In addition to establishing ranked-choice for the general election, Proposition 131 would implement a top four primary for governor, attorney general and federal congressional races, among others. This new primary process would put candidates from all parties in competition for four slots on the general election ballot — only candidates with the most primary votes would advance.
Ah, so they limit the field to 4 candidates. Feels like a way to rig the primary process to remove a dark horse.
It depends on how they implement the primary process. It sounds as if they’re running one big primary, rather than a primary per party. In that case, there could be 100 people on the primary. Only the top 4 of the primary make it to the general election.
It does sound flawed. For one thing, RCV gives you the opportunity to eliminate primaries and just shove everyone on one ballot. I’m not sure what they think they’re accomplishing by breaking it up into two elections. But also, a well-heeled party could run dozens of candidates and influence elections just by sheer information overload. Or, if there’s some sort of candidates-per-party limit, again a well-heeled PAC could support several “parties” that are all different in name only - again, pushing legitimate third parties out of the primary.
I’m not an expert here, but it seems as if there are some opportunities for shenanigans; it’s both overly complex and yet constrained, and IME this makes them more vulnerable to abuse. I can see why it’d get push-back.
Yeah, but ranked choice voting makes it so spoiler candidates don’t spoil.
the entire concept of a primary is to whittle-down the field. four seems to me to be a reasonable number.
Ranked choice is a terrible option and still allows strategic voters. It’s literally the third worst option, the only things being worse are borda and plurality (First past the post). I do not understand why people want RCV at all, when there are so much better options that aren’t being voted out in numerous states, counties, and cities in America already.
What would you replace it with? What’s the best or a couple of the best of the so much better options?
Iirc STV overcomes some of the short comings of RCV, although I’m not sure if it’s also the case when used for single-member districts. Another one with some traction in the US is STAR voting, which is also related to my personal preference (albeit untested in practice) of highest median voting.
STV overcomes some of the short comings of STV
Umm, I’m not sure about that.
Ohh, whoops!
I don’t think STV really exists for single member elections. It just becomes RCV.
3-2-1 is by far the best from a “works in every situation” perspective, it’s literally just a better RCV without all the strategic voting concerns. STAR is second best but only because it’s more complicated and has possible worse outcomes, even though best case outcomes are far better. Most results say that STAR is better, but I find it significantly harder to understand and believe that most voters would believe the same, thus increasing the chance of it getting repealed. The best ‘new’ voting system is the system that lasts and never needs to be replaced. That is the main criteria we should be going for, because we have seen it all over the country where RCV was approved by voters, was either too confusing or caused ‘spoiled’ results, and then was immediately repealed back to plurality and those regions have never gone back to RCV.
Even Approval voting is better, and is simpler than all of these. I will point out that literally every RCV campaign states that Approval voting has problems that are actually much more prevalent in RCV, for example FairVote.org states that
Approval voting can be challenging for voters with strong preferences. A vote for a second choice counts exactly as much as a vote for a first choice, creating incentives to “bullet vote,” or choose only one candidate, even when voters have second- or third-choice preferences. Because voters can’t back compromise candidates without weakening their first choice, the use of strategic voting increases — especially in contested elections.
which is just outright incorrect. Voting for multiple candidates can never weaken any of your choices and it’s honestly insane a bunch of the claims that FairVote makes.
Honestly a bunch of the groups that are pushing for RCV just straight up lie about a lot of it. Aside from being removed from use in many locations in the US in just the past few years, they completely ignore how bad strategic voting is getting in the US, meaning we need to choose even stronger methods against strategic voting. Elon Musk is literally paying people to vote right now. They also ignore how confusing a ballot can be to many americans. I think this is a terrible reason, but it is a reason. The more chances you give someone to mess something up, the less they are going to like it and the more they’re going to be able to blame it for things they don’t like happening.
