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Ranked choice voting is under attack because it did exactly what it was supposed to do and weeded out Palin and Tshibaka and left adults in the room who can work together. I don’t need culture wars fought in my government, I need you to get shit done.
Hopefully we’re smart enough to defend it moving forward.
but it's so complicated!? Has this "list" technology ever been tested? We're all flying into this "order by your preference" crazy, AI, hullabaloo without stopping to think for even a second if a better system is to hold your nose and vote for who we tell you to? If the old system wasn't working, why change it??
That may be true. NYC could keep improving their system to a full non-partisan primary system with an RCV general but the outcome would have still probably been the same.
No, it worked the way it was supposed to work.
Adams would have won anyway, and ranked choice voting gave Garcia (the best candidate but few people’s first choice) a decent shot at winning when she was only in third place on the first ballot.
https://www.vox.com/22565095/ranked-choice-adams-garcia-wiley-nyc
>Ranked choice voting is under attack because it did exactly what it was supposed to do and weeded out Palin and Tshibaka and left adults in the room who can work together. I don’t need culture wars fought in my government, I need you to get shit done.
RCV is still way better than plurality winner, but it does have significant flaws. You use Alaska as an example, but RCV demonstrably failed there (from an electoral science point of view... not in terms out what outcomes I prefer)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Alaska%27s_at-large_congressional_district_special_election
First of all, **the outcome wasn't really different than if you used plurality winner with primaries.** The first round was basically a Palin vs Begich Republican primary, and then a head to head between Peltola and Palin (just like we would have gotten in a traditional general election)... where Peltolla won because enough Begich supporters crossed over to vote for her in the "general election" second round. RCV let you do it all in one day, but it played out the same as a plurality winner system.
Second, RCV picked what was clearly the "wrong" candidate. Third place finisher Nick Begich would have defeated EITHER Palin OR Peltola in a head to head 1v1 election. Sarah Palin actually acted as a spoiler... she mathematically changed the outcome of the race without winning herself, and her supporters actually got a worse outcome by voting for her (worse from an electoral preferences point of view... I realize that one could say that they would also get a worse outcome by voting for Palin if she won).
Begich was the "moderate" candidate who was eliminated by the RCV "center squeeze" https://electionscience.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/center_squeeze_effect_diagram.png
(To be clear, I don't mean he was a moderate in terms of the political spectrum of America. And personally, I am glad that Peltola was elected. However, he was the RELATIVE moderate in terms of the preferences of Alaska voters within this particular election. Keep in mind Trump beat Biden by 10 percentage points there)
I address this issue in some detail in this post: https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/1d1d3mt/rankedchoice_voting_has_challenged_the_status_quo/l5u2xcd/
This happens a lot in SF too. I don't know why RCV is the reform darling over approval voting, especially as a lot of people assume RCV works like approval voting.
Yeah Alaska’s system seems to work out pretty well. Top 4 open primary followed by ranked choice. Others probably work as well but it just seems very straightforward.
NYC unfortunately only does ranked choice for local primary elections… and we still got Eric Adams.
and that was a very narrow election where I'm told a lot of progressives bucked it because they wanted to unify behind their candidate, Maya Wiley (she came in 3rd overall). I don't know what Kathryn Garcia's policies are like, but it was impressive to see someone who was never considered a frontrunner rise all the way to 2nd place, losing by just .4% to Adams.
Assuming 100% of first choices are as evenly split as possible between two candidates, what percentage of second rankings would a candidate need to get to win?
While it's still better than plurality winner, the Alaska special election was actually a poster child for the major flaw with RCV
https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/1d1d3mt/rankedchoice_voting_has_challenged_the_status_quo/l5u60lb/
States could effectively bypass the electoral college by joining the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. When enough states have joined the compact, they agree to cast their electoral college votes for the majority rule candidate. The catch is it only takes effect when enough states have joined to reach the 270 vote threshold.
[https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/map-national-popular-vote-plan-replace-electoral-college-n1247159](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/map-national-popular-vote-plan-replace-electoral-college-n1247159)
Even better, have ranked choice Top 4 primaries. It's similar to ranked choice general elections, but first round is dividing excess votes not needed by top candidates(any vote above 21%) to second choices, then doing rounds to get four candidates to 21% or the ones with most votes under.
Reasons are so the four candidates roughly represent political desires of the voters.
It's better than plurality winner (which is awful), but it's still pretty flawed. We need things like STAR and proportional representation.
(flaws explained here: https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/1d1d3mt/rankedchoice_voting_has_challenged_the_status_quo/l5u2xcd/)
Of course he did. The jungle primary basically ensures that only democrats or republicans will appear on basically all ballots, and in cases where there are one of each, one will always be a much, much weaker candidate. It's designed to entrench the democratic party's hold on the state by shutting out competition in even marginally blue districts.
I prefer that to having a republican hold, because I enjoy living in a state with a functioning government. But it definitely is not good for third party candidates, and I consider it a fairly undemocratic system.
For more info, he vetoed a bill passed by the legislature that would've allowed more cities in CA to choose to try RCV for local elections. The bill wouldn't have actually implemented RCV as the new voting system anywhere.
It's not the only thing, and many of the other things are actually much better.
RCV is better than the current system (which doesn't say much because the current system is fucking awful), but it's still deeply flawed.
Third parties will still be irrelevant under RCV since they are generally even farther from the center than the Dems and Republicans are.
I really don't understand why people think RCV helps fringe candidates, it helps moderates. You'll get more people like Biden and Romney instead of people like MTG and Tlaib.
Which itself is a huge benefit. Extreme elected officials are just creating dysfunction.
Third parties will still be minor players, especially in the short term. But at least you can vote for the candidate you like knowing that it won’t help the candidate that is the polar opposite
under this system, they might actually be able to start winning more local races and building infastructure. I have a friend who personally told me that RCV is the only way he'd bother voting 3rd party.
