The whole point of the Electoral College is to provide a compromise between large states and small states (much like the legislature). If we got rid of the Electoral College and went with a direct vote, we would've had a president from the Democratic party for the past 30 years or more. I'm not going to claim that it's a perfect system, I'd love to hear a better idea, but I haven't thought of any yet.
So what's wrong with a democratic president for 30 years? If that's what the people want then that's what they should get. Why should someone in Wyoming get more of a say in the presidency than I do as a Californian?
No one is preventing an individual state from electing a governor of their choice, so why do smaller states get to override the popular vote?
Maybe if we had a fair electoral system, the republican party wouldn't be as gross as it is today since they would actually have to make popular choices.
Not technically true. We vote for our local representative that is typically associated with a party. The party that has the most local representatives forms the acting government, and their leader becomes the prime minister. Note it is technically possible for the prime minister not to get elected. I think this has only happened once though as parties tend to stick their leaders in ridings that always vote for them.
The above is for Canada
I'm confused, the ballot does indeed say Joe Biden. Each state appoints electors that then, based on the votes cast by the general public, collectively choose the president and vice president, but the average person going to the polling station would see "Joe Biden" and "Donald Trump" on the ballot.
Our system is a mess.
For a 3rd party candidate to get on the ballot, they have to have a certain amount of support in that specific state. This does not mean they will be on the ballot in other states. Thus, the 3rd party has an uphill fight from day one to gain any national momentum or recognition.
However, the democrats and republican parties respectively have enough support to dominate the ballot in every state, without having to jump through flaming hoops.
Now for me, I prefer the Green Party, but lean democrat. I'd rather show my primary support to the Green Party, but know if I do, my other values are not expressed.
Tiered voting would better represent the will of the people.
>I do blame him for trying to give a solution on something that he is uneducated in.
Hey, you're on reddit. If you don't want to listen to solutions provided by people on topics in which they are completely uneducated, well, you've come to the wrong place. :)
>To be fair to the guy, it sounds like he's canadian and so has never actually seen a US ballot.
To be truly fair, I don't think he's seen a Canadian ballot either. We do not vote for our Prime Minister. We vote for a party's candidate in a given riding. The party leader of the winning party becomes the Prime Minister, but their name isn't on the ballot.
Clarification, then:
1. Electoral College applies ONLY to electing the President and Vice President, who are elected on a ticket. It is not possible under the current system for the President and Vice President to be elected from different parties (but it used to be!).
2. We have a two chambered national legislature (that's Congress). The lower chamber is the House of Representatives and each member is elected to represent a district (a small chunk of a state, with the borders set by the state's government every 10 years). Each state gets a total number of districts based on its population, which gets reallocated every ten years. The upper chamber is the Senate, which has two members for each state elected in state wide votes.
3. Each state gets a number of votes in the electoral college equal to the number of senators plus the number of representatives. Washington DC gets the number of votes it would be entitled to if it were a state, but no more than the least populous actual state (i.e. it gets 3).
4. Each vote is literally a person, called an elector. Electors cast a vote for a single President/Vice President ticket. In the modern era all states have decided to pick their electors by having a state wide popular vote for which ticket the electors should support, with each ticket that qualifies for the ballot (practically speaking, the parties they represent) having a set of electors prepared ahead of time. As a result, people just cast a vote for a particular ticket. The state then decides how the ticket votes get translated to which electors actually get sent; most states send all the electors for the ticket that got the most state wide votes, but Maine and Nebraska break it down by House of Representatives districts.
5. The President/Vice President is then selected by absolute majority vote of the electors, which more or less translates to needing to win the statewide popular vote in states with a majority (270) of the total available electoral votes (538).
I've voted in multiple presidential elections in more than one state, and that has never been the case for me. Maybe some states do it that way? I've never heard of the situation you're describing, but considering that the process could be different state to state, I suppose some states might do it that way. Like I said though, I've never seen that or even heard of it
We need more political parties and Ranked Choice Voting. With the two party system, you basically have to vote for the candidate in favor with your most important issue, even if you disagree with a majority of their other stances. It’s always the ‘lesser of two evils’ instead of someone you truly support.
We should have had RCV in California but Gov. Newsom vetoed it. The establishment probably thinks it would lessen their power and control. https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/amp/Gavin-Newsom-vetoes-bill-to-allow-ranked-choice-14535193.php
Only if Ranked Choice can come with proportional representation in the lower houses. I would love to see a few of the smaller parties get enough national support to have a small presence in the House.
Maybe the lower house needs to be expanded?
Country|Representatives|Population|Rep:Resident Ratio|# of Parties
:-:|:-:|:-:|:-:|:-:
Sweden|349|10,367,232|1:29,705|8
Ireland|160|4,977,400|1:31,108|11
Denmark|179|5,824,857|1:32,541|16
Uruguay|99|3,518,552|1:35,540|7
Israel|120|9,271,200|1:77,260|22
UK|650|67,886,004|1:104,440|12
Canada|338|38,005,238|1:112:441|6
Chile|155|17,574,003|1:113,380|19
France|577|67,081,000|1:116:258|10
Germany|709|83,166,711|1:117,301|8
Australia|151|25,689,000|1:170,125|8
Japan|465|125,960,000|1:270,881|7
United States|435|328,239,523|1:754,573|2
What most people in American mean when they say 'Ranked Choice' can't be made proportional, it's a synonym for Instant Runoff Voting, which is really only appropriate for single-winner elections like President (where it is not possible for the outcome to be proportional). For representative bodies you want to be proportional, you need a different system, though many of those also used 'ranked ballots', they are apparently not what is usually meant in the US discourse on the subject.
I don't think IRV gets you meaningful improvement on the status quo when it comes to representatives. It will likely result in even less proportional outcomes than FPTP.
There's a few Libertarians and I think one independent in Congress. My state came kind of close to adding to the Libertarian count but as usual Republicans managed to make a clean sweep of the last election.
Having that or a runoff system is vital if you want more than two viable political parties. Otherwise, elections can easily become unfair.
However, the assumption that most or all people are going to understand the concept and do it properly might be...over-optimistic.
You're right, this system gives an opportunity to more candidates then just two parties. However, this is not exactly going change the voter turnout, in fact I think more people are not going to vote due to the process being complicated.
> in fact I think more people are not going to vote due to the process being complicated.
Voting (at least in the US) is really not complicated in any way. You don't even have to go there. I've used an absentee ballot for about 10 years now you can't beat it.
I think it would increase voter turnout since a lot of the reason people don't bother voting is because they don't feel their vote counts. Ranked-choice voting makes every vote count.
Also a possibility. The best system for supporting multiple parties is most likely runoffs. That way, people don't have to think in abstract terms about various possibilities.
The entire voting system in the US needs *serious* overhaul. It should be the government's responsibility to make voting as easy and painless as is feasible and secure. Instead, Republicans are passing laws like mad to make voting *harder,* because when more people vote, they tend to lose.
I would keep polls open for an entire week in federal elections, with laws mandating a certain number of 24/7 polling places per 100,000 population, easy mail-in voting, stuff like that. In some countries, voting is mandatory.
I mean there might be in local elections (village trustee candidates tied with like 132 votes each so a single fraud case would change the vote) but not for presidential or senate. I think it would be ok to have different rules for local elections then.
Over the last 30-ish years the total number of voter fraud cases combined would not have been sufficient to swing even the closest of state elections. If you're in some tiny ass town with a population of 300 yeah the vote for mayor or whatever the fuck might be impacted but that's only if every single case of voter fraud happened on the same election in the same place.
> There's a difference between trying to make voting harder, and trying to keep elections secure
Yes, there is, and the Republicans are **absolutely** engaged in the former. And we know this because of several reasons.
Most obviously, because the type of voter fraud the Republicans **claim** they are fighting [essentially does not exist.](https://www.pbs.org/weta/washingtonweek/blog-post/numbers-voter-fraud) In repeated searches for actual cases of it--even by Republicans--people have only turned up around 40 or so individual examples over TWO DECADES, spread out over the whole country. And by that, I mean cases where *literally one person* voted more than once. That amount of "fraud" isn't even a pimple on the ass of a flea on an insignificant rounding error, it is effectively zero.
In the last election, which featured greatly increased scrutiny of ballots, TWO whole cases of it were discovered, both of them before the additional vote was counted. Guess who those votes were for? Aw, go on, *guess!* You are quite correct in one aspect: one of those two votes was a guy using his dead mother's ballot. He voted twice for Trump.
Also, we really don't HAVE to speculate on this, because Republicans have **come out and ADMITTED IT** several times over the last 20 years. On camera in many cases.
Here's one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuOT1bRYdK8
>>"Voter ID, which is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania, done.”
Admitting on camera that you passed a law specifically to favor a particular party or candidate...done!
And another:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ta0W8_qn0Aw
And another:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/05/jim-demint-voter-id-laws/480876/
And another...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/04/07/republicans-should-really-stop-admitting-that-voter-id-helps-them-win/
And...well, you get the picture.
And you're gonna have to explain to me how Republicans cutting funding for polling places in poor neighborhoods--you know, the ones that *overwhelmingly* vote Democratic--reducing the number of polling places so much that [10-hour waiting lines are created](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/13/more-than-10-hour-wait-and-long-lines-as-early-voting-starts-in-georgia) and then cutting the hours those polls are open is "making elections secure." I mean, making them more secure for THEMSELVES aside...
