YSK that in 16 States in the USA has banned Ranked-Choice voting, including 5 that has just banned it in 2025, and 6 of those bans happened in 2024.

Submitted ⁨⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨throwawayacc0430@sh.itjust.works⁩ to ⁨youshouldknow@lemmy.world⁩

https://ballotpedia.org/Ranked-choice_voting_(RCV)#Where_is_RCV_used

RCV trends: Four states ban RCV in 2025, bringing the number of states with bans to 15.

(Okay idk why it says 15 up here then later says 16, somebody on that site probably didn’t update the title text)

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 ® signed HB 165 on March 18. • West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey ® signed SB 490 the March 19. • Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly (D) signed SB 6 into law on April 1. • North Dakota Gov. Kelly Armstrong ® signed HB 1297 on April 15. • Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders ® signed HB 1706 which became law on April 17.

Six states banned RCV in 2024.

Why YSK: If you’re a US-American, its time to pay attention to State and Local politics instead of solely on the Federal. There is a trend in conservative jurisdictions to stop progress in making elecoral systems more fair. Use this opportunity as a rallying-cry to pass Ranked-Choice Voting in progressive jurisdictions, and hopefully everyone else takes notes. Sometimes, all you need is a few states adopting a law to become the catalyst for it to become the model for the entire country, for better or for worse. Don’t allow anti-RCV legislations to dominate, counter the propaganda with pro-RCV arguments. Time to turn the tide.

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Comments

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MetalMachine@feddit.nl ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
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

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AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
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.

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LilB0kChoy@lemm.ee ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Tl;dr

I was curious so I had to go look and see what states banned it. I was shocked, shocked I tell you to see the states that banned it are:

Alabama
Arkansas
Florida
Idaho
Kansas Kentucky
Louisiana Mississippi Missouri
Montana
North Dakota
Oklahoma
South Dakota
Tennessee
West Virginia Wyoming

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- Quibblekrust@thelemmy.club ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Why did you add like a hundred spaces in front of the list of states? That makes it a code block that requires tons of horizontal scrolling to read. I didn’t even recognize it as such at first.
  
  You know Lemmy has spoiler syntax, right? If that’s what you were going for?
  
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- BassTurd@lemmy.world ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Does it also shock you that Iowa is on the short list to do the same?
  
  www.billtrack50.com/billdetail/1848744
  
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  - LilB0kChoy@lemm.ee ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Nope. I live in Minnesota and I’m well aware of what I.O.W.A. stands for.
    
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- jaybone@lemmy.zip ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  You’d think it would be democrats worried about another Bernie Sanders coming along.
  
  What is it the republicans are worried about with RCV?
  
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  - JeremyHuntQW12@lemmy.world ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    The left wing vote is split, so the Republicans can win just by getting the largest number of votes with first-past-the-post.
    
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  - ExtantHuman@lemm.ee ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    The magas only gained their stranglehold on the party, despite being a minority, due to the neocons splitting their primary ballots.
    
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  - LilB0kChoy@lemm.ee ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    I don’t know because they shouldn’t be.
    
    Republicans like Senator Tom Cotton and Donald Trump have garnered headlines for stating their opposition to ranked choice voting after election results didn’t turn out exactly as they hoped. Their preferred candidates, Sarah Palin in the House and Kelly Tshibaka in the Senate, didn’t win. Both are Republicans. So, they claim (loudly) that RCV is biased against Republicans or “rigged.”
    
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- circuitfarmer@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  For those non-USians reading this, the pattern is: states which tend to vote Republican and thus have majority Republican governance. So called “red states”.
  
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IndustryStandard@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
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.

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- throwawayacc0430@sh.itjust.works ⁨32⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago
  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 😏
  
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ExtantHuman@lemm.ee ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Ohio is trying to ban it this year.

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- throwawayacc0430@sh.itjust.works ⁨24⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago
  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)
  
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SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Nothing will meaningfully improve until the rich fear for their lives

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SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
At what point is a democracy not a democracy anymore?

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- undergroundoverground@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  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.
  
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- Monument@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  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.
  
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- Amnesigenic@lemmy.ml ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  The US has never been a democracy, they’re just being more straightforward about it recently
  
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  - Randelung@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    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.
    
