That’s what I’m saying. So far in states that have a super majority like Red states theyve banned RCV and even states that are super majority Blue like WA state the legislature year after year refuses to make it law.
Great example of why those on the left are not perfect, there is a lot of room for improvement to go further left and not be like MAGA or fascist.
The issue is, Ranked Choice doesn’t actually make that happen.
Ranked Choice is a very old voting system, first written about by The Marquis de Condorcet in 1785.
Condorcet was a mathematician and was sort of interested in electoral politics… Which ended up in him dying in a French prison as a enemy of the Revolution.
Neither here nor there. Anyway Condorcet only had contempt for his version of RCV because not only did it fail to elect the pairwise winner, it could actually be twisted to elect the pairwise loser.
The pairwise winner is someone who can win in a one on one election vs every other candidate. It’s now called the Condorcet winner.
Anyway, RCV was then reinvented in the 1820s as the Single Transferable Vote for use in multiple winner elections, and then a decade or two later the multiple winner part was stripped out to create the version of RCV that Condorcet was not a fan of, nor was the creator of STV.
Then in the 1990s a lobbying group called FairVote started pushing the broken RCV.
And the system has broken in the real world. Burlington Vermont 2009, and the Alaska congressional election of 2022 are both well documented.
The meta-analysis is that RCV tends to break at a rate of about 4% of the time with three candidates, and about 7% with 4.
It gets worse if the candidates are all somewhat viable.
FairVote has to date ignored or actively downplayed these issues.
The good news is that other voting systems exist and actually do break the two party dominance.
Approval is used in STL City elections, and STAR is used by the Democratic party of Oregon.
Score is used in a lot of feedback forms, rate a group of things on a scale, 1-5, 0-100, etc.
Not really, because when RCV breaks, it breaks hard.
As in the person who would otherwise have won being eliminated in the first round of counting, and then the person who is actually elected being the last choice on a bunch of ballots because the ballots had been gutted down the middle.
Also, that 4% was padded out by a lot of elections where the third party was not viable in the first place. As soon as the third party is viable, then RCV just breaks due to the return of the Spoiler Effect.
US seems to have a specifically bad version of FPTP. In the UK we use it and yet still have more than 2 political parties. Though its still not a great system and it largely favours 2 parties, its more possible for a new party to emerge.
I feel a better choice is just infinite choice voting. Vote for anyone and everyone you want,tally them up and most votes win.
Vote everyone if you dont care, vote your main choice and a safe choice otherwise, or vote for one person if you are super confident or dont like the others
Fine. Let’s switch to ranked choice voting so more than two parties are viable.
That’s what I’m saying. So far in states that have a super majority like Red states theyve banned RCV and even states that are super majority Blue like WA state the legislature year after year refuses to make it law.
Great example of why those on the left are not perfect, there is a lot of room for improvement to go further left and not be like MAGA or fascist.
Oregon voted it down too because it was too confusing. Sigh…
The Oregon Democratic party was also likely against it because they’re pushing a system that’s much better. They’re all in on STAR.
Which is over at starvoting.org
The failure of democracy in 'Murica isn’t a bug, it’s a feature
The issue is, Ranked Choice doesn’t actually make that happen.
Ranked Choice is a very old voting system, first written about by The Marquis de Condorcet in 1785.
Condorcet was a mathematician and was sort of interested in electoral politics… Which ended up in him dying in a French prison as a enemy of the Revolution.
Neither here nor there. Anyway Condorcet only had contempt for his version of RCV because not only did it fail to elect the pairwise winner, it could actually be twisted to elect the pairwise loser.
The pairwise winner is someone who can win in a one on one election vs every other candidate. It’s now called the Condorcet winner.
Anyway, RCV was then reinvented in the 1820s as the Single Transferable Vote for use in multiple winner elections, and then a decade or two later the multiple winner part was stripped out to create the version of RCV that Condorcet was not a fan of, nor was the creator of STV.
Then in the 1990s a lobbying group called FairVote started pushing the broken RCV.
And the system has broken in the real world. Burlington Vermont 2009, and the Alaska congressional election of 2022 are both well documented.
The meta-analysis is that RCV tends to break at a rate of about 4% of the time with three candidates, and about 7% with 4.
It gets worse if the candidates are all somewhat viable.
FairVote has to date ignored or actively downplayed these issues.
The good news is that other voting systems exist and actually do break the two party dominance.
Approval is used in STL City elections, and STAR is used by the Democratic party of Oregon.
Score is used in a lot of feedback forms, rate a group of things on a scale, 1-5, 0-100, etc.
Isn’t failing 4% of the time like a thousand million times better than our current failure rate of 100%?
Not really, because when RCV breaks, it breaks hard.
As in the person who would otherwise have won being eliminated in the first round of counting, and then the person who is actually elected being the last choice on a bunch of ballots because the ballots had been gutted down the middle.
Also, that 4% was padded out by a lot of elections where the third party was not viable in the first place. As soon as the third party is viable, then RCV just breaks due to the return of the Spoiler Effect.
It’s explained in too much detail here.
https://www.rangevoting.org/Monotone.html
US seems to have a specifically bad version of FPTP. In the UK we use it and yet still have more than 2 political parties. Though its still not a great system and it largely favours 2 parties, its more possible for a new party to emerge.
I feel a better choice is just infinite choice voting. Vote for anyone and everyone you want,tally them up and most votes win.
Vote everyone if you dont care, vote your main choice and a safe choice otherwise, or vote for one person if you are super confident or dont like the others
I agree, ranked choice voting is way overdue