One of the things that bugs me about the current voting system is how it discourages voting for 3rd party candidates if there is a primary candidate that you fear getting elected. I'm not sure if it would be feasible or possible, but I'd love if they changed the voting system to resemble something like this. You give each candidate on the ballot, as well as any write-ins, a rating, a number between 5 and -5. Negative ratings indicate that you do not want that candidate to some degree, positive ratings indicate you do want a candidate to some degree. Only a single candidate may be given the positive 5 rating per voter's ballot, although you don't have to give any of them such a rating, if you don't like any of the candidates. Theoretically, such negative ratings on all candidates on the ballot might wind up causing a write-in that most people are unaware of to even be capable of being elected, if all the normal candidates have negative ratings. If you don't care either way for a candidate, your rating for them could be a 0. To determine who is elected, they average the ratings given to the candidates by all the voters, and whomever has the highest average wins. For instance, someone who wants to vote for 'Awesome' Party Candidate 'Jack Rakan' may rate him a 5, but they don't want 'Evil' Party Candidate 'Darth Sidious' to win, so they rate Darth Sidious a -5. 'Lesser-Evil' Party is known to be more likely to win than Awesome Party, and they are would like to give such a decent chance, especially against Darth Sidious' crazed masses of supporters, so they give Lesser-Evil party's candidate 'Dark Schneider' a 2. This is much better than the current two party system, where you might be stuck between the choice of taking votes away from Lesser-Evil by voting for Awesome, in such a way that Evil would win if you vote for Awesome, and even though more than 60% of the public might prefer awesome to win, they aren't organized and aware of each-other enough to properly avoid voting for the 2nd Lesser-Evil party, as Awesome party has never won before and doesn't even get invited to debates by the Evil and Lesser-Evil controlled Main-Stream media. Also, fictional character political polling as a joke: Richard Wilkins III (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) (-2) Darth Sidious (Star Wars) (-5) Elizibeth Weir (Stargate: Atlantis) (4) Homer Simpson (Simpsons) (-3) Denny Crane (Boston Legal) (3) Jean-Luc Picard (Star Trek: The Next Generation) (3) Clark Kent (Superman) (4) Tony Stark (Iron Man) (1) Jim Raynor (Starcraft) (2) Amelia Bones (Harry Potter) (3) Princess Zelda (Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time) (5)