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- sadTruth@lemmy.hogru.ch ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  For Patriots and politicians: As long as there is democracy in the name (Democratic Republic of Korea)
  
  For decent people: As soon as the laws/choices the government produces are no longer what the average person would choose.
  
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  - throwawayacc0430@sh.itjust.works ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    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.
    
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- Rekorse@sh.itjust.works ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  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.
  
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- throwawayacc0430@sh.itjust.works ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Not sure. Ancient societies also used FPTP and they are still considered by some Scholars/Historians as “democracy” 🤷‍♂️
  
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  - SabinStargem@lemmy.today ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    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.
    
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w3dd1e@lemm.ee ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
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.

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- BakerBagel@midwest.social ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  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
  
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- gaja@lemm.ee ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Missouri Amendment 7, Require Citizenship to Vote and Prohibit Ranked-Choice Voting Amendmen
  
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Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Is anybody surprised that you could replace the orange with red and have a pretty accurate election map?

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- GuyFawkes@midwest.social ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  In Kansas it surprises me that Kelly signed it; I’d be more inclined to believe that the Republican supermajorities pushed it past a veto.
  
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  - ceenote@lemmy.world ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    It looks like it passed with a veto proof majority that probably included some democrats. Link
    
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drmoose@lemmy.world ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
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.

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- surewhynotlem@lemmy.world ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  It’s almost like those in power make the laws that are used to elect those in power 🤔
  
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- BmeBenji@lemm.ee ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  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
  
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  - jballs@sh.itjust.works ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    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.
    
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- throwawayacc0430@sh.itjust.works ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  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.
  
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  - hanrahan@slrpnk.net ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    
    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.
    
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  - pinball_wizard@lemmy.zip ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    
    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.
    
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- skisnow@lemmy.ca ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  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.
  
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- Nemo@slrpnk.net ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  This may shock you, but there’s a lot of us. It’s not the same people doing both.
  
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s38b35M5@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
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…

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Vanilla_PuddinFudge@infosec.pub ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Seems about right. This reinforces my reality. If something good happened to humanity, I might wonder if I somehow might be going mad.

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GuyFawkes@midwest.social ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
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.

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- throwawayacc0430@sh.itjust.works ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  They don’t want sub-divisions of the State (cities/towns) to implement RCV in their local elections. Probably to avoid the idea to spread. It like Democracy/Republicanism. When the French god rid of their monarchy, all the monarchs of nearby countries were afraid the sentinment would spread, same thing here.
  
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  - GuyFawkes@midwest.social ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    That makes a lot of (unfortunate) sense, other than Kelly approving it (I’m in Kansas). I’ll need to dig in more and make sure it wasn’t just a veto overridden by the Republican supermajorities, or else wasn’t a poison pill attached to must have legislation.
    
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- BakerBagel@midwest.social ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  The Ohio HoR just overwhelming voted to remove all state funding from any city that implements ranked choice voting. It threatens the parties in power, so they are both eager to stomp it out
  
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- sin_free_for_00_days@sopuli.xyz ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  The link gives some arguments. It’s mostly stupid right wing claptrap.
  
  Opponents of ranked-choice voting argue that it benefits voters with more time and information, leads to decreased voter confidence in elections, and disconnects voting from important issues and debates. Opponents of ranked-choice voting also argue that RCV winners do not necessarily represent the will of the voters.
  
  It goes on to giving statements for those reasons from such respectable organizations as The Heritage Foundation, so do what you want with that.
  
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  - chaogomu@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    I’m an opponent of RCV for none of those reasons.
    
    No, I hate it because it’s deeply flawed and provides zero of the benefits that proponents claim it does.
    
    Rather than help third parties, it actually hurts them.
    
    The inventor of the system, created it as an example of a bad voting system. This was in 1790.
    
    There’s far more ballot spoilage when compared to any other system.
    
    It doesn’t eliminate the spoiler effect, just kicks it down the ballot a bit,
    
    It’s confusing to count, which has led to the wrong candidate being sworn in.
    
    It requires centralized counting, which is a single point of failure or attack.
    
    And finally there are better, simpler systems that actually do the things that RCV proponents claim RCV
    
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- fubarx@lemmy.world ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Alaska passed it. The election results didn’t go as expected. Everyone in one party (guess) freaked out and started passing bans nationwide.
  