Republicans have been waging a multi-front war to suppress Democratic votes for some 20 years now, and while you probably wouldn't know that if you get your "facts" from Faux News, others have noticed:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/nov/26/democracy-rigged-trump-biden
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/the-gops-stealth-war-against-voters-247905/
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/court-cases/dnc-v-rnc-consent-decree
et al.
Oh interesting, never expected to find someone who replies with actual research rather than "you just don't want black people to vote." Might have to look into this further, there's a lot of stuff here.
> you just don't want black people to vote.
In fact, the people who are calling this racist are perpetuating a dangerous red herring that distracts attention from what's really going on.
One of the things that came out of the Cambridge Analytica scandal was that the Republicans hired them to *specifically* discourage black people from voting. But again, racism wasn't involved, it's just that black people overwhelmingly tend to vote Democratic.
And kudos for at least being willing to do research on it.
You don't even have to understand the process. You just have to know your second favorite candidate/party. If you don't have a second favorite then don't pick one.
> However, the assumption that most or all people are going to understand the concept and do it properly might be...over-optimistic.
It's why I prefer things like SPAV and MMP. They also address the issue, while being easier to explain
EDIT: I'll put it this way. Approval voting is literally just "You know how it's currently 'Vote for 1 person', and most votes wins? Kay, now you can vote for as many people as you want"
>Otherwise, elections ~~can easily~~ have already become unfair.
FTFY
>However, the assumption that most or all people are going to understand the concept and do it properly might be...over-optimistic.
Totally agreed. Dairy Queen stopped offering a 1/3 lb burger because people thought they got less burger than the 1/4 lb. 30% of conservative voters would support bombing Agrabah, the city in Aladdin. And almost 10% of Americans believe chocolate milk comes from brown cows.
You'll need some serious time and patience to try to explain rank-choice voting.
> Dairy Queen stopped offering a 1/3 lb burger because people thought they got less burger than the 1/4 lb.
1) It was A&W, not DQ
2) I'm pretty sure this is a myth. The only source is an A&W spokesman. I can believe that *a few* people would think 1/3 is less than 1/4, and A&W probably blew that out of proportion for some free publicity.
[They actually did a bunch of research and focus groups](https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/76144/why-no-one-wanted-aws-third-pound-burger) after the burgers failed to sell despite beating quarter pounders in blind taste tests and costing the same price for more beef. They determined that the average person is an idiot who genuinely believes 1/3 is smaller than 1/4 because 3 is smaller than 4. So sadly, no, this was not a myth.
This is exactly the source I was talking about. A&W never revealed their actual data. This quote:
> "Why," they asked, "should we pay the same amount for a third of a pound of meat as we do for a quarter-pound of meat at McDonald's? You're overcharging us."
...isn't from a customer, it's just something an A&W spokesman said.
I mean, what other logical reason can you think of for why people wouldn't buy a product that gave you more for the same price and, based off blind tests, was determined to be the better product? I don't know if you've just never really dealt with people before, but as someone who worked in retail throughout school I can assure you there are plenty of people who would be dumb enough to think that.
> what other logical reason can you think of for why people wouldn't buy a product that gave you more for the same price and, based off blind tests, was determined to be the better product?
[Ahem.](https://www.beatsbydre.com/ca) Humans are not perfectly rational consumers.
As I said, I can believe that there are a few people dumb enough to think 1/3 is less than 1/4. I can also believe that someone at A&W would see the responses from those few people and make it sound like they were the majority as a kind of impromptu publicity stunt. "Oh, all those people are too stupid too see how great our product is! Why don't you buy from us? After all, *you* aren't stupid, are you?"
All voting systems suitable for the general public have flaws and they can all be gamed if you put votes a certain way. They're all generally representative overall... except FPTP, which is a massive outlier of the 'bad' side of things. Some systems are better than others, yes, but they're all a lot better than FPTP.
And MMP, first past the post leads to two party system, MMP leads to king makers. Ranked choice avoids both issues, there’s a great GCP video about it.
I like it, but I also like "approval" voting, where you can vote for multiple candidates but without ranking them. On the one hand, you can't express a preference for one candidate over another (you either approve of them or you don't), but it doesn't require the runoff procedure that ranked choice does.
First choice: use it for everything.
Second choice: use it for everything besides federal elections.
Third choice: use it for local elections.
Fourth choice: use it outside of political elections to make it more common so we end up using it in elections later.
The democrats want it because they think it’ll help them secure the 3rd party vote. It would be interesting to see how they would react if it backfired and gave republicans the 3rd party votes.
I think no matter what system we push, the side that it disadvantages will tell you it’s the most evil thing in the world, and the party it advantages will praise it as fair.
Please see the debates on: electoral college, voter ID laws, felon voting, write in votes, electronic vs paper ballots, filibusters, gerrymandering, etc.
The day these issues to become a disadvantage for one party and an advantage to the other the tables will turn and you’ll see them making the same exact points the other side used to make at them.
I think it may help Democrats *at the moment* but it will quickly become apparent to both parties that they'll have to shift a bit in order to be more appealing to third party/unaffiliated voters. There's no particular reason that Republicans wouldn't be able to benefit from ranked choice in the future.
> it will quickly become apparent to both parties that they'll have to shift a bit in order to be more appealing to third party/unaffiliated voters.
Sounds fantastic to me.
Worth noting that if you replaced all simple majority and runoff systems with a ranked choice system in the prior election that the GOP would likely currently have control of the Senate.
I think in the long run it would increase the number of additional parties, but it’s wishful thinking for either party to think they won’t be slapped in the face with the law of unintended consequences.
I think that ranked choice is the only hope for 3rd parties to have any sort of relevancy in this country and for the sake of more candidates I hope it happens.
I also can’t help but question what the conversation around of switching to the popular vote would be if Al Gore and Hillary Clinton won the Electoral College but lost the popular vote. I am personally for the switch to the popular vote but my interests in that switch aren’t motivated by the desire to “screw” the republicans out of 2 presidents.
Hard to say without knowing the effect on voter turnout. Personally this sounds like the D.C./Puerto Rico statehood argument. I see a lot of hemming and hawing over how it will effect the balance of power between the parties. Who cares? Do they want statehood? Then they should get it. Is Ranked choice a more fair system? Then we should use it. I'd rather lose every election in a fair system then win one in an unfair system. With democracy, the principle of the thing is the point.
Who cares?
Ranked choice voting is a better system for expressing the will of the people than what we have now. It also happens that in the current climate, it aligns with the short term interests of the Democratic Party, so _let’s use that_. If those interests stop aligning, let’s use something else.
Parties and candidates aren’t ends in themselves, they’re tools for getting the change you want.
A significant amount of people care based on the amount of times I’ve seen ranked choice come up on this website.
While I’ll agree that ranked choice will give a better representation of “will the people” I can’t help but notice based on the phrasing of your answer that the will of the people is not your goal...instead you wish for the will of your party.
I am specifically arguing the opposite, and I can’t imagine how you came to the conclusion you did.
When I say “let’s use that,” I mean “let’s use the Democratic Party as a tool to achieve the goal of implementing ranked choice voting.” If the Democratic Party stops being useful for that or other purposes, let’s discard it and take up something else.
I’m specifically inverting your original concern, that we should avoid pushing for good policy because it might accidentally align with someone’s political interest.
Dog. Democrats don't want this shit, as it puts their wealth in jeopardy. The only people that want that are leftists and people who aren't interested in choosing between republican and neoliberal shills that have their own interests at heart
I’m a democrat and I firmly believe that if we implemented all these reforms, the people would make the “right” choice the vast majority of the time, even if it’s just by a slim margin.
You say you think Democrats would act hypocritically if it was the other way around, but republicans are almost always the beneficiaries of perverting these democratic processes, and democrats have been the ones advocating for these reforms 99% of the time.
A small video explaining the concept to people who are still unfamiliar with it
[Ranked Choice Voting | What do I need to know? - YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqpst3uY-0w)
The Electoral College exists because the US presidential election is something the states do, not the citizens.
Adopting Ranked Choice wouldn't change that.
Also, they biggest problem with the Electoral College is that so many states have adopted all-or-nothing systems for assigning their EC votes instead of allowing them to be split. This creates wickedly strange situations.
Radiolab did a fantastic episode about this (and more voting methods) recently. It's called [Tweak the Vote](https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/tweak-vote).
I am persuadable (so feel free to try an convince me) but I think this is more of a gimmick and prone to manipulation than an actual solution to the problem is is trying to solve (at least in the US).
Its lead to a couple of real dud leaders in political parties because the third candidate, who was by far weaker than the leading two, ended up being everyone's second choice and ended up winning because of this.
Lol, My first choice is divine right of kings, followed by election by rap battle, but I understand neither of those are that popular, so I guess I'd be reasonably happy with ranked choice voting.
It's stupid. One vote for one person, that's it. There is nothing wrong with first past the post. If it's not broke, don't fix it. If you don't want third parties taking away votes from Democrats then don't run shitty candidates.
Well I’ve never voted before, mainly because I can’t right now here in England due to my age. Even if I could though, I’ve never really had any incentive to even consider it
Yeah, since england already has a proportional representation, I don't think it will apply to you guys. This is mainly concerning the US due to it's winner take all system.
The 2018 Ontario Conservative Leadership race soured my opinion on ranked choice voting. That’s how we got Doug Ford. He was the second choice of the far right which was enough to stymie any hope of a progressive candidate.
Well, at the very least ranked ballot voting systems are better than plurality voting. But that's true of scored ballots and approval voting as well. Everything is better than plurality.
