I hope they implement ranked choice, so many of the current problems are from the two party system which is inevitable from first past the post.
this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2024
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Unfortunately, RCV doesn't end the two party system. It's better than what we have, but only marginally. My hope is that when voters complain about it, the next step is not to repeal RCV but to evolve into Star voting.
RCV at least allows for options, and it's pretty easy to understand. First past the post is literally the worst.
Agreed. But it still encourages strategic voting and discourages third-party spoilers. It's fptp with extra steps, and it gets worse the more candidates you have. If you don't pick a frontrunner first or second, there's a chance your vote isn't counted at all.
Uhhh, no. That’s not how RCV works at all.
Let’s say there are five candidates - A, B , C, D, and E.
Let’s assume candidates A & B are the most popular.
Personally I choose to rank them as C, E, D, B and then A.
Out of all of them, no one gets over 50% of the #1 vote. Whoever gets the lowest #1 vote is knocked out first. Let’s suggest that this is C. All of their #1 votes and therefore my vote is then transferred to E.
Let’s suggest that after this there’s still no one who has over 50% of the vote between the other four candidates. Let’s further assume that candidate E has the lowest resulting vote after the first round of knockout. My vote is then transferred to candidate D.
Out of A, B, and D, let’s assume none of them still have over 50% of the vote after this redistribution. Let’s further assume that D has the lowest vote of the three. My vote is then transferred to B.
Given there are only two candidates left, one will have to have a majority. That candidate wins.
Under RCV, as long as you mark every box with a preference your vote can never ever be wasted. It will always end up with a candidate that wins or one that loses, but it cannot ever be exhausted and therefore meaningless.
Thank you for providing an example.
Let's say E is everyone's second choice, but nobody's first choice. E is the first candidate eliminated because E got 0% of the vote.
Let's say it shakes out like this:
40% A E C B
21% B E A C
20% D E C B
19% C E D B <- You
40 A D 39 D B 21 B D
60 D 40 A
First round, E is eliminated despite being the most popular candidate by far.
Second Round, C, followed by B. D wins.
But if 3% of A voters switched to C, then A would have won because D would be eliminated, sending their votes to C, which would have eliminated B, sending those votes to A. But D and C voters hate A, so it's in their best interest to also vote for B. And now we're back to fptp
When considering the quality of a voting system, you want voters to be honest (i.e. not strategic in their votes). Voters should pick the candidate they agree with, not the candidates they think they must support to avoid a catastrophe.
I agree it does not solve our problem but it would make more than just a marginal difference. It would heavily disincentivize going too far politically one way to win your primary.
As someone who lives in a jurisdiction where every single vote I can engage in is RCV (Australia; NSW) I can honestly say that it’s so much better than FPTP. I don’t know what the perfect voting system is (frankly a subjective topic as it currently stands; please feel free to correct me with statistically valid alternatives) but RCV at the very least means that I can (and personally have) never vote for a major party as #1 and I can know for sure that my vote has never been exhausted, because I’ve never left a blank box. We also have mandatory voting, which helps to keep things sane.
In Australia, government election funding is only ever allocated to the parties based on #1 votes, so I can also confidently say I’ve never contributed to a major party’s election coffers as I’ve also never donated to any major party. I obviously support one major party over the others, as based on my preferences, but I’ll always give the election funding to a smaller party or Independent.
RCV is a wonderful step to take from FPTP. I understand that it may not be democratically perfect, and frankly no representative voting system may ever be, but it’s a far cry better than FPTP. It’s a known concept that here in Australia politicians vie to represent the ‘middle’ rather than the extremes, because the vast majority of voters aren’t overly-enthused political lunatics. We still have our issues to be sure, but I’d rather that the political class fight over the centrist majority rather than court the political extremes in order to convince people to actually vote thanks to mandatory voting.
How come it's still leading to two major parties?
It's still not that old (~10 years or so iirc), it takes time for a third party to be major contentender. Earlier on you're more likely to see third party wins in more local than national level elections.
It's not an insta-win for third parties. But that's ok, because local elections matter, and that's where you'd typically see results first.
We have four Major Parties - Labor, the Liberals, the Nationals, and the Greens. If you understand their relative power based on our system of government, you’ll see that we’re somewhere in between the US and the EU with regards to representational democracy. It’s not great, but in the Anglospheric context we do pretty well because the others don’t have our combination of Ranked Choice Voting (RCV), Proportional Representative Voting (PRV) and Mandatory Voting.
Maybe it's just to me, but liberal/national coalition and labor seem like the two major parties, green is barely at the table still.
If you exclude the coalition, national has 4 times the representation of green, and liberal 3 times that.
Just my opinion here, but it's still two major parties, with the thirds coming up in ranks and getting some momentum going. It'll be a good day imo when the greens overtake the nationals (and maybe one day the liberals), but I personally don't see it as representative of the people yet. Improving, but still functionally two parties.
I guess it depends on your definition of ‘major’. I think in a pluralistic democracy, any party that represents 10+% of the population meets that criteria. Of course, from the perspective of a two-party system 10% doesn’t seem like much, but it’s significant enough to have held the balance of power many times since the Greens came into existence in the ‘90s.
Long answer, it's complicated as usual. Short answer: single member electorates.
Not surprisingly, the senate (our upper house at the federal level) is much more representative than the lower house, because they have very large, multi-member electorates.
If you live in a safe seat, your vote only counts for election funding (last I checked $2ish per 1st preference).
Anyone arguing FPTP is better than ranked choice is stupid or has sinister motives.
All this circle jerking over RCV is missing the point that the #fascist #GOP isn't going to allow you to have RCV & have already made it illegal in at least 5 states.
#VoteBlueIfYouEverWantToVoteAgain
How does supporting this limit anyone's ability to vote in November?
It doesn't, but it's absofuckinglutely putting the cart before the horse.
OP is wasting time tilting at windmills to attack people who agree with them while the GQP does real damage.
I want RCV or STAR as bad as the rest of you, but this is all a waste of time until there is a Democratic majority that will enact RCV or STAR voting.
Because the #fascist #GOP isn't going to do that.
The vast majority of people here advocate for RCV and some occasionally introduce nuance to discuss its pro/cons just to make sure people don’t (mistakenly) think it’ll solve all our problems. You are being needlessly passive aggressive and tilting at windmills in your opening text all because people don’t 100% praise it top to bottom with every comment.
Can you please point to the people making passive-aggressive posts in this thread before you posted this comment?
The first sentence/paragraph from OP
Seeing as how some people here on Lemmy get upset at any mention of Ranked Choice Voting and respond that, in their opinion, it's not perfect, and that we should therefore keep the voting system we have while we debate which alternative is perfect for several decades, allow me to preemptively respond.
Pre-emptively responding to something they have encountered on Lemmy in the past is not being passive-aggressive. It sounds more like you take offense to the idea that such criticisms should not be pre-empted.
I’m not offended and I think they are mischaracterizing a valid dialogue. They’re picking a fight with people who largely agree with them and are reducing everyone’s point to “don’t bother changing anything until we find a perfect solution,” which is not something I’ve ever seen surrounding RCV. Frankly I’d like to see them show examples. They just seem upset people are discussing the merits as well as the shortcomings, even if most of us still think it should be implemented.
I usually agree with your posts because you are a pretty smart person who I regularly see introduce nuance, so I am surprised to see such a strong reaction from you here.
I only see one person here picking a fight.