Quadratic Voting

The Best Political System to Never Exist

A few weeks ago, I was hiking with my friend Liv while chatting about politics, because unlike the majority of Americans, I actually have a friends group that can discuss political differences of opinion without losing our goddamn minds. It’s good to take the high-level abstract approach in discussions like these, so it’s not entirely surprising that Liv eventually asked me what one change I would make in the government if I had the hypothetical opportunity to do so. I told her it would be to implement a system of quadratic voting, because that would solve 99% of our political problems. I also told her, more or less, that despite being objectively the best form of democracy we could ever implement, this voting system would never be adopted in real life because it’s also too complicated for 99% of the population to easily understand.

I don’t tend to make bold dramatic statements like that without being extremely sure of myself, so you may be wondering why I would hold that opinion. To explain that, I first need to explain what I find awful about our current democratic process.

It’s 2024 right now, and every four years, we gather up to do the same old nonsense of electing a President. This inevitably works as follows. First we run the political primaries, in which the presidential nominees are chosen. In order to appeal to the maximum number of voters in their political party, they adopt political platforms that maximize Republican or Democrat support. In other words, they must become the perfect centrist opinion - the one that no true Republican/Democrat can truly disagree with. But not the perfect centrist for society at large, that would be much too reasonable a choice. They must become the perfect centrist opinion of their respective political parties - either the blue team or the red team.

This is why every November, we never end up being asked to vote for a reasonable Democrat or Republican. Instead we get a choice between two different yet both completely insane candidates: both of whom are flawlessly inhuman amalgamations of their own political parties respective think tanks. The Left Wing candidate will inevitably support an end to racism (applicable to qualified minorities only), fighting climate change (except no nuclear power), and BIPOC being legally allowed to shoot police officers without any repercussions. The Right Wing candidate will inevitably support free speech (except for their enemies), promoting a local economy (while giving tax breaks to globalists), and police officers being legally allowed to shoot BIPOC without any repercussions. It’s all so tiresome. Instead of being able to choose a candidate with reasonable centrist views, we get insane left-wing or insane right-wing geriatric extremists.

Quadratic voting is designed to mitigate this push towards extremism by converting your vote into 25 points of “purchasing power” which you spend to support your candidates. This “purchasing power” is spent on multiple votes. That means you don’t have to support just one candidate: if there are multiple candidates that you favor, you can divide your purchasing power between them. That way, even if your first choice doesn’t win, you would still be helping to get your second or third-choice candidate in office.

Here’s the catch: quadratic voting costs go up the more votes you spend on a single candidate. The cost of voting for a candidate is the number of votes you spend, squared. For example, suppose you’re the kind of extremist who votes for the leading candidate all the time. You’re either a “Vote Blue No Matter Who” type of Democrat or a “God-Emperor Trump Messiah” type of Republican. In this scenario, nothing stops you from spending all your points on either Biden or Trump. However, it will cost you all 25 points for 5 votes, because 5 times 5 equals 25.

5 x 5 = 25 points total (for 5 Trump votes)

However, suppose that you’re a more eclectic voter like me. You might see the parallels between Donald Trump’s protectionism and Andrew’s Yang’s strong social safety net as both being a way to mitigate the effects of job loss in a steadily weakening economy. So you decide to break down your vote a bit. You spend 16 points to get 4 votes for Trump (because 4 times 4 equals 16) and you spend the remaining 9 points to get 3 votes for Yang (because 3 times 3 equals 9). You’ve still spent the same number of points but you were able to get more with them because of your frugality and willingness to compromise instead of blowing your wad all on one politician.

4 x 4 = 16 points (for 4 Trump votes)

3 x 3 = 9 points (for 3 Yang votes)

16 + 9 = 25 points total

But suppose that you’re even more nuanced, and you slightly favor Trump but also want to give some other conservatives in the party a reasonable chance to win. Also, you have a slight affinity for angry populist firebrands. In that case, you would distribute your vote a bit more equally, spending 9 points of voting power to get 3 votes for Trump, another 9 points to get 3 votes for Yang, spending 4 points to get 2 votes for Ron Desantis. Then you would spend your remaining points to get 1 vote for Vivek Ramaswamy (1 point), 1 vote for Bernie Sanders (1 point), and 1 vote for Kanye West (1 point). It all still adds up to 25 points of voting power.

3 x 3 = 9 points (for 3 Trump votes)

3 x 3 = 9 points (for 3 Yang votes)

2 x 2 = 4 points (for 2 Desantis votes)

1 x 1 = 1 point (for 1 Ramaswamy vote)

1 x 1 = 1 point (for 1 Sanders vote)

1 x 1 = 1 point (for 1 West vote)

9 + 9 + 4 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 25 points total

This is a very efficient vote economy, but that’s a good thing. If you take the time to research the issues in such depth that you see what each candidate brings to the table instead of knee-jerk voting for “Our Guy” then I fully support you in that. We need less political polarization, and the fact that you can see the unique merits and drawbacks of each candidate is great.

But maybe you’re not into Democrats. That’s a valid preference. Not everybody wants to be a centrist, and that’s perfectly OK. Maybe your political views align almost entirely with the existing Republican party and you legitimately favor Trump, but you want to give some other candidates a chance rather than just Donald. (And maybe you want to toss a bone to Yang, simply for being such an unconventional candidate.) Quadratic voting supports this approach too. You could spend 9 points of voting power to get 3 Donald Trump votes, and then spend 4 votes of voting power respectively on Ron Desantis, Vivek Ramaswamy, Kanye West, and Andrew Yang.

3 x 3 = 9 points (for 3 Trump votes)

2 x 2 = 4 points (for 2 Desantis votes)

2 x 2 = 4 points (for 2 Ramaswamy votes)

2 x 2 = 4 points (for 2 West votes)

2 x 2 = 4 points (for 2 Yang votes)

9 + 4 + 4 + 4 + 4 = 25 points total

Now some might suggest that this is unfair, because people who spread their points out more get more votes. But this is compensated by the fact that each of these votes has less power due to the fact that they are being diluted. For example, you could in theory vote in an election with twenty-five candidates and support each of them equally by getting a single vote for each. But if you do that, what have you really accomplished? Supporting everybody equally is the same thing as not voting at all. The candidate with the most votes still wins. The main benefit to quadratic voting is that if your first choice doesn’t win, then your second and third choices still matter. This minimizes the chance that America will end up being run by an angry lunatic or senile buffoon. Additionally, it limits the amount of angry political dialogue normal people can have because now when people ask you “Whom did you vote for?” instead of saying Biden or Trump (potentially triggering an angry reaction) you actually have to have a nuanced discussion of how you broke your vote down and why. This encourages people to communicate with each other about politics instead of just virtue-signalling that they are on The Correct Team.

Unfortunately, the chance of this system ever being implemented is effectively zero, since even the act of explaining it to you involved several pages of math. So until every single person in the United States is educated enough to understand this article, we will never see such a beautiful system in existence, and I will only ever be able to fantasize about it privately while out in the woods with my hiking partners, where there is no danger of my subversive political views being overheard.