ST. LOUIS — Five states have banned ranked choice voting in the last two months, bringing the total number of Republican-leaning states now prohibiting the voting method to 10.
Missouri could soon join them.
If approved by voters, a GOP-backed measure set for the state ballot this fall would amend Missouri’s constitution to ban ranked choice voting.
There is literally no good argument for writing a law banning this. It’s indefensible. I challenge one person to try.
You can bet I’m going to start parading this around to conservative family members. This is such flagrant bullshit.
Edit: no good argument for writing a law banning this is the operative phrase here folks. RCV has pros and cons like anything. Banning it from even being proposed is indefensible.
Conservatives lose when more options are presented. If you’re a conservative that’s a great argument for banning ranked choice voting.
Conservatives lose pretty much all the time when voting is fair. That’s why they work as hard as possible make voting harder and create districts where they are guaranteed to win.
If conservatives become convinced that they can not win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. The will reject democracy.
-David Frum
Missouri has previously done things like pass state laws that ban local areas - especially St. Louis - from raising the minimum wage. Which if you think about it, really works to the advantage of the rural people the most, to have a slave low-wage-earning population forced to live inside the city, so that whenever the rural people deign to grace them with their presence, their fast-food burgers are at maximum cheapiness.
After all, it’s their “fault” for choosing to live in the city - when any (cough not-black) “person” (or rather, 3/5ths of one?) could “choose” to “live” out in the country, for a cheaper price. Actual facts to the contrary be damned - see e.g. Ferguson, yes Missouri is where THAT infamous place is.
They actively take away people’s freedoms to live in the manner that seems best to them, and this is unfortunately entirely on-brand for them. Look up Scott Hawley - he has so very many things going on it’s hard to pick just one, but one that springs readily to mind is being the only congressman to vote against a child sex-trafficking bill. Who da fuq hears “child sex-trafficking” and says “yes please, sign me up for MORE of that!” (you know… outside of Missouri anyway)?
Which if you think about it, really works to the advantage of the rural people the most, to have a slave low-wage-earning population forced to live inside the city, so that whenever the rural people deign to grace them with their presence, their fast-food burgers are at maximum cheapiness.
There’s plenty of people earning slave wages in rural areas.
They can do as they please, subject to federal laws - the difference is when you cross the line to tell others what to do.
Take mask wearing: they don’t want to wear masks? Maximized freedom demands that they not be forced to… except that’s not good enough, they keep trying to force others to also not wear masks, b/c they don’t want to see those face diapers on other people.
Or take women’s medical care: they don’t want something like an abortion? Maximized freedom demands that they not be forced into having an abortion… except that’s not good enough, and the woman’s life has to be sacrificed (extremely ironically, in the name of being Pro-“Life”!).
So if they want to allow employers to pay slave-labor wages out there in rural areas - where tbf housing is legit cheaper, so that minimum wage really would go farther - then maximized freedom demands that they be allowed to live how they please (I am not arguing for maximized freedom btw, but they use that as their justification hence I am focusing on it here)… except that’s not good enough, and they literally pass state-level laws, preventing local areas from raising the minimum wage above the federal minimum.
So it’s a hypocrisy thing, where they demand one set of laws for themselves (freedom) while a whole other set of laws for others (the opposite of freedom so… slavery?). Also, they demand authoritarianism for themselves (employers being allowed to pay slave-labor wages, or prevent women from doing medical care procedures, or round up LGBTQ+ and shoot them on sight), but then when they deal with others, suddenly the “authority” no longer matters, and now they whine for the “freedom” that they themselves deny to others. What word would work best for this besides “childish” - its not even “selfishness” b/c a smart implementation of the latter would do a cost-to-benefit tradeoff analysis as to what actions would yield the greatest net result; nor is it quite “immaturity”, though that comes a lot closer. This is behavior that (I thought) most people grow out of early in life, yet here we are.
There is literally no good argument for writing a law banning this. It’s indefensible. I challenge one person to try.
I’ve been in favor of RCV for a decade+ and believe our country would change practically overnight by adopting it; however, there are legitimate reasons it hasn’t been adopted. As stated and linked in the article,
Brown and other critics of ranked choice voting contend the system is confusing, and he said there are numerous instances in which voters didn’t end up ranking their choices.
Ballot exhaustion occurs when a ballot is no longer countable in a tally as all of the candidates marked on the ballot are no longer in the contest. This can occur as part of ranked-choice voting when a voter has ranked only candidates that have been eliminated even though other candidates remain in the contest, as voters are not required to rank all candidates in an election. In cases where a voter has ranked only candidates that did not make it to the final round of counting, the voter’s ballot is said to have been exhausted. An exhausted ballot is sometimes referred to as an inactive ballot.
Whether this qualifies as “literally no good argument” I think is dependent on the number ballots where this was an issue. You could make an argument that people aren’t educated about the system or the system isn’t adaptable for all voters. Whether those are “good arguments” is perhaps subjective.
