CDZ Ranked Voting

[dblack]

I'm not sure I see the problem your concerned about.

My concern is that ranked-choice voting for a single state in a national election may make matters worse for that state.

Hypothetically let’s suppose that Biden and Trump are really close. Each has 267 electoral college votes. It all comes down to Maine.

Steve is a voter in Maine. Steve is not happy with the duopoly and he reads about ranked-choice voting.

“Well I’m not crazy about Biden and I absolutely hate Trump. Might as well try something different and vote 3rd party. If my 3rd party vote for president doesn’t win then my choice goes to Biden anyway so it doesn’t hurt to try something different” he thinks to himself.

Well what if there are a lot of Steves in Maine. The Green Party candidate actually wins! The Steves in Maine celebrate that Maine goes Green Party in the presidential election and all is great. Or is it?

What happens to Maine’s electoral college votes?

They go to the proper candidate - the candidate that a majority of Maine's voters preferred. This is a feature, not a bug.

Democrat: 267
Republican: 267
Green: 4

If this was a NATIONAL ranked-choice voting system and with no majority of electoral college votes, then the lowest choice would be redistributed to their second option. Maine’s choice of Green Party would get redistributed to Democrat and Biden wins.

Democrat: 271
Republican: 267
Green: eliminated

But that’s NOT what we have. We don’t have NATIONAL ranked-choice voting. It’s just Maine.

So what would actually happen, I think, is that Maine’s votes would not get redistributed. They picked green so they stay green.

Democrat: 267
Republican: 267
Green: 4

Now there’s no candidate with the 270 electoral college votes needed. To select a winner, they invoke the 12th amendment which puts the result of the election in the hands of the House of Representatives, which will vary in results depending on who currently controls that branch.

So what happened to the Steves out there in Maine? They prefer Biden over Trump but chose to vote 3rd party. By doing so, they ended up hurting Biden’s chances of winning. They potentially sabotaged the less terrible candidate by going 3rd party. Maybe they should have just stuck with the duopoly.

Doesn’t that defeat the entire purpose of ranked-choice voting??? I’m not sure how helpful it is if just one state is doing it, but admittedly I’m still unsure of the logistics on this.

It sounds like you're just re-introducing the lesser-of-two-evils argument, albeit at the state electoral level. If you start with the premise the lo2e is valid, you're not gonna like ranked choice voting. From my perspective, lo2e is idiotic. It's voting for a bad candidate on purpose.

Maybe you're just saying that, idiotic or not, a lot of people still buy into it, and will attempt to "game" ranked choice voting as well. If a state manages to pass something like ranked choice voting, I'm guessing the voters are ready for the change. But even if some do game it, are we any worse off than before? And unless everyone games it, we're better off.

The real irony of ranked choice voting is that it allows voters to actually vote "against" a candidate. Lo2e tries to convince people that they can vote "against" a candidate, but you really can't. All you can do is vote "for" another candidate. Nowhere in your vote will it indicate who you were supposedly against. But ranked choice allows a voter to specifically and deliberately rank a candidate last (or not rank them at all - the math is the same). So, if you think Trump is the worst, you can rank him last - yes, below Kanye West. This actually means something - and you don't have to guess which of the other candidates is "most likely" to win.

 

[XponentialChaos]

I'm not sure I see the problem your concerned about.

My concern is that ranked-choice voting for a single state in a national election may make matters worse for that state.

Hypothetically let’s suppose that Biden and Trump are really close. Each has 267 electoral college votes. It all comes down to Maine.

Steve is a voter in Maine. Steve is not happy with the duopoly and he reads about ranked-choice voting.

“Well I’m not crazy about Biden and I absolutely hate Trump. Might as well try something different and vote 3rd party. If my 3rd party vote for president doesn’t win then my choice goes to Biden anyway so it doesn’t hurt to try something different” he thinks to himself.

Well what if there are a lot of Steves in Maine. The Green Party candidate actually wins! The Steves in Maine celebrate that Maine goes Green Party in the presidential election and all is great. Or is it?

What happens to Maine’s electoral college votes?

They go to the proper candidate - the candidate that a majority of Maine's voters preferred. This is a feature, not a bug.

Democrat: 267
Republican: 267
Green: 4

If this was a NATIONAL ranked-choice voting system and with no majority of electoral college votes, then the lowest choice would be redistributed to their second option. Maine’s choice of Green Party would get redistributed to Democrat and Biden wins.

Democrat: 271
Republican: 267
Green: eliminated

But that’s NOT what we have. We don’t have NATIONAL ranked-choice voting. It’s just Maine.

So what would actually happen, I think, is that Maine’s votes would not get redistributed. They picked green so they stay green.

