Just RCV won’t help us much, as the duality is still there (only 1 winner creates a duality)
The only thing that will really solve the problem is RCV + proportional: Proportional ranked choice voting for senate & house
I had previously been a supporter of Rank Choice Voting, at least for experimental purposes at first and if proven successful in lowering polarization and voter satisfaction, maybe pushing a larger rollout. You brought up some great points I had not considered. What are your thoughts on open primaries?
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I live in a county (Pierce Co., WA) that had RCV for a very short time (2006-2009) and repealed it because of several problems:
- Unless all elections are rank choice, you need two ballots & two types of tabulators, not quite doubling your costs.
- Results take forever as they have to essentially certify every count before they can start the next. (bigger problem in WA State because we have mail-in ballots arriving weeks after Election Day and post-election ballot curing.
- Name ID & incumbancy overwhelmingly benefit (even more than usual) when you have crowded ballots.
- It’s a totally different campaign dynamic. Candidates played to be everyones #2 and just didn’t want to piss anyone off.
- We elected a well-known gadfly who was ‘not the other two’ and we lost millions in lawsuits before he was recalled.
I voted for both the initiative to implement it and the one to repeal it. Good idea on paper. But practical implementation is a challenge.
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I don’t like open primaries because they let non-members of a party influence who the party’s candidate will be. If you’re not a part of that political party, you shouldn’t have a say in choosing their nominee. Open primaries also make it easy for voters from one side to vote strategically, boosting weaker candidates in the other party just to mess with their results. Plus, it dilutes the party’s core values and forces candidates to cater to a broader, less representative base. I believe parties should have the right to choose their own nominees without interference from outside voters.
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In the places where it is in use, I’m not seeing great improvements. Look at the East Bay, Oakland. RCV seemed to result in more polarization of positions like mayors, not less. The same in San Francisco, extreme polarization favoring the far Left. Look at NYC - is it better off?
Why is the political Party that is conducting multiple overseas wars and utterly destroying our economy now GUNG HO about RCV?
I used to support it. But I find it fascinating that the same Party that claims people cannot manage IDs to vote have no problems with ranking candidates.
It’s frankly one lie after another, and what I’m seeing with my own eyes are that the areas that are using it are not experiencing great leadership and improved quality of life, despite the concepts RCV claims to address.
I see massive fraud and corruption throughout our government, at all levels right now, and adding “a new and improved” voting method that is not distinguishing itself from the old method in any bright and shining and prosperous ways - YET, is being pushed as hard as possible by ESTABLISHMENT DEMOCRATS - is a big concern for me.
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I love your response and the detail to it. Thank you.
I don’t pretend any solution is “perfect” or doesn’t come with its own set of concerns to keep vigilante about. I think the questions to have an overall discussion on is “Does it advance us forward?” and “can it better achieve the ideal object of reducing polarization/division through the reduction of plurality winners?”
I think the points you lay out are an amazing checklist of items folks would need to keep in view when executing a transition to a new system. Dropping the ball on cost, education, and incompleteness of the ballot would be major impacts and setbacks. Change is difficult and we need to have a voice like yours as part of the process when considering new options/ideas.
I vote no on this idea.
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I can understand that. I just wonder if open primaries would incentivize both parties more to the center and away from the extremes.
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I appreciate the good intention here, but unfortunately RCV suffers from vote-splitting as well, and it can have outcomes where the winning candidate is not the candidate which was preferred head-to-head. It only performs marginally better than plurality voting plus a top-two runoff. No voting method is perfect, but I recommend looking at Approval Voting and STAR Voting for much better options.
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How about instead of this, the same allotted media coverage time for all on the ballot must be presented on all forms of outlets to be viewed. We never know who any of these other candidates are until we see a ballot and at that point we never know what the other guys are about. I got my sample ballot and saw like 5 other people I never even heard of, and have no idea what they stand for. Divide the spotlight equally imo.
RCV is literally funded by George Soros.
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Under no circumstances should any county, state or god forbid federal election have rank choice voting, it is by far the most dangerous method of voting. This method is tied to marxist ideology and will lead to a completely corrupted federal government.
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Rank choice voting makes cheating easier. That’s how CA was turned into essentially a one party rule. I do no support this proposal
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Too easy to manipulate. Essentially rank choice voting turned CA into essentially a one party rule by rigging the election with many “opposition” candidates to split the votes allowing Democrats to rise to the run off. Just a bad way to vote.
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Unless I missed an announcement, CA doesn 't use RCV. Only Maine and Alaska are using state wide.
Can you offer sources to support your statements?
Big no from me on this one
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There are a lot of promises made about RCV, but there are many reasons to think it (a) does next to nothing to improve representation in government, and (b) the drawbacks outweigh any nominal gain in accuracy.
I’d start with the fact that even FairVote recognizes RCV elections agree with our current system at least 93% of the time. I say “at least” because strategic voting in our current system has similarities with the instant runoff model: Whether it is the voter or the IRV system, support for less viable candidates is moved to more viable candidates.
Second, simulations of RCV and FPTP suggest they share a similar ideological distribution of winners. This, in combination with the above real-world data, should call into question the efficacy of RCV as a proposed solution… if it is even worth the effort.
Lastly, there are much better alternatives we should be considering, such as Approval voting or STAR voting. One of the problems RCV shares with our current system is an electability bias, which tends to correlate with the amount of money a campaign can get. A recent post-election survey in Chicago suggests that candidates with large war-chests perform disproportionately well under both FPTP and RCV. On the other hand, Approval and STAR practically eliminated the correlation.
You mentioned you want systems which create consensus and pull the country back from extreme division. This is what Approval voting and STAR voting are designed to do. They should be center-stage in this discussion. Not RCV.
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It is local in CA. And has led to one party rule communities. Too easy to stack the deck.
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RCV is not wise. In many uses it’s led to one party rule.
It’s a No for me.
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