7 ms·

The plan to save America by killing the partisan primary

49 points by dane-pgp 4y ago

dane-pgp 4y ago
This is actually a really balanced article, making some very nuanced points about why some activists might oppose a system that produces more moderate candidates, and how the existing system sort of relies on low turnout to give extra power to the most motivated core voters of the two main political parties. It also discusses the problems with Ranked Choice Voting specifically, with examples of its possible failure modes, and considerations of it being harder for less informed or less educated voters to understand, including the issue that not filling in a complete set of preferences means your vote might get discarded before the final round, whereas someone else's wouldn't.
- verall 4y ago
  The "issue" of ballot exhaustion is super overblown and preys on people's misunderstandings of instant runoff voting. If you vote for, say, the green party candidate in major American election, your vote is effectively immediately "exhausted" since they will not have even a tenth of the votes of a major party candidate. FPTP encourages people to metagame who they think is "viable" which is really difficult in unpolled local elections and contrary to people voting who they would actually like to win.
  - dane-pgp 4y ago
    I absolutely agree that FPTP has all the same problems, only worse because they are not made explicitly and transparently part of the voting mechanics. I still think that ballot exhaustion is a real issue though (maybe an overblown one, but not super overblown). If you vote for the green party candidate, as per your example, but it's an RCV election, and you don't specify your preference for Democrats vs Republicans (because you're only familiar with FPTP, or you feel this would be "disloyal" to the Green candidate) then your vote would be less effective than another Green supporter who did express their full set of preferences. Maybe it's a price worth paying, that society says "If you don't maximally fill out the ballot, then you are potentially punished by having less political power than some of your fellow citizens", but I think we need to admit that this is a trade-off we're making when we support RCV. (Again, though, it's not a trade-off relative to FPTP, which absolutely gives some voters less power, because votes for third parties are immediately exhausted, I agree).
    - verall 4y ago
      You're not punished by having less political power, if you want the greens or noone, you get exactly what you want, and if you have a ranked preference, that is available to you. It just has a scary name that makes people think something undemocratic is going on, but nothing is. It's depressing it's explained like you have less political power than your fellow citizens. If it's not a trade off compared to FPTP, are you comparing to a parliamentary system? How would that work for individual or nonpartisan posts, like say a town mayor or chief dogcatcher?
      - DerekL 4y ago
        > … if you want the greens or noone … BTW, it's no one or no-one.
      - dane-pgp 4y ago
        > if you want the greens or noone, you get exactly what you want Except you don't get no-one, you get one of the two big parties. (Getting no-one would be like "none of the above" winning, which is a supported outcome in some election systems). The best I can do to steelman your argument is to imagine you meant "the greens or anyone", because then, yes, the winner was "anyone", but that's not what a voter necessarily thought they were doing by being "loyal" to the green candidate. Instant-runoff voting (used in practice for counting RCV ballots in the US) actually satisfies the "later-no-harm" criterion[0] of voting systems (unlike Approval Voting), so if a voter knows this fact, they may feel comfortable adding the extra signal of additional preferences to their vote, but otherwise they might be reluctant to, making their vote less effective due to lack of education or misplaced loyalty. You're right that this is a minor problem compared to the extensive flaws in FPTP, but it is a new and avoidable flaw, and it will affect people who might have previously benefited from (the unfairness of) FPTP. I'm not "comparing to a parliamentary system", though, since both presidential and parliamentary systems are compatible with both RCV/IRV and FPTP, and I think everything we've mentioned is equally applicable to individual and non-partisan posts. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Later-no-harm_criterion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Later-no-harm_criterion
        4y ago
- landemva 4y ago
  > the two main political parties. Two parties is a feature often defined by State election law. Some States like Illinois specifically mention Rs and Ds. Other States often use a method of favoring (donation limits) major parties which is determined by off-year results in a race like the Governor. Partisanship matters because of benefits in State election laws. State legislators who are Ds and Rs know this and don't talk about it because it would reduce their club powers. I would clean out the State election laws before applying band-aids and lotions.
  - defrost 4y ago
    The US two party oligarchy is particularly silly given the poor unrepresentative outcomes and the vocal opposition to political parties overall by many of the US founding fathers.
  - dane-pgp 4y ago
    > I would clean out the State election laws before applying band-aids and lotions. I don't see why the two approaches can't be run in parallel. I agree with you, though, that laws which privilege specific parties (or even parties generally over independent candidates) have no place in a democracy. Have there not been any cases brought which challenge the constitutionality of such laws? I know that Lawrence Lessig tried to challenge Winner Take All (plurality) voting in the US under the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment[0], which seemed like a bit of a long shot, whereas I don't think that the establishment would feel particularly threatened by having to rewrite a few state laws to be more neutral. Presumably there are plenty of states that don't have such laws, and they are equally locked into the two-party system. [0] https://medium.lessig.org/the-equal-protection-challenge-to-winner-take-all-a-legal-guide-ce99747e5001 https://medium.lessig.org/the-equal-protection-challenge-to-...
