Ranked Choice Voting! Find your local RCV group and find ways to help get RCV implemented in your city! It’s something that sees opposition from republicans and democrats so you know it’s good.
I’m a fan of STAR voting myself, but anything is better than the first past the post system we have now.
Could you give a quick primer on what STAR voting is? I got a star from my teacher some 30 years ago, but somehow I doubt the system is based on those…
STAR, or Score Then Automatic Runoff, differs from RCV in that instead of ranking the candidates in order of preference, you can assign a rating to each, out of five stars. All of the stars are added for each candidate (score), and the ones with the fewest stars are eliminated (automatic runoff), then the scores are added again, another runoff, etc.
So say you love candidate C, you dislike candidate B, and you hate candidate A.
- In an RCV system, you’d rank C,B,A, and if C is eliminated, your full support goes behind B, but in the initial scoring round, only your top ranked candidate gets your full vote.
- In a STAR system, you’d maybe give C five stars, B two stars, and A zero stars. You’re still giving some support to B for the initial scoring round, but most of your support goes to C.
So the biggest difference is that in the initial scoring round, your preference for candidates other than your first choice are considered. Check out this video, which gives a good breakdown of voting systems and how they account for spoilage: https://youtu.be/oFqV2OtJOOg?si=8sLYiYpA7EnOt94i
It’d also be nice if they couldn’t just override the primary election results because it’s not a “real election”
Yes, I’m still a bit bitter about how the DNC treated Bernie in the 2016 election
As you should be as this is part of the reason why Ttump got elected in the first place.
They did not override that one. Sanders did not even win the non superdelegates. That’s not to say the 2016 Democratic primary was not fucked. Party officials clearly had a preference and were obviously pushing Clinton. Showing the super delegates planned counts before they actually voted made it seem like Sanders had no chance. They need to minimize the number of super delegates so that they can only decide really close primaries.
It’d also be nice if they couldn’t just override the primary election results because it’s not a “real election”
That is some Trumpian level of bullshit. They cannot do that because it is against the Charter since the 1950’s. And yes legally the DNC could change their own charter but so can the RNC. Changing party charters to nullify primaries would spell certain doom for that party.
Yes, I’m still a bit bitter about how the DNC treated Bernie in the 2016 election
You and the Kremlin are bitter about how the Dem primary voters treated us Bernie supporters in the 2016 election. Got it.
Sanders was crushed by Clinton in the 2016 primary elections. It was clear pretty much from the start that she was going to win. You take away all the super delegates, she still demolishes him. Did they show some favoritism towards her? Sure. Did they call him some bad names in private emails? Yes. Did she get a few questions before a debate? Yes. Is there any evidence that the election was rigged and stolen from Sanders? No, none at all.
This insistence that the Sanders was somehow robbed of the 2016 nomination (or 2020 nomination at that) is equivalent to Trump’s claim that he was robbed in 2020.
I was curious about this. Since political parties run their own primaries, then they can decide to use whatever voting system they want. I suspect that RCV primaries would produce a candidate that is more competitive in the general election (though I don’t know enough about electoral math or demographics to be sure). I’m certain that RCV has a tendency to discourage scorched earth campaign tactics, so party candidates would be less prone to trying to destroy one another.
My city does ranked choice voting, and it’s great! I would love to see it at the state level.
That’s awesome! What city? What was the process for getting it on the ballot and what helped getting it passed?
San Francisco has had ranked choice voting since 2004. IIRC they called it “instant run-off voting” and it would save from having a run off election for the mayor and other elected officials.
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.
I think ranked choice voting would give us RFK as president
Edit: that was assuming we had these same candidates only as ranked choice obviously we would have more candidates
Honestly my knowledge of ranked choice voting is that it works better for reps other than the president, and that our basically one guy wins it all form for presidential elections feels like ranked choice would work less. I’m willing to be wrong. I’m not sure if I actually like systems where the majority party picks the head of state, but it does feel like ra ked choice voting makes it matter more there.
