HOW TO GET RID OF
NEGATIVE CAMPAIGNING

You see it every election year: One faction tries to get more votes for itself by telling bad things about its opponent(s). This includes the following:

• The candidate telling something bad about an opponent at a press conference.
• A candidate makes a political ad telling bad things about opponents.
• A political party makes negative ads about the opposing party.
• Political actions committees (PACs) make negative advertising about candidates or parties.
• Reporters unscrupulously report negative items about parties for personal gain.
• Often the negative items reported about candidates or parties are not true.

How can we get rid of this negative campaigning?

• There is only one way:
• Make negative campaigning hurt only the campaigner, not any opponent.

There is only one way to make this happen:

• Voting against one candidate must not increase any opponent's votes.

How can this be achieved?

• Two things must be done:
  1. The Plurality Voting System (vote for only one) used in most places must be permanently abolished.
  2. The Independent Voting System (vote on each choice separately) must be adopted into law.

1. The voter has 3 choices for each candidate: YES, NO, and ABSTAIN.
2. The default if the voter does nothing is always ABSTAIN.
3. On a lever machine, a three position control is used for each candidate (at right).
4. Each paper ballot candidate has YES and NO check boxes.
5. Checking neither or both check boxes is ABSTAIN.
6. Computer ballots, like paper ballots, would have YES and NO buttons for each candidate.
7. There is no interlocking of votes between candidates.
8. Each candidate's score is his YES votes minus his NO votes.
9. The candidate with the highest positive score wins.

With the Plurality Voting System, a vote with no YES vote for an office is not counted at all.

With the Independent Voting System, all votes except ABSTAIN votes are counted:

1. Voting NO for one candidate does not mean that the voter must vote YES for another.
2. Any voter can vote NO for both the negative campaigner and his target and have the votes count.
3. No candidate gains any YES votes because one candidate gets more NO votes.
4. The negative campaigner's candidate does not benefit from the negative campaign.

Thus, the Independent Voting System can prevent most negative campaigning.

It cannot prevent a Political Action Committee (PAC) from acting against a candidate because it does not like the beliefs of that candidate.

It cannot prevent a Political Action Committee (PAC) from acting against a party for the same reason.

But the PAC still does not gain any votes for other candidates from its negative campaigning.