What you are seeking is proportionality: both in a given multi-winner election (the example of two senators) and over time in a single-winner election (the cookie example). The former usually gets a lot more attention, and I’m glad to see somebody recognizing the the latter. Instead of your cookie example I recommend the office-lunch example: a bunch of colleagues go to work every day, or every Friday, and vote on a restaurant. What makes the office-lunch example superior is not just familiarity, but the fact that co-workers

1. have freedom of association

2. want to maintain good relations

Everyone recognizes the situation immediately and sees likely solutions.

Time-based proportionality is good for colleauges, but less obviously so for a political district. Political elections occur over longer time scales, and people practice *geographic sorting*—moving to places that suit them.

The fundamental problems of the current choose-one Plurality Voting (COPV) are

1. Voters express too little information (the absolute minimum, in fact)

2. The winning threshold is a mere plurality (unlike in papal elections, which go for infinite rounds until a candidate receives a majority)

COPV is thus vulnerable to vote splitting, so we get the two-party system, which means too few candidates to provide real choice and produce a true centrist winner.

The simplest, cleanest solution is to rate each candidate on a scale of X to Y. This enables multiple candidates, because now similar candidates are no longer competing for that single “vote” from the same constituency. The big question then is: What scale?

I also often use a computer-image metaphor, and lead with this question: What is the best bit depth for a monitor? Answer: it depends. For an airport display, monochrome might be enough. For image work, 32-bit color. For most office work, 8-bit would probably be fine. Similarly, for most large political elections, rating 0/1 is sufficient, whereas an HOA or business procurement team might want 0..10. 0/1 is called Approval Voting—thumbs up or down on every candidate, highest approval rating wins. Besides being simplest, AV can be used with our current ballots, or a simple show of hands.

In political voting, as anyone with practical experience will tell you, simplicity counts for a *lot*. One reason is voter understanding and faith in the system, which is why your noise method is DOA.

I’m not sure what community to direct you to. For years, creative voting methods were studied and discussed by The Center for Election Science, where I was treasurer, but they have since transmogrified into a narrow advocacy org for Approval Voting, which is just one voting method of many. AV is the simplest Pareto-principle way to achieve 80% of what you want, so I’d recommend that as a solution, but you seem inclined toward creativity. At CES, one of our guys in particular came up with some funky voting methods for the Webbys and the Hugo Awards.

You can find some links on my website, Unsplitthevote.org. You’d probably find the STAR Voting people most interesting.