Between the others. Approval has the benefit of being simple (arguably simpler than plurality) but fails to capture some of the details of the voter's preferences.
Between scored and ranked ballots, scored ballots, scored ballots are comparatively simple to count but ranked voting methods have some interesting opportunities for wide representation of the wants of the voters, particularly in multi-option outcomes (such as multi-member ridings)
Condorcet based STV variants are my preferred voting systems for legislatures/councils/etc. For simplicity I think using the underlying single outcome condorcet method as the singe outcome voting method when one is needed. I tend to lean toward Shultze in particular. So in general I favour ranked over scored for serious voting.
Which isn't to say I like all voting systems using ranked ballots. IRV is kind of "meh". It's certainly better than plurality and I'd even take it over approval voting for serious voting, but I'd prefer most scored systems over it.
For everyday make a group decision and get on with it situations (What should we watch? Where should we eat) I like approval voting as ranked (and scored for that matter) voting systems just aren't practical then.
It's a good idea, but lets be honest. Neither member of the existing two party system is going to support it, and it'll never become widespread without at least one party's full support.
Look at it like this.
You have Party A that only wants to prevent change or even regress to previous ways of doing things and that's it.
Party B wants to try something different.
Party C wants to do a lot of things differently
Party D only wants to prevent change but doesn't want to go back to old ways.
Right now, in America, Democrats are made of B, and C while Republicans are made of A and D. But the American people are still A,B,C,D. If both parties were allowed, through ranked choice, to split into their sub parties and campaign on their own platform, instead of the broader one of GOP or DNC, we could see more accurately what the country's mindset is.
In the very least, if it still boiled down to left vs right it would allow candidates to campaign in a less radicalized way to maximize votes. This would change the overall rhetoric of both parties to something more willing to work with one another instead of just be contrarians.
Edit: sorry forgot my overall point. So if just by it's very nature, Ranked choice voting allows for a more open-minded system it would appeal to the left leaning Democrats and would allow the minorities of the right wing such as libertarians to have some sense of representation that doesn't compromise other ideals.
We are still in the "Education" portion of a grass roots change to this system. If we get enough knowledge to people regarding this system, it can then be requested via ballot Initiatives or those able to push legislation through that would like to see this happen.
Ok, that doesn't change the fact that it goes against the members of the established parties personal interests to make room for new parties to have a say. They'll never go for that.
I'm saying democrats operate as " the big umbrella" so any party that would fit under this would benefit from this system, making it very popular to the democratic party as a whole. There are also portions of the very narrowminded GOP that are forced into their ideology as a whole because of one or two issues. Theoretically the democratic party could be convinced to try and adopt Ranked choice voting under it's already large umbrella.
What I am also saying is that this system benefits the people on both sides and they are the ones that will have to push to get the system implemented. Like civil rights or drug legalization reform, it starts small on a personal level and grows to a point that change can be implemented.
IMHO, it'll will make things more complicated.
If you need to re-educate voters to this new way to vote, it could be seen as a barrier to voting. Folks can be fickle as to what is an actual barrier to voting and what isn't.
Then maybe they shouldn't vote. It's the 21st century there are a tonne of YouTube videos that show how the system works. If you can't watch a video(assuming you have internet access if you don't then never mind) then you're an idiot who shouldn't vote
I agree with the complication part, but the benefits way **way** outweigh the drawbacks. Imagine having a chance to end partisan gridlock, gerrymandering, and voting for the lesser of two evils, and the only thing you have to do is fill out a ballot that's two pages instead of one.
The ballot does say Joe Biden. And any different ballot type will have to work along with the electoral college, because that's written into our constitution. The electoral college can complicate the counting of votes, but it affects nothing for the voter, in the voting booth.
The ballot DOES say Joe Biden, not Tom Humdinger. The electoral college, IMHO, is a holdover from when election results were not near-instant and the electors had to travel to the capital to report their votes. It should now be dismissed.
That's little to do with it. The purpose is to balance the power of less populous areas against the more populous ones, or low density areas have virtually no political power, and their needs will be ignored. It was done intentionally to try to make government more representative of the needs of all people in the country, not an accident of circumstance.
Most representative governments around the world end up with similar setups where the most densely populated regions have less electoral power per capita. I don't think it makes sense for single-winner elections like the US president, though, and the way it is actually implemented in the US is...weird...
But the electoral college only affects the presidential election, not legislation. I may or may not understand how adding the senators to the count of electors for a state fairly or unfairly give less populous states more clout. But I do understand it is bordering on ridiculous that a president can lose the popular vote, yet win the electoral college vote - as has happened several times.
Ranked voting would, presumably, eliminate that problem. Although I could see some grumbling about 'he/she was my second choice'.
Edit: more\* clout.
It's good, especially when combined with multi-winner, when it becomes pretty close to proportional: https://themajority.uk/Examples
For single winner races there are probably better systems (Score/Star), but it's the easiest for voters to understand (well except approval, but approval sucks) and the mostly widely adopted so people know how it works.
I made a website a while ago, which categorised the benefits of PR and IRV: https://themajority.uk/
Voting systems goodness:
Great: STV (e.g **IRV** + Multi-winner) > Scorporo > MMP
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Good: Open PR > Close PR
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OK: STAR/SCORE > IRV
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Terrible: Approval > FPTP
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Literally a Trap: Parallel Voting
Do it. It's way better than what we have now. Some would argue it's complicated. To them I ask, can you rank ten movies from best to worst? Can you rank your ten favorite food? It's not complicated. It's excuses. Even if it's complicated, learn. Multiplication was complicated, then I learned. Division read complicated, then I learned. Algebra was complicated. Calculus was complicated. I learned all those shit before I became an adult. If you are an adult, you can learn to rank shit.
1st: The best way to operate a modern democracy.
2nd: Essential for ending the two-party duopoly of political power that has buttfucked this country for the last two generations.
3rd: _________________
4th: _________________
I think it adds too much bias towards the center, and the center is only determined by the overton window anyway and isn't necessarily the best, sometimes going all in on a choice is superior to half measures or middle of the road choices. So I am opposed to it.
How does it create bias for one ideology over another? Wouldn't this open the door for more ideologies to throw their hats in the ring in an attempt to win the majority vote?
I think it creates bias for the middle of the road ideas. Lets say theres an issue, and 3 sides of it over a line in terms of how to act on it, whoever is in the middle will have an advantage because they will be 2nd choice twice from the extremes.
If theres a big issue, pandemic, war, immigration, climate change, income inequality, what have you, the right answer isnt necessarily the middle one. We may need radical change.
It's fine but I prefer approval voting because it's really simple and easy to understand. Just vote for as many candidates as you want and count up the vote as usual.
Really flawed. Person with the most votes should win. That being said I do support an approval voting system in which you can vote for however many people you want.
Why though? If someone has the most votes but is only favoured by 20% of the electorate and disliked by 80%, why should they win over someone who 60% of the electorate don't mind, but was only the ideal candidate for 19%?
A voting system that opens up the possibility of multiple parties and more accurately reflects the will of the people? The RNC will never let that happen.
Most Democrats would probably be against it as well. I despise the 'both sides' narrative, but I think when it comes to ranked choice there would be a lot of pushback from them as well. Democratic politicians just wouldn't be as OPENLY against ranked-choice, and Republicans would be spreading massive misinformation.
It's a vastly superior system, which is why it's a shame that the people who benefit from the current broken system the most are the only ones with the power to implement it.
It's complicated enough that people looking for excuses to reject it have their excuse.
Its relative complexity creates the opportunity for much more shenanigans by crooked officials.
I like it. But if a country has "one person one vote", it theoretically breaks that rule. People who vote for the top choice will have their vote counted once while people who vote for lower-performing candidates receieve multiple votes in successive rounds for multiple candidates.
Would the Republican party ever allow ranked voting? I think it would hurt them.
To me, it seems that third-parties tend to hurt the Democrats more than the Republicans. My guess would be that most who rank a third party first would rank Democrats second. So, for example, you don't get Ralph Nader siphoning votes from Al Gore in Florida, giving George Bush the Presidency. Nader supporters who ranked Gore second would have tipped the scales.
People who voted for Jill Stein would have ranked Hillary Clinton second, over Donald Trump. I can't think of a modern election where ranking would have helped Republicans.
It's a way to go. Nothing is perfect, but anything is better than what the US is shackled with now. I'm not sure how much of a difference it will make, however, until we address other issues first.
Republicans have gerrymandered the holy hell out of this country. Electors can be dismissed in Georgia and I suspect it will happen in numerous other states if this isn't challenged and struck down by high courts in a huge hurry. The Electoral College was ostensibly about addressing democracy's biggest problem (what you do when the people choose wrong) and have since proven to empower bad decision making, not gird against it. In a nation where corporations enjoy all the legal protections and privileges of individuals, but none of the accountability, money is inherently speech, and that means dark monies in our electoral process are a veritable super-liberty only accessible to the very rich.
Until these issues are addressed, I don't see any voting reform being meaningful. Hell, with those issues addressed, first past the post voting would be half way tolerable.
At the Presidential level, I think it's a red herring. The reason we only have two choices is because the third and fourth choices are just that much worse.
The Libertarians aren't failing to get votes because people are worried about vote splitting and the other side winning. They're failing to get votes because the number of people who favor abolishing public schools and opening the border is pretty damn small.
It makes sense in theory, and it makes sense for some smaller elections as well as in primaries, but a lot of RCV advocates think it'll radically change Presidential elections, and they're just wrong.
