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It's great that you include so many links, so people can read more about what you are talking about.

I have a few questions, which would help me understand your solution better. Before I ask them, I want to briefly feed back to you what I think you are suggesting -- that way you can correct me where I'm making assumptions or misreading you.

What makes these other voting methods true "alternatives" to plurality voting is that they all essentially allow people to vote for more than one candidate. So with approval voting, you can vote your "approval" for as many candidates as you approve of. With condorcet voting, you rank the candidates. With emocracy, you give each candidate a score that reflects your approval or disapproval. By giving people the option of supporting multiple candidates, you essentially eliminate the spoiler phenomenon that makes third party candidates (like Ralph Nader) into scapegoats. People would be able to vote for both the third party candidate (who they like better) and the more "mainstream" candidate (so as not to "waste" their vote and elect the opposition).

I can see how this would directly lead to two of your predictions --

• There could be much more than two frontrunners.
• People would have more the impression that voting actually helps: they would be able to better express themselves at the ballot box.

But I didn't immediately see how it would lead to another of your points:

• Political smear wouldn't work anymore, because, with more candidates to smear, it would become a weapon with a very dangerous double edge.

After I thought about it for a minute, I think I can see your logic. Negative campaigning would backfire because it drives down not just your opponent's approval, but yours as well, thereby inadvertently bolstering the other candidates. In a two-way race, it pays to make your opponent look 10 times worse, even if you make yourself look 9 times worse. But not in a multi-person field.

I think you overstate this particular impact, if I've guessed your thinking correctly. It would definitely cut down on negative campaigning a great deal, but probably wouldn't eliminate it. While some races might become three, four, or five way without the constraints of plurality voting, many would still have one or two frontrunners, with enough of a popularity cushion above the others so that it would pay to attack each other.

One theme that you touch on, but don't go into, is the connection between money and getting elected. You talk about the advantage of the incumbency, and a significant part of that advantage is the money they can raise from lobbyists. You talk about the pervasiveness of corruption. You talk about how hard it is for non-wealthy candidates to have a chance.

How would changing the election system change the connection between money and politics? Wouldn't incumbents still be able to outspend their rivals, trying to game whatever the new system was? I can see many of the advantages in the systems you suggest, but I'm not sure how changing the rules of the game in these ways will change the fact that some people will have more money to spend in coming up with winning strategies, whatever the rules are.

I'm not suggesting that these changes wouldn't make a positive difference -- just asking how they would change that one dimension of the problem, since you mention it several times.

I'd also like to know more about your longer term vision for this issue. If enough people get informed about voting system alternatives, try them out, etc. what would you hope would happen next? What are the advocacy groups you have listed trying to do? Change the rules state by state, or city by city? I think it's very good that you list concrete things that people can do, but it would also be good to lay out where those steps might lead down the line.

Thanks for posting this. It really is an important issue for people to think about.