  They tried to repeal RCV in Alaska too, but it failed by a slim count even after 100:1 repeal money advantage. They’ll probably try again: alaskapublic.org/…/alaskas-ranked-choice-repeal-m…
  
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  - LaLuzDelSol@lemmy.world ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Nope, the “No” campaign (keeping ranked choice voting) outspent the campaign to repeal ranked choice voting by 100:1, largely with out of state money.
    
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  - throwawayacc0430@sh.itjust.works ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    I just read about it. Apparantly, most voters preferred the republican Begich over other 2 candidates and Begich is the Condorcet winner, so I could see why they’d be upset at the result.
    
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- Monument@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Because they don’t believe in choice, freedom, or even democracy. They merely support the ideal and facilitate the illusion.
  
  Anything that empowers voters to either dilute the two-party hegemony (where both parties are accountable to the same pool of donors) or elect party members that haven’t been carefully vetted by insiders is a threat to entrenched power structures. Adding roadblocks now ensures that transitions to better systems are made impossible via peaceful and lawful means.
  
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gt5@lemm.ee ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
We have rcv here for local elections in nyc but not for any state or federal elections

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- Disaster@sh.itjust.works ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  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.
  
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motor_spirit@lemmy.world ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
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

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Dorkyd68@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Sarah huckabee did something awful??? Shocked I say

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chunes@lemmy.world ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Meh. There are better voting systems such as range voting and STAR.

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- throwawayacc0430@sh.itjust.works ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  You also have to account in human stupidity. If you make the ballot too complex, dumbasses are gonna mess it up and the ballots will be invalidated.
  
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  - deus@lemmy.world ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Ok, I’m sold, let’s do this
    
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  - lmmarsano@lemmynsfw.com ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    The ballot is the same for all ranked voting methods. The method of determining winner from those ballots varies, and some are clearly worse.
    
    For instance, if a candidate would beat all others 1-on-1 (Condorcet winner), then shouldn’t a decent method always select that candidate as winner? RCV doesn’t do that. Other methods also fail.
    
    This nice table compares voting methods by a wide range of properties. I don’t think it hurts to make a more informed decision before backing a method that will be difficult to change. We got stuck with FPTP through inadequate research, and it’d be great not to repeat that mistake.
    
    While rated voting methods fail the Condorcet winner criterion, by rating instead of ranking candidates they satisfy another set of criteria also worth considering.
    
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  - chunes@lemmy.world ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    RCV isn’t monotonic, meaning that in the right circumstances you can harm your candidate by voting for him. Doesn’t matter how rare it is; what a ridiculous quality for a voting system to have.
    
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- UltraGiGaGigantic@lemmy.ml ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Got some videos here that explains various voting systems if yall are interested.
  
  Electoral Reform Videos
  First Past The Post voting (What most states use now) Videos on alternative electoral systems STAR voting Alternative vote Ranked Choice voting Range Voting Single Transferable Vote Mixed Member Proportional representation
  
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  - eugenevdebs@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    
    STAR voting
    
    Your STAR voting video doesn’t exist on my end, America here if that matters for copyright/prohibition.
    
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- Cuberoot@lemmynsfw.com ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  There are, and my state would have banned those too it they’d heard about them when they were banning RCV. They weren’t making principled objections like monotonicity failures. They likely noticed that most of RCV’s loudest advocates were from the wrong party (and some of the were the wrong color too!), and figured that was a good enough reason to shut it down.
  
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Olgratin_Magmatoe@slrpnk.net ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Approval and STAR are better anyway. Not that they wouldn’t find a piss poor excuse to ban those as well.

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- throwawayacc0430@sh.itjust.works ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  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.
  
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  - Olgratin_Magmatoe@slrpnk.net ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    
    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.
    
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  - ammonium@lemmy.world ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    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%?
    
    electionscience.org/…/approval-voting-vs-rcv
    
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Bwaz@lemmy.world ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
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?

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- throwawayacc0430@sh.itjust.works ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  
  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)
  
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yucandu@lemmy.world ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
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!

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Photuris@lemmy.ml ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I hate it here in the South.

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