I would like the ability to cast negative votes. As you might of guessed negative votes would subtract a vote from a candidate's total as opposed to traditional votes that add to a candidate's total.
The current voting system assumes that the voter has a strong favorable opinion of one candidate. This works well when there are only two candidates to choose from. However, more often than not, especially in local elections there are multiple candidates with similar opinions competing against one strong candidate with opposing views.
For example, consider a scenario in which there is one conservative candidate and two liberal candidates with similar views running for office. The conservative candidate gets 40% of the votes and the liberal candidates split the balance (35% for one and 25% for the other). In this scenario the conservative candidate would win even though 60% of the population voted liberal.
Negative votes would give the indifferent liberal voter the ability to vote against the conservative candidate without diluting the two liberal candidates who share views similar to his own.
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You illustrate the problem with our current voting system. However, even your proposed system breaks down in a multi-party environment.
There are other, more elegant systems where you can assign an order of preference to candidates. You simply create the list of people you wanted to vote for, in order of preference. That way, people who want to vote for 3rd party candidates can, and yet still list the major party candidate second.
Every voting system has its problems. Under your proposal, say the election pits a Democrat, a Republican and an Neo-nazi against each other. The Democrat gets 49% voting for and another 49% voting against him. The Rebublican also gets 49% for and 49% against. I assume you understand how this could happen. The Neo-nazi can then win the election with only 2% of the vote! Of course these numbers are unrealistically extreme, but you can see how the results could certainly misrepresent the "will of the people."
The result would be a nearly random winner, based on what voters thought they needed to do to stall each candidate. It would be fun, though.
In the realm of business such as when making choices in the free market, we are never compelled to buy anything we don’t choose, so there is no such thing as an “anti-purchase.” If you can’t stand the taste of Brand X Margarine, you just don’t buy it. There is no chance that Brand X will wind up on your pancake unless you act to put it there. You don’t need to pull Brand X in the shelves. Nor would you have much reason to do so, since friends or relatives might like it.Recently, in a crowd sourcing IDEA website this adapted voting system seems turn off the crowd created factionalism and mob rule elite that shows how the site of good ideas is being bastardized by negative voting. Imagine am umderdog or good idea coming from behind being block by minus one minus 2 to his total votes while the instigator is racking up plus 4 pts each to his supporters that was pathetic yet they branded it as wisdom of the crowd.