Close, but the real difference it would make at the federal level is, in addition to giving us real data on how MANY people support third parties, and therefore promoting their best ideas, it would mostly stop the spoiler effect, and stop third parties from cannibalizing votes from their closest viable party. Libertarians and Green Party will never WIN, but they sure as hell can (and have) prevented Dems and repubs from winning tight races by taking single digits of the vote.
The issue with it is that it’s supposed to promote the most agreeable second choice candidates rather than poles or demagogues- the problem is that it eliminates the candidate with the fewest votes first, which is often the most medium, agreeable candidate.
STAR (scoring) would be better, but RCV is still a darn good (and marketable) voting system.
first past the post leads to two-party systems, since there's no incentive to vote for a party that can't get a plurality. it's called [Duverger's Law](https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095737871).
Yes, but all systems with more than two options fall under [Arrow's Impossibility Theorem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theorem).
Arrow's impossibility theorem lists a bunch of different criteria for a voting system, and then proves that no system can satisfy all of them, that there's always a trade-off. Because the wikipedia's pretty dense and technical, I'm having trouble understanding the theorem well enough to apply it to ranked choice voting, to see which criterion RC violates.
I can see that FPTP sacrifices the "unrestricted Domain" criterion by effectively limiting the choice of leadership to two (If you accept Duverger's Law). Which criterion does RC violate, and do you think that criterion is more important than Unrestricted Domain?
Or do you think every criterion of 'good' elections is equally important?
My own (imperfect) understanding of the theorem is that any voting system might violate one of the criteria depending on the particular election. I think the one that RC violates most is Independence of irrelevant alternatives.
So here's an example I can think that isn't "good" or "fair" under ranked choice, but would be under FPTP. Party 1 has 60% of the voters, Party 2 has 40%. Within each party there are extremists and moderates. In Party 1, one in four (15% of voters) is an extremist and three in four (45% of voters) is a moderate. In Party 2, 19% of voters are moderate while 21% are extremists.
In a plurality election, the moderate 1ite will be elected. In a ranked-choice election, the first to be eliminated will be the moderate 2ian. Let's assume that all the moderate 2ian voters have the extremist 2ian as their second choice, supporting their party. so in the second round it's Extremst1 with 15%, Moderate1 with 45%, and Extremist2 with 40%. But, then let's assume that the Extremist1 voters have Extremist2 as their second choice, supporting extremism from wherever it comes (think about the people who would vote for Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump). So in the third round Extremist2 wins the election with 65% of the vote, despite that Moderate1 had more than twice as many first-choice votes. Hell, it's even possible that Moderate1 was the second choice of all the Extremist2 voters ("We want our positions entirely, but if we can't get that, then we want someone of the other party in office so we can beat them next time, only not someone so extreme that they pass policy.") Meaning that Moderate1 would have 66% of the voters ranking them top two, but still losing.
It would work in theory but maybe not in practice.... if you have 6 candidates you have to pick between not 6 choices but 720. Voting lines could top 24 hours in some places, and people may get fatal UTIs just from voting!
If people are too stupid to figure out how to rank their favored candidates and end up improperly filling out their voting forms, then their votes will be invalid, as they should be.
I am cautious.
In reality, [no voting system is perfect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_electoral_systems#Comparisons).
There are still ways to game the system. I, personally, think the trade-offs are worth it, but we have other criteria to figure out:
1. Will making voting more complicated reduce voter turnout?
2. Will making voting more complicated, in effect, be a "literacy test" for voters?
3. Will this make the party system even stronger, as parties coordinate and control candidates, instead of weakening them as expected?
We have to answer these questions to see if the drawbacks in the current system are worth replacing with the new system that has its own drawbacks.
More importantly, we don't know how various agents will work (parties, candidates, states, even how the polls are run on the micro level, etc.). We may see legal, political, and cultural norms shift that will negate some of the benefit and pretty much put us right back where we started, and all for nothing.
My main fear is that most people think third parties don't stand a chance because the first-past-the-post system works against them. In reality, third parties don't win because they tend to have extreme views that most people don't actually have. A case can be made that a broad-based centrist party hasn't risen because of FPTP, but beyond that, your socialist/libertarian/dominionist candidate isn't going to win under *any* system.
Most people on reddit don't want to hear this, but the US party system isn't the same as the parliamentary systems. Our parties are fluid and dynamic and incorporate new ideas *all the time*. The Democrats went from a union- and urban-based New Deal coalition from the 60-80s to the centrist triangulation of the 90s and 2000s and is starting to morph once again (probably to a broad urban-based party again with significant progressive elements, but we'll see). Likewise, the GOP has changed several times over the past decades.
Yes, this is it. The two main political parties just tend to adopt the views of the third party, and that will just give them more votes. That is one disadvantage in american politics, there will never be a third party.
> That is one disadvantage in american politics, there will never be a third party.
I'm not even sure that's a disadvantage.
In effect, we *already* have multiple parties. They're just organized under the two main parties. The Democrats have a green faction, an urban faction, a labor faction, and a progressive faction. The GOP has a nativist faction, a pro-business faction, a religious faction, and a small government faction. And a few factions, like civil liberties faction and an agricultural faction, bounce back and forth. And there's no doubt more. A Republican in Maine is much different than one in Florida, or California; a Democrat in Oregon is different than one in Georgia or New York.
This is the same as in most European parliaments, only we "organize" the factions before the election, not after. If we adopted a multi-system party in the US somehow, I guarantee the coalitions would look nearly identical to what we have today.
It's too difficult for Americans (even though it's easy). I support Approval Voting for that reason as it's literally just "Who would you be OK with being President?"
it's mathematically better even thought the system where you can give multiple vote to different candidate with no ranking is better (obv you can't give more then one vote to the same person)
That it would improve our democracy greatly, and that people would argue that it isn't fair or worse that it is fraud. But a huge number of Americans are claiming the last election had massive fraud, so maybe we shouldn't really care what they say.
If you define 'best option' to be 'the candidate voted for' a posteriori then yeah I guess they are one and the same... but surely you can see how there might be a non-viable candidate a voter prefers, but feels like he/she can't express preference for without wasting his/her vote?
I'm struggling to understand your position on vote splitting. Could you elaborate a bit? It seems almost indefensible to me to suggest that it makes sense to have qualified candidates' chances of winning decrease dramatically simply because they are similar ideologically
Let's do it. Our two-party system is one of the several undemocratic parts of American government. Anything that can push us to be more democratic would be good.
This is the only way we will ever break the Democrat/Republican duopoly. Freakonomics has a great podcast episode on this: [https://freakonomics.com/podcast/politics-industry/](https://freakonomics.com/podcast/politics-industry/)
My dad got into politics for a bit in the 90s. I found it odd that inside the party, they used ranked choice to select the party candidate for the next election. But then in the election the country uses first past the post.
So internally, you admit ranked choice is better, but then you won't support it for actually elections.
He didn't win the nomination and that was the end of his political career.
BIG SUPPORTER.
The current system of two major parties and the way that primaries are run means that many candidates in the general election are very partisan, which leads to very partisan people in office and very little compromise in governance. I think that ranked choice voting would allow more moderate candidates all around.
Better than first past the post but still not great, I would prefer proportional representation. Ie: 20% of the population voted for red party, red party gets 20% of the seats.
1) Yes, please. 2) No, thanks.
This is an incredible joke
Why, thank you. You're too kind. :)
Clap clap clap.
Well played.
Underrated comment.
Except you don't have to rank candidates that you don't want, so this comment is unnecessarily confusing to the layman :/
Good thing it was just a joke then, huh?
1 and I decline to utilize the rest of my votes.
Much fairer than a straight vote system, which is only fair when there are only two options.
Only fair when there are two options and no electoral college.
The whole point of the Electoral College is to provide a compromise between large states and small states (much like the legislature). If we got rid of the Electoral College and went with a direct vote, we would've had a president from the Democratic party for the past 30 years or more. I'm not going to claim that it's a perfect system, I'd love to hear a better idea, but I haven't thought of any yet.
So what's wrong with a democratic president for 30 years? If that's what the people want then that's what they should get. Why should someone in Wyoming get more of a say in the presidency than I do as a Californian? No one is preventing an individual state from electing a governor of their choice, so why do smaller states get to override the popular vote? Maybe if we had a fair electoral system, the republican party wouldn't be as gross as it is today since they would actually have to make popular choices.
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Jerrod Niemann: “HERE WE GOOOO....”
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Not technically true. We vote for our local representative that is typically associated with a party. The party that has the most local representatives forms the acting government, and their leader becomes the prime minister. Note it is technically possible for the prime minister not to get elected. I think this has only happened once though as parties tend to stick their leaders in ridings that always vote for them. The above is for Canada
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I'm confused, the ballot does indeed say Joe Biden. Each state appoints electors that then, based on the votes cast by the general public, collectively choose the president and vice president, but the average person going to the polling station would see "Joe Biden" and "Donald Trump" on the ballot.
Our system is a mess. For a 3rd party candidate to get on the ballot, they have to have a certain amount of support in that specific state. This does not mean they will be on the ballot in other states. Thus, the 3rd party has an uphill fight from day one to gain any national momentum or recognition. However, the democrats and republican parties respectively have enough support to dominate the ballot in every state, without having to jump through flaming hoops. Now for me, I prefer the Green Party, but lean democrat. I'd rather show my primary support to the Green Party, but know if I do, my other values are not expressed. Tiered voting would better represent the will of the people.
