Submitted 10 months ago by throwawayacc0430@sh.itjust.works to youshouldknow@lemmy.world
First past the post voting is the sole issue that is keeping legitimately contending third parties off of our ballots.
Installing ranked choice voting (or one of its very close cousins) is the the number one reformation change that can be made to give the people their voices back. So of course, the powers that be are terrified of it… no surprises here.
There are other issues, too, like North Dakota getting 2 Senators representing 783,926 people while California gets 2 Senators representing 38,940,231 people, or a ratio of almost 50 to 1.
The EU has a similar system:
The point of the EU Council/US Senate is to protect isolated regions from getting steamrolled by urban regions. Farmers are comparatively few relative to city industry workers, but any nation, union or federation is built on the back of farming. However, due to the distance and lack of interaction between city dwellers and rural dwellers, it’s easy for city dwellers to grow disconnected from the reality of just how important the rural dimension is, and vote for laws that only suit the city. It is utterly necessary to create a system which balances the two.
Plenty of issues overall, sure, but I’m speaking specifically about the statistical inability to vote for third parties and have it mean anything.
Well, you know its the right thing if they are banning it.
Love how it’s the cousin fucking states and the flyover Midwest.
Anything but real democracy.
There was a STRONG effort to ban (or at least end) RCV here in Alaska, and it failed, but barely. They even did the super misleading wording, too, in order to make it unclear if the measure banned RCV or supported it.
I was always so confused by the adamant support that was being shown by general people, though. Like, I get why both Dems and Republicans would be against it: they want to be the only two players in the game. But why any general people would want less choice is beyond me. And it’s funny, because the staunchest proponents (at least where I am) were conservatives, when (again, where I live) RCV basically drove out the Democrats. There were Progressives, there were “centrists,” there were Libertarians, and then there was Republican/MAGA. Dems didn’t even get enough support to be on the ballot. So their hated Libs were wiped off the board entirely for being so ill-liked, but they want to get rid of that system? I just don’t get it.
People are stupid. They think RCV is “too confusing”
I feel like it can kind of be confusing to understand how the process works for it.
But it is not even remotely confusing as to what you do. Choose, from most to least, who you want. It’s that simple. You want to get into how those votes are tallied, do a little dive, there’s plenty of videos very simply explaining it. If you don’t, and just want to be able to go vote? Just go vote. If even ranking them is too complicated because you have a worm in your brain, just choose one and ignore everything else.
It might be complicated to tally, but it is not complicated to do. It’s just people being duped by the Big 2 parties to not want choices.
Don’t worry. Voting altogether will be next.
The fact that Americans banned it, means it good for the people.
the gop specifically, they know thier VOter suppression and gerrymander all BS, and would be negated if that happened.
If it happened, both parties were responsible, they work in tandem, pretending to be different sides, so you get fucked no matter where you vote.
It’s not just the USA that’s in dire need of it. The UK should also adopt it. First Past The Post (FPTP) voting encourages polarized extremism.
Lol home of the free, what a shit hole
What is a ban going to do.
It just changes the language of the acceptance bill
Pre-empts local laws preventing sub-divisions of the State (Cities, Towns) from enacting their own election system that would use “ranking” as a method of determining candidates winning or losing.
Renaming the system will not bypass the ban.
Nothing screams “democracy” like explicitely banning a voting system
well, to be fair, shitty electoral systems should be banned, like FPTP, because they aren’t representative. what’s happening here is sadly the opposite.
It still shouldn’t be banned, it should be up for debate when picking a system. Explicitely banning a system is pretty much anti-democratic by nature.
FPTP is fine in many small scale applications. How should a town of 5,000 people elect their mayor otherwise?
Ranked choice should be the standard
This is democrats and Republicans not wanting people to vote for their candidate of choice because they have to constantly play the game of the lesser of two evils
Don’t blame me; I voted for Kodos
And this is why you have the 2A
Not even one state that has banned it is run by Democrats.
As of April 30, five states had banned RCV in 2025, which brought the total number of states that prohibit RCV to 16.
Gov. Mark Gordon (Republican) signed HB 165 on March 18. West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey (Republican) signed SB 490 the March 19.*** Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly (Democrat) signed SB 6 into law on April 1.*** North Dakota Gov. Kelly Armstrong (Republican) signed HB 1297 on April 15. Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (Republican) signed HB 1706 which became law on April 17.
