Georgia Could Be the Next State To Try Ranked Choice Voting
After a bruising Senate loss, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger is open to alternatives.
After Sen. Raphael Warnock (D–Ga.) defeated GOP challenger Herschel Walker this month, Georgia's Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, indicated that he would propose new changes to the state's rules that could benefit not just voters but third-party candidates as well.
Currently, Georgia is one of only two states that requires runoffs for both primary and general elections if no candidate receives a majority. A 2021 law shortened the time between the general and the runoff from nine weeks to four. With only a month in which to vote and barely enough time to request, receive, and return a mailed ballot, voters in large counties contended with long lines at the polls. The state also spent millions to conduct the second election, including more than $10 million in the Atlanta metro area alone.
Speaking to The New York Times last week, Raffensperger said he would petition the state legislature with three separate proposals. One would force large counties to open more locations for voting early. Another would lower the vote total needed to avoid a runoff from 50 percent to 45.
The third proposal is the most consequential, and the most interesting. Raffensperger will also ask state lawmakers to consider switching to a ranked choice ballot for future elections.
In this system, voters rank each candidate on the ballot in order of preference. When the votes are tallied, if no candidate wins a majority, then the lowest performer is eliminated; that candidate's votes are then recounted with the voters' second choices counted first. This repeats until one candidate passes 50 percent. Proponents of ranked choice call it an "instant runoff" system, as it obviates the need to hold a runoff election at a later date.
If voters balk at the idea of a senator representing the entire state while only capturing 45 percent of the total vote, an instant runoff would be a much better option. FairVote, a nonpartisan organization that supports ranked choice voting, argued after the runoff votes were tallied that an instant runoff would do better to capture the feelings of the electorate. Between the November election and the December runoff, it noted, "total turnout dropped from 3.9 million to 3.5 million." In other words, 400,000 fewer voters turned out for the runoff, around five times what Libertarian candidate Chase Oliver received in November.
Walker and Warnock also each received fewer votes overall in the runoff than in the general. It seems illogical to claim that Warnock did not earn reelection with 1.9 million votes, but he did a month later with 1.8 million.
Ranked choice voting has its detractors. But by negating the "spoiler effect," it makes it easier for voters to vote their conscience. Voters can pick a third-party candidate; if that candidate doesn't win, then the ballot will simply be retallied with the second choice first. Voters can also choose to leave their extra spots blank. Many Alaska Republicans did exactly that this year rather than vote for Sarah Palin for U.S. House.
Editor's Note: As of February 29, 2024, commenting privileges on reason.com posts are limited to Reason Plus subscribers. Past commenters are grandfathered in for a temporary period. Subscribe here to preserve your ability to comment. Your Reason Plus subscription also gives you an ad-free version of reason.com, along with full access to the digital edition and archives of Reason magazine. We request that comments be civil and on-topic. We do not moderate or assume any responsibility for comments, which are owned by the readers who post them. Comments do not represent the views of reason.com or Reason Foundation. We reserve the right to delete any comment and ban commenters for any reason at any time. Comments may only be edited within 5 minutes of posting. Report abuses.
Please
to post comments
Ranked choice voting is clearly better than the nasty two-party system we currently have in almost every state, but it’s not enough. All elections for representatives in the state legislatures and the Congress should be “at-large” so that everyone who wants to run for office can put their names on the ballots with only minimum threshold criteria. More importantly elections should be held online, with polling places only for people who don’t have internet access at home (or who don’t have a home) with the entire process being conducted by bank level security (“six sigma”) and a receipt verification of your ballot to create the paper trail and raise the level of voter confidence in the election process. None of this technology is new or untried; and it would be much better than whatever is in second place – i.e. the dismal process we have now.
A Neverending litany of election “reform” gimmicktry. We all really need the electoral Slap-chop!
There is no gimmickry involved. If Libertarians are ten percent of the electorate, we should have ten percent of the representatives in the state legislatures and the Congress. The two-party, winner-takes-all, district-based election system ensures that either a Republican or a Democrat will win almost every time, and ensures that as many as 45% of the non-Democrat, non-Republic voters will not be represented by the representative of their choice after every election.
Ranked choice voting, whether you strongly support it or strongly oppose it, won’t result in Libertarians finding their way to proportional representation.
I thought he was saying that at-large representation would do that.
Great article, Mike. I appreciate your work, I’m now creating over $35,125 dollars each month simply by doing a simple job online! I do know You currently making a lot of greenbacks online from $28,127 dollars, its simple online operating jobs.
.
.
Just open the link——————————->>> http://Www.RichApp1.Com
The hope is first RCV and then switch legislative elections to multi member districts. Then Libertarians could conceivably win depending on their share of the vote and how big the districts are. There likely wouldn’t be many but if it was used in all legislative elections, there could be a few.
First past the post by districts is not what has harmed L’s. What has harmed L’s is:
DeRp control of elections which is a near unique form of electoral corruption in the world.
Districts that are way too big for anyone (third party or maverick) to win an election without first addressing the top-down concerns of donor class to fund campaigns.
L’s themselves who have never really given a shit about constituents, representation, etc. Instead they 30000 foot high preachers who aren’t even good at preaching.
