Talk:Weighted voting

2016 comment

In June of 2016, the article claims that weighted voting is used in the United States Electoral College. I disagree. Or, put another way, if weighted voting is used is the Electoral College, then it is also used in both houses of the U.S. Congress. --Mpb2 (talk) 19:49, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

• Under a strict enough definition, I think the EC shouldn't count, because American states don't actually cast votes for the president, but rather electors, who can break their individual pledges to vote for a given candidate. But setting that small caveat aside, the EC is much more like the other weighted systems in the article than a typical legislative body (such as the Senate) is. That's because a given Senate vote on a bill is fundamentally separate from the elections that put those senators into power. Neither vote was officially weighted -- each citizen in a state had the same weight as other citizens, and each Senator the same as others. Of course, considering the two in combination, it looks an awful lot like a resident of a small state has a heavier vote than one in a large state. But a key distinction is that individual senators are free to act one way or the other. It would be different if all bills were put to a national public vote that gave every state exactly two votes on the issue (or every congressional district, with their unequal populations, exactly one) but the Senate and House as they exist don't hold truly weighted votes. ± Lenoxus (" *** ") 19:13, 13 October 2017 (UTC)

• @Lenoxus: I agree that the outcome of an EC or a legislative body is extremely important, but to tell you the truth, when political scientists and political technologists use the term "weighted vote", they usually don't talk about those usual situations in the world when say an upper chamber of parliament has the same number of members per region regardless of region's population quantity (like US Senate or to a lesser extent the US EC). When we say "weighted vote" we usually mean a now extremely rare or non-existing but historically widespread situations when say a richer person in the same area had a right to more ballots than a poor person and so on. Like a public commercial company, as the lead of this article now states. So to speak, to make the concept more precise we exclude typical situations that can be claimed not having a relation to weighted vote. --95.24.73.208 (talk) 07:21, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

• @Mpb2: You are correct. The EC has nothing to do with the weighted vote whatsoever. --95.24.73.208 (talk) 07:06, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

Sections are unclear and confusing

What is the Weighted voting games section getting at? Then the The notion of power section uses that to make some other obscure point. Can someone with expertise in gaming clear this all up? What is [6: 5, 3, 2] for example? And who/what is P₁? Thanks — Iadmc♫^talk  21:47, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

Weighted Voting in modern times

Weighted voting is used municipally in some areas of the USA and Canada. It has also been a consistent proposal in electoral reform debates in Canada. This is more or less just a reminder to myself to come back to this page later. Wilson (talk) 01:15, 2 November 2024 (UTC)