    - landemva 4y ago
      Sometimes difficult to show harm and standing. Appeals are expensive. The States I looked at have major/minor party and other hindrances such as mandatory reports to secretary of state by party officers from each county. Maybe I would look in N.H. election laws for a place without this.
- defrost 4y ago
  > and considerations of it being harder for less informed or less educated voters to understand, Works fine in Australia and I'll add, in the true spirit of Aussie Competiveness, that our dumb F*'s are dumber than US dumb F*'s. Making a list of who you like in numbered order ain't that hard, and ditching the ballots of those that cannot number 1 through 6 is no great loss. The USofA has one of the truly insanely over complicated and least effective voting systems on the planet .. the billions spent on presidential elections is just ridiculous and symptomatic of some kind of crazy "little king" syndrome when the real focus should be on getting a balanced representative team together .. let them sort out a token figurehead that can be easily replaced if corrupt | sick | etc.
  - dane-pgp 4y ago
    > ditching the ballots of those that cannot number 1 through 6 is no great loss. It's worth looking into the statistics around that. For example, one study[0] found that: "Between 2004 – 2016, 32% of electorates reported more informal votes than votes in the margin between the winner and runner-up." Of course not, not all "informal votes" are due to people trying but failing to correctly fill out their ballot paper, but the study also found that "more candidates cause more informal votes", so the complexity of the ballots was clearly a factor. The fact that as many as a third of seats would have a different winner if every vote was counted, though, has to undermine confidence in the democratic process. And this is in a polity where voting is compulsory, so in the US it would be more likely that these informal voters just stayed at home, and the problem would be even more brushed under the carpet. [0] http://eamonmcginn.com.s3-website-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/papers/Informal_Voting.pdf http://eamonmcginn.com.s3-website-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.c...
    - defrost 4y ago
      An interesting study, cheers for that, a few points of note that sprang out at me: - In Australia, where voting is compulsory, around 5% of votes are informal, not counting toward the outcome. So, compulsory voting (> 95% of those that can vote do vote) plus low (5%) informal voting ==> way more people vote effectively in Australia than in the USofA (by a long shot). - The abstract quote differs from the main body quote of the same: > Between 2004–2016, 32% of electorates received more informal votes than those in the margin between the winner and runner-up. Or, in other words: 32% of electorates were closely contested and could have been swayed by the ineffective votes of those that didn't pay attention to detail (is this what we want?). What isn't expanded on (in my quick skim, I could be wrong) - is that these electorates were close AFTER ranking votes were counted and less popular candidates discarded with second and third preferences thrown in. Your "conclusion" > The fact that as many as a third of seats would have a different winner if every vote was counted, though, has to undermine confidence in the democratic process. is hasty - it assumes that the informal votes, had they been proper votes (rather than drawings of a dick, etc) would have made a decisive and coordinated swing bloc large enough to tip the balance .. when, in truth, they could have been evenly split across the field and had no decisive weight. (And there are other issues, but that'll suffice for now).
dontbenebby 4y ago
[dead]
troydavis 4y ago
(tl;dr: If you're in a state with closed and/or partisan primaries, that's probably the easiest and highest-impact change - and doesn't require changing voting methods. https://ballotpedia.org/Primary_election_types_by_state https://ballotpedia.org/Primary_election_types_by_state has more.) The article discusses two independent changes together: 1. Changing to open, non-partisan primaries (where every voter can vote for any candidate in the primary), and 2. Changing the method by which the winner is chosen. A jurisdiction can move to open, non-partisan primaries without a new voting method. As the article mentioned, Washington did so: https://ballotpedia.org/Primary_elections_in_Washington https://ballotpedia.org/Primary_elections_in_Washington . Other states: https://ballotpedia.org/Primary_election_types_by_state https://ballotpedia.org/Primary_election_types_by_state In terms of making winners better represent the entire electorate, moving to a non-partisan primaries might be the single highest-impact improvement that a jurisdiction can make. It almost certainly is when one considers the chances of the change actually happening (ie, viability). Separately, jurisdictions can elect to change voting methods in elections with more than two candidates. For example, I’m co-leading a campaign to change Seattle's open primaries to use Approval Voting[1], which is on the Seattle ballot as Proposition 1A[2] now. My point is that each of these changes has supporters and detractors, pros and cons. Acting like they both need to be changed at once makes things harder. [1]: https://electionscience.org/approval-voting-faqs/ https://electionscience.org/approval-voting-faqs/ [2]: https://seattleapproves.org/ https://seattleapproves.org/
- Overtonwindow 4y ago
  I remember in the Atlanta area when Cynthia McKinney was running for reelection, and a large number of conservatives crossed party lines to vote for her opponent, Denise Majette. It upset a lot of Democrats, but the idea of cross primary voting seems to be one that both parties used to undermine the other. That would seem a strike against an open system, especially if you have a party with a larger presence in a district that can negatively disrupt the other party. Of course the idea is to have no parties, but like-minded people coalesce, and it’s nearly impossible to get rid of them. You could try nonpartisan, but with nearly 200 years of a party system, it would be nearly impossible to ever get rid of it. Without infringing on free speech of course
