4 ms·

I don't know as this is the place for it, but if we're speaking to things that would lower the temperature, let's get ranked-choice voting in place so that we

I don't know as this is the place for it, but if we're speaking to things that would lower the temperature, let's get ranked-choice voting in place so that we can break the untrue perception that we're locked into two parties' way of looking at things.

dane-pgp 4y ago
That's an absolutely valid addition on the topic of reducing the temperature of politics and allowing new compromises to be found. The only difference, fortunately, is that getting RCV (or other reforms) implemented for state elections doesn't requiring changing the US constitution. On the other hand, the fact that both the Republican and Democratic parties hold multiple state government trifectas, but only Maine has adopted RCV, means that both parties seem to be resisting reform. I wonder if it would be possible to have a cross-party grass-roots campaign to support primary challengers for every state legislator (from any party) who doesn't want their state to copy (or surpass) Maine's achievement. Even if that only ended up working in safely blue states, that would still raise awareness and wake people up to the Prisoner's Dilemma that the voting system puts them in. On the other hand, if the reform ended up being associated with one party, that would just make it another issue that the country was gridlocked on. Perhaps Republicans need to see it safely working in a red state first.
naniwaduni 4y ago
Rather than any variety of ranked choice, which demands convoluted counting schemes and fundamentally provides less information than scalar scoring schemes, we should be pushing hard for approval voting, which has the advantages of being dead simple to explain and interpret, obviously fair, able to reuse most existing infra, and not requiring the majority of voters to make substantial changes to their voting patterns as a transitional step. If we didn't have the history of voting system reform attempts to look at, I would almost suspect that ranked choice advocacy is a troll move to discredit alternative voting systems, rather than being a vestige of lack of rigorous analysis of voting systems until after early attempts at voting system reforms had gotten out of ground.

dane-pgp 4y ago

That's an absolutely valid addition on the topic of reducing the temperature of politics and allowing new compromises to be found. The only difference, fortunately, is that getting RCV (or other reforms) implemented for state elections doesn't requiring changing the US constitution. On the other hand, the fact that both the Republican and Democratic parties hold multiple state government trifectas, but only Maine has adopted RCV, means that both parties seem to be resisting reform. I wonder if it would be possible to have a cross-party grass-roots campaign to support primary challengers for every state legislator (from any party) who doesn't want their state to copy (or surpass) Maine's achievement. Even if that only ended up working in safely blue states, that would still raise awareness and wake people up to the Prisoner's Dilemma that the voting system puts them in. On the other hand, if the reform ended up being associated with one party, that would just make it another issue that the country was gridlocked on. Perhaps Republicans need to see it safely working in a red state first.

naniwaduni 4y ago

Rather than any variety of ranked choice, which demands convoluted counting schemes and fundamentally provides less information than scalar scoring schemes, we should be pushing hard for approval voting, which has the advantages of being dead simple to explain and interpret, obviously fair, able to reuse most existing infra, and not requiring the majority of voters to make substantial changes to their voting patterns as a transitional step. If we didn't have the history of voting system reform attempts to look at, I would almost suspect that ranked choice advocacy is a troll move to discredit alternative voting systems, rather than being a vestige of lack of rigorous analysis of voting systems until after early attempts at voting system reforms had gotten out of ground.