A new proposed amendment that proposes a national change from first past the post voting to alternative or rank choice voting.

1. Voting
Amendment
By: Eric Gruel

2. Preamble
1. The United States, composed of all 50 states, shall have all elections of federal standing to
be elected by the people, and to distribute all the votes in the voting system of Alternative
vote.
2. When voting, those who have chosen to not participate in the activity will be fined. In
compensation for this required activity, Voting Day will become a National Holiday for
those whom have not the time.
3. Gerrymandering, and the corporation that comes with voting system borders, shall be
outlawed and if found to be partaking in the activity, shall have the importance and be
treated as a felony. Voting borders will be determined through the Shortest Split Line
Method.

3. Preamble pt. 2
● The goal of this amendment is to bring the prosperity and equality of all groups and
people’s voices in the political hemisphere and to completely eliminate the spoiler effect.
● This amendment relates to every amendment that includes the act of voting, which
includes the 14th amendment and 17th amendment.
● This topic has been an issue ever since democracy and voting were established in
America, and frankly, the entire world.
● And it started due to the need of a voting system and the ease of what may be the worst
voting system of all, First Past the Post.
● The issue started when people started to realize the horrible in the quality of the First
Past the Post voting system and decided to create new ways of voting leading to the
creation of the alternative vote. However ever since, this issue has been a hotly debated
topic with some states and even cities adopting this better voting system.

4. Main Argument
● A healthy democracy requires many things, one of which being multiple parties running candidates for office, however, it can
quickly devolved into two party rule, with the citizens not liking either candidate but trapped within the system because of a
problem called the spoiler effect. What can started this problem? Well, I’ll tell you, it’s the First Past the Post Voting System.
● What’s the difference? With the first past the post voting system, most of the citizens will vote for the big parties, so people will
think it’s going to be a close race between the biggest parties. While some may be indifferent toward one party, they maybe afraid
of another party. Because they can only pick a single candidate, they will give their vote to the one who they dislike the least. This
is strategic voting, and it’s a necessity under First Past the Post.
● But the Alternative Vote. Instead of picking one and only one candidate, they can rank them in order of his most favorite to his
least.
● And so, in order to fully understand this, CGP Grey has a lovely example of how a election will go,
● And how the vote will go is: Candidate A, beloved though he is with some of the citizenry, comes in last place with only 5% and he
is eliminated from the race. Because the voters ranked their candidates in order, we can know what would have happened if A
didn’t run. Without A, voters would have picked Candidate B instead, so their votes are transferred to her as though A was never
in the race at all.
● The Alternative Vote method keeps eliminating the least popular candidate until someone either wins a majority or is the only one
left.
● While the Alternative Vote does have flaws it’s important to note that any problem AV has, first past the post shares.
● Alternative Vote has a huge advantage that first past the post lacks and makes it a mathematically superior method: no spoiler
effect! And so, this should be why we use AV.

5. ● Gerrymandering in 2006 USA is enormous and pervasive. It appears to be more severe than in any
other major democracy.
● Gerrymandering can lead to near-permanent 1-party domination and essentially eliminate voter choice.
● A simple cure is to draw all districts with the shortest splitline algorithm involving
approximately-bisecting a state's population with the shortest eligible splitting line, and then continuing
recursively on the resulting hemi-states.
● This way all districts have simple shapes, are completely unbiased, are easily independently checked, it
costs virtually nothing to draw them, and you don't have to trust anybody. Pictures for all 50 states
based on US Census data.
● Experimental fact: "Independent" and "bi-partisan" district-drawing commissions often do not work to
stop gerrymandering.

6. ● Making it mandatory would lead to greater political awareness, because many people are disengaged with politics, it is shown
through shockingly low turnout figures both on a local and national level. Making voting mandatory however, would increase
people’s political awareness, even if it were only as superficially as knowing the country’s major parties and their broad
policies.
● It would also signify greater civic engagement, because greater participation would reduce the growing sense of isolation that
many people today feel with politics. It would ensure that more people were involved in the election of lawmakers, and through
a process of participation it would increase the likelihood that such laws and regulations would be complied with.
● Mandatory voting doesn’t infringe on your liberties, and to see this, current practices in countries operating under mandatory
voting systems provide some insight into what its introduction to the US might look like. According to the NY TIMES In
Australia, you have to show up to cast your ballot or be levied with a modest fine. Indeed, if you want to cast a blank ballot in
order to express your dissatisfaction with any of the given candidates you’re entirely at liberty to do so. Granted, being obliged
to show up and cast a ballot it infringes on ‘one’s individual autonomy to be left alone’, but the end result absolutely justifies the
means.
● It might just stop terrible political decisions from being made, like how in the U.K., most who voted to leave in June’s EU
referendum thought that the UK wouldn’t actually leave and that there was just a protest vote. And so if mandatory voting had
been in effect it’s highly probable that swing voters would have cast their ballot and made the crucial difference, saving the
country potentially years of future pain
● One way of making it so that the people have time to vote is to make Election Day a National Holiday so that all people can
come to vote without worrying about jobs or work.