alphabetisation on the STV Council Ballot Paper, including Grant, who now wishes to be known as Grant Aardvark-Thoms. If I were him, I'd change my first name to Abraham for maximum effect, but there you go.
Anyway, people are considering if maybe it's time to change this, and randomise the order of candidates on the ballot paper. I'm not so sure about this, I think it won't actually change anything, it'll just replace an alphabetical advantage with a completely random advantage. Others suggest having each ballot paper have the candidates in a different order. Again, I'm sceptical, as this could mean that the way someone casts a vote is determined by when they get to the polling station. But a term given for this second method is 'rotation', and that got me thinking...
What if the voters did the rotating? This blog is launching a new campaign:
The Campaign for A Circular Ballot Paper
I knocked this specimen up in a few minutes. With four years of work, and a very large research grant for me, we might just be on to something...
3 comments:
Pollsters routinely use rotation when asking questions involving multiple names eg in US primaries. It's terrifying how many people will vote for someone simply because they're near the top of a list.
And yet we still can't get a Conservative government!
Looks a wee bit like a dartboard to me- far too tempting!
Just give it slots, spin it and give the voters a wee silver ball
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