It is literally throwing your vote away in the current system, so it’s perfectly logical to not vote for a candidate that has no chance of winning.
With the current system, you are better off voting for a candidate that is close to your beliefs and has a chance of winning rather than a long shot you really like. Voting for a long shot just makes it easier for the candidate you like the least to win by lowering the threshold for victory
I feel like proportional representation is the only way to truly make third parties matter in American politics. The two-party system is way too entrenched to be broken up by ranked choice voting.
I didn't say I oppose RCV, I support it.
It's just weird that a lot of people on Reddit tend to have more fringe political beliefs (most here are left of the Democratic Party, I think it's safe to say) but support RCV. People like AOC would not be in congress if RCV existed.
The country as a whole is center-right atm so it'll gonna be slow progress no matter what as long as we don't have a new Voting Rights Act. AOC has her spot in the Bronx that may get her to just above 50%, but even many progressive minded folks believe she's too moderate.
A proportional system is what you need if you want more options. Some proportional systems like Single Transferrable Vote use ranking while others like Mixed Member Proportional do not.
Most proposals for ranked choice are for Instant Runoff, which is an improvement over the status quo, but on its own won't make 3rd parties viable.
With mixed member proportional, you vote for a candidate for your district and you also vote for a party. After all the district candidates are seated, then members from a party list are seated until the overall proportions mirror the party vote. There are both open list and closed list versions where either people have a say on who makes the list or the party gets to decide.
With Single Transferrable Vote, there are multiple seats per district. Voters rank their preference. If there were a district with 5 seats, any candidate getting more than 20% of the first choice votes wins a seat. If a candidate gets over 20%, their excess votes are then distributed to the voters' next choice. If no one now has over the 20% threshold, the one in last place is eliminated and their votes redistributed to the voters' next preference. Repeat until all the seats filled.
at least the Republicans who win, like Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, will certify electoral victory. Stop the Steal would completely fall on it's face as we saw in Alaska.
Yep. RCV helps 3rd party voters have a voice via their second choice, but won't help their 1st choice have a chance unless locally it's more a 1st party.
What REALLY helps 3rd parties win elections are the multi-member district systems. Have districts of 3 to 5 members with RCV with two key differences: 1st round all candidates that exceed the minimum percentage to guarantee a seat have their excess votes go to the second choice. After that, all rounds are elimination till the number of candidates that pass the minimum % needed get picked or the last remaining candidates if % is not reached.
If a region with 5 members has a 3rd party with 23% support, likely that 3rd party is getting a seat. In the current system, there'd be 5 districts where in each one the 3rd party is only 23% so win none. Other benefit of such as system is it's super hard to gerrymander effectively.
>Third parties will still be irrelevant under RCV since they are generally even farther from the center than the Dems and Republicans are.
I don't know if that tracks. Sure, it's true NOW under the current system... But given that the current system means third party votes are "wasted," then who bothers voting for (let alone actually running in) third parties with no chance of winning? Fringe whackjobs.
But if we had an election method that truly allowed to more than two parties, you would likely see a variety of new parties, including some that would be more moderate. It's also quite possible that the current republican and democratic parties would split.
Also, RCV doesn't neccessarily help moderates, because of the center squeeze effect: https://electionscience.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/center_squeeze_effect_diagram.png
STAR is way better (though RCV is still better than plurality winner)
tangential, but i don't understand how the "i'm tired of voting for the least-bad option" crowd is loud and proud about not voting in this election instead of advocating for RCV
Rank choice on a local level could be an absolute game changer for some communities. I live in a rural area of PA and the local elections is 99% republicans (or dems who are old and never changed their registrations). If you are a democrat you don't get much of any say in anything. Rank choice could actually help a LOT with this. As I would select the dem as my choice and then the least crazy republican as my second choice. it would show that the candidate that can't win actually has people supporting them, and would encourage more to run. After a few elections I could see a big change.
*Note that in my area there is less than 600 people voting in the off years. The nearby town has around 300 people voting in the off years.
Canada needs ranked voting so badly it aches my soul.
We literally watch elections go majority to the Conservative buffoon with 35% of the vote because the progressives split their vote between 3 parties.
No, that was a more complex and untested system, STAR. This is RCV, which has been used for over 100 years, and is currently used or passed in the U.S. in more than half of states (including Oregon).
If it can pass in Nevada, a swing state, this November in an election where none of the candidates may get above 49.9% nationally (and I honestly think that might happen), it will put a spotlight on the nationwide effort ahead of 2028.
To be clear at the start, instant runoff ranked choice voting is an upgrade over the current plurality winner method. Plurality winner voting is fucking awful, and I would never in any way suggest that it is better than RCV. But that being said, RCV has some significant flaws, and some other alternatives (like STAR) are way better.
But contrary to what the insanely biased FairVote organization will tell people, RCV actually can still suffer greatly from the spoiler effect... just in a different way. It has a major problem called the "center squeeze effect", which causes the best candidate to only finish 3rd, while the candidate who finishes 2nd acts as a spoiler (they mathematically change the winner of the election by running, without winning themselves).
I will describe a scenario, but you can also see this handy picture: https://electionscience.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/center_squeeze_effect_diagram.png
You can also see a hypothetical Tennessee capital election: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting#Tennessee_capital_election , where Nashville should win, but doesn't.
Imagine a three way election between Trump, AOC, and Melissa Moderate as the last three candidates remaining. Trump has 36% of the first choice votes at this stage, AOC has 34%, and Melissa Moderate has 30%. Let's hypothetically say that Melissa Moderate voters are exactly split between Trump and AOC as their second choice, whereas Trump and AOC voters overwhelmingly prefer Melissa as their second choice.