Yeah. Nobody wants to acknowledge it because they watched a youtube and define themselves by “ranked choice” (and most don’t even know the specifics of the criteria they are supporting…)
Ranked Choice makes a LOT of sense at the county and state level. Because that is where third party candidates already have good odds if they actually represent the will of the people.
At the presidential? And with electoral college nonsense? The amount of money required to run a campaign and the tendency for certain chuddy demographics to rally behind one shitstain mean that you only really have two viable parties and ranked choice, at best, is a noop. At worst it enables spoilers.
Which… is also why a lot of parliament based governments still tend to have two major parties. They just have more splitting but… we already do when you realize that AOC and Hakeem Jeffries are in the same party.
It’s stunning that each party managed to find a candidate that could lose against the other.
Its not that stunning. In fact, its more common than you’d guess.
Only Ford could lose to Carter. Only Dukakis could lose to Bush. Only Hillary could lose to Trump. Hindsight 20/20. Foresight blind as a fucking bat.
Ford did himself in. Apparently in 1976, American’s didn’t like the fact that the President could commit crimes while in office and get off with a pardon from his former VP. Crimes he was never charged with or convicted of.
Today, a scandal is like a badge of “honor” and being a convicted criminal and morally bankrupt sleezeball is basically a requirement for the Presidency. At least it is if you’re a Republican.
If the election was today, Biden would lose. Imagine if Trump wasn’t the nominee for November, the GOP would win the presidency.
Edit: it’s just reality according to the current polling.
according to the current polling
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: the polls are likely skewed towards the GOP, and it’s thought that this is because of random text/calls, which boomers are more likely to respond to.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/17/politics/michael-cohen-poll-rigging/index.html
You’re correct. They did it back then. They absolutely are still doing it now.
If he would lose the election today, YES, Biden is bad. Where’s the disconnect?
If you think polling relates to reality then look into polling and how it doesn’t.
You really think Biden would win the election if it was held today? Have you not been paying attention at the work he still needs to do to win?
The existence of Project 2025 makes all of the “which candidate is better?” discussion completely irrelevant. If you support the people that support Project 2025 then you’re a bootlicker who wants to end popular representation in the government and replace it with authoritarianism. If you are vocally against the people who oppose Project 2025 then you are collaborating with the enemy.
Any other option is better.
Meanwhile Project 2025 on the Democrat side is the codename for the medical advances being pursued to keep Biden functioning through to 2025.
(I kid of course, you’re absolutely right, as depressing as that is)
The existence of Project 2025
Republicans have a shitty pre-election plan in the run up to every election. This isn’t any different than every other election cycle, from the perspective of “Bad Republicans promise to do bad things”.
Any other option is better.
The illusion of electoral choice is choking the life out of any actual democracy in this country. Time and time again, we’re told which party is The Worst and that Anyone Else Would Be Better. That’s how Trump won in 2016 ffs. Republicans doomed themselves to a decade of this manic fascist bumblefuckery by whipping themselves into an “Anyone but Hillary!” feeding frenzy.
If you are vocally against the people who oppose Project 2025 then you are collaborating with the enemy.
You’re either with us, or you’re with the terrorists!
The illusion of electoral choice is choking the life out of any actual democracy in this country.
Ok so what’s your plan to fix it? Because I have one: vote for people that want to improve the electoral system and against those that want to prevent it from improving. As much as Democrats are “part of the problem”, they’ve also been open to runoff voting, switching to a national popular vote, easier voting mechanisms, and other changes that would allow for third parties and better representation. Republicans, meanwhile, have been trying to prevent those changes, as they’ve done in 5 states now where they banned ranked choice voting.
To be fair though, Trump is more open to changing the electoral process. The only problem is, he wants to get rid of voting entirely and remove any option we have to prevent rule by wealthy oligarchs like himself.
Not wanting biden to commit genocide isn’t collaborating with the enemy, that’s what you’re doing by shutting down discussion of that. Republicans want more Palestinians dead, and you’re helping to give them what they want. What’s so cool about genocide that you think people should shut up and just take it? What a cool smart moral guy you are, calling people bootlickers if they don’t quietly accept genocide
Your comment would carry a whole lot more weight if we didn’t have this shitty FPTP system…but we do.