How is an exhausted ballot any different from voting 3rd party today? 100% guaranteed for sure when I’ve voted Green my vote did not count towards anybody with a chance of winning. Is that any different if I could vote green and socialist and whatever else (but still not rank any major party candidates)?
It’s education for sure. We have very few issues with the system in Australia, which has been used for decades.
The exhaustion issue could be prevented by using full preferential instead of optional preferential (although some don’t like that because they believe it “forces” them to rank a candidate they don’t like).
He missed the point of my comment. I’m not saying there aren’t reasons to not adopt RCV, I am saying there is no reason to write laws that ban its adoption. They’re going to ban any system that could vaguely hurt them. This is a dangerous precedent when simply not adopting it is an available option. It also means if future constituencies want to switch over to it, they to repeal the law before they can even start to an enact a new one.
I’m not saying there is no good reason for not adopting it. I am saying there is no good reason for writing laws that ban its adoption.
There is no good argument for passing a law that bans the adoption of RCV. It’s the GOP continuing to stack the deck in their favor, a flagrant attempt to stop a change they don’t like because they think it will hurt them.
Oh no! Don’t you dare threaten the internet with parading it around in front of family members!
You mock but I have successfully changed the course of conversation when I bring up extreme or otherwise flagrantly undemocrstic actions like this. I have uncle who is completely rethinking his stance because he has been watching what governors in the south have been up to. Never seen him question the GOP/MAGA until recently, because he’s seeing the consequences play out for real now. Louisiana ending concealed carry permits scared the shit out of him.
A lot of people really do have a line and you need to keep showing them the stuff Fox and breitbart won’t show them. If we don’t try then we may as well just roll over and die and skip the stress of effort.
“We believe in the one person, one vote system of elections that our country was founded upon,”
Which was a surprise to all the slaves.
Once again Republicans misunderstand/misrepresent history to suit their own needs. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_man,_one_vote
In short, none of this is meant to say that a person can’t express more granular support in an election, so long as it doesn’t give certain citizens greater influence than others. A ranked ballot is still “one vote” per race, in IRV at least, so my vote doesn’t mean any more than yours.
It doesn’t even make sense. Everyone is still voting once. Or an I missing something? I apologize, i didn’t read the article.
And we really don’t have one person, one vote, and this is a fix for that. Most political seats in the US are not competitive because one party dominates, so some people’s votes (in swing districts) matter much more than others. RCV allows previously non-competitive one-party races to become competitive, so we can actually have everyone’s votes matter more equally.
Republicans are banning RCV faster than Democrats are pushing for it (which is easy because almost no democrats and no on influential to the party is actively pushing RCV). Probably because RCV hurts Democrats too, but either way at this rate if the time ever comes for a national discourse on a national RCV the red states will already be propagandized to disregard facts and hate RCV. The Democrats are not your solution to RCV, once again they’re the party of ‘too little to late’ incarnate. Go vote for them sure, but stop acting like they’re pro RCV and will advocate for a solution that takes power away from them because they aren’t and they won’t.
From Time.com
What is ranked-choice voting?
Ranked-choice voting is an electoral system that allows people to vote for multiple candidates, in order of preference. Instead of just choosing who you want to win, you fill out the ballot saying who is your first choice, second choice, or third choice (or more as needed) for each position.
The candidate with the majority (more than 50%) of first-choice votes wins outright. If no candidate gets a majority of first-choice votes, then it triggers a new counting process. The candidate who did the worst is eliminated, and that candidate’s voters’ ballots are redistributed to their second-choice pick. In other words, if you ranked a losing candidate as your first choice, and the candidate is eliminated, then your vote still counts: it just moves to your second-choice candidate. That process continues until there is a candidate who has the majority of votes.
Pretty straightforward to me. But grandma gets confused, so we can’t possibly implement it.
/s because it’ll probably be needed
That is literally the problem. People resistant to change (willfully or not) don’t want RCV.
No /s required.
Where I live we have RCV for some local government stuff but central government voting is MMP, which works quite well (except in the opinion of our conservatives). TL;DR: you vote for a candidate and also for a party. The party vote essentially sets how many seats each party gets in parliament, the candidate vote is for who represents your electorate.
I just don’t get the issue though. It doesn’t really matter if they understand the intricacies. Simply list the candidates in order of preference and let it play out.
Most people don’t even understand how our current electoral system works but they don’t seem to be raising a stink about it lol
Most people don’t even understand how our current electoral system works but they don’t seem to be raising a stink about it lol
And many of the ones that have no clue think they understand. But regardless, the entire concept of American Exceptionalism that gets hammered into us from birth means that whatever we have now is “the right way.” Changing things challenges that concept, which many have internalized as part of their core identity. Which… gestures vaguely at the overall political landscape …yeah.
If conservatives are trying to ban something, then it’s probably a good thing they were banning. Ranked voting should be more of a thing.