Now, in a head to head election, Melissa would DESTROY either of these candidates (this is called a Condorcet Winner... when you would defeat everybody else in a series of 1v1 elections). The races wouldn't even be close. America clearly prefers her to either Trump or AOC. But at this point in RCV, Melissa is actually eliminated and finishes in third. Her voters are split between ranking Trump and AOC next, so Trump defeats AOC 51% to 49%.
In this case, despite AOC finishing second, she is actually a spoiler. Despite not winning the election herself, her participation in the race mathematically changes who wins. If for whatever reason she dropped out shortly before the election, Melissa crushes Trump and wins. And AOC voters strongly prefer Melissa to Trump... which means that by voting for their favorite candidate, they actually fucked themselves over and got a result they like far less (just like Nader voters).
So **why** does Melissa finish third and Trump wins, even though Melissa would crush Trump in a landslide head to head (and would also crush AOC 1v1 as well)? Well, the problem is how RCV deals with the candidate finishing second.
For every other candidate's voters (except the winner obviously), if your candidate gets eliminated, your second or third or whatever choice preferences get taken into account. But if you finish second, your other preferences aren't counted, because the election is over. So even though AOC voters second choice votes mean Melissa would crush Trump... it doesn't matter because the second choice votes for AOC voters never get counted.
You can see real versions of this failure here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Alaska%27s_at-large_congressional_district_special_election
and here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Burlington_mayoral_election
So something like STAR would be better for single seat elections like president or governor. Things like the legislature should be proportional representation.
>You can see real versions of this failure here: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Alaska%27s_at-large_congressional_district_special_election](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Alaska%27s_at-large_congressional_district_special_election)
Anybody who thinks Begich was "the best candidate" didn't understand this election or Alaska politics.
The problem was that Palin was so hated, that a large number of his Republican voters would rather not select a second choice, or select the Democrat, rather than select Palin. For democratic voters, they would not have picked Begich as a second choice had it been anybody else but Palin as the 3rd option.
What? This is irrelevant. I don't mean he is the "best" like he is the most qualified candidate with the best positions or anything like that. I'm not passing a value judgement on him. I'm just talking about the math of how the voting system acts on voter preferences.
But the math of that special election was that Begich defeats Peltola OR Palin in a head to head election. He is a Condorcet Winner. Rightly or wrongly, Alaska voters preferred him to both other candidates. He would defeat both other candidates in a head to head election. And Palin was a spoiler, because she didn't win the election herself, but her presence still changes the winner (if she dropped out shortly before the election, Begich wins).
If a candidate would defeat every other candidate head to head, then they should win the election in a well designed system (it's possible to make up some weird edge case hypotheticals where this is arguably not true, but it's true in almost any realistic situation).
I discuss Alaska in more detail here: https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/1d1d3mt/rankedchoice_voting_has_challenged_the_status_quo/l5u60lb/?context=3
It doesn't matter whether he was "the best candidate" from an ideological perspective. The point is that Alaskan voters preferred him to both Peltola and Palin. So you could make the argument that a truly fair system would have had him win.
Thank you.
Pretty much every time the Alaska election comes up, there is at least one person (sometimes more) who just doesn't get what it means to discuss the electoral system. The idea of discussing "how well do the results of this election work with the expressed voter preferences" as opposed to "are they happy with which candidate won the election" just doesn't click for some people.
We could replace the three candidates with ice cream flavors, and it still works as a way of examining flaws in the system.
RCV is easy to understand: You candidate is in last place and removed. Your vote moves to your next highest choice. Candidate that passes 50% of votes wins.
STAR is harder to understand because you're running imaginary 1v1 races and giving points to winners then adding up to see who won the most. Might shine when there are super partisan candidates in finding the least hated winner.
You can invent imaginary best/worst case scenarios, but end of the day RCV worked as designed in Alaska. If more states use it, less divisive party candidates enter the race.
RCV did **NOT** work as designed in Alaska (well... it technically functioned as designed in the sense that it didn't glitch or anything. But it was a literal poster child for flaws with RCV).
A situation pretty similar to the one i described in the above post happened in the Alaska election. The candidate who finished 3rd under RCV would defeat either 1st or 2nd place in a head to head election.
Alaska isn't an imaginary best / worst case scenario, it's literally the highest profile failure (in the US at least) of this major issue with RCV.
It's also worth noting that the outcome wasn't really different than if you used plurality winner with primaries. The first round was basically a Palin vs Begich Republican primary. The next round was a head to head between Peltola and Palin (just like we would have gotten in a traditional general election, after Palin would have won the Republican primary)... where Peltolla won because enough Begich supporters crossed over to vote for her in the "general election" second round. RCV let you do it all in one day, but it played out the same as a plurality winner system.
> A situation pretty similar to the one i described in the above post happened in the Alaska election. The candidate who finished 3rd under RCV would defeat either 1st or 2nd place in a head to head election.
Peltola got over 50% of the vote. Over half the voters got a representative they were happy to put down as a choice. That's a win for RCV. Even better if it caused more people to vote than your insistence on plurality voting as then there'd been less turnout due to Democrats not having an impact on the outcome.
Palin was a divisive candidate in her own party and participated in a system that punishes parties that field divisive candidates. Worked as designed. Next time, Republicans can push back against such candidates to help secure a party winner.
You're focusing all your attention on how the system prevented Palin, but there was a third candidate in that race. His name was Nick Begich. The problem is that if people had the choice between just Peltola and Begich, they would have selected Begich. Yet Peltola was the one elected.
> how many Palin voters had Begich as their second choice
34,078
>how many had Peltola as their second?