Here’s a simulator to show you how RCV can spoil the vote (like it did in Egypt and Burlington, VT) : https://howtofixtheelection.com/ballot/newer/
In any case, for me I do not want a repeat of Aspen, or Burlington, or any of the numerous other bans that are occurring or have occurred of RCV causing people to not want to even try new voting systems. https://news.ballotpedia.org/2024/07/16/more-states-banned-ranked-choice-voting-in-2024-than-any-other-year/
https://electionscience.github.io/vse-sim/ https://www.equal.vote/accuracy https://www.starvoting.org/star https://dmarron.com/2010/09/19/the-feud-over-the-2009-burlington-mayoral-election/ https://better-count-us.medium.com/no-instant-runoff-wouldnt-solve-spoiled-elections-7f6136f1d0ee https://fairvote.org/resources/electoral-systems/ranked_choice_voting_vs_approval_voting/ https://ballotpedia.org/Ranked-choice_voting_(RCV)#States_and_localities_that_stopped_using_RCV https://news.ballotpedia.org/2024/07/16/more-states-banned-ranked-choice-voting-in-2024-than-any-other-year/
edit: one last source: testimony from court where common RCV claims were disproven and alternatives were provided like STAR. https://olis.oregonlegislature.gov/liz/2021R1/Downloads/PublicTestimonyDocument/17728
That is the main criteria we should be going for, because we have seen it all over the country where RCV was approved by voters, was either too confusing or caused ‘spoiled’ results, and then was immediately repealed back to plurality and those regions have never gone back to RCV.
You just triggered my bullshit alarm. Sorry. I was with you up until then, looked up details of 3-2-1, all that good stuff. But you’re drawing conclusions that are strained to the point of Stretch Armstrong.
I don’t know why Yonkers authorized RCV in 1940, and then stopped again in 1947. I’m not going to automatically assume it was because it was too confusing or something. This list you sent means almost completely nothing.
RCV has been getting wide adoption:
https://fairvote.org/resources/data-on-rcv/
I’m not just going by the happy graph. It’s spreading and you’re having to go back to the 1940s to tell me how it’s getting repealed.
Let me ask a couple more detail questions, just to check how grounded what you’re saying is with reality, because it seems like you’re running way, way off the rails here.
Aside from being removed from use in many locations in the US in just the past few years
Where has it been removed from use in the US in just the past few years? I’m not talking about somewhere where the Republicans got scared and preemptively banned it. That’s different. I’m talking about somewhere where people tried it, the voters reported not liking it, and there was a consequent removal of it from use.
The fact that you’re conflating places where the Republicans got scared and preemptively banned it, with places where the people using it didn’t like it and wanted to switch away from it, is another of those bullshit-alarm things.
Aspen, or Burlington
Aspen had a weird situation where the same person was winning every time as would have won anyway with plurality voting, they only used it once, in 2009, someone sued the city, I don’t know. I couldn’t follow it. It doesn’t look like there was any kind of uprising against RCV.
What are you talking about with Burlington?
https://www.burlingtonvt.gov/191/Ranked-Choice-Voting
They did it once, there was controversy, then they kept it. What’s the issue?
I’m not just going by the happy graph. It’s spreading and you’re having to go back to the 1940s to tell me how it’s getting repealed.
you didn’t even bother reading enough to find out it was repealed in Aspen, CO the state this vote is occuring in in 2009, in Telluride, CO (once again the state this vote is occurring in) in 2019. It was repealed in Burlington, VT in 2009, in Virginia in 2023. Did you just randomly choose Yonkers from the middle of the list and completely ignore the first four entries? Come on. You’re better than that. It’s on the ballot right now in Alaska, did you ignore that link too? The one where Ballotpedia is saying it’s been banned in 5 states just in 2024 alone??? https://news.ballotpedia.org/2024/07/16/more-states-banned-ranked-choice-voting-in-2024-than-any-other-year/
I’m not just going by the happy graph. It’s spreading and you’re having to go back to the 1940s to tell me how it’s getting repealed.
Where has it been removed from use in the US in just the past few years? I’m not talking about somewhere where the Republicans got scared and preemptively banned it. That’s different. I’m talking about somewhere where people tried it, the voters reported not liking it, and there was a consequent removal of it from use.
dude. you’re literally just cherry picking data out of the links I provided. There was a list of locations that repealed it, just in the past decade alone. You’re ignoring it.
- Aspen, CO 2009
- Burlington, VT 2009
- Telluride, CO 2019
- Arlington, VA 2023
Alaska is on the ballot to repeal this year as well
40 bills just this year to repeal or ban RCV. https://news.ballotpedia.org/2024/04/02/rcv-bans-and-repeals-advancing-at-higher-rate-than-new-authorizations/
I’m not talking about somewhere where the Republicans got scared and preemptively banned it. That’s different. I’m talking about somewhere where people tried it, the voters reported not liking it, and there was a consequent removal of it from use.
