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 am extremely in favor of RCV as long as it applies to the national level.
It CANNOT end at the state level. If my electoral vote has a chance of being wasted on a 3rd party candidate that has no chance, then the system is EVEN WORSE than our current system.
As an example, if there was a chance that Trump could win because a few electoral votes went to Bernie, I would just put Biden as my first vote. But if the electoral vote would also shift to the next available candidate, then I would vote Bernie first.
Good news! RCV already solves that problem
If Bernie didn’t get enough votes to win, the votes for him go to the voters’ second choice candidate (Biden – few voters would want Bernie-Trump). If those combined votes are enough for him to win, then Biden wins in that state. In RCV, Trump would only win if people actually preferred him over Biden
My entire comment was addressing that assumption. That assumption requires 2 levels of RCV, state vote and national (electoral) vote.
If RCV was implemented only at the state level, and the state chose Bernie, and that was the end of it, then it would pull electoral votes away from Biden.
If the electoral vote was also allowed to shift after the national electoral total was determined, then it’s all good.
Then you may be interested in the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.
We can’t directly institute RCV in the electoral college but we can control how the delegates to the electoral college are pledged. Unfortunately since the 12th amendment we are no longer able to have multiple votes in the EC. It either succeeds or throws the vote to Congress. Which solved the problem at the time but tied our hands now.
I’m actually well aware of that. It’s essentially a way to get rid of the electoral college for the popular vote without actually getting rid of the EC. And I’d love for it to be implemented in enough states to work.
However, I think RCV can still work. It’s just that the state allocated votes would need to first look at the state level race for president, determine a ranking, then look at the national level race, and allocate to the highest rank that can possibly win.
Oh I agree that it’s possible. We’re just in the weird position of having to work around the Constitution.