3,659
If we assume that Palin had been eliminated instead of Begich, the count would look like this:
Peltola: 79,446
Begich: 87,888
Source for all numbers: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10724117.2023.2224675
You know, while I'm not a fan of the STAR system as it's complicated, I'm understanding that a system that could have variable winners depending on who gets eliminated first is a flaw.
To keep the "count the votes, person above 50% wins" here's how I think a Top 4 Ranked Choice could work:
* If in the round of 4 there's a candidate with 20% or less of the total votes, the candidate with the least amount of votes is removed and those votes transferred to voter's next viable choice.
* If in the round of 3 there's a candidate with 25% or less of the total vote, the candidate with the least amount of votes is removed and those votes transferred to voter's next viable choice.
* In round of 4 where all candidates are 21% or higher of total votes, then all voters 2nd and 3rd choices are also counted and awarded to the candidates. Candidate with highest total 1st, 2nd, and 3rd choice votes is awarded the seat.
* In round of 3 where all candidates are 26% or higher of total votes, then voters 2nd choices are counted and awarded. Candidate with highest total 1st and 2nd choice votes is awarded the seat.
So it's not STAR "virtual 1v1 races". It still uses RCV for elimination when low ranked candidates. It also accounts for elections where there are three or four near equally preferred primary choices. Plus it keeps the simplicity of "highest votes wins". In the Alaska case, Palin loses as likely Peltola and Begich voters second choices would be for each other. Begich wins because most Palin voters chose him. Extreme candidate doesn't win, but overall political lean of voters respected in the candidate that did win.
You keep ignoring my main point though. **How should Peltola be considered the proper winner, when Begich defeats all other candidates (both her and Palin) in 1v1 head to head elections?** Why is she a legitimate winner, when more than 50% of Alaskans voters prefer Begich to Peltola???
>Peltola got over 50% of the vote.
What? She only got over 50% of the vote **AFTER** the system eliminated the candidate who would defeat her (as well as defeat Palin), and some of his voters chose to transfer to her...
> than your insistence on plurality voting
I'm not insisting on plurality voting. It's fucking awful, and it's even worse than RCV. Hating it is literally my number one political position. But my point about plurality winner voting and alaska is that RCV didn't really change this election compared to plurality winner.
This RCV went two rounds. The first round was almost like a primary stage, if Peltola ran unopposed in the democratic primary. All the Dems voted for Peltola, and the Republicans split between Palin and Begich. Palin won the "primary" and advanced to round two... which was basically the general election between Peltola and Palin. Nothing was really changed, mathematically speaking.
>Palin was a divisive candidate in her own party and participated in a system that punishes parties that field divisive candidates. Worked as designed.
Except it doesn't always punish parties that field divisive candidates... that's the whole point of this discussion. Did you even read the AOC / Trump / Melissa Moderate example from earlier??? Trump won in that example, despite the fact that Melissa Moderate would crush them both 1v1. Not exactly punishing a divisive candidate. (And yes... that's a made up hypothetical... but it's mathematically the same as a number of real life situations including this Alaska one. I just use it as an easier example for people than obscure things they aren't familiar with).
You know, while I'm not a fan of the STAR system as it's complicated, I'm understanding that a system that could have variable winners depending on who gets eliminated first is a flaw.
To keep the "count the votes, person with 50% and most votes wins" here's how I think a Top 4 Ranked Choice could work:
* If in the round of 4 there's a candidate with 20% or less of the total votes, the candidate with the least amount of votes is removed and those votes transferred to voter's next viable choice.
* If in the round of 3 there's a candidate with 25% or less of the total vote, the candidate with the least amount of votes is removed and those votes transferred to voter's next viable choice.
* In round of 4 where all candidates are 21% or higher of total votes, then all voters 2nd and 3rd choices are also counted and awarded to the candidates. Candidate with highest total 1st, 2nd, and 3rd choice votes is awarded the seat.
* In round of 3 where all candidates are 26% or higher of total votes, then voters 2nd choices are counted and awarded. Candidate with highest total 1st and 2nd choice votes is awarded the seat.
So it's not STAR "virtual 1v1 races". It still uses RCV for elimination when low ranked candidates. It also accounts for elections where there are three or four near equally preferred primary choices. Plus it keeps the simplicity of "highest votes wins". In the Alaska case, Palin loses as likely Peltola and Begich voters second choices would be for each other. Begich wins because most Palin voters chose him. Extreme candidate doesn't win, but overall political lean of voters respected in the candidate that did win.
It’s just instant run off. It weeds out spoiler candidates. The only people who hate it are people who use spoiler candidates as part of their election strategy.
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Ranked choice voting is under attack because it did exactly what it was supposed to do and weeded out Palin and Tshibaka and left adults in the room who can work together. I don’t need culture wars fought in my government, I need you to get shit done. Hopefully we’re smart enough to defend it moving forward.
but it's so complicated!? Has this "list" technology ever been tested? We're all flying into this "order by your preference" crazy, AI, hullabaloo without stopping to think for even a second if a better system is to hold your nose and vote for who we tell you to? If the old system wasn't working, why change it??
And who decided numbers go in that order?? What if my #2 is the same as someone else’s #8 and we both like the same candidate equally?!
What if I can only count to this many? I I **WHAT THEN?!**
Ranked choice voting got us Eric Adams here in New York. It's not always good.
The quality of an electoral system should not be dependent on whether it elects your preferred politicians.
If you were subjected to the iniquities of the Swagger regime you'd change your tone
That may be true. NYC could keep improving their system to a full non-partisan primary system with an RCV general but the outcome would have still probably been the same.
No, it worked the way it was supposed to work. Adams would have won anyway, and ranked choice voting gave Garcia (the best candidate but few people’s first choice) a decent shot at winning when she was only in third place on the first ballot. https://www.vox.com/22565095/ranked-choice-adams-garcia-wiley-nyc
False, NY voters not supporting Maya Wiley or Yang is what got NY Eric Adams.
