this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2024
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[–] [email protected] 37 points 1 day ago (3 children)

funny that with instant runoff voting, your vote would go to a larger party as soon as your fringe candidate got eliminated.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

Perhaps, but I'd feel a lot better knowing I was able to vote for my fringe nutjob without handing their fringe nutjob the Whitehouse. And if my fringe nutjob lost, then I could still keep voting for who I truly believe is best. And by the time all my fringe nutjobs were eliminated, and I had to vote for a Democrat again, I'd at least know that we truly and democratically came to that answer. I don't have to be "right" about the best candidate, but I hate casting a damage control vote that feels like a lie.

So as it stands, I hate voting, I hate having to vote for Democrats, and I just suck it up and do it anyway because we don't have the time to collectively push for a better option.

Plus, if everyone could vote for their fringe nutjob without fear of giving the election to the worst possible option, we might find out that more people support ideas outside of the two party system. Maybe even shifting the Overton window and opening the door for a more representative electorate.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 23 hours ago

This might surprise some people, but I actually agree with this. I'd love to take a risk on a Green or Socialist or even Libertarian candidate without risking throwing my vote away to the Republican. I'd still not do it with Presidents (the Electoral College fucks you over there), but I'm voting for RCV this November and look forward to eventually being able to not just vote for the lesser evil, nor have to vote for the crook because the other option in that election is a literal fascist...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Maybe those grifters should run for lower offices first instead of wasting peoples’ time and money on un-winnable elections that are entirely beholden to what congress’ makeup ends up being.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) (1 children)

Maybe, but since you don't know who my personal nutjobs are, maybe your assumptions are fundamentally flawed? Maybe they have run for lower office? Maybe they have won elections? Maybe they aren't grifters, but concerned citizens who truly want to make a difference in the best way they know how? Maybe assuming someone is falling for grifters is a bit unfair?

Or maybe I was taken in by a grifter all along and would still benefit from Ranked Choice Voting so I don't throw away my vote and let Trump back in the Whitehouse? Either way it's an improvement.

Fwiw, my personal nutjob is Bernie, and even if he didn't win, I consider the shift he made in American politics to have value in its own right.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Lol, okay, I'll give you that. I'm not well.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 23 hours ago

Need 🤣 reaction. So ⬆ instead.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

I think these guys would leave the Dems unranked. I suspect they'd even rank Republicans over them, with the amount of "hate Dems" they got going.

Americans as a whole are dumb. Expecting them to use RCV like it should be used is like expecting a pigeon to play chess. We know what actually happens when you try to play chess with a pigeon.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 21 hours ago

OK that's just bullying and imagining the worst to make yourself feel better about this.

Jumping to this "hate dems" thing when most seem to just be nitpicking also feels a but much. And you are just stereotyping.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

not when the ballot looks like:

___ democrat
___ republican
___ independent
___ independent
_2_ honest guy without a chance in hell
___ who da fk is this guy
_1_ fringe nutjob

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Run off voting would give the honest guy the greatest chance at winning. There would be no strategic voting, just voting for the one who best represents you, and a bare minimum contingency.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Unfortunately that's not how RCV works.

There's a lot of misinformation about RCV, claims that just aren't supported in reality. And one of those is false claims is that RCV is in any way good for third parties.

At it's core, RCV is just a series of First Past the Post mini elections on a single ballot.

That creates problems.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Unfortunately that's not how cereal works.

There's a lot of misinformation about cereal, claims that just aren't supported in reality. And one of those false claims is that you can just put cereal in a bowl with milk in it.

At it's core, cereal is just a series of very small, crunchy loaves of bread, in a single bowl.

That creates problems.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 hours ago

Ordinal voting systems cannot support third parties due to Arrow's Impossibility Theorem.

I don't get why RCV proponents constantly lie about it. But then again, it doesn't actually fix the problems present in First Past the Post, because at its core, Ranked Choice is First Past the Post, just repeated a bunch on a single ballot.

That leads to some odd situations where you can actually decrease support for your preferred candidate to help them win.

How that one works is if you have A, B, and C, with the election normally being a contest of B and C, C voters can strategically boost A until B is knocked out of the election. Then B votes get redistributed, with a percentage going to C, so that C now wins.

All because C lowered their first round support a bit, while demonizing A among B voters.

This same sort of mechanism has resulted in odd candidates winning real world elections. Like the Burlington, Vermont Mayoral Race of 2009.

Also, if you add more candidates to the ballot, this sort of attack becomes easier, not harder.


Then there's Ballot Exhaustion. This is where your ballot no longer has any viable candidate left to transfer votes to. But here's the kicker, your ballot can be gutted down the middle before your vote can transfer. If you have A, B, C, D, and E, on your ballot and B, C, D, and E, get eliminated before A, your vote gets thrown away. Even if transferring it to B, C, D, or E would have had them win. It doesn't matter at all, because the rules of the system so that those candidates are out.

Even if literally every single voter puts B as their second choice, with no other candidates reaching that magic 50% in the first round, B is eliminated.

And about that magic 50%. It's not 50% of the initial vote, it's 50% of the ballots that are left in that round. So with Ballot Exhaustion sometimes reaching as much as 18% of all ballots cast, you can have a winner who is only supported by 41% of the population. Or rather, 41% of the voters in that election.


Let's see, other red flags... RCV needs to be counted in a centralized location, so you have to transport the ballots. That adds to the time that counting takes, and adds security issues. Makes it very easy for the people counting to steal an election.

Then there's the complexity of the count itself. That has caused problems, like the wrong candidate being sworn in, because the people counting screwed up.

https://abc7news.com/ranked-choice-voting-oakland-school-board-director-district-4-race-mike-hutchinson-alameda-county-registrar-of-voters/12626221/


Overall, the system is actually a step backwards from what we have, and gets in the way of actual election reform, because people say "we already tried that, and it made things worse".

The actual reform needs to be a Cardinal voting system, Like Approval or STAR. Cardinal voting systems actually live up to the promise, and allow third parties to grow and flourish without punishing voters for wanting something different.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

Depends on the implementation, some require all candidates be placed.