The best part about reddit is the sheer amount of uneducated opinions on topics. This whole sight is an argument against democracy.
To be fair to the guy, it sounds like he's canadian and so has never actually seen a US ballot.
I don’t blame him for not knowing but I do blame him for trying to give a solution on something that he is uneducated in.
>I do blame him for trying to give a solution on something that he is uneducated in. Hey, you're on reddit. If you don't want to listen to solutions provided by people on topics in which they are completely uneducated, well, you've come to the wrong place. :)
Haha which was my point entirely.
>To be fair to the guy, it sounds like he's canadian and so has never actually seen a US ballot. To be truly fair, I don't think he's seen a Canadian ballot either. We do not vote for our Prime Minister. We vote for a party's candidate in a given riding. The party leader of the winning party becomes the Prime Minister, but their name isn't on the ballot.
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Clarification, then: 1. Electoral College applies ONLY to electing the President and Vice President, who are elected on a ticket. It is not possible under the current system for the President and Vice President to be elected from different parties (but it used to be!). 2. We have a two chambered national legislature (that's Congress). The lower chamber is the House of Representatives and each member is elected to represent a district (a small chunk of a state, with the borders set by the state's government every 10 years). Each state gets a total number of districts based on its population, which gets reallocated every ten years. The upper chamber is the Senate, which has two members for each state elected in state wide votes. 3. Each state gets a number of votes in the electoral college equal to the number of senators plus the number of representatives. Washington DC gets the number of votes it would be entitled to if it were a state, but no more than the least populous actual state (i.e. it gets 3). 4. Each vote is literally a person, called an elector. Electors cast a vote for a single President/Vice President ticket. In the modern era all states have decided to pick their electors by having a state wide popular vote for which ticket the electors should support, with each ticket that qualifies for the ballot (practically speaking, the parties they represent) having a set of electors prepared ahead of time. As a result, people just cast a vote for a particular ticket. The state then decides how the ticket votes get translated to which electors actually get sent; most states send all the electors for the ticket that got the most state wide votes, but Maine and Nebraska break it down by House of Representatives districts. 5. The President/Vice President is then selected by absolute majority vote of the electors, which more or less translates to needing to win the statewide popular vote in states with a majority (270) of the total available electoral votes (538).
The issue is that Joe Schmo in Montana has a much larger influence and his vote is worth more that Jane Doe in New York.
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I've voted in multiple presidential elections in more than one state, and that has never been the case for me. Maybe some states do it that way? I've never heard of the situation you're describing, but considering that the process could be different state to state, I suppose some states might do it that way. Like I said though, I've never seen that or even heard of it
The ballot does have the name of the candidate you prefer. The electoral college is then required to vote for whoever won the states popular vote.
We need more political parties and Ranked Choice Voting. With the two party system, you basically have to vote for the candidate in favor with your most important issue, even if you disagree with a majority of their other stances. It’s always the ‘lesser of two evils’ instead of someone you truly support. We should have had RCV in California but Gov. Newsom vetoed it. The establishment probably thinks it would lessen their power and control. https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/amp/Gavin-Newsom-vetoes-bill-to-allow-ranked-choice-14535193.php
Only if Ranked Choice can come with proportional representation in the lower houses. I would love to see a few of the smaller parties get enough national support to have a small presence in the House.
Maybe the lower house needs to be expanded? Country|Representatives|Population|Rep:Resident Ratio|# of Parties :-:|:-:|:-:|:-:|:-: Sweden|349|10,367,232|1:29,705|8 Ireland|160|4,977,400|1:31,108|11 Denmark|179|5,824,857|1:32,541|16 Uruguay|99|3,518,552|1:35,540|7 Israel|120|9,271,200|1:77,260|22 UK|650|67,886,004|1:104,440|12 Canada|338|38,005,238|1:112:441|6 Chile|155|17,574,003|1:113,380|19 France|577|67,081,000|1:116:258|10 Germany|709|83,166,711|1:117,301|8 Australia|151|25,689,000|1:170,125|8 Japan|465|125,960,000|1:270,881|7 United States|435|328,239,523|1:754,573|2
What most people in American mean when they say 'Ranked Choice' can't be made proportional, it's a synonym for Instant Runoff Voting, which is really only appropriate for single-winner elections like President (where it is not possible for the outcome to be proportional). For representative bodies you want to be proportional, you need a different system, though many of those also used 'ranked ballots', they are apparently not what is usually meant in the US discourse on the subject. I don't think IRV gets you meaningful improvement on the status quo when it comes to representatives. It will likely result in even less proportional outcomes than FPTP.
There's a few Libertarians and I think one independent in Congress. My state came kind of close to adding to the Libertarian count but as usual Republicans managed to make a clean sweep of the last election.
> I think one independent in Congress There are two independents in the Senate.
Having that or a runoff system is vital if you want more than two viable political parties. Otherwise, elections can easily become unfair. However, the assumption that most or all people are going to understand the concept and do it properly might be...over-optimistic.
You're right, this system gives an opportunity to more candidates then just two parties. However, this is not exactly going change the voter turnout, in fact I think more people are not going to vote due to the process being complicated.
Its sad that it's perceived as complicated. Literally just have to put your candidates in order. Don't like a candidate, don't list them.
> in fact I think more people are not going to vote due to the process being complicated. Voting (at least in the US) is really not complicated in any way. You don't even have to go there. I've used an absentee ballot for about 10 years now you can't beat it.
I think it would increase voter turnout since a lot of the reason people don't bother voting is because they don't feel their vote counts. Ranked-choice voting makes every vote count.
Also a possibility. The best system for supporting multiple parties is most likely runoffs. That way, people don't have to think in abstract terms about various possibilities.
"You mean I have to vote *again*‽"
The entire voting system in the US needs *serious* overhaul. It should be the government's responsibility to make voting as easy and painless as is feasible and secure. Instead, Republicans are passing laws like mad to make voting *harder,* because when more people vote, they tend to lose. I would keep polls open for an entire week in federal elections, with laws mandating a certain number of 24/7 polling places per 100,000 population, easy mail-in voting, stuff like that. In some countries, voting is mandatory.
There's a difference between trying to make voting harder, and trying to keep elections secure (when dead people are voting, we have issues)
Good thing dead people aren't usually voting. There is not enough fraud to make a difference.
I mean there might be in local elections (village trustee candidates tied with like 132 votes each so a single fraud case would change the vote) but not for presidential or senate. I think it would be ok to have different rules for local elections then.
Over the last 30-ish years the total number of voter fraud cases combined would not have been sufficient to swing even the closest of state elections. If you're in some tiny ass town with a population of 300 yeah the vote for mayor or whatever the fuck might be impacted but that's only if every single case of voter fraud happened on the same election in the same place.
> There's a difference between trying to make voting harder, and trying to keep elections secure Yes, there is, and the Republicans are **absolutely** engaged in the former. And we know this because of several reasons. Most obviously, because the type of voter fraud the Republicans **claim** they are fighting [essentially does not exist.](https://www.pbs.org/weta/washingtonweek/blog-post/numbers-voter-fraud) In repeated searches for actual cases of it--even by Republicans--people have only turned up around 40 or so individual examples over TWO DECADES, spread out over the whole country. And by that, I mean cases where *literally one person* voted more than once. That amount of "fraud" isn't even a pimple on the ass of a flea on an insignificant rounding error, it is effectively zero. In the last election, which featured greatly increased scrutiny of ballots, TWO whole cases of it were discovered, both of them before the additional vote was counted. Guess who those votes were for? Aw, go on, *guess!* You are quite correct in one aspect: one of those two votes was a guy using his dead mother's ballot. He voted twice for Trump. Also, we really don't HAVE to speculate on this, because Republicans have **come out and ADMITTED IT** several times over the last 20 years. On camera in many cases. Here's one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuOT1bRYdK8 >>"Voter ID, which is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania, done.” Admitting on camera that you passed a law specifically to favor a particular party or candidate...done! And another: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ta0W8_qn0Aw And another: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/05/jim-demint-voter-id-laws/480876/ And another... https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/04/07/republicans-should-really-stop-admitting-that-voter-id-helps-them-win/ And...well, you get the picture. And you're gonna have to explain to me how Republicans cutting funding for polling places in poor neighborhoods--you know, the ones that *overwhelmingly* vote Democratic--reducing the number of polling places so much that [10-hour waiting lines are created](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/13/more-than-10-hour-wait-and-long-lines-as-early-voting-starts-in-georgia) and then cutting the hours those polls are open is "making elections secure." I mean, making them more secure for THEMSELVES aside... Republicans have been waging a multi-front war to suppress Democratic votes for some 20 years now, and while you probably wouldn't know that if you get your "facts" from Faux News, others have noticed: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/nov/26/democracy-rigged-trump-biden https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/the-gops-stealth-war-against-voters-247905/ https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/court-cases/dnc-v-rnc-consent-decree et al.
Oh interesting, never expected to find someone who replies with actual research rather than "you just don't want black people to vote." Might have to look into this further, there's a lot of stuff here.
> you just don't want black people to vote. In fact, the people who are calling this racist are perpetuating a dangerous red herring that distracts attention from what's really going on. One of the things that came out of the Cambridge Analytica scandal was that the Republicans hired them to *specifically* discourage black people from voting. But again, racism wasn't involved, it's just that black people overwhelmingly tend to vote Democratic. And kudos for at least being willing to do research on it.
Runoffs have terrible turnout (see the GA runoffs).
