Until ranked choice for president
That wouldn't change anything. RCV still produces a polarized two-party system.
Psephomancy
joined 1 year ago
Ranked Choice Voting doesn't make third parties viable, either. It uses the same counting method as our current system (tally up people's first-choice preferences) and therefore suffers from all the same problems, like vote-splitting, spoiler effect, and center-squeeze effect. You can't fix the problems of FPTP by adding more rounds of FPTP. You need to allow voters to express opinions about all of the candidates and then actually count all of those opinions.
If you want third parties to be viable, you want real reforms like STAR Voting, Condorcet RCV, or Approval Voting.
Better ranked system (transferable vote instead of points)
https://civs1.civs.us/civs_create.html ? or https://star.vote for scored ballots
You would probably prefer STAR Voting, or a Condorcet variant of RCV, like Ranked Robin or Total Vote Runoff.
They have the more expressive ballots of Hare RCV without carrying over the flaws of FPTP.
You just advertised a system that doesn’t count dissenting votes, therefore making it impossible to find the real acceptance of some choice.
Likewise, RCV doesn't count all of the voter's rankings, making it impossible to find the true preferred candidate from the published election results.
Down voting and abstaining have been studied (and used), too:
As an Alaskan voter, ranked choice is the only reason we have a female, Native American, Democrat congressional representative instead of Sarah Palin filling Don Young’s deep red legacy.
Peltola would have won under FPTP, too; RCV didn't change the outcome. The real issue is that there were two Republicans on the same ballot vs one Democrat, splitting the vote with each other.
RCV is equitable and works, but not in the way progressives hope. It allows for the most centrist candidate to be chosen that appeals to the most possible people.
No, it suffers from the center-squeeze effect and is biased against the candidates that appeal to the most possible people. In Alaska's special election, for instance, Begich was preferred over both other candidates by a majority of voters, but RCV incorrectly eliminated him first. This flaw gave an unfair advantage to progressives in that election, which you may like, but it could just as easily give an unfair advantage to conservatives in a future election, which you wouldn't. (If there are two Democrats and one Republicans the ballot, for instance.)
In my opinion, for single-winner elections, we need better voting systems that do always elect the candidate who appeals to the most possible people, which will allow third parties and independents to become viable, which will open people's minds beyond the two-party false dichotomy.
A two party system just becomes a battle of political extremes. And like it or not, being progressive is far left for a reason, especially in America. And I consider myself fairly progressive leaning.
Yes, and RCV perpetuates that polarization because of the center-squeeze effect.
Ranked choice would absolutely still help. The two party state is utterly awful.
Depends which form of ranked choice. The naïvely-designed ones like Supplementary Vote, Contingent Vote, Instant-Runoff Voting, Top Four, Final Five, etc. don't fix the two-party system at all, since they only count first-choice rankings in each round, just like our current system. Unfortunately those are the only ones being advocated in the US. We need Condorcet-compliant systems if we actually want to fix the spoiler effect and end the two-party system. Total Vote Runoff/Baldwin, Ranked Robin, Schulze, etc.
As an aside, ranked voting isn’t what I’d consider ideal for the general election, either. It’s still heavily disproportionate. Proportional voting is far superior for ensuring representation.
Yes!
Any form of single winner ballot (ranked choice or FPTP) is gonna favour the centrist, even though that means 50% of the population don’t get their ideal representation.
Actually, both FPTP and RCV suffer from the "center-squeeze effect", so centrist candidates are at a disadvantage and they favor more polarizing candidates.
Approval Voting (AKA Freedom Voting)
haha that might be the dumbest rebrand I've ever heard. Hope it succeeds, though!
No, FairVote is not a reliable source. They knowingly use falsehoods to push Hare's method under the name "RCV", and to attack every other voting method and reform organization. Compare with other points of view:
- https://electionscience.org/library/approval-voting-versus-irv/
- https://www.equal.vote/star_vs_rcv
- https://www.starvoting.org/rcv_v_star
Unlike Hare RCV, Condorcet variants of RCV are good, but no organization is advocating them in the US, and FairVote actively works against them.
view more: next ›
That one's not a flaw. All elections can suffer from ties. Pure Condorcet just makes it obvious when there's a tie (and this is very rare). There are a bunch of Condorcet completion methods for resolving the tie.