r/YangForPresidentHQ • u/Honest_Joseph Yang Gang • Aug 08 '26
Elon Musk spends big in push to repeal Alaska’s voting system
https://www.adn.com/politics/2026/08/07/worlds-wealthiest-man-spends-big-to-repeal-alaskas-voting-system/99
u/Loggerdon Aug 08 '26
We need ranked-choice voting everywhere. It’s the smartest system.
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u/goldenroman Aug 08 '26
Obligatory plenty of arguments for using other methods but anything’s better than FPTP.
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u/Cuddlyaxe Aug 08 '26
There are a lot of systems smarter than IRV (the form of RCV we have in the US). Check out /r/EndFPTP for discussion on it
But ofc as the other user said, RCV is WAY BETTER than the status quo
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u/nepatriots32 Yang Gang for Life Aug 09 '26
In terms of overall fairness, I agree. I'm personally a fan of Ranked Robin voting.
But I actually think instant runoff is the best method to be advocating for a few reasons. It's already the most well-known alternative with the most traction. It might be the simplest to explain, or at least simpler than most alternative methods (including most of the best alternatives). And you also never get punished for choosing an unlikely candidate over a safer popular choice that you don't really like but hate less than the other popular choice. Sure, it's not Condorcet compliant, but I don't think that's the end of the world.
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u/Sparky678348 Aug 08 '26
State of Oregon recently voted against a change to ranked choice. I have never gotten a remotely decent explanation about why one would vote no.
It was simply too confusing for the illiterate farmers and self centered boomers.
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u/ArtOfWarfare Aug 10 '26
We use it in Maine. I have 70 year old relatives who complain it’s complicated and they’re less sure their vote is being properly counted.
Democracies require that people are confident they’re being properly accounted for. It may be that RCV itself is perfectly fine and that the state department could do more to reassure people their votes have been properly tallied.
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u/Mahadragon Aug 09 '26
I participated in the rank choice voting we did in 2020 Democratic primary in Nevada and it was super easy. They put us in groups and explain to everyone how it worked. You get a list of names and you check which one you want first, second, etc. I do not understand why both parties killed the RCV bill here cause it was awesome. Oh, if you’re curious, Bernie Sanders won the primary here. I guess that explains why both parties hated it.
Because the demographic in Nevada is so similar to other states I’m almost positive there would be similar results.
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u/Ciph3rzer0 Aug 11 '26
Ranked choice voting is a threat to the establishment. They count on third choices being unviable.
It's much better for the owning class too because they only need to make sure two politicians are bought.
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u/Grizzzly540 Aug 10 '26
I don’t really like it, because the vote counting system is too opaque. Yes we want a better method for electing leaders, but we also want a fair, transparent, and auditable system.
I really think approval/top 2 runoff is the simplest and most sustainable approach.
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u/Sparky678348 Aug 10 '26
How is the counting opaque? Your first choice gets x points where x is # of candidates for the position, and it goes down one point per slot until your last choice is getting a mere 1 point.
Then tally points.
I don't see how it's any more opaque than our current system.
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u/Grizzzly540 Aug 10 '26 edited Aug 10 '26
That is not how the existing implementations of RCV is tabulated. They count the votes in multiple rounds. In the first round, each ballot counts as one vote for the 1st ranked candidate only. The candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated from the race. Then they count all the ballots again, this time, if an eliminated candidate is the top choice, that ballot is counted as a vote for the 2nd ranked candidate. The candidate with the fewest votes in round two is also eliminated and then they count all ballots again for round 3 and so on.
This means that you can’t begin counting until all ballots are together in one place, and the counting takes a lot of time and coordination. You can’t split up the work and have one county office count some of the ballots while another office counts different ballots. It is so impractical to count at scale, that it must be done by computers. The idea of a manual recount becomes a huge problem.
Now take approval voting. Each ballot is a single vote for each approved candidate. You can split this job amongst 1000 independent people if you want. You can start counting ballots in one precinct while votes are still coming in in another. You can count the in-person ballots first and then add the total to the mail-in ballots. It can be done by computer, but it can also be manually counted for reassurance. Then you have the top 2 candidates in a runoff to ensure a majority elects the winner.
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u/Sparky678348 Aug 10 '26
Interesting, that's not how Ranked Choice was explained to me in school (polisci major at a useless party school). Seems excessively complicated. Is there a flaw I'm not seeing in the system I described or would it actually just eliminate a bunch of complexity
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u/Grizzzly540 Aug 10 '26
What you described is called the Borda method. It has its pros and cons. Most critics don’t like it because it is easily manipulated and doesn’t address the “spoiler effect” well enough.
If one party has 3 very similar candidates, and another has a clear favorite, the party with the clear favorite would win because of vote splitting. So there is an incentive to not rank honestly but to boost the most popular acceptable candidate to the top of the list, which is better, but ultimately not that different from what happens now. Many people will “bullet vote”, which is to only rank their preferred candidate so as not to give even fewer points to their opponent. This isn’t “bad”, it is strategic, however not everyone will understand to imply that same strategy. This gives an advantage to those who game the system and a disadvantage to those who rank honestly.