Six states banned RCV in 2024.
5/6 are Republican shitheads however.
Your right about that, it is a fair thing to point out. However, I will mention that the democratic party has a hostile past to 3rd parties where they would do things like suing them to get them off ballots.
Here is one example for reference: apnews.com/…/2022-midterm-elections-lawsuits-voti…
Golly what a surprise! Duopoly gonna duopoly!
Remember that you still have power in this system by not voting for a party if they do not fulfill your demands.
Reminder that even Democrats banned it and “commie hellhole” California had its governor veto it.
Statistically when you don’t vote, you are effectively voting Republican. When turn out is high Dems tend to win, and when it’s low the GOP wins.
Not voting is definitely not going to change anything
Or vote against the one party (starts with an R) that continues to make the duopoly happen by banning RCV, and for the party (starts with a D) that’s far more likely to implement RCV.
People don’t vote in primaries enough.
AOC did it. Beat the corporate PoS. We can all do it.
And if they try to rig it, we do a little French-style direct action 😏
We voted for it at the county level here in CA. That was back in 2020. San Diego county voted to use RCV, as did several other counties in CA. The county registrar of voters is refusing to change from FPTP, and is waiting to see how the lawsuits turn out.
Even if your state hasn’t banned it, they will fight you tooth and nail not to change it.
Sarah huckabee did something awful??? Shocked I say
Ohio is trying to ban it this year.
I get why Gen alpha use “Ohio” to describe something bad now
God damn Skibidi Ohio polititians with no rizz, no cap fr fr, voters with brainrot smh
(sorry for the use of Gen alpha brainrot language)
I know a number of Gen alpha kids. None of them use those phrases. They are Gen Z terms
Yeah, obscenely gerrymandered Republican supermajority in the state legislature really sucks.
Mainer here. Its great, except that the governor’s race is specifically exempted from RCV. May have something to do with GOP former governor LePage, but can’t recall before my morning meds…
We have rcv here for local elections in nyc but not for any state or federal elections
because the state and fed levels are corrupt as hell. the local level seemed more amenable, although i suspect the nyc mayoral elections will be thoroughly fiddled.
Which reminds me. Governor of NY didn’t even fucking sack Crooked Adams. That just tells all you need to know. Crooks covering for crooks. Now the crook in cheif drops the charges on Adams.
What a shitshow.
Seems about right. This reinforces my reality. If something good happened to humanity, I might wonder if I somehow might be going mad.
Nothing will meaningfully improve until the rich fear for their lives
seeing so many upvotes on this comment made my morning.
remember, we can plan anonymously online by posting plans in the form of if/then scenarios. example: if i were trying to put the richest american oligarchs in check, i would first need a list of who they are widely disseminated to the masses.
i’m not advocating that, i’m just saying IF that’s what i were trying to do, that’s how i would do it.
i’m not advocating that
You don’t have to. Forbes already publishes a real-time up-to-date list of the richest people in the world.
www.forbes.com/real-time-billionaires/#5b60b1453d…
It can be sorted by net worth, country of residence, industry the person made their fortune in, or age.
It occurs to me that the electoral system might be used in Pres elections to work (very slightly) in that direction. What if a number of associated candidates made a pact that their electors, if elected, would vote for whichever of the pact makers got the most popular votes overall? Like if Sanders and Biden and Harris were in a pact like that of Democrats (named chosen of unlikely future candidates). People could vote for whichever, avoiding split-the-vote tactics. If Sanders won a state, but Harris got more pop votes nationwide, his electors would instead vote for her. Complicated maybe, but it wouldn’t need any constitutional changes, and might make disasters like a Trump win less likely. Dumb idea?
it wouldn’t need any constitutional changes
You need a lot of states to change their laws. Some states ban faithless electors unless the candidate they pledged for dies. So unless we’re yeeting the candidates off a building in order to stop fascism, you can’t change your electorsl votes.
Also, if you’re method of avoiding fascism is by relying on the electors to keep their promise, you’re ending up with disaster.