chiefalchemist 4y ago
> Instead, Nevada would have a nonpartisan primary, from which the top five candidates of any party would emerge to the general election. How useful is this? My understanding in that in a fair number of elections there is no challenger to the incumbent party, or the challenge is token at best. That is the two parties have implied territories, sans a handful of areas that are up for grabs "battlegrounds". With traditional voting or with ranked voting, I'd like to see "None of the above" be provided as a candidate. The People should be provided a means to express that feeling if that's the case. Let be honest, low voter turnout is often a function of the products being offered. "Not of the above" provides important feedback that's currently lost.
- landemva 4y ago
  "None of the above" is already available by leaving blank that race. You can submit a ballot without marking any races.
  - chiefalchemist 4y ago
    "Null" is not tracked. Also, it cannot be assumed to be intentional. It's the lack of a vote. NotA is a decision and actively communicates dissatisfaction with the choices offered. You can't show up, leave everyhing blank, and presume that void will be heard.
    - dane-pgp 4y ago
      Spoilt / informal ballots are counted in elections in many jurisdictions, with the number of such votes reported in the final results table. This means that there is at least an upper-bound known for the number of people who scribbled "none of the above" across their ballot. If the NotA campaign were more organized, and supporters of it were more motivated, then they could probably get the number of spoilt / informal ballots well above the margin of victory in multiple districts, which would be an effective way of bringing the legitimacy of the candidate's win into question, and pressuring politicians to make NotA an actual option on ballots. Once that goal was achieved, though, and NotA still got less than 5% of the vote, I think it would be very hard to convince the public that the winner was somehow hiding their true unpopularity by "forcing" voters to vote for someone they didn't like (and that the winner was disingenuously claiming that low turnout meant that the abstaining voters were confident they would be happy with the outcome).
recuter 4y ago
I'm not American and have an extremely naive question: why not make more parties?
- satya71 4y ago
  There are lots of parties. But first past the post system ensures they don’t get anywhere.
  - recuter 4y ago
    Yeah. https://www.commoncause.org/colorado/democracy-wire/first-past-the-post-voting-our-elections-explained/ https://www.commoncause.org/colorado/democracy-wire/first-pa... There_I_fixed_it.jpeg I do get why the incumbent parties wouldn't want to change the system but surely if day dreaming about saving America this would be an area of focus.
- psychlops 4y ago
  The two parties in control collaborate and place rules in place to marginalize and exclude any competition.
- dghlsakjg 4y ago
  There are tons of parties in the US. However, because of the winner take all system, small parties can never gain power. You will almost always end up with two parties in a plurality vote since that is the only way to reliably win. In other words the party with the broadest appeal will always win. If two right wing candidates both receive 30% of the vote, and the single left wing candidate receives 40% of the vote then the left wins power. So in the next cycle, you have an obvious choice: split the right wing vote and lose, or coalesce into a single party and get 60% of the vote. Look up Maurice Duverger. He did a lot of theoretical work on this.
  - recuter 4y ago
    If I think abortion is fine but spiraling deficits are not am I left wing or right wing? I suggest an alternative stratagem: partner up with a righty/lefty on orthogonal issues, split both votes, and then collaborate honorably once one of you is in power. As if you are in cahoots but openly. Like a coalition of some sort.
kelseyfrog 4y ago
I can't help but feel that the author's point is, "Wouldn't it be great if all states used RCV for primaries?", which while probably an improvement, I am not convinced will change much. RCV + first past the post(FPTP) still produces two-party systems. They simply make coordination more difficult. In effect, they chose winners based on intra-party voter coordination ability ie: the ability for a party to effectively communicate a preferred ranking. That may or may not be more aligned with your desires than whatever metric we're functionally choosing winners by today. Still, RCV is an incremental, and I'd argue necessary, step toward multi-winner elections. To that effect, it's most likely an improvement.
bentt 4y ago
Are there states that have tried to do this but it's been defeated?
entropicgravity 4y ago
That might work. Another path is thru the Senate. It would take only a relative handful of democrat people (say 100,000) to move their voting state from California to North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming and vote in Democratic Senators. (This is from, possibly dodgy, memory, The Economist had an article on this about six months ago that had a detailed plan with all the numbers.)
sidewndr46 4y ago
Couldn't we just solve this by eliminating draconian ballot access provisions? If all 330 million Americans want to run for president I don't think it's a serious logistical issue anymore. Just assign every candidate a registration number and have them put it on all their campaigns ads
smitty1e 4y ago
An argument in favor of partisan primaries is that it allows parties to pick the candidates that best represent the party platform. Supposedly. The discussion that is more cogent in my opinion is ballot security. This is not only the chain of custody of ballots throughout the life cycle, but also the security of the voter marking and casting the ballot. Mail-in ballots offer vast opportunity for voter coercion. Which is why a polling place is really the proper answer for almost all voters. This is both a huge issue for election credibility, and something that the less serious voices are entirely too glib about.

