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!
I had an argument with someone who said they opposed instant runoff voting because letting people move their votes around is tantamount to giving them extra votes
That’s been a continual strategy to try to deter and block RCV. They argued that in front of the courts in Maine when the state moved to RCV.
In the end, I feel there’s one big defense: no matter where my vote ends up, I only get one for the last candidate standing that I voted for.
The other voting systems where you rate candidates on a scale, it’s a bit muddier as to what a “vote” is. A vote should be your voice that’s the same as anyone else’s in the electorate. As long as all humans get the same voice, it should be able to take any form.
That definition (“all voters are equal”) is a good starting point, but it’s also less watertight than it seems. I will show you an obviously unfair system that exploits that definition:
All voters vote for one candidate. The candidate with the second-most votes wins.