Ranked-Choice Voting

Ranked Choice appeals to political nerds and is baffling to normal people.

r1 Only in the US, it seems. We've had it for a long time and no one is baffled by it.

Eric Adams always had the lead though. Its not like he went from #8 to #1.

Maine uses it for some races. I believe Alaska dies as well.

Another problem with ranked choice voting is that for it to be effective there has to be a large number of great candidates to choose from. In NYC Democratic mayor primary in 2021, there wasn't. Only candidate I reasonably liked was Garcia. I filled in the next two slots (neither was Adams) then left the other two blank. I probably should have just been Garcia and done. But there were likely many who felt obligated to fill in all 5 slots on their ballot and believe me the choices were dire: party machine hacks, flakes, woker than thou types, and Andrew Yang.

I think a run-off is easier than ranked choice. It forces the voters to affirmatively rerank their choices with a smaller pool of candidates.

It’s why we don’t have Rep. Sarah Palin (R-Alaska) right now. Based on that alone, I support it 100%.

This is an organization that's had success in getting RCV initiatives passed across the country. You can help.

R7, no, that's not true, Palin was behind before the "ranking" kicked in. Mary Peltola would have won without the ranked choice voting, she received the most votes overall

I LOVE IT!!!

R9 Yes/No. RCV replaced the normal partisan primary system. Had that still been in place, it would have been a binary R vs D election, and the outcome may have been different.

It's a system that changes nothing, confuses people, and will be repealed as confusion grows. Simulations of it on focus groups have found that when a candidate places third in the first round and then ends winning as the rankings are re-distributed, people HATE the winner and the system. American voters think only the top two vote-getters in round 1 should be able to win the office at stake.

Proportional Representation would be such a better system, either list voting or Mixed-Member Proportional. But we don't do that in America.

In case anyone is disheartened by r12's accurate assessment, a clarification that FairVote (at r8) is working for:

PROPORTIONAL RANKED CHOICE VOTING GIVES AMERICANS BETTER REPRESENTATION

[quote]Proportional RCV gives voters more choices and better representation. It is tried and tested in several U.S. jurisdictions, so we know just how well it is working in practice. Visit this page for in-depth analysis from proportional RCV elections across the nation.

I think it's safe to say Americans aren't great with wordy explanations of unfamiliar concepts, so it's probably best to keep referring to PRCV as RCV for "marketing" purposes.

New Yorker here who discovered that some of my friends and neighbors are simply dense.

One friend was upset that Adams won, yet ranked him. I asked my friend, “Why did you even rank him at all if you wanted him to have no chance of winning?”

“I thought I had to,” was his response.

Ranked choice voting was explained very clearly in a mailing that went out to every NYC voter.

It’s certainly undemocratic to make voters pass some sort of test before allowing them to vote. Undemocratic, and such strategies have been used in racist ways in the past.

But it’s disheartening to see how ignorant and ill-informed the average voter is.

And it can’t be helping that so few students take civics classes these days. In my high school (OK, that was the Jurassic era), it was required.

Then again, I’m pretty sure TPTB are happier keeping everyone ignorant. Fewer chances that the hoi polloi will complain or become meaningfully engaged.

[quote]It’s why we don’t have Rep. Sarah Palin (R-Alaska) right now. Based on that alone, I support it 100%.

I think you’re thinking of Lisa Murkowski who was trailing a Trump sycophant before the ranked choice kicked in.

Can't remember on which show but saw a discussion of this and the point being made was when there are primaries, primaries appeal to the most extreme voters in each party - they'll both nominate fringe candidates neither of whom actually appeal to the vast majority of the country which tends to be centrist. Getting rid of primaries would get rid of extremist influence in both parties. Just cut to the chase and candidates have to appeal to the public from the get-go.

[quote]Getting rid of primaries would get rid of extremist influence in both parties. Just cut to the chase and candidates have to appeal to the public from the get-go.

Yup, plus some states don’t have open primaries so you either have to vote for the candidate in your party even if you prefer an outside candidate or you’re shit out of luck.

R17 and in states like Texas, you can vote in either primary. As Republicans have dominated the state for 40 years, a lot of Dems would vote in the GOP primary just to vote for the least offensive Republican.

I think you mean Top Two system, R11, as used in CA and WA.

R19 No. Alaska had a traditional R vs D primary system, which was replaced with RCV. Had that system still been in place, R’s had 55% of the vote. Maybe if it was Palin, that wouldn’t have held. But RCV avoided having to find out.

RCV was passed by NYC voters on a ballot proposal in Fall 2019. However turnout for that election was exceptionally low as there was no governor, mayor, Senator or President race on the ballot. RCV proponents deliberately placed the measure for that particular election knowing that few people would be voting except the most hard core political nerds and geeks. I wonder how the measure would have fared if it had been on the ballot for a higher turnout election?

R21, I think the fact that few people vote in all but the most high-profile races is a massive problem.

Participating in democracy should not be a niche activity. It galls me how much people complain about politicians, complain about the state of the roads/schools/hospitals/whatever, but won’t lift a finger to get informed and then vote.

Maybe we do get the government we deserve. It’s depressing to me. Do other democracies elect people like Trump, MTG, G Santos, and so on? Perhaps.

R13: No, RCV is not proportional. Proportional RCV is Single Transferable Vote, STV. You can't just call a completely different system the same thing for "marketing purposes".

We should be adopting List PR as it only involves a single vote, no ranking. Baring that, just legalize fusion voting on top of the current system and be done with it.

I am sure there's a flaw in this reasoning so kindly point it out without slaying me, I have a hangover.

But my reluctance about ranked voting is that as I understand it, candidates drop off the ballot from the bottom and the alternate choices of their supporters are counted. But it seems to me the candidates who come in last are probably the poorest quality candidates - so the people voting for them are likely poor quality voters. If you're going to vote for a candidate from the Tear it All Down Coalition as your first choice, it doesn't seem likely you'd rank a more moderate candidate as your second. So why give them the ability to influence the outcome of the election more than the candidate with the largest plurality? I guess I am talking myself around to run off elections.

New York uses Rank Choice for Primaries, but not General Elections.

Do voters have to return to the polls additional times for the re-ranking? If so, many are lucky just to stand in line and vote once, let alone multiple times.

No way. Looks easier to manipulate than the rigged voting we have now.