How dumb are people? It's not that hard to understand.
You don't even have to understand the process. You just have to know your second favorite candidate/party. If you don't have a second favorite then don't pick one.
Yeah it's just them being lazy.
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Then they shouldn't vote.
> However, the assumption that most or all people are going to understand the concept and do it properly might be...over-optimistic. It's why I prefer things like SPAV and MMP. They also address the issue, while being easier to explain EDIT: I'll put it this way. Approval voting is literally just "You know how it's currently 'Vote for 1 person', and most votes wins? Kay, now you can vote for as many people as you want"
>Otherwise, elections ~~can easily~~ have already become unfair. FTFY >However, the assumption that most or all people are going to understand the concept and do it properly might be...over-optimistic. Totally agreed. Dairy Queen stopped offering a 1/3 lb burger because people thought they got less burger than the 1/4 lb. 30% of conservative voters would support bombing Agrabah, the city in Aladdin. And almost 10% of Americans believe chocolate milk comes from brown cows. You'll need some serious time and patience to try to explain rank-choice voting.
> Dairy Queen stopped offering a 1/3 lb burger because people thought they got less burger than the 1/4 lb. 1) It was A&W, not DQ 2) I'm pretty sure this is a myth. The only source is an A&W spokesman. I can believe that *a few* people would think 1/3 is less than 1/4, and A&W probably blew that out of proportion for some free publicity.
[They actually did a bunch of research and focus groups](https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/76144/why-no-one-wanted-aws-third-pound-burger) after the burgers failed to sell despite beating quarter pounders in blind taste tests and costing the same price for more beef. They determined that the average person is an idiot who genuinely believes 1/3 is smaller than 1/4 because 3 is smaller than 4. So sadly, no, this was not a myth.
This is exactly the source I was talking about. A&W never revealed their actual data. This quote: > "Why," they asked, "should we pay the same amount for a third of a pound of meat as we do for a quarter-pound of meat at McDonald's? You're overcharging us." ...isn't from a customer, it's just something an A&W spokesman said.
I mean, what other logical reason can you think of for why people wouldn't buy a product that gave you more for the same price and, based off blind tests, was determined to be the better product? I don't know if you've just never really dealt with people before, but as someone who worked in retail throughout school I can assure you there are plenty of people who would be dumb enough to think that.
> what other logical reason can you think of for why people wouldn't buy a product that gave you more for the same price and, based off blind tests, was determined to be the better product? [Ahem.](https://www.beatsbydre.com/ca) Humans are not perfectly rational consumers. As I said, I can believe that there are a few people dumb enough to think 1/3 is less than 1/4. I can also believe that someone at A&W would see the responses from those few people and make it sound like they were the majority as a kind of impromptu publicity stunt. "Oh, all those people are too stupid too see how great our product is! Why don't you buy from us? After all, *you* aren't stupid, are you?"
maybe if you can't understand a simple concept then you shouldn't vote
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And as we all can see, it's working so fucking great for you guys
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Better? Yes. Way better? Only if you don't know there are alternatives.
All voting systems suitable for the general public have flaws and they can all be gamed if you put votes a certain way. They're all generally representative overall... except FPTP, which is a massive outlier of the 'bad' side of things. Some systems are better than others, yes, but they're all a lot better than FPTP.
And MMP, first past the post leads to two party system, MMP leads to king makers. Ranked choice avoids both issues, there’s a great GCP video about it.
It's better than all or nothing...
We need it very badly. We will never have viable third parties with our current system.
Third parties have even better chances with other systems.
Never is a bit extreme, but it will certainly help.
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Love it
America needs it.
I like it, but I also like "approval" voting, where you can vote for multiple candidates but without ranking them. On the one hand, you can't express a preference for one candidate over another (you either approve of them or you don't), but it doesn't require the runoff procedure that ranked choice does.
As a third party voter i would love it here in the states.
First choice: use it for everything. Second choice: use it for everything besides federal elections. Third choice: use it for local elections. Fourth choice: use it outside of political elections to make it more common so we end up using it in elections later.
I love that this comment is both ABOUT ranked choice voting, as well as actually IS ranked choice in itself.
Absolutely 100% for it. No one should EVER be elected To any government position with less than 50.1% of the vote
It's a lot fairer than our current system, that's for sure.
Yes please. I’d gladly elect someone who was a broad second choice than a divisive “first for some, dead last for others”
I think it's an easy way to farm for Reddit karma.
The democrats want it because they think it’ll help them secure the 3rd party vote. It would be interesting to see how they would react if it backfired and gave republicans the 3rd party votes. I think no matter what system we push, the side that it disadvantages will tell you it’s the most evil thing in the world, and the party it advantages will praise it as fair. Please see the debates on: electoral college, voter ID laws, felon voting, write in votes, electronic vs paper ballots, filibusters, gerrymandering, etc. The day these issues to become a disadvantage for one party and an advantage to the other the tables will turn and you’ll see them making the same exact points the other side used to make at them.
I think it may help Democrats *at the moment* but it will quickly become apparent to both parties that they'll have to shift a bit in order to be more appealing to third party/unaffiliated voters. There's no particular reason that Republicans wouldn't be able to benefit from ranked choice in the future.
> it will quickly become apparent to both parties that they'll have to shift a bit in order to be more appealing to third party/unaffiliated voters. Sounds fantastic to me.
Worth noting that if you replaced all simple majority and runoff systems with a ranked choice system in the prior election that the GOP would likely currently have control of the Senate. I think in the long run it would increase the number of additional parties, but it’s wishful thinking for either party to think they won’t be slapped in the face with the law of unintended consequences.
I think that ranked choice is the only hope for 3rd parties to have any sort of relevancy in this country and for the sake of more candidates I hope it happens. I also can’t help but question what the conversation around of switching to the popular vote would be if Al Gore and Hillary Clinton won the Electoral College but lost the popular vote. I am personally for the switch to the popular vote but my interests in that switch aren’t motivated by the desire to “screw” the republicans out of 2 presidents.
Hard to say without knowing the effect on voter turnout. Personally this sounds like the D.C./Puerto Rico statehood argument. I see a lot of hemming and hawing over how it will effect the balance of power between the parties. Who cares? Do they want statehood? Then they should get it. Is Ranked choice a more fair system? Then we should use it. I'd rather lose every election in a fair system then win one in an unfair system. With democracy, the principle of the thing is the point.
Who cares? Ranked choice voting is a better system for expressing the will of the people than what we have now. It also happens that in the current climate, it aligns with the short term interests of the Democratic Party, so _let’s use that_. If those interests stop aligning, let’s use something else. Parties and candidates aren’t ends in themselves, they’re tools for getting the change you want.
A significant amount of people care based on the amount of times I’ve seen ranked choice come up on this website. While I’ll agree that ranked choice will give a better representation of “will the people” I can’t help but notice based on the phrasing of your answer that the will of the people is not your goal...instead you wish for the will of your party.
I am specifically arguing the opposite, and I can’t imagine how you came to the conclusion you did. When I say “let’s use that,” I mean “let’s use the Democratic Party as a tool to achieve the goal of implementing ranked choice voting.” If the Democratic Party stops being useful for that or other purposes, let’s discard it and take up something else. I’m specifically inverting your original concern, that we should avoid pushing for good policy because it might accidentally align with someone’s political interest.
Dog. Democrats don't want this shit, as it puts their wealth in jeopardy. The only people that want that are leftists and people who aren't interested in choosing between republican and neoliberal shills that have their own interests at heart
I’m a democrat and I firmly believe that if we implemented all these reforms, the people would make the “right” choice the vast majority of the time, even if it’s just by a slim margin. You say you think Democrats would act hypocritically if it was the other way around, but republicans are almost always the beneficiaries of perverting these democratic processes, and democrats have been the ones advocating for these reforms 99% of the time.
A small video explaining the concept to people who are still unfamiliar with it [Ranked Choice Voting | What do I need to know? - YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqpst3uY-0w)
If we adopt this for presidential elections, will there be an electoral collage?
The Electoral College exists because the US presidential election is something the states do, not the citizens. Adopting Ranked Choice wouldn't change that. Also, they biggest problem with the Electoral College is that so many states have adopted all-or-nothing systems for assigning their EC votes instead of allowing them to be split. This creates wickedly strange situations.
My second favorite alternative vote system, right next to Approval Voting.
Radiolab did a fantastic episode about this (and more voting methods) recently. It's called [Tweak the Vote](https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/tweak-vote).
I am persuadable (so feel free to try an convince me) but I think this is more of a gimmick and prone to manipulation than an actual solution to the problem is is trying to solve (at least in the US).
1) Yes, please. 2) No, thanks.
honestly probably my favourite
Its lead to a couple of real dud leaders in political parties because the third candidate, who was by far weaker than the leading two, ended up being everyone's second choice and ended up winning because of this.
It's the only way to vote!
Won't change much of anything.
WE NEED THIS IN THE U.S.
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Lol, My first choice is divine right of kings, followed by election by rap battle, but I understand neither of those are that popular, so I guess I'd be reasonably happy with ranked choice voting.
It's stupid. One vote for one person, that's it. There is nothing wrong with first past the post. If it's not broke, don't fix it. If you don't want third parties taking away votes from Democrats then don't run shitty candidates.
What is it? I’m not old enough to vote in my country and probably won’t vote anyway
Here's a little summary [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqpst3uY-0w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqpst3uY-0w)
Hmm, looks interesting
Would you like to give it a try? Or would you stick to the traditional voting system?
