Seeing as how some people here on Lemmy get upset at any mention of Ranked Choice Voting and respond that, in their opinion, it’s not perfect, and that we should therefore keep the voting system we have while we debate which alternative is perfect for several decades, allow me to preemptively respond.
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RCV has the momentum and is infinitely superior to what we have now. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of fantastic.
I’d be happy if a community chose one of the other options. I don’t care. They’re all better than what we have and we should be celebrating every city, county and state that switches to any of them. That’s the purpose of this post.
Trying to demonize one option because you don’t think it’s perfect is just muddying the waters and subjecting us to decades of more of the shit sandwich we have now while we debate which alternative is flawless (hint: none of them are).
You’ll never get everyone to agree on which option is best. A vast majority of us can agree, though, that FPTP is garbage, and RCV is way way better.
It’s like you’re sitting there with nothing to eat but spoiled meat and it’s making you deathly sick, someone comes by and offers you a fresh juicy hamburger, and you respond, “No! I’ll accept nothing less than Filet Mignon!” Dude! You’re eating spoiled meat! Take the damn burger!
Unfortunately, RCV doesn’t end the two party system. It’s better than what we have, but only marginally. My hope is that when voters complain about it, the next step is not to repeal RCV but to evolve into Star voting.
RCV at least allows for options, and it’s pretty easy to understand. First past the post is literally the worst.
Agreed. But it still encourages strategic voting and discourages third-party spoilers. It’s fptp with extra steps, and it gets worse the more candidates you have. If you don’t pick a frontrunner first or second, there’s a chance your vote isn’t counted at all.
Uhhh, no. That’s not how RCV works at all.
Let’s say there are five candidates - A, B , C, D, and E.
Let’s assume candidates A & B are the most popular.
Personally I choose to rank them as C, E, D, B and then A.
Out of all of them, no one gets over 50% of the #1 vote. Whoever gets the lowest #1 vote is knocked out first. Let’s suggest that this is C. All of their #1 votes and therefore my vote is then transferred to E.
Let’s suggest that after this there’s still no one who has over 50% of the vote between the other four candidates. Let’s further assume that candidate E has the lowest resulting vote after the first round of knockout. My vote is then transferred to candidate D.
Out of A, B, and D, let’s assume none of them still have over 50% of the vote after this redistribution. Let’s further assume that D has the lowest vote of the three. My vote is then transferred to B.
Given there are only two candidates left, one will have to have a majority. That candidate wins.
Under RCV, as long as you mark every box with a preference your vote can never ever be wasted. It will always end up with a candidate that wins or one that loses, but it cannot ever be exhausted and therefore meaningless.
Thank you for providing an example.
Let’s say E is everyone’s second choice, but nobody’s first choice. E is the first candidate eliminated because E got 0% of the vote.
Let’s say it shakes out like this:
40% A E C B
21% B E A C
20% D E C B
19% C E D B <- You
40 A D 39 D B 21 B D
60 D 40 A
First round, E is eliminated despite being the most popular candidate by far.
Second Round, C, followed by B. D wins.
But if 3% of A voters switched to C, then A would have won because D would be eliminated, sending their votes to C, which would have eliminated B, sending those votes to A. But D and C voters hate A, so it’s in their best interest to also vote for B. And now we’re back to fptp
When considering the quality of a voting system, you want voters to be honest (i.e. not strategic in their votes). Voters should pick the candidate they agree with, not the candidates they think they must support to avoid a catastrophe.
Read more here.
I agree it does not solve our problem but it would make more than just a marginal difference. It would heavily disincentivize going too far politically one way to win your primary.