In the 1800 US presidential election, the system at the time was that 2 votes are cast by the electoral college, the one with most votes is the president and the with the second-most votes becomes president (stupid system, right?). Electors of the Jefferson-Burr ticket was supposed to have one of their electors vote for Jefferson, but not Burr, so that Jefferson has just 1 vote more than Burr, making Jefferson President and Burr vice-president.
But NONE of the electors did that. They all voted for both, which resulted in a tie, resulting in a contingent election. (They later added an amendment to make Pres and VP two separate vote counts, which we have today)
I don’t have faith in Electors to make good plans. Although Electors are handpicked hardcore supporters of a candidate, sometimes their fanaticism can make irrational decisions, including even ignoring instructions from the candidate they supposedly support. (For example: Some Sanders supporters did not vote Biden in the General election, even when Sanders endorsed Biden)
At what point is a democracy not a democracy anymore?
The USA is too big to be a democracy. It would need to be several smaller regions/countries that had equal rights when dealing with each other. But its much easier to just force people to do what you want rather than make a mutually beneficial deal.
So, like, … maybe 50 or so smaller regions? And a few other mostly even smaller territories that don’t get those rights, just for funsies?
I joke, of course. But in seriousness: Are you suggesting the US just defederate and become more like, say, the EU? What are you anticipating that would solve? Moreover, what is it that makes it too big to be a democracy? Can large governments exist only in authoritarian forms? Why would that be?
The US has never been a democracy, they’re just being more straightforward about it recently
People keep commenting this without context and it’s driving me mad. It’s factually wrong, so at least tell us what you mean in the figurative sense.
A better question would be “when was there ever been a true democracy?”
For me, there hasn’t been. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try. It means that we need to truly internalise that wealth and power will, if left unchecked, succeed in perverting it entirely. We need to be ever augmenting it, with that in mind, with a view to playing whack a mole with the interests of the 1% and keeping it working for the 99%.
I mean that won’t work either. The rich and powerful will never allow us to simply vote away their ill beggoten wealth and power. However, at least people could say that they tried.
I don’t think we’ll ever have a “true” democracy.
Its like the concept of “utopia”, you can get closer and closer, but never actually reach it
Like an asymptote in mathematics.
For the U.S., the decisive blow came with the Citizens United ruling, although it’s not unreasonable to suggest the refusal to punish Nixon during watergate signaled that the rule of law was merely a suggestion. That kicked off a whole cascade of political and legal maneuvering to get both the legislative and societal landscape into such a contortion that it would willingly hand away the entire nation to vulture-capitalists.
Sadly, some states, people voted against ranked-choice-voting in referendum. Seems lile people just hear a complex idea and want to shut it down because it challenged their simplistic worldview.
Not sure. Ancient societies also used FPTP and they are still considered by some Scholars/Historians as “democracy” 🤷♂️
Personally, I think government systems are actually a type of technology. Unfortunately, they aren’t the kind of research where you can easily experiment and iterate upon, since people tend to die in massive numbers if the experiment fails.
Approval and STAR are better anyway. Not that they wouldn’t find a piss poor excuse to ban those as well.
STAR? Sure.
Approval? Nah
Gonna copy paste my comment again:
I can see a bit of strategic voting happening.
Let me demonstrate:
For the sake of simplicity, let’s say we have 3 candidates, and no term limits:
Trump, Biden, Sanders
Biden and Sander voters dispise trump, their preference in RCV is (example):
Biden>Sanders>Trump: 30%
Sander>Biden>Trump: 25%
Trump>Sanders>Biden: 23%
Trump>Biden>Sanders: 22%
Okay, so lets say they all approve their top 2:
Biden: 77%
Sanders: 78%
Trump: 45%
Okay we have president Sanders! Congrats, right?
Well, now the trumpers who approved sanders are like: “Hey wait a minute, we made our daddy lose because we approved Sanders”
All the trumpers now have a meeting and decided that next election, they don’t approve Sanders or Biden as a strategic vote.
So now, Election 2 Results:
Biden: 55%
Sanders: 55%
Trump: 45%
Oh great, it’s a tie. The law says that the election have to be re-done to solve the tie:
Now this next election, all people who preferred Sanders first go to a Sanders supporter meeting and started saying: “Lets disapprove Biden so Bernie can win!”