49 points by dane-pgp 4y ago

This is actually a really balanced article, making some very nuanced points about why some activists might oppose a system that produces more moderate candidates, and how the existing system sort of relies on low turnout to give extra power to the most motivated core voters of the two main political parties. It also discusses the problems with Ranked Choice Voting specifically, with examples of its possible failure modes, and considerations of it being harder for less informed or less educated voters to understand, including the issue that not filling in a complete set of preferences means your vote might get discarded before the final round, whereas someone else's wouldn't.

verall 4y ago
The "issue" of ballot exhaustion is super overblown and preys on people's misunderstandings of instant runoff voting. If you vote for, say, the green party candidate in major American election, your vote is effectively immediately "exhausted" since they will not have even a tenth of the votes of a major party candidate. FPTP encourages people to metagame who they think is "viable" which is really difficult in unpolled local elections and contrary to people voting who they would actually like to win.
- dane-pgp 4y ago
  I absolutely agree that FPTP has all the same problems, only worse because they are not made explicitly and transparently part of the voting mechanics. I still think that ballot exhaustion is a real issue though (maybe an overblown one, but not super overblown). If you vote for the green party candidate, as per your example, but it's an RCV election, and you don't specify your preference for Democrats vs Republicans (because you're only familiar with FPTP, or you feel this would be "disloyal" to the Green candidate) then your vote would be less effective than another Green supporter who did express their full set of preferences. Maybe it's a price worth paying, that society says "If you don't maximally fill out the ballot, then you are potentially punished by having less political power than some of your fellow citizens", but I think we need to admit that this is a trade-off we're making when we support RCV. (Again, though, it's not a trade-off relative to FPTP, which absolutely gives some voters less power, because votes for third parties are immediately exhausted, I agree).
  - verall 4y ago
    You're not punished by having less political power, if you want the greens or noone, you get exactly what you want, and if you have a ranked preference, that is available to you. It just has a scary name that makes people think something undemocratic is going on, but nothing is. It's depressing it's explained like you have less political power than your fellow citizens. If it's not a trade off compared to FPTP, are you comparing to a parliamentary system? How would that work for individual or nonpartisan posts, like say a town mayor or chief dogcatcher?
    - DerekL 4y ago
      > … if you want the greens or noone … BTW, it's no one or no-one.
    - dane-pgp 4y ago
      > if you want the greens or noone, you get exactly what you want Except you don't get no-one, you get one of the two big parties. (Getting no-one would be like "none of the above" winning, which is a supported outcome in some election systems). The best I can do to steelman your argument is to imagine you meant "the greens or anyone", because then, yes, the winner was "anyone", but that's not what a voter necessarily thought they were doing by being "loyal" to the green candidate. Instant-runoff voting (used in practice for counting RCV ballots in the US) actually satisfies the "later-no-harm" criterion[0] of voting systems (unlike Approval Voting), so if a voter knows this fact, they may feel comfortable adding the extra signal of additional preferences to their vote, but otherwise they might be reluctant to, making their vote less effective due to lack of education or misplaced loyalty. You're right that this is a minor problem compared to the extensive flaws in FPTP, but it is a new and avoidable flaw, and it will affect people who might have previously benefited from (the unfairness of) FPTP. I'm not "comparing to a parliamentary system", though, since both presidential and parliamentary systems are compatible with both RCV/IRV and FPTP, and I think everything we've mentioned is equally applicable to individual and non-partisan posts. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Later-no-harm_criterion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Later-no-harm_criterion
      - 4y ago
landemva 4y ago
> the two main political parties. Two parties is a feature often defined by State election law. Some States like Illinois specifically mention Rs and Ds. Other States often use a method of favoring (donation limits) major parties which is determined by off-year results in a race like the Governor. Partisanship matters because of benefits in State election laws. State legislators who are Ds and Rs know this and don't talk about it because it would reduce their club powers. I would clean out the State election laws before applying band-aids and lotions.
