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Another reason to like Tim Walz. He has openly supported RCV: https://www.rcvbloomington.org/supporters
its going to be just like marijuana reform. forcibly, by the citizens county by county, state by state and it will take another 40 years
lol specifically banning RCV is on my states ballot this November, we won’t be able to do county by county in Missouri if it passes and they’ve tacked it onto some anti absentee vote nonsense so it’s probably going to pass
Bruh they really do hate democracy dont they
Fascists are funny like that
Yo, end that shit. You guys have got Approval Voting in St. Louis and it needs to spread to the rest of the state.
Start by supporting the RCV ballot initiative going on in Oregon this November. Donate and volunteer even if you're not in Oregon. If we're lucky Oregon will approve it and show everyone else both vote by mail AND RCV works perfectly fine.
https://www.oregonrcv.org/
I normally was recommending RCV, but today someone mentioned STAR which is like RCV 2.0. The RCV works flawlessly with 2 parties, but as the number of candidates grows and they are equally viable then actually the less preferred candidate might win, because people place candidates in different order. This can cause candidates that might otherwise win, be eliminated too early.
STAR essentially works like RCV, but you give candidates "stars" (1 to 5 rating) and you can have multiple candidates ranked on the same level (of you like both equally).
Any idea why STAR might not be good?
Brah, we have fptp. I'd die for something like that.
Hmm, so I did a little research on STAR. It seems to basically just be "weighted" voting, where candidates are given a vote with a weight per voter just to select two runoff candidates. Then it goes to normal FPTP (decided by individual voter ranking) once the runoff candidates are selected.
I really do like the flexibility of the ranking system, and I think it could work very well in an actively participating citizenry. BUT:
I feel like this would just end up with American voters falling into the same 2-party trap, and 3rd parties once again splintering themselves across a bunch of different candidates that will not total up enough to make it into the runoff. Since there isn't multiple chances to coalesce 3rd party candidates into the "most preferred" one, voters will most likely just once again pile into two big parties.
The major benefit I do see is that voters can give multiple candidates the same high rating, meaning the visibility of said 3rd party candidates could be a lot higher and end up eliminating the entire first problem I just mentioned. However, it would be entirely dependent on at least one 3rd party candidate scraping together enough 4 and 5 star votes to make it at least to 2nd place in the runoff before being killed off.
It is also harder to administer and requires a good bit more backend data handling on election workers' side. That's probably not a big deal, but it does add complexity and a little more effort for the public to interpret the final results.
One of the reasons I like RCV is because it sort of "filters upwards" thru candidates, giving each one multiple chances to increase their vote share.
Theoretical: If you had 5 candidates in a smaller local election, and the 1st choice results were 35%, 25%, 20%, 10%, 10%; you probably expect typical Americans used to FPTP to pile Republicans and Democrats into the upper 35 and 25%'s, and through each elimination round their first-choice votes will not change.
But if the 3rd party 20/10/10's, now empowered to not accidentally throw away their vote in FPTP, coalesced into a single voting bloc through their second and third choices not choosing the R or D, they'll easily hit 50%. In STAR, the election is already over; it's a runoff between the R and D again, and now we still have the same 2 party problem.
I'm trying to be realistic though, and as an Oregon resident I want to get at least something that is better than FPTP. There were a couple STAR proposals around the state at county/city levels and they've failed each time, but RCV seems to be getting some momentum this year. At least enough momentum to actually make it to a statewide ballot measure, which is more than any other alternative has gotten so far, so I'm gonna fight like hell for it.
We could speed things along by eliminating the Electoral College with the National Popular Vote. As Republicans lose more consecutive terms, they’ll get behind ranked-choice as an avenue for leverage.
How about just not having a winner-takes-all system?
I'm skeptical about complex voting systems, simply because they cause a lot of confusion and some people don't understand what they're voting for.
Here in Germany we get two votes for the Bundestag, it's essentially a split between district vote and federal vote. The system is pretty simple, you get two columns, one with people, one with parties. And many voters still don't understand the implications of it.
My city's council has such a stupid voting system (multiple votes, multiple districts and parties), that it took me and my friends (all having masters degrees or doctorates, one literally being a pol sci teacher) several hours and an absurd chain of local/state websites to finally find a Word(!!) document that somewhat explained the process, and we still don't really know what was happening.
My point is not that 80% of people are too stupid to understand these systems, but too lazy to look for information, and that's fine. Even the stupidest voter should be able to find and understand the system within 5min. If not, information is obscured or the system too complex.
I think something like Sequential Proportional Approval Voting would be much better for the US system.
I much prefer Approval Voting, but anything is better than FPTP.
I prefer ranked choice simply because I may “approve” of two candidates in the sense they’d do a good job, but prefer one candidate over the other. Ranked choice allows me to note my preference.
Hard agree anything is better than FPTP
It'd be quite ironic if they put this to a vote and FPTP wins because because the votes of its opponents are split between Ranked Choice and Approval Voting.
Among voting theorists they tend to pick approval. So far the only direct heads-up vote to choose between Approval and RCV had RCV win with about 70% vs 30%. But honestly that's pretty dang good for Approval considering how relatively unknown it is.
Then we shall institute gladiator battles to settle all disputes. /s
Vote progressive and you'll get voting system reform. And, more importantly imo, campaign finance reform.
Also vote in every local election. Even the seemingly insignificant ones like a school board election.
We only get the endless loop of people voting out of fear or against something around these parts.
Elected nixon, elected bush, elected another bush, elected donald fucking trump, every president in between is just: well at least it's not _______
We deserve better. Do you?
Anything that gets us out of the two-party system where either of the parties would have to agree to let people leave.
Yes, we do, but we don't always get what we deserve.
The lotion scene would've been a lot more interesting if he captured a guy down there.