This is completely pointless to have this discussion then. Preemptively banning it is a great sign that you’re not going to have a strong enough market to retain the voting style after it’s implemented. If it’s already this difficult to get it implemented then having entire states that are hellbent on banning it is exactly the kind of thing you shouldn’t be trying to get past. You should choose a method that 1. doesn’t have any of the problems that republicans could even slightly pin on the voting method. 2. is easier to understand and therefore harder to convince citizens it’s a boogieman 3. doesn’t have an organization that is repeatedly lying about the problems with the method in order to convince voters. All it does is make it easier to attack.
They did it once, there was controversy, then they kept it. What’s the issue?
they didn’t keep it. they repealed it for 14 years. It was brought back last year in a much smaller form, which you literally would have seen if you read the list of locations.
None of what you have said at all matters anyway. RCV not only has a bad name (as is evidenced by the GOP continually attacking it and implementing bans across the nation), but it’s just not a good voting method. It has sooooo many problems, the LEAST of which is it getting repealed. It’s confusing, results in strategic voters, lower Voter Satisfaction, harder to count, allows spoilers, has several organizations that lie about the problems with it, and it will prevent us from moving to a better system in the future.
All of this you would have known if you bothered to read anything I linked, which I know you didn’t because those links take hours to read. You didn’t even do a good job scanning one of them.
Your bullshit o-meter is miscalibrated. Maybe look at other sources besides FairVote (here’s a nice little article covering just one of fairvote’s complete misrepresentations https://www.rangevoting.org/LNH.html) and then come back to the conversation. I was trying to be completely non-adversarial here and just explain my reasoning, and then you come in with ‘bullshit alarms’ and then reveal you didn’t even bother to read the sources I provided. Not a good look, especially not with other members of the community acting like this.
Guy. Relax. I’m being honest with you about what I think and asking some questions. You can stop yelling.
You sent me 15 different links. I didn’t read them all because I don’t have all night. I sort of looked them over. If you’re going to start yelling because I didn’t read your half day presentation, you can stop talking with me.
Aspen, CO 2009 Burlington, VT 2009 Telluride, CO 2019 Arlington, VA 2023
Okay, so by many places repealed in the last few years, you meant two. Telluride and Arlington, and then 15 years ago, two other places. Do I have that right? Any locations to add to that that are post-2009? It looks like Glenn Youngkin had something to do with taking it away in Arlington That’s not exactly a crushing endorsement for its badness, from my point of view.
Places where politicians are fighting against the effort means nothing to me. I told you that. You can yell as much as you like. I’m pretty convinced that any type of reform is going to get that kind of resistance. Places where the voters tried it and didn’t like it will make an impact on me, but as far as I know, anywhere it’s been tried recently, the voters have liked it. Do you have any counterexamples? Interviews with voters, polls of voters, places where with some experience people thought it was bad?
I’m trying to honestly make sense of this, give you an honest hearing-out without staying up all night. What’s your take on this?
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jIhFQfEoxSdyRz5SqEjZotbVDx4xshwM/view
What’s your take on that paper? It looks like something happened in Burlington in 2009 that’s a real flaw. But it looks like the Condorcet winner wins with RCV pretty much all the time outside of that one time. Look at the long list of checkmarks. I like this paper’s proposed fix fine, since even once that it happens is a problem. Off the top of my head, STAR and 3-2-1 also sound fine. Mostly, I’m in favor of moving away from FPTP and unconvinced by your panic about RCV.
This is completely pointless to have this discussion then. Preemptively banning it is a great sign that you’re not going to have a strong enough market to retain the voting style after it’s implemented. If it’s already this difficult to get it implemented then having entire states that are hellbent on banning it is exactly the kind of thing you shouldn’t be trying to get past. You should choose a method that 1. doesn’t have any of the problems that republicans could even slightly pin on the voting method. 2. is easier to understand and therefore harder to convince citizens it’s a boogieman 3. doesn’t have an organization that is repeatedly lying about the problems with the method in order to convince voters. All it does is make it easier to attack.
It sounds like you don’t draw a distinction between the voters trying something and not liking it, and a bunch of politicians trying to fight it to stop it from happening. I do draw that distinction. All you’re doing by yelling at me that the second one is a problem with the voting method itself, instead of an inherent difficulty in anything that changes the system that you’re going to have to overcome regardless, is just wasting time that I could be using to read your other arguments.