- defrost 4y ago
  The US two party oligarchy is particularly silly given the poor unrepresentative outcomes and the vocal opposition to political parties overall by many of the US founding fathers.
- dane-pgp 4y ago
  > I would clean out the State election laws before applying band-aids and lotions. I don't see why the two approaches can't be run in parallel. I agree with you, though, that laws which privilege specific parties (or even parties generally over independent candidates) have no place in a democracy. Have there not been any cases brought which challenge the constitutionality of such laws? I know that Lawrence Lessig tried to challenge Winner Take All (plurality) voting in the US under the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment[0], which seemed like a bit of a long shot, whereas I don't think that the establishment would feel particularly threatened by having to rewrite a few state laws to be more neutral. Presumably there are plenty of states that don't have such laws, and they are equally locked into the two-party system. [0] https://medium.lessig.org/the-equal-protection-challenge-to-winner-take-all-a-legal-guide-ce99747e5001 https://medium.lessig.org/the-equal-protection-challenge-to-...
  - landemva 4y ago
    Sometimes difficult to show harm and standing. Appeals are expensive. The States I looked at have major/minor party and other hindrances such as mandatory reports to secretary of state by party officers from each county. Maybe I would look in N.H. election laws for a place without this.
defrost 4y ago
> and considerations of it being harder for less informed or less educated voters to understand, Works fine in Australia and I'll add, in the true spirit of Aussie Competiveness, that our dumb F*'s are dumber than US dumb F*'s. Making a list of who you like in numbered order ain't that hard, and ditching the ballots of those that cannot number 1 through 6 is no great loss. The USofA has one of the truly insanely over complicated and least effective voting systems on the planet .. the billions spent on presidential elections is just ridiculous and symptomatic of some kind of crazy "little king" syndrome when the real focus should be on getting a balanced representative team together .. let them sort out a token figurehead that can be easily replaced if corrupt | sick | etc.
- dane-pgp 4y ago
  > ditching the ballots of those that cannot number 1 through 6 is no great loss. It's worth looking into the statistics around that. For example, one study[0] found that: "Between 2004 – 2016, 32% of electorates reported more informal votes than votes in the margin between the winner and runner-up." Of course not, not all "informal votes" are due to people trying but failing to correctly fill out their ballot paper, but the study also found that "more candidates cause more informal votes", so the complexity of the ballots was clearly a factor. The fact that as many as a third of seats would have a different winner if every vote was counted, though, has to undermine confidence in the democratic process. And this is in a polity where voting is compulsory, so in the US it would be more likely that these informal voters just stayed at home, and the problem would be even more brushed under the carpet. [0] http://eamonmcginn.com.s3-website-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/papers/Informal_Voting.pdf http://eamonmcginn.com.s3-website-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.c...
  - defrost 4y ago
    An interesting study, cheers for that, a few points of note that sprang out at me: - In Australia, where voting is compulsory, around 5% of votes are informal, not counting toward the outcome. So, compulsory voting (> 95% of those that can vote do vote) plus low (5%) informal voting ==> way more people vote effectively in Australia than in the USofA (by a long shot). - The abstract quote differs from the main body quote of the same: > Between 2004–2016, 32% of electorates received more informal votes than those in the margin between the winner and runner-up. Or, in other words: 32% of electorates were closely contested and could have been swayed by the ineffective votes of those that didn't pay attention to detail (is this what we want?). What isn't expanded on (in my quick skim, I could be wrong) - is that these electorates were close AFTER ranking votes were counted and less popular candidates discarded with second and third preferences thrown in. Your "conclusion" > The fact that as many as a third of seats would have a different winner if every vote was counted, though, has to undermine confidence in the democratic process. is hasty - it assumes that the informal votes, had they been proper votes (rather than drawings of a dick, etc) would have made a decisive and coordinated swing bloc large enough to tip the balance .. when, in truth, they could have been evenly split across the field and had no decisive weight. (And there are other issues, but that'll suffice for now).