Simultaneously, Biden voters will be like: “Lets disapprove Sanders so Biden can win!”
Next election results:
Trump: 45%
Biden: 30%
Sanders 25%
Congrats, we have a glorified FPTP and spoiler effect yet again!
Now, other election systems could also have strategic voting, but its less likely with, for example, RCV, since you can rank candidates.
STAR voting is also acceptable, but its also less heard of, and as far as I know, it hasn’t ever been done in a real-life election. I doubt that’ll get popular any time soon, might as well find another easier to implement Non-FPTP system to rally behind.
Voters get together and decide who to vote for
Okay, I’m going to stop you right there. What about the voting populace makes you think we’re capable of that?
The bigger problem in my opinion is more about the fact that all elections that select a single winner will always end up in stupid degenerate systems like this where flaws and imperfections exist.
The best thing to do (again, my opinion) is to abolish all single winner races and have multiple winners with proportional representation. Get rid of directly elected presidents and have a prime minister selected by a proportionally representative parliament instead. All presidential systems suck, and the larger the number of people voting, the harder and harder it sucks. It’s not just a USA problem - you also see it in France and Turkey, where they also have an all-powerful president that is elected nationally and the election is a complete shit-show every time without fail. On the other hand, having a prime minister selected as the head of state from a proportionally elected parliament is a much fairer and more stable system in my opinion. It has downsides too of course, but nowhere near as bad as nationally elected presidential systems.
In any case, the situation is a potential danger, but I don’t think it’s very likely to happen. First of all, it would require all those voters in the second round to conspire a particular way, which isn’t very likely. Secondly, there’s the fact that the numbers would have to line up in a very particular way which has a very low probability of happening - tweak a few numbers here and there, and the spoiler effect vanishes. Sure, the scenario you point out is a hypothetical flaw in approval voting, but I think it’s a much smaller effect and probability of actually influencing anything - definitely nowhere near as much of a strategic voting effect as in plurality voting systems.
Congrats, we have a glorified FPTP and spoiler effect yet again!
Not quite. As you’ve just observed, this kind of strategic voting is risky, and self destructive. Which means that many would recognize this, and not use this voting strategy. Its a game of chicken, and lots of people prefer not to play such a game and instead support the safe bet, which means supporting those you genuinely support.
And as !ammonium@lemmy.world pointed out, it isn’t possible to have a perfect voting system.
Then there is the fact that there is more to this than just voting strategies. There are the other effects to keep in mind. For example approval is far simpler to explain than RCV, especially when you explain how the counting works.
Another example is that approval is purely an additive process for counting, RCV is not. That means auditing results is significantly easier and quicker under approval than RCV. That leads to higher voter confidence in results than RCV audits.
Now, other election systems could also have strategic voting, but its less likely with, for example, RCV, since you can rank candidates.
RCV still can experience the spoiler effect just as FPTP, because it is in effect FPTP taking place over some number of instant rounds.
It’s mathematically proven that no voting system is perfect, so you’ll have to choose what you value most in a voting system. There is no clear best system.
I think the arguments for approval voting are strong. It’s simple and easy to understand, no need for complex multiple rounds of counting. Since you can’t rank candidates it doesn’t suffer from the spoiler effect.
In your hypothetical scenario you’re forgetting the Trump voters who will vote for Sanders again after they see Biden nearly beating him. RCV has a bigger problem which is called the spoiler effect where, without strategical voting a loser can influence the election results. And am I missing something or should the numbers in your RCV list add up to 100%?
Americans complain about the two party system and do absolutely nothing to change that. It’s like watching a soap opera but everyone’s fell of the horse and lost their memory.
It’s even worse than that - they don’t just “do absolutely nothing to change that”, they actively whip each other into line by loudly blaming third party voters for not giving them the votes that they somehow owe to their big money party.
It’s almost like those in power make the laws that are used to elect those in power 🤔
In Colorado last year RCV was on the ballot as part of an initiative. It was shot down easily because both parties campaigned against it. Not sure what to do when the weight of all incumbents is thrown against something
In Colorado, one of my wife’s friends is what most people (I say this, knowing the Lemmy political scale is vastly different from most Americans) would consider super liberal. She’s also very outspoken and politically active, so she has no problems telling everyone she knows how to vote on every issue.
