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Comment by deadringerr | Hacker News Reader

I like your points, I do think this is a big piece of the picture. I almost wish the polls let you vote either "for" a candidate or directly "against" a particular candidate - I think we'd see that many of the Trump voters would have preferred to vote "against" Clinton rather than "for" Trump.

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>I think we'd see that many of the Trump voters would have preferred to vote "against" Clinton rather than "for" Trump.

That's an odd statement to make because many Clinton voters would have also preferred to vote "against" Clinton rather than "for" Clinton.* They were part of the "Never Trump" crowd. Not pro-Hillary but very anti-Trump.

E: Typo, apologies I didn't catch it before my post delay ran out. `"for" Trump` in my post has been corrected to `"for" Clinton`.

I think I see what you're saying, though you might have meant that those who voted "for" Clinton would have rather voted "against" Trump. It's true, all variations would see votes and I think that would speak better to who actually had a larger base of people truly voting "for" the message of a candidate.

Yes, I copy/pasted then forgot to change a variable. When will coders learn, eh? :) I've fixed it and noted the fix. I also agree it would paint a more accurate political picture, less black and white.

No problem, I understood what you meant. :)

You want Range Voting, or at least Approval Voting.

http://rangevoting.org/

Stein suggested an interesting solution to this problem: https://youtu.be/py6sPkiQm8E?t=2m45s. Food for thought.

Yes, this is interesting. I'd like to see some version of this (or range voting as referred to in another comment) implemented in a state and the reactions of the population - if voters felt like this more properly reflected their opinion.

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