dontbenebby 4y ago

[dead]

troydavis 4y ago

(tl;dr: If you're in a state with closed and/or partisan primaries, that's probably the easiest and highest-impact change - and doesn't require changing voting methods. https://ballotpedia.org/Primary_election_types_by_state https://ballotpedia.org/Primary_election_types_by_state has more.) The article discusses two independent changes together: 1. Changing to open, non-partisan primaries (where every voter can vote for any candidate in the primary), and 2. Changing the method by which the winner is chosen. A jurisdiction can move to open, non-partisan primaries without a new voting method. As the article mentioned, Washington did so: https://ballotpedia.org/Primary_elections_in_Washington https://ballotpedia.org/Primary_elections_in_Washington . Other states: https://ballotpedia.org/Primary_election_types_by_state https://ballotpedia.org/Primary_election_types_by_state In terms of making winners better represent the entire electorate, moving to a non-partisan primaries might be the single highest-impact improvement that a jurisdiction can make. It almost certainly is when one considers the chances of the change actually happening (ie, viability). Separately, jurisdictions can elect to change voting methods in elections with more than two candidates. For example, I’m co-leading a campaign to change Seattle's open primaries to use Approval Voting[1], which is on the Seattle ballot as Proposition 1A[2] now. My point is that each of these changes has supporters and detractors, pros and cons. Acting like they both need to be changed at once makes things harder. [1]: https://electionscience.org/approval-voting-faqs/ https://electionscience.org/approval-voting-faqs/ [2]: https://seattleapproves.org/ https://seattleapproves.org/

Overtonwindow 4y ago
I remember in the Atlanta area when Cynthia McKinney was running for reelection, and a large number of conservatives crossed party lines to vote for her opponent, Denise Majette. It upset a lot of Democrats, but the idea of cross primary voting seems to be one that both parties used to undermine the other. That would seem a strike against an open system, especially if you have a party with a larger presence in a district that can negatively disrupt the other party. Of course the idea is to have no parties, but like-minded people coalesce, and it’s nearly impossible to get rid of them. You could try nonpartisan, but with nearly 200 years of a party system, it would be nearly impossible to ever get rid of it. Without infringing on free speech of course

chiefalchemist 4y ago

> Instead, Nevada would have a nonpartisan primary, from which the top five candidates of any party would emerge to the general election. How useful is this? My understanding in that in a fair number of elections there is no challenger to the incumbent party, or the challenge is token at best. That is the two parties have implied territories, sans a handful of areas that are up for grabs "battlegrounds". With traditional voting or with ranked voting, I'd like to see "None of the above" be provided as a candidate. The People should be provided a means to express that feeling if that's the case. Let be honest, low voter turnout is often a function of the products being offered. "Not of the above" provides important feedback that's currently lost.