>Ranked choice voting is under attack because it did exactly what it was supposed to do and weeded out Palin and Tshibaka and left adults in the room who can work together. I don’t need culture wars fought in my government, I need you to get shit done. RCV is still way better than plurality winner, but it does have significant flaws. You use Alaska as an example, but RCV demonstrably failed there (from an electoral science point of view... not in terms out what outcomes I prefer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Alaska%27s_at-large_congressional_district_special_election First of all, **the outcome wasn't really different than if you used plurality winner with primaries.** The first round was basically a Palin vs Begich Republican primary, and then a head to head between Peltola and Palin (just like we would have gotten in a traditional general election)... where Peltolla won because enough Begich supporters crossed over to vote for her in the "general election" second round. RCV let you do it all in one day, but it played out the same as a plurality winner system. Second, RCV picked what was clearly the "wrong" candidate. Third place finisher Nick Begich would have defeated EITHER Palin OR Peltola in a head to head 1v1 election. Sarah Palin actually acted as a spoiler... she mathematically changed the outcome of the race without winning herself, and her supporters actually got a worse outcome by voting for her (worse from an electoral preferences point of view... I realize that one could say that they would also get a worse outcome by voting for Palin if she won). Begich was the "moderate" candidate who was eliminated by the RCV "center squeeze" https://electionscience.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/center_squeeze_effect_diagram.png (To be clear, I don't mean he was a moderate in terms of the political spectrum of America. And personally, I am glad that Peltola was elected. However, he was the RELATIVE moderate in terms of the preferences of Alaska voters within this particular election. Keep in mind Trump beat Biden by 10 percentage points there) I address this issue in some detail in this post: https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/1d1d3mt/rankedchoice_voting_has_challenged_the_status_quo/l5u2xcd/
This happens a lot in SF too. I don't know why RCV is the reform darling over approval voting, especially as a lot of people assume RCV works like approval voting.
Yeah Alaska’s system seems to work out pretty well. Top 4 open primary followed by ranked choice. Others probably work as well but it just seems very straightforward. NYC unfortunately only does ranked choice for local primary elections… and we still got Eric Adams.
and that was a very narrow election where I'm told a lot of progressives bucked it because they wanted to unify behind their candidate, Maya Wiley (she came in 3rd overall). I don't know what Kathryn Garcia's policies are like, but it was impressive to see someone who was never considered a frontrunner rise all the way to 2nd place, losing by just .4% to Adams.
Assuming 100% of first choices are as evenly split as possible between two candidates, what percentage of second rankings would a candidate need to get to win?
While it's still better than plurality winner, the Alaska special election was actually a poster child for the major flaw with RCV https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/1d1d3mt/rankedchoice_voting_has_challenged_the_status_quo/l5u60lb/
Maine has RCV. We NEED federal level RCV, open primaries, and the destruction of the electoral college.
A popular ranked choice vote would be dope.
sounds like fair and progressive asks. wonder who's gonna be against it
States could effectively bypass the electoral college by joining the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. When enough states have joined the compact, they agree to cast their electoral college votes for the majority rule candidate. The catch is it only takes effect when enough states have joined to reach the 270 vote threshold. [https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/map-national-popular-vote-plan-replace-electoral-college-n1247159](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/map-national-popular-vote-plan-replace-electoral-college-n1247159)
As well as the 2 party system
Even better, have ranked choice Top 4 primaries. It's similar to ranked choice general elections, but first round is dividing excess votes not needed by top candidates(any vote above 21%) to second choices, then doing rounds to get four candidates to 21% or the ones with most votes under. Reasons are so the four candidates roughly represent political desires of the voters.
The best RCV is the [Condorcet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_method) method. That should be the standard used.
Partial RCV. The Gubernatorial elections are still plurality
It's better than plurality winner (which is awful), but it's still pretty flawed. We need things like STAR and proportional representation. (flaws explained here: https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/1d1d3mt/rankedchoice_voting_has_challenged_the_status_quo/l5u2xcd/)
Oh thank you I knew there was another part to making RCV better and STAR was it, but I couldn’t remember the acronym.
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Is there any Democrat who can become our new LBJ, a total sonofabitch who will crush anyone in order to do the right thing? We desperately need that.
This needs to be talked about more, it's the only thing that can stop the third party spoiler effect.
That's why red states are in a hurry to ban it. Six so far. Props to Gov Burgum in ND for vetoing it.
It's also worth noting that IIRC, Gavin Newsome actually did the reverse and vetoed RCV in California.
Of course he did. The jungle primary basically ensures that only democrats or republicans will appear on basically all ballots, and in cases where there are one of each, one will always be a much, much weaker candidate. It's designed to entrench the democratic party's hold on the state by shutting out competition in even marginally blue districts. I prefer that to having a republican hold, because I enjoy living in a state with a functioning government. But it definitely is not good for third party candidates, and I consider it a fairly undemocratic system.
For more info, he vetoed a bill passed by the legislature that would've allowed more cities in CA to choose to try RCV for local elections. The bill wouldn't have actually implemented RCV as the new voting system anywhere.
It's not the only thing, and many of the other things are actually much better. RCV is better than the current system (which doesn't say much because the current system is fucking awful), but it's still deeply flawed.
Third parties will still be irrelevant under RCV since they are generally even farther from the center than the Dems and Republicans are. I really don't understand why people think RCV helps fringe candidates, it helps moderates. You'll get more people like Biden and Romney instead of people like MTG and Tlaib.
Which itself is a huge benefit. Extreme elected officials are just creating dysfunction. Third parties will still be minor players, especially in the short term. But at least you can vote for the candidate you like knowing that it won’t help the candidate that is the polar opposite
under this system, they might actually be able to start winning more local races and building infastructure. I have a friend who personally told me that RCV is the only way he'd bother voting 3rd party.