In this system, it’s a vote for a shitty Democrat or a vote for authoritarianism.
That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t pressure biden to not support genocide ffs. How are you all so on board for sticking your fingers in your ears and pretending thousands of civilians aren’t being slaughtered by weapons provided by our president? I’ll probably still vote for him, but you can go fuck yourself if you’re telling me I should stay silent about ethnic cleansing
Biden isn’t “committing genocide” and saying he is amounts to simple propaganda.
The conservatives want to take aid away from Ukraine to deliver it to Israel. If Trump wins, far more weapons will be going to Israel than they are now. Repeating propaganda like this is not helpful for the Palestinian people.
Lastly, Israel is an important ally from a strategic perspective. Not only are they our closest ally in the Middle East, but they have a number of important resources like intel semiconductor facilities. Cutting ties with Israel would be bad for America, and the role of the US government is to put America first. It’s more complex than simply supporting one side or the other and Biden is attempting to balance aid for Palestine with preserving our relationship with Israel. That’s exactly what a good president should be doing.
Biden is complicit in genocide, so much so that he should be tried in court with the rest of the people in the Israeli state. You can’t get much more complicit than sending weapons and aid to an apartheid state that is carrying out a genocide, without which they would not be able to carry out said genocide as effectively. A good president would divest and sanction Israel, not write a blank check for their crimes against humanity.
Biden doesn’t want to do anything about gaza, but Trump wants to bomb the west bank too. That means I support less genocide and you support not doing anything to prevent more genocide. That makes you a racist traitor.
I support voting for biden (barely) and I support telling him to stop supporting genocide. All you wanna do is pretend there is no genocide. That makes you a genocidal reactionary, and whatever I am it’s a fuck of a lot better than that :3
I think Trump retiring and the Republicans replacing him with a charismatic, young, intelligent christofascist would be devastating for the Democrats (and humanity) right now and I don’t know why they don’t do it.
For that matter I don’t see why Democrats don’t replace Biden with a charismatic, young, intelligent social democrat which would be equally devastating for republicans. So who knows with these people.
They don’t do it because it doesn’t serve them personally. As we have seen time and time again, politicians are mostly griftfers that will flip on a dime and change their moral compass just so that they can benefit from the situation.
By personally do you mean financially? Because I think an argument for personal benefit could be made for blowing the opposition out of the water.
Charismatic + Young + Intelligent + Christofascist…
0 results found.
I think Republicans might need to remove one search criterion to make that work.
As for Dems… that might just be AOC? Lol
I would love to vote for AOC. She will be old enough to run next year, but it will be four years before the next election.
She checks all the boxes unless you’re the type to believe Republican spin (she was a bartender once but has more education than most GoP house members). I’m unfortunately sure she’ll get the same DNC treatment as Sanders, though :/
I mean there’s definitely intelligent enough people who just want to use people
Of course! But I don’t think there’s any public figure Republicans who fit the bill.
I think one of the big things is the MAGA voters vote for Trump and ONLY Trump. They don’t turn out for elections without him in it. The Republicans know that without the MAGAs, they’re not gonna win the presidential election.
Also this is purely theory but I wouldn’t be surprised if Russia gives Trump information he can blackmail Republicans with. I’m sure Russian honeypots have dug up a lot of stuff over the years.
Maga is a cult of personality. The Republicans’ fear is they won’t turn out for anyone but Trump.
As for the Democrats, the line they always give is that social democrats can’t win elections, but honestly, I think the party elite is afraid of what would happen if they did.
I think both things can be correct at the same time. Unfortunately, they have quite a bit of evidence to support the former argument, which means they don’t have to openly engage with the latter. The closest we got to the veil coming off was 2016, but whether or not we agree with them that the left can win elections, the fact of the matter is they generally don’t except in the most ideologically homogenous districts.