landemva 4y ago
"None of the above" is already available by leaving blank that race. You can submit a ballot without marking any races.
- chiefalchemist 4y ago
  "Null" is not tracked. Also, it cannot be assumed to be intentional. It's the lack of a vote. NotA is a decision and actively communicates dissatisfaction with the choices offered. You can't show up, leave everyhing blank, and presume that void will be heard.
  - dane-pgp 4y ago
    Spoilt / informal ballots are counted in elections in many jurisdictions, with the number of such votes reported in the final results table. This means that there is at least an upper-bound known for the number of people who scribbled "none of the above" across their ballot. If the NotA campaign were more organized, and supporters of it were more motivated, then they could probably get the number of spoilt / informal ballots well above the margin of victory in multiple districts, which would be an effective way of bringing the legitimacy of the candidate's win into question, and pressuring politicians to make NotA an actual option on ballots. Once that goal was achieved, though, and NotA still got less than 5% of the vote, I think it would be very hard to convince the public that the winner was somehow hiding their true unpopularity by "forcing" voters to vote for someone they didn't like (and that the winner was disingenuously claiming that low turnout meant that the abstaining voters were confident they would be happy with the outcome).

recuter 4y ago

I'm not American and have an extremely naive question: why not make more parties?

satya71 4y ago
There are lots of parties. But first past the post system ensures they don’t get anywhere.
- recuter 4y ago
  Yeah. https://www.commoncause.org/colorado/democracy-wire/first-past-the-post-voting-our-elections-explained/ https://www.commoncause.org/colorado/democracy-wire/first-pa... There_I_fixed_it.jpeg I do get why the incumbent parties wouldn't want to change the system but surely if day dreaming about saving America this would be an area of focus.
psychlops 4y ago
The two parties in control collaborate and place rules in place to marginalize and exclude any competition.
dghlsakjg 4y ago
There are tons of parties in the US. However, because of the winner take all system, small parties can never gain power. You will almost always end up with two parties in a plurality vote since that is the only way to reliably win. In other words the party with the broadest appeal will always win. If two right wing candidates both receive 30% of the vote, and the single left wing candidate receives 40% of the vote then the left wins power. So in the next cycle, you have an obvious choice: split the right wing vote and lose, or coalesce into a single party and get 60% of the vote. Look up Maurice Duverger. He did a lot of theoretical work on this.
- recuter 4y ago
  If I think abortion is fine but spiraling deficits are not am I left wing or right wing? I suggest an alternative stratagem: partner up with a righty/lefty on orthogonal issues, split both votes, and then collaborate honorably once one of you is in power. As if you are in cahoots but openly. Like a coalition of some sort.

kelseyfrog 4y ago

I can't help but feel that the author's point is, "Wouldn't it be great if all states used RCV for primaries?", which while probably an improvement, I am not convinced will change much. RCV + first past the post(FPTP) still produces two-party systems. They simply make coordination more difficult. In effect, they chose winners based on intra-party voter coordination ability ie: the ability for a party to effectively communicate a preferred ranking. That may or may not be more aligned with your desires than whatever metric we're functionally choosing winners by today. Still, RCV is an incremental, and I'd argue necessary, step toward multi-winner elections. To that effect, it's most likely an improvement.

bentt 4y ago

Are there states that have tried to do this but it's been defeated?

entropicgravity 4y ago

That might work. Another path is thru the Senate. It would take only a relative handful of democrat people (say 100,000) to move their voting state from California to North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming and vote in Democratic Senators. (This is from, possibly dodgy, memory, The Economist had an article on this about six months ago that had a detailed plan with all the numbers.)

sidewndr46 4y ago

Couldn't we just solve this by eliminating draconian ballot access provisions? If all 330 million Americans want to run for president I don't think it's a serious logistical issue anymore. Just assign every candidate a registration number and have them put it on all their campaigns ads

smitty1e 4y ago

An argument in favor of partisan primaries is that it allows parties to pick the candidates that best represent the party platform. Supposedly. The discussion that is more cogent in my opinion is ballot security. This is not only the chain of custody of ballots throughout the life cycle, but also the security of the voter marking and casting the ballot. Mail-in ballots offer vast opportunity for voter coercion. Which is why a polling place is really the proper answer for almost all voters. This is both a huge issue for election credibility, and something that the less serious voices are entirely too glib about.