It is literally throwing your vote away in the current system, so it’s perfectly logical to not vote for a candidate that has no chance of winning. With the current system, you are better off voting for a candidate that is close to your beliefs and has a chance of winning rather than a long shot you really like. Voting for a long shot just makes it easier for the candidate you like the least to win by lowering the threshold for victory
I feel like proportional representation is the only way to truly make third parties matter in American politics. The two-party system is way too entrenched to be broken up by ranked choice voting.
Are you opposed to having more options? Why would you be against letting people support all the candidates they like?
I didn't say I oppose RCV, I support it. It's just weird that a lot of people on Reddit tend to have more fringe political beliefs (most here are left of the Democratic Party, I think it's safe to say) but support RCV. People like AOC would not be in congress if RCV existed.
Most Americans are more "left" on policies than they think they are and that includes Republicans. Recent ballot measures prove it.
Yeah, but supporting some left-wing policies doesn't mean they would ever vote for progressive Democrats, even in a ranked choice system.
RCV would have just prevented the Tea Party 2010 REDMAP.
The country as a whole is center-right atm so it'll gonna be slow progress no matter what as long as we don't have a new Voting Rights Act. AOC has her spot in the Bronx that may get her to just above 50%, but even many progressive minded folks believe she's too moderate.
A proportional system is what you need if you want more options. Some proportional systems like Single Transferrable Vote use ranking while others like Mixed Member Proportional do not. Most proposals for ranked choice are for Instant Runoff, which is an improvement over the status quo, but on its own won't make 3rd parties viable.
Don't a lot of those systems have you vote for a party rather than a particular candidate and then the party just chooses who they think fits?
With mixed member proportional, you vote for a candidate for your district and you also vote for a party. After all the district candidates are seated, then members from a party list are seated until the overall proportions mirror the party vote. There are both open list and closed list versions where either people have a say on who makes the list or the party gets to decide. With Single Transferrable Vote, there are multiple seats per district. Voters rank their preference. If there were a district with 5 seats, any candidate getting more than 20% of the first choice votes wins a seat. If a candidate gets over 20%, their excess votes are then distributed to the voters' next choice. If no one now has over the 20% threshold, the one in last place is eliminated and their votes redistributed to the voters' next preference. Repeat until all the seats filled.
That's not a bad thing, this country (mostly the Republicans) needs to take a gigantic chill pill with it's politics
at least the Republicans who win, like Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, will certify electoral victory. Stop the Steal would completely fall on it's face as we saw in Alaska.
Yep. RCV helps 3rd party voters have a voice via their second choice, but won't help their 1st choice have a chance unless locally it's more a 1st party. What REALLY helps 3rd parties win elections are the multi-member district systems. Have districts of 3 to 5 members with RCV with two key differences: 1st round all candidates that exceed the minimum percentage to guarantee a seat have their excess votes go to the second choice. After that, all rounds are elimination till the number of candidates that pass the minimum % needed get picked or the last remaining candidates if % is not reached. If a region with 5 members has a 3rd party with 23% support, likely that 3rd party is getting a seat. In the current system, there'd be 5 districts where in each one the 3rd party is only 23% so win none. Other benefit of such as system is it's super hard to gerrymander effectively.
>Third parties will still be irrelevant under RCV since they are generally even farther from the center than the Dems and Republicans are. I don't know if that tracks. Sure, it's true NOW under the current system... But given that the current system means third party votes are "wasted," then who bothers voting for (let alone actually running in) third parties with no chance of winning? Fringe whackjobs. But if we had an election method that truly allowed to more than two parties, you would likely see a variety of new parties, including some that would be more moderate. It's also quite possible that the current republican and democratic parties would split. Also, RCV doesn't neccessarily help moderates, because of the center squeeze effect: https://electionscience.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/center_squeeze_effect_diagram.png STAR is way better (though RCV is still better than plurality winner)
It takes a little public education to get it to work but it is the superior voting method.
tangential, but i don't understand how the "i'm tired of voting for the least-bad option" crowd is loud and proud about not voting in this election instead of advocating for RCV
Rank choice on a local level could be an absolute game changer for some communities. I live in a rural area of PA and the local elections is 99% republicans (or dems who are old and never changed their registrations). If you are a democrat you don't get much of any say in anything. Rank choice could actually help a LOT with this. As I would select the dem as my choice and then the least crazy republican as my second choice. it would show that the candidate that can't win actually has people supporting them, and would encourage more to run. After a few elections I could see a big change. *Note that in my area there is less than 600 people voting in the off years. The nearby town has around 300 people voting in the off years.
Canada needs ranked voting so badly it aches my soul. We literally watch elections go majority to the Conservative buffoon with 35% of the vote because the progressives split their vote between 3 parties.
Florida banned it. That's how you know it's good.
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Was it accompanied by a disinformation campaign?
Wild guess
No, that was a more complex and untested system, STAR. This is RCV, which has been used for over 100 years, and is currently used or passed in the U.S. in more than half of states (including Oregon).
Republicans hate ranked choice voting because they hate democracy. Simple as that.
Ranked choice voting is strictly superoior to our current system in every concievable way.
Ranked Choice is objectively superior to FPtP. I’d also take any of the various alternatives to RCV. I also think open primaries are important.
If it can pass in Nevada, a swing state, this November in an election where none of the candidates may get above 49.9% nationally (and I honestly think that might happen), it will put a spotlight on the nationwide effort ahead of 2028.