Last election, we were at her house and she mentioned that she was against ranked choice voting. When I asked her why, she pointed to her voting guide provided by the Colorado Democratic Party. She just blindly accepts that because the party says it’s bad, then it’s bad.
After seeing that, it wasn’t surprising to me when the proposition failed.
Lol go to r/conservative and you’ll see all those idiots having doublethink simultaneouly saying that they support term limits for congress and support for ranked-choice voting, yet continues to vote in conservatives that oppose the very policies they claim to support.
Its actually quite ridiculous. Republican legislators consistantly oppose raising the minimum wage or abortion, yet, the republican voters votes in favor of those policies, while simultaneously vote for the legislators that oppose them.
I’m just like… Why??? Do y’all vote like this? 🤦♂️
I think we should just go the Swiss-route and do direct democracy; representatives don’t even represent their constituents anymore.
I think we should just go the Swiss-route and do direct democracy;
That’s literally the Anarchy system. I.e Laws and no leaders.
As an Australian who has ranked choice (we call it preferential) it’s not the panecea folks here seem to think it is to bring about the enlightenment.
I’m 58, have voted in every election from when I was eligible through to this year. We don’t have ICE but we have Border Force and we routinely deport non citizens, we inspect digital devices at the border, we off shore legal refugees in internment camps, we have zero care for the enviorment and love penis shaped defence spending, we are a car dependent shit hole with few redeeming qualities… It’s ever been thus, Donad Horne oponed on this in the 1970s.
We don’t have feedom of the press or freedom of speech, so often these things are unable to even be reported on at all and our most egregious atrocities have widespread support amongst the broader population. In that respect its not as big a divisor as. n the US as we’re all arseholes :) We’re happy to allow religious scumbags to discriminate against LGBQT folks, happy to have our privacy removed, are quite fond of fucking over our indigenous peoples and the wider enviorment and near zero concern for exestential issues like climate change. We’re happy to shit over homeless people and have unaffordable housing and racism is broadly endemic.
We have never elected a government that i think is anything but objectively fucking horrible, we have our tongue firmly stuck up the US foreign policy asshole and follow them into every stupid dumb shit military action. We have had the occasionally decent poltican but then so does the US (Bernie etc) .
Like us, your people are broken and you’re not going to cure what ails ya’ with RCV.
I’m just like… Why??? Why do y’all vote like this?
Looks awkwardly at the voting history of every politician they have voted for…
Yeah. Those Republicans sure look silly rallying behind people who immediately betray them once in office.
Awkward cough.
This may shock you, but there’s a lot of us. It’s not the same people doing both.
In MO. Voted on it last year. The ballot was intentionally worded to be misleading.
It said each person can only cast one vote. Making it sound like it was to prevent people from voting twice even though that person as already not allowed.
So dumb.
They just pulled that in the Ohio House this week. They have been calling it “One Person, One Vote” and are going to withhold state funds to any municipality that uses ranked choice voting. It passed our house 22-5 iirc
Really bugs me how americans talk about “ranked choice voting” because you guys seem to mean STV, which is a form of proportional representation with multi-member districts.
But in Canada, “ranked ballots” meant IRV, which was basically FPTP with a ranked ballot, and ironically exacerbated the worst parts of FPTP like the trend to a two party system.
Stick with the real names of electoral systems!
absolutely shocked that southern states with the worst education and track history of the most oppressive laws would do this to their constituents
they’ve been nothing but whored-out welfare states the whole fucking time
Can anyone explain to me why a BAN was even needed? If a State is FPTP that’s the way it is; why do they need to say a different way is not allowed? Especially because of that different way were to actually be viable enough to become law it would just be a one two step - repeal the old, then institute the new.
MisterFrog@lemmy.world 10 months ago
🇦🇺 heh, amateurs… But seriously this is ridiculous, and straight up anti-democtatic. Single member first past the post is the worst voting system out there.
Inb4 they make mulit-member electorates winner-take-all (all seats to the party who got the plurality of votes).
This is THE fight USA. In my opinion, your ridiculous voting systems is probably why it’s so easy to suppress you.