> The first vote for a candidate costs one credit. But casting two votes for a single candidate costs four credits (ie, two squared); casting three costs nine (three squared), and so on.

This is not as bad as I imagined from the title. A lot of alternative voting systems that people like (e.g. ranked choice) are too complicated, and I think it's important for legitimacy that a voting process be so simple that even stupid or uninterested people can understand the mechanism completely. In this proposal, a winner is still determined by simple counting, and the more complicated part is entirely exposed to individual voters.

Though with anything that makes voting for alternatives easier, I think something would have to be done to limit the explosion of candidates to a reasonably small number that a voter can realistically consider, like 5 or 10.