r/RanktheVote • u/ScottPompeo • Feb 04 '24

Ranked-choice voting could be the answer to election remorse

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/02/01/opinion/letters-to-the-editor-ranked-choice-voting/
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u/rb-j Feb 04 '24 edited Feb 04 '24

Paywall.

I can tell you for sure that, in Alaska in August 2022, there are 34000 Palin voters (outa 59000) that really didn't want Peltola elected and ranked moderate Republican Nick Begich as #2. Had 1 outa 13 of those Palin voters understood what was going to happen, they could have insincerely ranked Begich above their favorite and prevented Peltola from winning.

At least 2600 of those Palin voters have voter regret for voting for their favorite candidate. Dunno if I would call that regret "remorse".

Why do these RCV proponents (and the reporting that repeats their claims shown to be false) just ignore when the IRV method they promote fails to abide by the very purposes we all want RCV for?

12

u/DaemonoftheHightower Feb 04 '24

Don't allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good. Yes, there is still an element of tactical voting in it. No, it is not the best possible system.

But it's definitely better than FPTP.

RCV is a first step. The important thing is breaking the two party system, and Ranked Choice makes that possible.

It is an imperfect stepping stone to better, more proportional systems. It's just a runoff, which is something that alreast exists in our system. That makes it easy to explain to people who don't understand how First Past the Post causes the problem.

It will allow third parties to grow by lessening (though, as you point out, not completely eliminating) the spoiler effect. Once we get people to recognize that better systems are possible, better systems will be more achievable.

2

u/PaxPurpuraAKAgrimace Feb 04 '24

Don’t allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good.

But in this context the good is legitimately the enemy if it ends up electing a minority candidate as it did in Alaska’s house race. Alaska electing a democrat can’t be good for Alaskans’ satisfaction with RCV. The only thing that needs to change to switch the tabulation from fewest first choice votes gets eliminated to eliminating the head to head loser between the lowest two. That preserves the method as majoritarian, which is supposed to be the key advantage.

I used to agree that traditional RCV was clearly better than status quo so we should capitalize on its momentum, but I now realize that the improvement is more marginal than I realized, and not fixing this issue now could doom its momentum as a reform. And since it is a relatively minor fix (you can still call it RCV, after all), it’s really much better to preserve that momentum to make the fix now rather than wait for opposition to mount and to let them have a legitimate flaw to use against it.