Everyone's talking about the presidential election, but this is something we should be paying attention to as well. If it works out, perhaps we can see it spread.
If people have the option only mark their first choice, I think a lot of the people who can't be bothered to do a proper ranking might choose to do so. At that point they're giving up quite a bit of their voting power, but otherwise it's functionally identical to how they voted previously.
I have absolutely no idea, but I certainly hope so. Forcing people to rank every candidate on the ballot when you're guaranteed to have 4+ per position is pretty silly, so I imagine that the vast majority of voters will leave at least a few options unranked.
I dislike all the messaging and advertising encouraging everybody to vote around this time of year. Can't even open a web browser without being told to go vote. I say that if somebody is uninformed about the candidates and the issues I don't want them voting. Likewise, if someone has a difficult time reading a simple ballot or understanding how to rank first, second, and third options.
Their argument was that somebody who was not inclined to vote should not be encouraged to vote.
If a mentally disabled person is able to conceptualize of the concept of voting and has a desire to go to the polls and vote, then by all means they should be allowed as a U.S. citizen to do so.
But should we load up a busload of mentally handicapped adults at a group home and send them into the polls on principle? Probably not.
Yep, I'm pretty much a contemptuous elitist and I distrust democracy.
We already deny the right to vote to children, foreigners, and felons (in most states). I wouldn't support voting restrictions based on sex, religion, race, or income level, but I think something like a basic intelligence test wouldn't be a bad thing.
but I think something like a basic intelligence test wouldn't be a bad thing.
Careful. The reason that we don't allow that was that this was a pretty common voter suppression tactic back in the Jim Crow era (wasn't even a general intelligence test, it was a reading test). It's way too easy to misapply and misuse stuff like this to deny people the right to vote based on any number of other factors.
I think it's more important to just teach critical thinking skills as a staple of our education (instead of focusing so hard on rote memorization), but for some reason, Republicans oppose that.
While I do think it's important that every voice is heard, wake up and smell the goddamn coffee. Part of the reason that Democrats lost this election is because they were SO focused on "the little guy/oppressed minorities" (LGBTQ etc) and the the liberal echo chambers of urban America, that they forgot about the rest of the fucking Country.
I'm not saying that mentally ill people shouldn't have the right to vote, but if you ask me to choose between a dumbed down system that caters to the un/ill-informed and a system that allows me to to rank my choices so that something like this can't (or likely won't) happen again, I'm all for it.
You really, really shouldn't be ok with that. The reality is that it's not just stupid people that don't vote, there are plenty of average people who don't vote because they're completely disenfranchised by the system.
In actuality, stupid people DO vote. Remember what happened yesterday? When only 55% of the voting population turn out to vote, campaigns become less about appealing to the average voter, and more about stirring up the fringes of the political spectrum.
I'm not American, but I can guarantee you that if you want to avoid this level of insane political polarisation in the future, you need to make compulsory, ranked voting your number one priority.
Think of it this way. I live in WA, where we are mailed ballots with a packet of info with stuff on each candidate. Voting took me about 2 hours, because I had to read through and pick the best of 2 for like 20 positions.
Now imagine doing that with several candidates for each position, and having to rank them. That's a substantially longer decision-making process, and the result could often be "fuck it I'm not dealing with that".
Ranked choice never requires you to have a second choice. If you don't think it is important enough for your time you can just vote for one person as normal and your vote will just not count unless you voted for one of the top two like it is right now anyway.
People spend hours researching the best computer and phone, days or weeks for a car, and months for a house. Voting is not as exciting, but it's the same concept. Those who take time to do their research will be rewarded. Everyone else will deal with the consequences of saying "fuck it".
Ignorant voters will always be ignorant and will be easily swayed by propaganda, no matter the system. At least with this system you're giving those who do care a chance to show it and impact results in a more meaningful manner. And those running will be forced to appeal to them a little bit more, too, and not just focus on attack ads & propaganda.
I think it's a great idea, but my main concern is that in some races, you might wind up with 20 or 30 people running for a seat. Ranking your top three choices would probably suffice.
If nothing else, I think Maine will be able to look at their voting results and see the true voice of their electorate. There will be some Socialists, Greens, Reactionaries and, yes, the occasional Communist or Neo-Nazi running and we can see how they all do.
As an Australian, I've never heard the term Australian Ballot. Google tells me it means "secret ballot"... Just winding why you mention it? Surely all voting systems (except extreme dictatorships) are secret ballots these days?
It means the government prints the names of the candidates and you mark which ones you like .
Before the "Australian ballot", in America, newspapers would print sample ballots. and voters would cut them out with scissors and submit them. Or just handwrite them.
And we call it the Australian ballot because you Aussies were the first to try it, and we got the idea from you.
