A DC campaign has collected more than 40,000 signatures to put an initiative on the city’s ballot that would open primary elections to independent voters and implement ranked choice voting in all District elections.

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!

  • Maggoty@lemmy.world
    4·
    6 months ago

    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.

    • Omega@lemmy.world
      2·
      6 months ago

      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.

      • Maggoty@lemmy.world
        2·
        6 months ago

        Oh I agree that it’s possible. We’re just in the weird position of having to work around the Constitution.