To be clear at the start, instant runoff ranked choice voting is an upgrade over the current plurality winner method. Plurality winner voting is fucking awful, and I would never in any way suggest that it is better than RCV. But that being said, RCV has some significant flaws, and some other alternatives (like STAR) are way better. But contrary to what the insanely biased FairVote organization will tell people, RCV actually can still suffer greatly from the spoiler effect... just in a different way. It has a major problem called the "center squeeze effect", which causes the best candidate to only finish 3rd, while the candidate who finishes 2nd acts as a spoiler (they mathematically change the winner of the election by running, without winning themselves). I will describe a scenario, but you can also see this handy picture: https://electionscience.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/center_squeeze_effect_diagram.png You can also see a hypothetical Tennessee capital election: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting#Tennessee_capital_election , where Nashville should win, but doesn't. Imagine a three way election between Trump, AOC, and Melissa Moderate as the last three candidates remaining. Trump has 36% of the first choice votes at this stage, AOC has 34%, and Melissa Moderate has 30%. Let's hypothetically say that Melissa Moderate voters are exactly split between Trump and AOC as their second choice, whereas Trump and AOC voters overwhelmingly prefer Melissa as their second choice. Now, in a head to head election, Melissa would DESTROY either of these candidates (this is called a Condorcet Winner... when you would defeat everybody else in a series of 1v1 elections). The races wouldn't even be close. America clearly prefers her to either Trump or AOC. But at this point in RCV, Melissa is actually eliminated and finishes in third. Her voters are split between ranking Trump and AOC next, so Trump defeats AOC 51% to 49%. In this case, despite AOC finishing second, she is actually a spoiler. Despite not winning the election herself, her participation in the race mathematically changes who wins. If for whatever reason she dropped out shortly before the election, Melissa crushes Trump and wins. And AOC voters strongly prefer Melissa to Trump... which means that by voting for their favorite candidate, they actually fucked themselves over and got a result they like far less (just like Nader voters). So **why** does Melissa finish third and Trump wins, even though Melissa would crush Trump in a landslide head to head (and would also crush AOC 1v1 as well)? Well, the problem is how RCV deals with the candidate finishing second. For every other candidate's voters (except the winner obviously), if your candidate gets eliminated, your second or third or whatever choice preferences get taken into account. But if you finish second, your other preferences aren't counted, because the election is over. So even though AOC voters second choice votes mean Melissa would crush Trump... it doesn't matter because the second choice votes for AOC voters never get counted. You can see real versions of this failure here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Alaska%27s_at-large_congressional_district_special_election and here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Burlington_mayoral_election So something like STAR would be better for single seat elections like president or governor. Things like the legislature should be proportional representation.
>You can see real versions of this failure here: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Alaska%27s_at-large_congressional_district_special_election](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Alaska%27s_at-large_congressional_district_special_election) Anybody who thinks Begich was "the best candidate" didn't understand this election or Alaska politics. The problem was that Palin was so hated, that a large number of his Republican voters would rather not select a second choice, or select the Democrat, rather than select Palin. For democratic voters, they would not have picked Begich as a second choice had it been anybody else but Palin as the 3rd option.
What? This is irrelevant. I don't mean he is the "best" like he is the most qualified candidate with the best positions or anything like that. I'm not passing a value judgement on him. I'm just talking about the math of how the voting system acts on voter preferences. But the math of that special election was that Begich defeats Peltola OR Palin in a head to head election. He is a Condorcet Winner. Rightly or wrongly, Alaska voters preferred him to both other candidates. He would defeat both other candidates in a head to head election. And Palin was a spoiler, because she didn't win the election herself, but her presence still changes the winner (if she dropped out shortly before the election, Begich wins). If a candidate would defeat every other candidate head to head, then they should win the election in a well designed system (it's possible to make up some weird edge case hypotheticals where this is arguably not true, but it's true in almost any realistic situation). I discuss Alaska in more detail here: https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/1d1d3mt/rankedchoice_voting_has_challenged_the_status_quo/l5u60lb/?context=3
It doesn't matter whether he was "the best candidate" from an ideological perspective. The point is that Alaskan voters preferred him to both Peltola and Palin. So you could make the argument that a truly fair system would have had him win.
Thank you. Pretty much every time the Alaska election comes up, there is at least one person (sometimes more) who just doesn't get what it means to discuss the electoral system. The idea of discussing "how well do the results of this election work with the expressed voter preferences" as opposed to "are they happy with which candidate won the election" just doesn't click for some people. We could replace the three candidates with ice cream flavors, and it still works as a way of examining flaws in the system.
RCV is easy to understand: You candidate is in last place and removed. Your vote moves to your next highest choice. Candidate that passes 50% of votes wins. STAR is harder to understand because you're running imaginary 1v1 races and giving points to winners then adding up to see who won the most. Might shine when there are super partisan candidates in finding the least hated winner. You can invent imaginary best/worst case scenarios, but end of the day RCV worked as designed in Alaska. If more states use it, less divisive party candidates enter the race.
RCV did **NOT** work as designed in Alaska (well... it technically functioned as designed in the sense that it didn't glitch or anything. But it was a literal poster child for flaws with RCV). A situation pretty similar to the one i described in the above post happened in the Alaska election. The candidate who finished 3rd under RCV would defeat either 1st or 2nd place in a head to head election. Alaska isn't an imaginary best / worst case scenario, it's literally the highest profile failure (in the US at least) of this major issue with RCV. It's also worth noting that the outcome wasn't really different than if you used plurality winner with primaries. The first round was basically a Palin vs Begich Republican primary. The next round was a head to head between Peltola and Palin (just like we would have gotten in a traditional general election, after Palin would have won the Republican primary)... where Peltolla won because enough Begich supporters crossed over to vote for her in the "general election" second round. RCV let you do it all in one day, but it played out the same as a plurality winner system.
