How About Negative Voting?

George Leef didn’t like the idea of compelling students to vote, but he is pondering whether voters should be allowed to cast a “negative” vote. In a commentary on the web site of The Future of Freedom Foundation, Leef proposed to increase election participation by allowing voters to register their dissatisfaction with a candidate by casting a “negative” vote that is subtracted from the candidate’s “positive” vote total. “ For each candidate, a net support total would be calculated by subtracting the ‘Against’ votes from the ‘For’ votes. The winner would be the candidate with the highest amount of net support,” he wrote.