Charismatic, intelligent people don’t need fascism nearly as much as dumbfucks do but even for the few who get sucked in anyway, there’s easier and more self-serving ways to express it than a grueling, always-on position in the Republican party.
But ultimately the answer to both “why don’t they run someone actually good” questions is “because it would be a threat to neoliberals and their record profits”.
Not saying I take everything Biden says at face value but he has stated that he wouldn’t be running if Trump wasn’t. I think there is sound rationale behind it though. Trump just flings shit all over everything, Biden has already been through it. Why expose a promising young candidate to that? Next election cycle the GOP primary candidates are going to be trying to out trump and whoever is going to be the dem candidate will be looking that much better because of the shit the GOP smeared all over themselves.
The point I’m making is more than a little devils advocate though. Dems need to address the enthusiasm gap, it seems like theyre going to be leaning on the grassroots movement from pro-choice groups. Fingers crossed it’s effective.
Because the cult is about the man, not the idea. Ron DeSantis tried to be just that (not saying he holds any of those qualities that you mentioned, just that he tried) and failed because no one cares about what Trump actually stands for (when you listen to Trump supporters talk about him, you’d think they would actually vote for democrats considering the issues they bring up—barring the worst of the worst racist, homophobic deranged individuals of course). At the end of the day, they just care about their god-lord little-hand long-tie orange-faced crybaby and the made-up grievances he’s had to endure and how that somehow translates to their own impending persecution.
The reason the Democratic Party hasn’t does that is they hold the monopoly on milquetoast impotence in governing, as their corporate overlords have decreed.
There’s a possibility that this would provoke demobilization among Trump voters.
They don’t have anyone nearly as good as him. People give Trump a lot of shit, deservedly so, but he’s one hell of a politician. Nobody can galvanize their base like he does.
Yeah. Agree 100%. His greatest political victory was to convince people that a born wealthy real estate clown is an “outsider” to politics that can relate to the common folk. A true outsider would be an engineer, doctor, scientist, etc. Someone that doesn’t have the ability to increase their wealth by millions with minor tweaks in the law.
Ever notice that corpo speak and political speak are exactly the same. Like how they can both run circles around any question without ever answering it? Yeah.
Yeah I figured it could be seen as encouraging christofascism but I just yearn for young politicians.
These old stodgy dudes have two things going for them that young guys don’t (yet) have - a lifetime of building a support network of donors and mastery at playing “the game”.
They should retire at 60 and pass along their donors and skills to a few proteges, but recently they cling until the very last breath.
It would still be better then trump but i would like to see a party that doesn’t suck since we have a two party system with 0 good options which is why im voting for biden despite hating him (rather incompetent then malicious)
The USA really needs preferential voting, like what Australia has: https://www.chickennation.com/voting/
I have to assume the reason is because they don’t have anyone. If they did they’d be relatively forefront in politics and you’d know about them.
This is the current state of US politics - it’s more about who you’re against than who you’re for, and I firmly believe this is the reason why no scandals seem to matter anymore.
On the conservative side, they get a steady stream of content telling them how horrible Biden and the Democrats are, so anyone with a heartbeat and an ® next to their name is fine. It’s probably how Trump of all people became the party leader.
Strategic voting is a direct result of first past the post voting; effectively any system that uses FPTP will result in a two party system where your vote gets used against the other person not for your choice.
I’ll continue to shill for ranked choice voting whenever I see any opportunity.
On the progressive side, they get a steady stream of content telling them how horrible Trump and the Republicans are, so anyone with a heartbeat and an D next to their name is fine. It’s probably how Biden of all people became the party leader.
Sure, if you ignore all the progressives who hate Biden and protest his handling of Palestine constantly, you can pretend that both sides are lockstep behind dear leader.
Read through the comments here. People who don’t act like Blue MAGA sycophants are treated like heretics.
You’ve clearly never asked a progressive how they feel about the Democrat party.
Its “Democratic Party”.
We dont call the opponents “Republic Party”
Republicans started saying this to disassociate the party from the word “democracy”
Actions speak louder than words. Who do these progressives keep voting for?
