Ranked choice doesn’t really help here. Generally right-wing/conservative/wannabe-gilead voters aggregate around the republican candidate. Libertarians get stupid but there are very few of them and they start off stupid.
On the left? We have a LOT more infighting but the only viable candidates at the Presidential level (and most, but not all, states) are the Democrat.
So what does ranked choice get us? Okay, everyone picks their favorite third party first. They all get eliminated. So who voted for the Democrat and who voted for the republican?
It also becomes a question of what variation of ranked choice voting is used. Because, depending on the elimination model, you are just normalizing spoiler candidates.
And… there is the very good argument that we already have ranked choice voting in a sense. Primaries. it happens less when there is an incumbent but everyone picks their absolute favorite candidate who most closely represents them. The majority of that then becomes the candidate we vote for come November.
Nah, I think the real answer is to just get rid of the electorcal college at the presidential level and just do popular votes. We have the technology.
I’ll also add on that there is a lot of theory (and even demonstrable-ish evidence) that you tend to consolidate around two-ish candidates even in the models that are fairly amenable to third parties. There are a LOT of question marks because this isn’t the kind of study you can really isolate, but even the third party heavy models (most parliamentary governments, for example) tend to have two dominating parties with a third or fourth that are “just strong enough to get concessions”.
Reforming the electoral college is definitely needed as well, but a much longer runway since it likely requires a constitutional amendment. You can implement RCV without forgoing electoral college reform or abolition. No single change will fix it all, but RCV is beneficial in moving towards democracy and has a lot of momentum already.
I think after people learn and get used to RCV (and when older generations die), their voting styles will change. No more voting solely out of fear. It also requires the major (wealthy) candidates to align more to the smaller (less wealthy) candidates. There’s really no reason to be against it. In some states they offer both styles of ballots so you can just vote for one person if you’d like. The only downside is that it can be confusing to new people.
None of that addresses the points I made outside of a nebulous “wouldn’t it be great if all the boomers died” which… no arguments.
Again, it all depends on what criteria are used to handle the rankings. Because a LOT of models will inherently favor the “side” that can rally behind a single candidate. Which is what we see under a lot of parliamentary models.
I am ALL for election reform. But “it can’t hurt” is not a reason to enact a heavy change. Especially when… it CAN hurt and discriminate against different demographics.
As for “the only downside is that it can be confusing to new people”: You should HANG with my buddy CHAD. Still hurting from that debacle.
Wasn’t trying to address your points because they’re just speculation. We’ve never had RCV nationwide for federal elections so can’t say how it would affect the way people vote. I don’t think the 2 party ruling system goes away with RCV, but it’s a step towards making politics more equitable. There are only benefits to giving voters more options. It’s not that “it can’t hurt”. It’s that it will benefit voters.
How does RCV discriminate? Which demographics?
Any voting system is prone to errors and any change will have growing pains. Doesn’t mean you don’t move forward. People need a way to vote for who they want, not who they don’t want. RCV is one solution. Doesn’t impede on any others.