All of this you would have known if you bothered to read anything I linked, which I know you didn’t because those links take hours to read. You didn’t even do a good job scanning one of them.
It’s getting hard to take you seriously. Do you seriously expect me to spend hours reading all your links in order to respond to your message? I doubt that you’ll be able to find one person on Lemmy who would ever be willing to do that. Would you? If I sent you fifteen different links of this type of length, would you click them all open and read them and not get back to me until you had? That’s absurd. And to keep yelling like this and then turn people around to your way of looking at things?
I am trying to keep an open mind and look at your ideas, but you’re making it pretty difficult.
Obviously enshrining the divine right of kings is the correct choice.
/s
You just said it was better than fptp you fool…
Gee I wonder why someone would want something even marginally better.
Clown
Because you get one chance at a new system. People aren’t going to vote for another system after the first one fails. And no wonder democrats aren’t voting for RCV if dicks like you are the ones spreading the word.
On the D voting guide it said wealthy donors shouldn’t influence CO elections. I assumed dems would want rcv so I’m a bit confused here.
I think Democrats are divided between ones who want RCV because it’s a good idea, and ones who want to kill it because it threatens their power.
Anyone who tells you that all Democrats are the first thing, or all the second thing, and then draws a conclusion about what you need to do with your vote because of these things we all know, is not to be trusted.
Yeah. There’s the “I vote democrat because currently they are the only realistic option for left wing ideals and to involve yourself in making positive political changes” vs the “corporate democrats”.
Having your country only support two parties certainly means that you have to consolidate lots of different viewpoints into single parties.
I’m a Dem but do not want RCV. I want 3-2-1 or STAR but would settle for Approval. RCV/IRV is the worse possible option as a replacement for plurality besides an option called Borda that sometimes results in the opposite candidate getting selected due to strategic voting. Why in the world would I vote for something that is almost guaranteed to confuse people and then result in us rolling back RCV because people don’t like it? Let’s start with an actual good polling option, we really only get one chance at it because there’s no way in hell people are going to want to experiment a second time.
almost guaranteed to confuse people and then result in us rolling back RCV because people don’t like it
The places where it’s been tried in the US, people generally have really liked it. The only places I’ve seen rollback campaigns have been from scared Republicans, which I interpret as a good sign.
Let’s start with an actual good polling option, we really only get one chance at it because there’s no way in hell people are going to want to experiment a second time.
What? That’s usually the opposite of how it works.
I don’t have any kind of strong preference among the not-FPTP voting options, but I think grabbing one that’s getting traction and making an improvement to the existing system sounds like a good thing, even if what we’re replacing things with isn’t yet the perfect option.
If you don’t have a strong preference now, I would urge you to look deeper into the pros and cons of potential alternatives. RCV carries some very glaring weaknesses that make it only marginally better than FPTP, including the lack of a guarantee of a Condorcet winner (it shares this property with FPTP) and the introduction of perversity (which FPTP does not suffer from).
I’m never for letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, and there is no truly “perfect” voting system, but RCV seems like such a minor improvement that I believe effort would be better spent on something with a bit more impact.
I’ve looked into this before, and most of the cases where rcv fails seem relatively unlikely in real elections. I’d be happy with Star, IRV, RCV/IRV ballots with the runoff process modified to be a Condorcet method, approval. So I’ll support any initiative to change to any of these systems.
Saying that IRV has glaring problems that make it not much better than fptp seems unsubstantiated.
For any voting system you propose, there are going to be properties you want that it fails, but like, some of those seem more important in real elections than others most of the time, and IRV seems reasonable in most cases.
Am I missing something big?
Yeah, I really don’t understand this “it’s only 150% better than FPTP, it is HORROR, we need to avoid” point of view.
If there’s something else better, then great. Advocate for that. In the meantime please don’t try to stop us switching from FPTP to RCV. Some of their other points, that experimenting with thing 1 one time will lead to not wanting to experiment with thing 2 a different time, just seem nutty to me.
Replacing it with the next least bad option at least opens the door for making further changes in the future (ie. hopefully breaking the two-party deadlock).
I think I disagree with the idea that it opens the door. If anything, I think implementing RCV would more likely poison the well, at best leading to “didn’t we just change how we vote?” apathy/exasperation when another ballot initiative came around.
Of course, that could be a consequence of RCV failing on the ballot as well.
Hmm, I guess that’s true