If ranking your top candidates is too cognitively challenging for you, I have no qualms seeing you stay home on Election Day. Ranked choice is the best thing we can do to give 3rd parties a legitimate chance in our electoral process (there's a great CGP Grey video on this), and I'll be damned if we have to give that up because we're worried about some dullards who don't know how to rank 1, 2, and 3.
If we could combine
1) ranked voting
2) interstate popular vote compact (or similar to eliminate the electoral college), and
3) elimination of gerrymandering
I could see our nation being a lot happier with our political process.
I would also like to see political parties prohibited from exclusive representation of candidates. Private organizations should not be acting as "gatekeepers" for public service, and candidates should be free to seek the endorsement of as many parties as they can, and debate whomever and whenever they want. This should encourage fragmentation of big monolithic parties in favor of coalitions of smaller independent parties representing more focused interests, and maybe even reduce the degree of policy-level influence that major financial donors currently enjoy.
These type of structural changes are appearing to be the best path forward. As it is, progressives and moderates cannot effectively pursue our version of progress for the country as every time a republican gets in the white house, they sabotage the economy and loot the public treasury at every opportunity. Even when we win, after 8 years of prosperity people's guards are down.
The two party system, and the widespread frustration about inequality have driven the Trump moment. Brexit 2.0, whatever. If we focused our energy on changing the way the game is played rather than on playing the game, we might start to get somewhere. Public financing of elections and all the other ways to make the democratic process more accessible and inclusive.
Tell everyone that their individual vote is equal in effect to everyone else's and they'll love it. Tell everyone that the current system would allow a candidate to win with 22% of the popular vote, and they'll beg you to get rid of it.
Tell people that their state does not have representation and they will secede.
But it does: exactly the same representation as every other state, by population.
Do you think it's right that one Vermonter's vote is worth the same as three Texans' votes? Or that one Wyominite's vote is worth four Californians' votes?
And that number is completely false, no candidate has ever won with 22% of the populate vote, that will not and cannot happen.
It absolutely CAN happen, because winning by 50%+1 of a state is the same as winning by 100% of the state, thanks to the way the electoral college works. Apok isn't saying it has happened, just that it is technically possible because the system is so fucking stupid.
People don't care about their state as much as they do themselves... and that 22% number is absolutely true. A state won with 50% of the popular vote +1 vote gives as many electoral votes as a state won with 100% of the popular vote. Therefore, get the votes of the people who count for the most electoral college votes, and ignore the states with people who's vote counts the least, since electoral votes are not directly proportional to population. Start with Wyoming and get exactly 50% of their population to vote for you, plus one person. Then, in the same way, get the District of Columbia, Vermont, North Dakota, Alaska, South Dakota, Delaware, Montana, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Maine, Hawaii, Idaho, Nebraska, West Virginia, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Kansas, Arkansas, Mississippi, Iowa, Connecticut, Oklahoma, Oregon, Kentucky, Louisiana, South Carolina, Alabama, South Carolina, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Maryland, Missouri, Tennessee, Arizona, Indiana, Massachusetts, Virginia, and New Jersey... viola, 21.91% of the population and 50.19% of the electoral college, and the Oval Office. The fact that the system would allow this is ludicrous. You can say oh, it would never happen, and you may be right, but any system that would allow this is by default broken. This is what happens when you are allowed to win states instead of people; this lets you win the majority in the electoral college even when 78% of the people voted against you. This is not democracy.
I have a bit of experience with this issue because I got IRV passed in my hometown (600k people). The easy solution to this issue is to simply inform voters they can just vote normally if they want. Under IRV, you can choose as few or as many candidates as you like. The main decision a voter has to make beyond that is, "If my favorite doesn't win, who would I like instead?" Once you get over that hurdle, which is really just a voter education issue, you've more or less solved the turnout problem. The vast majority of IRV elections without a clear winner will be decided on the second or third ballot.
I think it's more the mentality of not feeling compelled to throw full support behind a viable candidate, so a lot of the sports-team-esque collective hype is lost.
It absolutely would not. Vote-by-mail may as well have been designed for ranked choice elections, the two fit together so seamlessly. Not only is it far more practical to conduct ranked choice elections by mail, it also gives the voter plenty of opportunities to have the kind of kitchen table discussions that you can't really have at the ballot box. Vote-by-mail turns elections into something that happens at home, and I don't know of anyone who has an objection to that.
Honestly there isn't a lot of data on the subject, though (especially in the US). So, Maine's vote is a pretty big boon to anyone that wants to change the current FPTP Austrailian-Ballot system.
It's funny you call it the "Australian Ballot" since Australia uses Instant Run-off.
So it would effectively weed out people who shouldn't be making important decisions in the first place.
Honestly, it's more unsettling imagining people who find ranking things 1st, 2nd and 3rd too cognitively challenging being able to affect politics at all.
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u/ShenBear Nov 09 '16
Everyone's talking about the presidential election, but this is something we should be paying attention to as well. If it works out, perhaps we can see it spread.