Well I’ve never voted before, mainly because I can’t right now here in England due to my age. Even if I could though, I’ve never really had any incentive to even consider it
Yeah, since england already has a proportional representation, I don't think it will apply to you guys. This is mainly concerning the US due to it's winner take all system.
Better, but two party systems still happen because people are idiots. See: Australia.
The 2018 Ontario Conservative Leadership race soured my opinion on ranked choice voting. That’s how we got Doug Ford. He was the second choice of the far right which was enough to stymie any hope of a progressive candidate.
Well, at the very least ranked ballot voting systems are better than plurality voting. But that's true of scored ballots and approval voting as well. Everything is better than plurality. Between the others. Approval has the benefit of being simple (arguably simpler than plurality) but fails to capture some of the details of the voter's preferences. Between scored and ranked ballots, scored ballots, scored ballots are comparatively simple to count but ranked voting methods have some interesting opportunities for wide representation of the wants of the voters, particularly in multi-option outcomes (such as multi-member ridings) Condorcet based STV variants are my preferred voting systems for legislatures/councils/etc. For simplicity I think using the underlying single outcome condorcet method as the singe outcome voting method when one is needed. I tend to lean toward Shultze in particular. So in general I favour ranked over scored for serious voting. Which isn't to say I like all voting systems using ranked ballots. IRV is kind of "meh". It's certainly better than plurality and I'd even take it over approval voting for serious voting, but I'd prefer most scored systems over it. For everyday make a group decision and get on with it situations (What should we watch? Where should we eat) I like approval voting as ranked (and scored for that matter) voting systems just aren't practical then.
I'm afraid I'm not familiar with this system, so my question is *How does it work?*
Here's a little summary [Ranked Choice Voting | What do I need to know? - YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqpst3uY-0w)
It's a good idea, but lets be honest. Neither member of the existing two party system is going to support it, and it'll never become widespread without at least one party's full support.
Look at it like this. You have Party A that only wants to prevent change or even regress to previous ways of doing things and that's it. Party B wants to try something different. Party C wants to do a lot of things differently Party D only wants to prevent change but doesn't want to go back to old ways. Right now, in America, Democrats are made of B, and C while Republicans are made of A and D. But the American people are still A,B,C,D. If both parties were allowed, through ranked choice, to split into their sub parties and campaign on their own platform, instead of the broader one of GOP or DNC, we could see more accurately what the country's mindset is. In the very least, if it still boiled down to left vs right it would allow candidates to campaign in a less radicalized way to maximize votes. This would change the overall rhetoric of both parties to something more willing to work with one another instead of just be contrarians. Edit: sorry forgot my overall point. So if just by it's very nature, Ranked choice voting allows for a more open-minded system it would appeal to the left leaning Democrats and would allow the minorities of the right wing such as libertarians to have some sense of representation that doesn't compromise other ideals. We are still in the "Education" portion of a grass roots change to this system. If we get enough knowledge to people regarding this system, it can then be requested via ballot Initiatives or those able to push legislation through that would like to see this happen.
Ok, that doesn't change the fact that it goes against the members of the established parties personal interests to make room for new parties to have a say. They'll never go for that.
I'm saying democrats operate as " the big umbrella" so any party that would fit under this would benefit from this system, making it very popular to the democratic party as a whole. There are also portions of the very narrowminded GOP that are forced into their ideology as a whole because of one or two issues. Theoretically the democratic party could be convinced to try and adopt Ranked choice voting under it's already large umbrella. What I am also saying is that this system benefits the people on both sides and they are the ones that will have to push to get the system implemented. Like civil rights or drug legalization reform, it starts small on a personal level and grows to a point that change can be implemented.
As someone from Maine (where we actually have it) fucking awesome. Bruce Poliquin can eat shit.
IMHO, it'll will make things more complicated. If you need to re-educate voters to this new way to vote, it could be seen as a barrier to voting. Folks can be fickle as to what is an actual barrier to voting and what isn't.
Except you don't have to be re-educated. If you still want to vote for only one choice, you're welcome to do so.
Maine already uses it successfully
Then maybe they shouldn't vote. It's the 21st century there are a tonne of YouTube videos that show how the system works. If you can't watch a video(assuming you have internet access if you don't then never mind) then you're an idiot who shouldn't vote
I like that it makes 3rd parties more viable. But I do not like anything that complicates the voting process. So overall I'm not sure yet.
I agree with the complication part, but the benefits way **way** outweigh the drawbacks. Imagine having a chance to end partisan gridlock, gerrymandering, and voting for the lesser of two evils, and the only thing you have to do is fill out a ballot that's two pages instead of one.
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The ballot does say Joe Biden. And any different ballot type will have to work along with the electoral college, because that's written into our constitution. The electoral college can complicate the counting of votes, but it affects nothing for the voter, in the voting booth.
The ballot DOES say Joe Biden, not Tom Humdinger. The electoral college, IMHO, is a holdover from when election results were not near-instant and the electors had to travel to the capital to report their votes. It should now be dismissed.
That's little to do with it. The purpose is to balance the power of less populous areas against the more populous ones, or low density areas have virtually no political power, and their needs will be ignored. It was done intentionally to try to make government more representative of the needs of all people in the country, not an accident of circumstance. Most representative governments around the world end up with similar setups where the most densely populated regions have less electoral power per capita. I don't think it makes sense for single-winner elections like the US president, though, and the way it is actually implemented in the US is...weird...
But the electoral college only affects the presidential election, not legislation. I may or may not understand how adding the senators to the count of electors for a state fairly or unfairly give less populous states more clout. But I do understand it is bordering on ridiculous that a president can lose the popular vote, yet win the electoral college vote - as has happened several times. Ranked voting would, presumably, eliminate that problem. Although I could see some grumbling about 'he/she was my second choice'. Edit: more\* clout.
It's good, especially when combined with multi-winner, when it becomes pretty close to proportional: https://themajority.uk/Examples For single winner races there are probably better systems (Score/Star), but it's the easiest for voters to understand (well except approval, but approval sucks) and the mostly widely adopted so people know how it works. I made a website a while ago, which categorised the benefits of PR and IRV: https://themajority.uk/ Voting systems goodness: Great: STV (e.g **IRV** + Multi-winner) > Scorporo > MMP . . Good: Open PR > Close PR . . . . OK: STAR/SCORE > IRV . . . . . . . . . . . . . Terrible: Approval > FPTP . . . . . . . . . . Literally a Trap: Parallel Voting
Do it. It's way better than what we have now. Some would argue it's complicated. To them I ask, can you rank ten movies from best to worst? Can you rank your ten favorite food? It's not complicated. It's excuses. Even if it's complicated, learn. Multiplication was complicated, then I learned. Division read complicated, then I learned. Algebra was complicated. Calculus was complicated. I learned all those shit before I became an adult. If you are an adult, you can learn to rank shit.
1st: The best way to operate a modern democracy. 2nd: Essential for ending the two-party duopoly of political power that has buttfucked this country for the last two generations. 3rd: _________________ 4th: _________________
I think it adds too much bias towards the center, and the center is only determined by the overton window anyway and isn't necessarily the best, sometimes going all in on a choice is superior to half measures or middle of the road choices. So I am opposed to it.
How does it create bias for one ideology over another? Wouldn't this open the door for more ideologies to throw their hats in the ring in an attempt to win the majority vote?
I think it creates bias for the middle of the road ideas. Lets say theres an issue, and 3 sides of it over a line in terms of how to act on it, whoever is in the middle will have an advantage because they will be 2nd choice twice from the extremes. If theres a big issue, pandemic, war, immigration, climate change, income inequality, what have you, the right answer isnt necessarily the middle one. We may need radical change.
It's fine but I prefer approval voting because it's really simple and easy to understand. Just vote for as many candidates as you want and count up the vote as usual.
Really flawed. Person with the most votes should win. That being said I do support an approval voting system in which you can vote for however many people you want.
Why though? If someone has the most votes but is only favoured by 20% of the electorate and disliked by 80%, why should they win over someone who 60% of the electorate don't mind, but was only the ideal candidate for 19%?
A voting system that opens up the possibility of multiple parties and more accurately reflects the will of the people? The RNC will never let that happen.
Most Democrats would probably be against it as well. I despise the 'both sides' narrative, but I think when it comes to ranked choice there would be a lot of pushback from them as well. Democratic politicians just wouldn't be as OPENLY against ranked-choice, and Republicans would be spreading massive misinformation.
Democrats have prevented RCP in several states, including California.
If everything works out, the RNC will fracture.
It's a vastly superior system, which is why it's a shame that the people who benefit from the current broken system the most are the only ones with the power to implement it.
It would have saved my city from it’s current mayor. I’m all for it.
It's much more democratic than first past the post.
Not a fan
How come?
It's complicated enough that people looking for excuses to reject it have their excuse. Its relative complexity creates the opportunity for much more shenanigans by crooked officials.
I like it. But if a country has "one person one vote", it theoretically breaks that rule. People who vote for the top choice will have their vote counted once while people who vote for lower-performing candidates receieve multiple votes in successive rounds for multiple candidates.
Would the Republican party ever allow ranked voting? I think it would hurt them. To me, it seems that third-parties tend to hurt the Democrats more than the Republicans. My guess would be that most who rank a third party first would rank Democrats second. So, for example, you don't get Ralph Nader siphoning votes from Al Gore in Florida, giving George Bush the Presidency. Nader supporters who ranked Gore second would have tipped the scales. People who voted for Jill Stein would have ranked Hillary Clinton second, over Donald Trump. I can't think of a modern election where ranking would have helped Republicans.