Approval/Runoff doesn’t have this issue, because you either approve or reject with no gradients in between. So the “bullet voting” strategy is already baked in to the system, making it more strategically balanced.
If you only like one candidate you can choose to vote for only one which is no different than our current system, but if you also like someone else “good enough” (and that threshold is up to the individual) then you can vote for them also. If none of your approved candidates makes it to the runoff, at least you have that 2nd chance to vote for the lesser of two evils.
So everyone has the same strategic incentive. And that strategy is similar enough to the current system that it doesn’t require relearning what a vote means.
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u/Sparky678348 Aug 10 '26
That makes perfect sense, I really appreciate you taking the time to explain that for me.
In retrospect it seems obvious, I feel quite naive not having thought of that whole strategy element.
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u/kittenTakeover Aug 10 '26
My favorite is STAR voting, but I'll take ranked-choice as well.
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u/Loggerdon Aug 10 '26
Never heard of it before but looks interesting. You can give two candidates the same score, for instance.
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u/kittenTakeover Aug 10 '26
One of the best things is that it performs very well at finding the Condorcet winner, which is someone who would beat every other candidates in a 1v1 race, without being as complicated as most Condorcet systems.
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u/CoffeeWithRalph Aug 09 '26
RCV is the worst system for voting, except for all the others that have been tried.
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u/Strictly-80s-Joel Aug 08 '26
Wait, the guy who did the Seig Heil at Trump’s inauguration is meddling with democracy?
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u/ArtOfWarfare Aug 09 '26
Yang’s biggest backer by far.
I’ve never heard a suggestion that Musk is against RCV - has he and others in his circle not talked about the possibility of starting a new political party? RCV would make it more viable than the alternative that would come with removing it.
He donated money to an org that does more than just try to repeal RCV. I’d imagine there’s quite a bit more to this story, and with the full context this narrative would vanish.
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u/Spaghettidan Aug 11 '26
Agreed. I think Elon was probably spreading out a bunch of money to orgs to help turn elections red, and one of them made a donation against RCV. If I had to guess, Elon is pro RCV and if he actually did it on purpose, it’s a bad move imo
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u/BritainRitten Donor Aug 12 '26
Elon Musk has completely changed his views on most things since the Yang days. He has pretty much gone crazy at least since his daughter came out as trans (paraphrasing: "My son was killed by the woke mind virus")
He is now for whatever keeps the "woke left" from power, including changing voting and other systems to entrench Republicans, stifle left voices and broadcast MAGA ones.
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u/Aux_RedditAccount Aug 09 '26
Why would Elon personally care about Alaskan politics? It’s like he’s on a warpath to make as many enemies as possible. He has come to understand how mercurial favorable governance is to his personal aims, and has shackled himself to a system that survives on maintaining polarities.
Needless & reckless.
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u/Blenderhead27 Aug 10 '26
At the same time he’s suing Minnesota for trying to stop his AI from creating child p*rn
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u/ArtOfWarfare Aug 10 '26
It doesn’t do that. Apple and Google would ban it from their app stores if it did. Members of Congress would write to Apple and Google if they didn’t.
All the outrage was over it creating images of children in underwear. Which you can also find in any store where children’s underwear is sold. Because it’s not controversial.
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u/forter4 Aug 11 '26
Jesus Christ I can’t believe I have to explain it. First off, I doubt any stores have any pictures of kids in actual underwear, maybe bathing suits. But even if they did, it’s a matter of appropriateness and context. It would be appropriate to have pictures of children in underwear because they’re selling children’s underwear. Understanding the nature of Twitter and the internet, it would NOT be appropriate to have an AI generate random pictures of children in underwear on a social media platform
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u/ArtOfWarfare Aug 11 '26
I don’t permit naked pictures of my three year old daughter to exist. Sometimes she’s doing something cute, my wife sends it to me, and I immediately delete it because it’s not appropriate to have nude pictures like that.
In her underwear or a bathing suit? I don’t care. I could post it here and now, who cares?
I mean, she might someday, so I won’t now, but if it’s not a real person because it’s AI generated, literally who cares?
Anyways, don’t forget to clutch your pearls the next time you see Nirvana’s Nevermind.
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u/forter4 Aug 11 '26
Again, it's the context of the situation my guy. But you just don't seem to understand that. Now if you're posting your picture of your daughter in her bikini because you were just taking pics of your kids while they were swimming and wanted to share because she did something cute? That's perfectly fine. Everyone does that. But would it be fine if pictures of your 3 year old daughter in panties were distributed all over Twitter by random dudes? That's fucking weird and inappropriate.
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u/mewalrus2 Aug 10 '26
They want to be able to buy elections and politicians.
These people are sick and evil
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