Coin flipping to decide elections

A 30 year old friend of mine travelled 8 hours by car from Switzerland to vote against Berlusconi. This level of voter commitment surely explains the unusually high 83.6% turnout and the media owner's remarkable failure to achieve a decisive victory.

Rennie's idea of everyone coin-flipping (a random result) in a multi-party election is an entertaining proposition and might make for some very positive change - say the election of a leader naive enough to have a new vision for how to influence people.

Without such a random element it is easy to predict more of the same in the UK... war, privatisation, student debt, longer working hours, lower real earnings for the majority and so on.

Of course, Rennie's idea could also throw up a real horror, at which point a bolt of lightning or national strike might be called for.

As for the tiny margins between recent election winners and losers, might not shifting rules on who is entitled to vote, the 'flexibility' of electronic voting, and the media's premature announcement of results (Florida 2000, FOX NEWS) have something to do with it?

Ends | 23 Apr 2006 | The Leg

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