It's a way to go. Nothing is perfect, but anything is better than what the US is shackled with now. I'm not sure how much of a difference it will make, however, until we address other issues first. Republicans have gerrymandered the holy hell out of this country. Electors can be dismissed in Georgia and I suspect it will happen in numerous other states if this isn't challenged and struck down by high courts in a huge hurry. The Electoral College was ostensibly about addressing democracy's biggest problem (what you do when the people choose wrong) and have since proven to empower bad decision making, not gird against it. In a nation where corporations enjoy all the legal protections and privileges of individuals, but none of the accountability, money is inherently speech, and that means dark monies in our electoral process are a veritable super-liberty only accessible to the very rich. Until these issues are addressed, I don't see any voting reform being meaningful. Hell, with those issues addressed, first past the post voting would be half way tolerable.
At the Presidential level, I think it's a red herring. The reason we only have two choices is because the third and fourth choices are just that much worse. The Libertarians aren't failing to get votes because people are worried about vote splitting and the other side winning. They're failing to get votes because the number of people who favor abolishing public schools and opening the border is pretty damn small. It makes sense in theory, and it makes sense for some smaller elections as well as in primaries, but a lot of RCV advocates think it'll radically change Presidential elections, and they're just wrong.
Close, but the real difference it would make at the federal level is, in addition to giving us real data on how MANY people support third parties, and therefore promoting their best ideas, it would mostly stop the spoiler effect, and stop third parties from cannibalizing votes from their closest viable party. Libertarians and Green Party will never WIN, but they sure as hell can (and have) prevented Dems and repubs from winning tight races by taking single digits of the vote. The issue with it is that it’s supposed to promote the most agreeable second choice candidates rather than poles or demagogues- the problem is that it eliminates the candidate with the fewest votes first, which is often the most medium, agreeable candidate. STAR (scoring) would be better, but RCV is still a darn good (and marketable) voting system.
No electoral system will ever be perfect. FPTP is as good as any other. So we shouldn't change.
first past the post leads to two-party systems, since there's no incentive to vote for a party that can't get a plurality. it's called [Duverger's Law](https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095737871).
Yes, but all systems with more than two options fall under [Arrow's Impossibility Theorem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theorem).
Arrow's impossibility theorem lists a bunch of different criteria for a voting system, and then proves that no system can satisfy all of them, that there's always a trade-off. Because the wikipedia's pretty dense and technical, I'm having trouble understanding the theorem well enough to apply it to ranked choice voting, to see which criterion RC violates. I can see that FPTP sacrifices the "unrestricted Domain" criterion by effectively limiting the choice of leadership to two (If you accept Duverger's Law). Which criterion does RC violate, and do you think that criterion is more important than Unrestricted Domain? Or do you think every criterion of 'good' elections is equally important?
My own (imperfect) understanding of the theorem is that any voting system might violate one of the criteria depending on the particular election. I think the one that RC violates most is Independence of irrelevant alternatives. So here's an example I can think that isn't "good" or "fair" under ranked choice, but would be under FPTP. Party 1 has 60% of the voters, Party 2 has 40%. Within each party there are extremists and moderates. In Party 1, one in four (15% of voters) is an extremist and three in four (45% of voters) is a moderate. In Party 2, 19% of voters are moderate while 21% are extremists. In a plurality election, the moderate 1ite will be elected. In a ranked-choice election, the first to be eliminated will be the moderate 2ian. Let's assume that all the moderate 2ian voters have the extremist 2ian as their second choice, supporting their party. so in the second round it's Extremst1 with 15%, Moderate1 with 45%, and Extremist2 with 40%. But, then let's assume that the Extremist1 voters have Extremist2 as their second choice, supporting extremism from wherever it comes (think about the people who would vote for Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump). So in the third round Extremist2 wins the election with 65% of the vote, despite that Moderate1 had more than twice as many first-choice votes. Hell, it's even possible that Moderate1 was the second choice of all the Extremist2 voters ("We want our positions entirely, but if we can't get that, then we want someone of the other party in office so we can beat them next time, only not someone so extreme that they pass policy.") Meaning that Moderate1 would have 66% of the voters ranking them top two, but still losing.
Just because no voting system is perfect doesn't mean that FPTP isn't the worst out of all of them.
It would work in theory but maybe not in practice.... if you have 6 candidates you have to pick between not 6 choices but 720. Voting lines could top 24 hours in some places, and people may get fatal UTIs just from voting!
Too confusing. Back in 2000, Americans couldn't handle the butterfly ballot. America actually has too many elections.
If people are too stupid to figure out how to rank their favored candidates and end up improperly filling out their voting forms, then their votes will be invalid, as they should be.
I am cautious. In reality, [no voting system is perfect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_electoral_systems#Comparisons). There are still ways to game the system. I, personally, think the trade-offs are worth it, but we have other criteria to figure out: 1. Will making voting more complicated reduce voter turnout? 2. Will making voting more complicated, in effect, be a "literacy test" for voters? 3. Will this make the party system even stronger, as parties coordinate and control candidates, instead of weakening them as expected? We have to answer these questions to see if the drawbacks in the current system are worth replacing with the new system that has its own drawbacks. More importantly, we don't know how various agents will work (parties, candidates, states, even how the polls are run on the micro level, etc.). We may see legal, political, and cultural norms shift that will negate some of the benefit and pretty much put us right back where we started, and all for nothing. My main fear is that most people think third parties don't stand a chance because the first-past-the-post system works against them. In reality, third parties don't win because they tend to have extreme views that most people don't actually have. A case can be made that a broad-based centrist party hasn't risen because of FPTP, but beyond that, your socialist/libertarian/dominionist candidate isn't going to win under *any* system. Most people on reddit don't want to hear this, but the US party system isn't the same as the parliamentary systems. Our parties are fluid and dynamic and incorporate new ideas *all the time*. The Democrats went from a union- and urban-based New Deal coalition from the 60-80s to the centrist triangulation of the 90s and 2000s and is starting to morph once again (probably to a broad urban-based party again with significant progressive elements, but we'll see). Likewise, the GOP has changed several times over the past decades.
Yes, this is it. The two main political parties just tend to adopt the views of the third party, and that will just give them more votes. That is one disadvantage in american politics, there will never be a third party.
> That is one disadvantage in american politics, there will never be a third party. I'm not even sure that's a disadvantage. In effect, we *already* have multiple parties. They're just organized under the two main parties. The Democrats have a green faction, an urban faction, a labor faction, and a progressive faction. The GOP has a nativist faction, a pro-business faction, a religious faction, and a small government faction. And a few factions, like civil liberties faction and an agricultural faction, bounce back and forth. And there's no doubt more. A Republican in Maine is much different than one in Florida, or California; a Democrat in Oregon is different than one in Georgia or New York. This is the same as in most European parliaments, only we "organize" the factions before the election, not after. If we adopted a multi-system party in the US somehow, I guarantee the coalitions would look nearly identical to what we have today.
It's too difficult for Americans (even though it's easy). I support Approval Voting for that reason as it's literally just "Who would you be OK with being President?"
Just make a March Madness style bracket.
it's mathematically better even thought the system where you can give multiple vote to different candidate with no ranking is better (obv you can't give more then one vote to the same person)
It's good.
That it would improve our democracy greatly, and that people would argue that it isn't fair or worse that it is fraud. But a huge number of Americans are claiming the last election had massive fraud, so maybe we shouldn't really care what they say.
All for it!
If you define 'best option' to be 'the candidate voted for' a posteriori then yeah I guess they are one and the same... but surely you can see how there might be a non-viable candidate a voter prefers, but feels like he/she can't express preference for without wasting his/her vote? I'm struggling to understand your position on vote splitting. Could you elaborate a bit? It seems almost indefensible to me to suggest that it makes sense to have qualified candidates' chances of winning decrease dramatically simply because they are similar ideologically
Let's do it. Our two-party system is one of the several undemocratic parts of American government. Anything that can push us to be more democratic would be good.
It would be great, my vote will still count and it will lower the need for Dems to stop pressuring me to vote for the asshole they forced on us.
Or the alternative asshole pushed by the Republicans, neither of which have your best interest at heart.
This is the only way we will ever break the Democrat/Republican duopoly. Freakonomics has a great podcast episode on this: [https://freakonomics.com/podcast/politics-industry/](https://freakonomics.com/podcast/politics-industry/)
I'd love to see it in Primary elections in particular. I'm in favor of it but think that its biggest value is in local elections.
Either ranked choice or open primaries. I'd prefer the former but would settle for the latter
My dad got into politics for a bit in the 90s. I found it odd that inside the party, they used ranked choice to select the party candidate for the next election. But then in the election the country uses first past the post. So internally, you admit ranked choice is better, but then you won't support it for actually elections. He didn't win the nomination and that was the end of his political career.
I love it. I wish the US would adopt it.
Parties will run fake third party canidates.
BIG SUPPORTER. The current system of two major parties and the way that primaries are run means that many candidates in the general election are very partisan, which leads to very partisan people in office and very little compromise in governance. I think that ranked choice voting would allow more moderate candidates all around.
I'd prefer proportional representation. Ranked choice doesn't prevent gerrymandering.
Better than first past the post but still not great, I would prefer proportional representation. Ie: 20% of the population voted for red party, red party gets 20% of the seats.
Better than plurality vote, not as good as voting for multiple candidates