Scientists studying honeybees have learned a lot about how a swarm decides where to locate its hive. The decision is critical, because a wrong decision can leave the hive exposed to deadly winter weather; therefore, bees need an effective voting system that reliably and efficiently yields their optimal hive location. Fortunately for bees, millions of years of evolution have given them one. In fact, their voting system is better than the voting system Americans use to elect their public officials.
It’s called range voting, and it’s very simple: instead of choosing one candidate, voters give each candidate a numerical score (e.g., 0-9). That’s it. After everyone has voted, the candidate with the highest average score wins.
Turns out, this simple change makes a big difference. In computer simulations, range voting greatly reduced many of the well-known problems with America’s two-party system. Problems such as gerrymandering and the silencing of third-party views, for example.
This website [1] explains how range voting works and this website [2] describes how bees do it.
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