Democrat: 267
Republican: 267
Green: 4

Now there’s no candidate with the 270 electoral college votes needed. To select a winner, they invoke the 12th amendment which puts the result of the election in the hands of the House of Representatives, which will vary in results depending on who currently controls that branch.

So what happened to the Steves out there in Maine? They prefer Biden over Trump but chose to vote 3rd party. By doing so, they ended up hurting Biden’s chances of winning. They potentially sabotaged the less terrible candidate by going 3rd party. Maybe they should have just stuck with the duopoly.

Doesn’t that defeat the entire purpose of ranked-choice voting??? I’m not sure how helpful it is if just one state is doing it, but admittedly I’m still unsure of the logistics on this.

It sounds like you're just re-introducing the lesser-of-two-evils argument, albeit at the state electoral level. If you start with the premise the lo2e is valid, you're not gonna like ranked choice voting. From my perspective, lo2e is idiotic. It's voting for a bad candidate on purpose.

Maybe you're just saying that, idiotic or not, a lot of people still buy into it, and will attempt to "game" ranked choice voting as well. Probably some of them will. Maybe most. But some won't, and many will realize it's not necessary.

The real irony of ranked choice voting is that it allows voters to actually vote "against" a candidate. Lo2e tries to convince people that they can vote "against" a candidate, but you really can't. All you can do is vote "for" another candidate. Nowhere in your vote will it indicate who you were supposedly against. But ranked choice allows a voter to specifically and deliberately rank a candidate last (or not rank them at all - the math is the same). So, if you think Trump is the worst, you can rank him last - yes, below Kanye West. This actually means something - and you don't have to guess which of the other candidates is "most likely" to win.

I think we’re on the same page. Yes it’s just lesser of two evils (lo2e) all over again. Version 2.0

My vision of a national ranked choice voting (rcv) system is that it would directly counter lo2e. That’s my favorite feature of rcv.

Unfortunately, rcv for Maine in a national election doesn’t seem to fix that at all. If anything, it’s just going to re-enforce lo2e the way I’m understanding it.

Rcv works at the state-level and eliminates lo2e. But I don’t think a half-assed national election with rcv works at attacking lo2e.

 

[dblack]

Unfortunately, rcv for Maine in a national election doesn’t seem to fix that at all. If anything, it’s just going to re-enforce lo2e the way I’m understanding it.

I can't predict how voters will react, and perhaps it's ridiculous of me to expect sanity, but the argument for lo2e is much weaker under ranked choice voting - even in the context where the electoral process won't be ranked. The argument of lo2e under plurality voting goes like this - "everyone who opposes Trump must vote for Biden, or else Trump will win - even though most of us hate him. If we anti-trumpers 'split the vote', Trump will win and we will sob in the streets again". Now, I think that argument is bogus, for reasons that I've gone on and on about elsewhere.

But look at the argument under ranked choice voting. Presumably campaigners would argue "You have to rank Biden first, because, if a third party candidate gets more first place votes than Biden, they'll win and our electoral votes will be 'wasted'". This is a much less likely scenario than the previous incarnation. Third parties aren't going to explode overnight because of ranked choice voting. Australia's experience with rcv indicates two strong parties will likely still dominate. But here's the thing - if there is a realistic chance that a third party candidate will get more first place votes than Biden, then they are no longer a "third" party.

 

[Picaro]

The 17th Amendment and its history is worth contemplating re why 'reforms' became necessary. The 17th pretty much cleaned up the EC's weaker points.

17th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Direct Election of U.S. Senators

En Español Americans did not directly vote for senators for the first 125 years of the Federal Government. The Constitution, as it was adopted in 1788, stated that senators would be elected by state legislatures. The first proposal to amend the Constitution to elect senators by popular vote was...

www.archives.gov

Note how long it took for that reform to make it through. I doubt most modern Americans have anything like the necessary attention spans needed for 'reforms' in the first place, much less a clue to what is going on at all.

 

[Picaro]

I think Oregon has some kind of a law requiring a majority of voters must vote for a bill or something or other or it doesn't pass regardless of yays or nays. Maybe that should be the case with Senators and House Reps; if a majority of eligible voters in a district don't vote they don't get Reps and Senators seated. This could be a substitute for a 'none of the above' choice.

 

[Tom Paine 1949]

Well, disregarding the case in Electoral College voting, where RCV is not really useful, Ranked Choice Voting has many advantages, not least of which that it is non-partisan and should help break up the hold of extremists and professional politicians in our disfunctional &
deadlocked duopoly. It can be introduced locally and by individual states for many different elections. But of course it is no panacea. No electoral reforms, not even fundamental constitutional reforms, can solve the deep economic, social and political problems facing our country. Capitalism, nationalism, world economic competition — these forces are reshaping our world. Our country and Americans think they can control or dominate these forces as they have in the past. That consciousness will have to change thoroughly. We are not even able to control ourselves at the moment.