Using the NFTF System to Vote Objectively

For my second Independence Day as a US Citizen, I thought it would be appropriate to share how Seth and I are using the NFTF scale to vote in the Maryland primaries.

This is my first time voting in a US election and so I wanted to do it right. Especially since this is the part of the process where votes have the most impact.

Fortunately, vote411.org mailed me an extensive brochure outlining all of the positions we are voting for and Candidate’s blurbs on relevant topics. I was also able to use their website to identify my districts and which candidates would be on my ballot. (Side note: I somehow signed up to vote by mail a while back so I also already have my ballot.)

At first, I tried to read through each candidate and figure out which one I liked the most. However, that was quite difficult when I was trying to compare between 10 contenders. I knew a couple of them gave me an overall good feeling, but I didn’t know how to divide it up.

Then, Seth stated the obvious: we should use the NFTF scale!

So here’s the deal – for each position, we make a grid for ourselves: candidates as the columns and their platform issues as the rows. Then, going issue by issue, I read out the candidate’s platform and we both give it a score on a scale of (-5, 5) in the appropriate box. We normally don’t share the scores with each other until the end, however if a candidate receives a negative score in more than two issues, we rule them out right away (especially if there are a lot of contenders).  

Once our grids are complete, we total our scores and rank our candidates. It was a pleasant surprise to see that Seth and I have had similar opinions for the most part – however, when we do differ in opinion, we revisit the platforms and compare to convince the other to revise the scoring (or realize we need to change it ourselves). This is a great way to identify unconscious bias stemming from phrasing choices or recency effects.

All in all, it’s been a great, albeit slightly time consuming, exercise. We had to spread out our candidate evaluations over a couple of days in order to give each decision the thought space it deserves, but I do know this system has really made this process feel worthwhile and valuable. I really cannot recommend it enough. Let me know if you try it out and how it works for you!