this post was submitted on 09 Apr 2024
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United States | News & Politics
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Ranked choice voting is the solution. So long as we use first past the post voting, voting for a third party candidate is a waste.
This can be changed by being active and supporting progressive candidates on the state and local levels.
This is the answer. Don't vote for third party candidates, by that point it's too late.
Vote for candidates in the primaries that are adamant about voting reform/ranked choice voting. Normalize it at state and local levels. Then, it will become a viable option at the national level.
This can happen quickly with the right advocacy and the right candidates, but good candidates are indeed hard to come by.
Ya, I sometimes encourage running for office along with my encouragement to vote. It seems mostly only shitty people run for office, this needs to change.
Kinda goes with being rich. Which is pretty much a requirement to run for small offices in most of the country (pay is shit) and definitely requires to run in major races (advertising and organizing is expensive). So only rich dudes run, and you generally have to be some type of agile to get rich in the first place (there are exceptions, but not many).
I think this is mostly true but not a fact. If you're running for senate in Kentucky then yes. But if you run for local or state lower office and do things a bit differently it's possible.
Think https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justin_Jones_(Tennessee_politician)
I don't believe he was or is rich and is making a difference.
Also, the reason for running for office isn't necessarily to win. Look at RFK Jr. running for president, there is 0% chance of him winning, he has other goals. He's trying to take votes away from candidates to swing the election.
Another non-winning goal could be to move or expand the "Overton Window", i.e. the politically acceptable range of thought. You just need to come out swinging and spitting facts about some topic.
Speaking of state and local, that is where change is going to happen with ranked choice voting. State and local governments can move much faster than the federal government to institute ranked choice voting. Because states have a high degree of autonomy on holding their own elections, they can prove that ranked choice is a viable option for local, state, and maybe even federal offices.
I love ranked choice too! But that's going to be a long long fight. I'm just talking about the system we have now, and the media's obvious interests in keeping their party candidates foremost in voter's minds
No, ranked choice has serious issues and won't likely fix the issue. I'd prefer to avoid citing specific alternatives because they all come with their own biases and trade-offs. One example of surprising results is the Burlington, VT mayoral election, which is contentious because the winner was neither the plurality or majority winner.
That said, I think it's a case of "don't let perfect be the enemy of better." If RCV is on the ballot, I'll vote for it. But I'd very much prefer one of the other many alternatives because I think it doesn't resolve the spoiler effect satisfactorily and can have very surprising results.
I highly recommend looking into the various alternatives and reading up on condorcet winners before jumping on the RCV bandwagon.
Regardless I think an even better solution is to focus on fixing gerrymandering. I think we should consider proportional representation in the House, which should get more third parties elected and give us a real shot at breaking the two party system there. I think we'll always have one of the two major parties in the White House just based on voter demographics, but changing at least on house of Congress should force the President to actually work across party lines instead of waiting until their party gets a majority. Having Democrats and Republicans need to cater to the greens, libertarians, etc would be awesome.
multi-member districts would help a lot, too.
How would that work?
Imagine picking the top 3 candidates instead of only one.
Combine multiple districts into one, for example.
Immediately makes things more purple, and closer in proportion to the region
Wouldn't you just get more candidates from the same party? It might complicate gerrymandering, but I think it would still happen.
I'd much rather have proportional representation, so you'd vote in whatever primary you want to select candidates, then vote for your preferred party, and then seats are assigned based on percentage of votes won. That should work well for the House at least.
Which acceptable "progressive" candidates are actively advocating for your holy grail of ranked-choice voting, and are you sure that voting for them isn't "a waste?" that will make trump win?