Allocation voting
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Allocation voting is any voting system in which voters are assigned a number of "points" or other unit of account, and are expected to allocate these among a number of alternatives. Unlike preference voting the numbers do not represent ranks but weights.
As a simple example, a system might allocate each voter five points or votes and permit them to apply them to a number of candidates for office. A more complex example might permit both positive and also negative votes, so that disapproval voting was also supported in the same system. asasally, an approval voting scheme is just an allocation voting scheme where each voter has as many votes as there are options, and can allocate only one vote to each such option.
[edit] Issues
Allocation systems tend to encourage bid and ask thinking and may be more applicable to situations where tolerances and preferences are entwined very deeply. According to some ethicists, such as Jane Jacobs, such entwined situations are inherently symptoms of corruption. Put more simply: by encouraging voters to think in terms of tradeoffs, they abandon moral codes and think in terms more of advantage, encouraging what Jacobs calls the "Trader Ethic" moral syndrome. This she contrasts to the "Guardian Ethic" of leaders and moral examples, in which tradeoffs are not up to the voter but the leader, who is trusted to make very difficult moral decisions, such as when to lie to the public. Her view is best described as "classical" as it builds on observations on these matters back at least to Plato and Confucius.
By contrast, the neoclassical mindset tends to accept the substitution of market systems for command hierarchy as a general optimization, and is more accepting of such methods as an allocation voting scheme.
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