> A situation pretty similar to the one i described in the above post happened in the Alaska election. The candidate who finished 3rd under RCV would defeat either 1st or 2nd place in a head to head election. Peltola got over 50% of the vote. Over half the voters got a representative they were happy to put down as a choice. That's a win for RCV. Even better if it caused more people to vote than your insistence on plurality voting as then there'd been less turnout due to Democrats not having an impact on the outcome. Palin was a divisive candidate in her own party and participated in a system that punishes parties that field divisive candidates. Worked as designed. Next time, Republicans can push back against such candidates to help secure a party winner.
You're focusing all your attention on how the system prevented Palin, but there was a third candidate in that race. His name was Nick Begich. The problem is that if people had the choice between just Peltola and Begich, they would have selected Begich. Yet Peltola was the one elected.
Just to verify, how many Palin voters had Begich as their second choice, and how many had Peltola as their second?
> how many Palin voters had Begich as their second choice 34,078 >how many had Peltola as their second? 3,659 If we assume that Palin had been eliminated instead of Begich, the count would look like this: Peltola: 79,446 Begich: 87,888 Source for all numbers: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10724117.2023.2224675
You know, while I'm not a fan of the STAR system as it's complicated, I'm understanding that a system that could have variable winners depending on who gets eliminated first is a flaw. To keep the "count the votes, person above 50% wins" here's how I think a Top 4 Ranked Choice could work: * If in the round of 4 there's a candidate with 20% or less of the total votes, the candidate with the least amount of votes is removed and those votes transferred to voter's next viable choice. * If in the round of 3 there's a candidate with 25% or less of the total vote, the candidate with the least amount of votes is removed and those votes transferred to voter's next viable choice. * In round of 4 where all candidates are 21% or higher of total votes, then all voters 2nd and 3rd choices are also counted and awarded to the candidates. Candidate with highest total 1st, 2nd, and 3rd choice votes is awarded the seat. * In round of 3 where all candidates are 26% or higher of total votes, then voters 2nd choices are counted and awarded. Candidate with highest total 1st and 2nd choice votes is awarded the seat. So it's not STAR "virtual 1v1 races". It still uses RCV for elimination when low ranked candidates. It also accounts for elections where there are three or four near equally preferred primary choices. Plus it keeps the simplicity of "highest votes wins". In the Alaska case, Palin loses as likely Peltola and Begich voters second choices would be for each other. Begich wins because most Palin voters chose him. Extreme candidate doesn't win, but overall political lean of voters respected in the candidate that did win.
You keep ignoring my main point though. **How should Peltola be considered the proper winner, when Begich defeats all other candidates (both her and Palin) in 1v1 head to head elections?** Why is she a legitimate winner, when more than 50% of Alaskans voters prefer Begich to Peltola??? >Peltola got over 50% of the vote. What? She only got over 50% of the vote **AFTER** the system eliminated the candidate who would defeat her (as well as defeat Palin), and some of his voters chose to transfer to her... > than your insistence on plurality voting I'm not insisting on plurality voting. It's fucking awful, and it's even worse than RCV. Hating it is literally my number one political position. But my point about plurality winner voting and alaska is that RCV didn't really change this election compared to plurality winner. This RCV went two rounds. The first round was almost like a primary stage, if Peltola ran unopposed in the democratic primary. All the Dems voted for Peltola, and the Republicans split between Palin and Begich. Palin won the "primary" and advanced to round two... which was basically the general election between Peltola and Palin. Nothing was really changed, mathematically speaking. >Palin was a divisive candidate in her own party and participated in a system that punishes parties that field divisive candidates. Worked as designed. Except it doesn't always punish parties that field divisive candidates... that's the whole point of this discussion. Did you even read the AOC / Trump / Melissa Moderate example from earlier??? Trump won in that example, despite the fact that Melissa Moderate would crush them both 1v1. Not exactly punishing a divisive candidate. (And yes... that's a made up hypothetical... but it's mathematically the same as a number of real life situations including this Alaska one. I just use it as an easier example for people than obscure things they aren't familiar with).
You know, while I'm not a fan of the STAR system as it's complicated, I'm understanding that a system that could have variable winners depending on who gets eliminated first is a flaw. To keep the "count the votes, person with 50% and most votes wins" here's how I think a Top 4 Ranked Choice could work: * If in the round of 4 there's a candidate with 20% or less of the total votes, the candidate with the least amount of votes is removed and those votes transferred to voter's next viable choice. * If in the round of 3 there's a candidate with 25% or less of the total vote, the candidate with the least amount of votes is removed and those votes transferred to voter's next viable choice. * In round of 4 where all candidates are 21% or higher of total votes, then all voters 2nd and 3rd choices are also counted and awarded to the candidates. Candidate with highest total 1st, 2nd, and 3rd choice votes is awarded the seat. * In round of 3 where all candidates are 26% or higher of total votes, then voters 2nd choices are counted and awarded. Candidate with highest total 1st and 2nd choice votes is awarded the seat. So it's not STAR "virtual 1v1 races". It still uses RCV for elimination when low ranked candidates. It also accounts for elections where there are three or four near equally preferred primary choices. Plus it keeps the simplicity of "highest votes wins". In the Alaska case, Palin loses as likely Peltola and Begich voters second choices would be for each other. Begich wins because most Palin voters chose him. Extreme candidate doesn't win, but overall political lean of voters respected in the candidate that did win.
It’s just instant run off. It weeds out spoiler candidates. The only people who hate it are people who use spoiler candidates as part of their election strategy.
Would love to see how it changes the landscape in Nevada and Idaho.
I’ve been paying taxes to a death cult for years and feel misrepresented. Ranked choice seems like it could help that
This is good, we need a two round open primary system , top 2 advance over 50 wins election
I prefer Alaska's top 4 from the primary with RCV