Weighted voting plays into both business and government.

When voting is mentioned in the United States, it’s a fair assumption that most people take that to mean that one person equals a single vote. After all, it’s the foundation of our system of democracy, right?

Well, sort of.

While most political elections in the U.S. today are determined by a one person-one vote system, it’s important to remember that weighted voting, in which not all votes are considered equal, has played and does play a large part in how decisions in both government and business are made.
One of most important elections in the U.S.  – that for president – is by weighted voting via the Electoral College, in which the number of delegates each state has toward the decision for president is based on a state’s population. Higher population states boast more delegates, and thus carry more weight in the final tally of Electoral College votes. It’s the reason a candidate can earn more popular votes than their opponent and still lose the election based on Electoral College votes as happened in both the 2000 and 2016 elections.

Outside of politics, weighted voting is a significant part of the way many businesses work when dealing with shareholder votes. Because a share in a company denotes the ownership of a “piece” of that company, those who own more shares own more of the company. Therefore, they’re sometimes granted more power in decisions that are put the shareholders – such as whether to engage in a stock split or merge with another company.
When it comes to tallying those votes and accounting for the different values they can represent, it’s important to have a reliable vote management system, such as TownVOTE, in place.