Quote:
Originally Posted by terks43
Yes what you saw with a field of several candidates being cut do to just two choices potentially from the same party is not ranked choice voting. That is a nonpartisan blanket primary. Because you started with for example 8 democratic 5 republican 3 green and 4 libertarian candidates to choose from. Ranked choice when done by itself would involve having a primary to bring the list of candidates down to one per party then having the ranked choice general election. Lets use this election as an example. Someone has to get more then 50% of the vote to win in ranked choice (that is not the case in our current voting system), infact as you can see later people win all the time with less the 50% of the vote. So you start with the 4 candidates from the parties. Rep. dem. lib. and green. On your ballet you will rank those from 1 to 4. They will then count up the number of first place votes. Lets say you ranked them as Lib. Rep. Dem. Green. And the results came back as 35% Republican and democrat. with 17% lib and 13% green. So since no one got 51% of the vote you eliminate the lowest vote getter, the green party in this example, and count again. Now anyone who put green as number 1 will have their 2nd choice counted as their first. Now lets say the results come back as no one having a 50.1% but with your first choice the libertarian being the lowest vote getter. So the lib candidate is eliminated. But because you put the republican as your second choice your vote will now be counted for the republican candidate instead of not being worth anything. You keep repeating this process until someone has at least 50.1% of the vote.
Now why is this good for you. Lets say you want to vote Libertarian but you can't because right now voting libertarian is exactly the same as voting democrat so you don't and instead you vote republican, even though this isn't the candidate you think represents your beliefs the best, to stop a democrat from winning. Not great because you didn't get to vote how you actually wanted to vote. With ranked choice voting you can vote for a third party candidate without having to fear that by doing so you'll be handing the election to the other side.
Ranked choice voting is actual Majority rule, not plurality.
Clinton won in '92 and '96 despite only getting 43.0 and 49.2% of the vote. Not even half. He won because the third party candidate broke up the republican vote. If those voting for the third part had voted republican instead he wouldn't have won. If that vote had been ranked choice then in theory the reform candidate voters in that election would have put the republican as their second choice and therefore the republican would have wound up winning. Ranked choice voting ensures that no candidate with less then half the vote wins.
Our current voting system only requires plurality to win. That makes it counterproductive to vote for a third party candidate. Ranked choice allows you to vote third party without handing the election to the other side by doing so. Because right now every vote for the libertarian party is a vote for the left. And every Green party vote is a vote for the right, the opposite of what it should be. For those who lean libertarian this system actually makes it much more likely to see a third party candidate win the office. As it is now not only will a third party never win the office but even voting for one is extremely counter productive for what you believe in.
Now that you've reached the end of this post this YouTube video to help you understand what it actually is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Y3jE3B8HsE
What you described is an interesting theory, but in practice may not result in broader choices.
The main benefit, as described by the video, is it avoids a “spoiler” third party candidate. I just don’t see this as much of a negative frequency or severity in the US as is described. In the UK, there are multiple parties and in a parliamentary system this results in coalition building. This too, had advantages and disadvantages.
As an observation of what I had described previously, is happening in Portland. The incumbent, who is a leftist, had the most votes in the primary. The second most votes was a person who is further left, a member of Antifa (by their own admission). Now, citizens are upset by the rioting and the incumbent has become less popular. The only other choice is the member of Antifa, who has now jumped out into the lead. It appears to me this has resulted in less variety of choice than a traditional two party system election, with smaller parties also on the ballot.
10-18-2022
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