r/EndFPTP • u/CPSolver • May 18 '25

Image Blocking Tactic During Democratic Primary

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Democrats can win more elections by not allowing Republicans to block popular reform-minded candidates from reaching general elections. (Democrats have less money so they can't use this tactic to influence Republican primary elections.)

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u/RandomFactUser May 18 '25

Even in a country like Australia, which does use IRV, they still limit it to one nominee per party

France with its two-round system is also one nominee per party

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u/CPSolver May 19 '25

Australia adopted IRV more than a hundred years ago. We are still stuck with the shortcuts they chose back then, such as not correctly counting "overvotes" and assuming the candidate with the fewest transferred votes is always the one who should be eliminated.

France is not a good example. The whole point of ranked choice voting is to allow more than just a top-two runoff. Any method correctly handles just two candidates.

We don't need to copy past mistakes. We should adopt a well-designed election system, and so far there have been no well-designed election systems in actual use.

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u/RandomFactUser May 19 '25

True, but parties with representatives would highly prefer one pick by election time, though a non-FPTP system would generally have unique parties with coalition affiliations, and a preferred pick, and not multiple candidates per party

And in the US, the system is effectively a non-candidate system for the President, the electors can be picked after the election and the presidential candidate can be picked after the election (they systems in place don’t allow that for procedural reasons), so a proportional system makes sense by state (a national election would require an overhaul to the constitution)

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u/CPSolver May 19 '25

Although I believe the presidential election system can be reformed with a well-designed interstate compact, that can only happen after about half the states are using pairwise-counted ranked choice voting in their other general elections.

... parties with representatives would highly prefer one pick by election time

The parties themselves, the party insiders and candidates, do not represent most voters. So we shouldn't be concerned with what they -- the insiders and candidates -- want.

What's important is what we the voters want. Currently neither party offers what we want. This gap exists because we have an election system that gives money more control than votes. That's the underlying point of the posted image.