What hurts Ls is the pretenders like you who claim to be L and then support covid statist measures.
I am making $92 an hour working from home. I never imagined that it was honest to goodness yet my closest companion is earning $16,000 a month by working on a laptop, that was truly astounding for me, she prescribed for me to attempt it simply.
Everybody must try this job now by just using this website. http://www.LiveJob247.com
What hurts Ls is showing up to the convention dressed in their Star Trek uniforms. And statist policies.
Sᴛᴀʀᴛ ᴡᴏʀᴋɪɴɢ ғʀᴏᴍ ʜᴏᴍᴇ! Gʀᴇᴀᴛ ᴊᴏʙ ғᴏʀ sᴛᴜᴅᴇɴᴛs, sᴛᴀʏ-ᴀᴛ-ʜᴏᴍᴇ ᴍᴏᴍs ᴏʀ ᴀɴʏᴏɴᴇ ɴᴇᴇᴅɪɴɢ ᴀɴ ᴇxᴛʀᴀ ɪɴᴄᴏᴍᴇ… Yᴏᴜ ᴏɴʟʏ ɴᴇᴇᴅ ᴀ ᴄᴏᴍᴘᴜᴛᴇʀ ᴀɴᴅ ᴀ ʀᴇʟɪᴀʙʟᴇ ɪɴᴛᴇʀɴᴇᴛ ᴄᴏɴɴᴇᴄᴛɪᴏɴ… Mᴀᴋᴇ $80 ʜᴏᴜʀʟʏ ᴀɴᴅ ᴜᴘ ᴛᴏ $13000 ᴀ ᴍᴏɴᴛʜ ʙʏ ғᴏʟʟᴏᴡɪɴɢ ʟɪɴᴋ ᴀᴛ ᴛʜᴇ ʙᴏᴛᴛᴏᴍ ᴀɴᴅ sɪɢɴɪɴɢ ᴜᴘ… Yᴏᴜ ᴄᴀɴ ʜᴀᴠᴇ ʏᴏᴜʀ ғɪʀsᴛ ᴄʜᴇᴄᴋ ʙʏ ᴛʜᴇ ᴇɴᴅ ᴏғ ᴛʜɪs ᴡᴇᴇᴋ:) GOOD LUCK.:)
Just open the link————————————–>>OPEN>> USA JOBS ONLINE
We need to purge the left. Anything else is useless bullshit.
I don’t know about that. We have a pretty good system in place. What we need to do is to get more reasonable people with platforms highlighting policies that ordinary people will vote for. Without even considering their platforms positions, the fact that Walker got more than handful of looney votes is scary as shit. I have a hard time believing that average Americans really *that* tribal and *that* dumb.
“All elections for representatives in the state legislatures and the Congress should be “at-large” so that everyone who wants to run for office can put their names on the ballots with only minimum threshold criteria.”
Let’s not forget “write-in” voting.
Doesn’t work. The only actual way for Libertarians and other third party representatives to be elected is proportional representation. If you have a better way that could actually be implemented in the real world to get Libertarians elected by all means share it with us. Until then I would like to enlist the support of all voters who are tired of remaining disenfranchised to get proportional representation election systems implemented in all fifty states.
The only way ranked choice voting makes sense is if the people diluting their votes actually dilute their votes. Letting the 1st and 2nd losers of a vote have a free 2nd and sometimes 3rd vote just disenfranchised the voters of the 2nd place candidate.
Huh?
Are you not aware how the system works? Take Palin in Alaska. The voters that voted her 1 never had their 2nd choice votes count.
If you want to split your vote, make the vote diluted.
1st: 70%
2nd: 20%
3rd: 10%
Right now the people with 3rd place get an extra free vote on round 2. 2nd place voters do not and never do.
Yes, I understand how it works, but your interpretation of it makes no sense to me.
What are you failing to understand? If you know how the system works then you know not every voter gets a 2nd vote.
What are you confused by?
I am aware of how the system works. From your comments, though, it’s pretty clear that you don’t.
Ahh. Glad you pointed out where I was wrong. Good show.
Amazing that.
100,000 voters.
They vote.
41,000 vote for candidate A
35,000 vote for candidate B
24,000 vote for candidates C, D, E and F
No one has gotten past 50%
So the votes of the 24,000 who voted for candidates C,D,E and F are counted again.
A gains 4,500 votes
B gains 500
D gains 500
So the votes of the 19,000 are counted AGAIN.
We’re at 3 votes for one set of voters at this point.
RCV is the old Democrat standard of ‘keep counting the votes until you have enough to win’ legalized.
Our problem is that we’ve let another leftist fiction to take hold. That of the plurality not being a majority.
A majority is only 50%+ when there are only two choices. Add choices and the majority percentage changes. It doesn’t stop being a majority though.
But we have been conditioned to believe otherwise by people who tout the coalition governance of the parliamentary systems.
Why? Because their purpose isn’t representation–it’s amassing enough power where they can simply declare whowon the election. And they will always be the winner.
I’m not sure how you can do the math and look at the outcomes and still come up with an infantile nonsense rant against RCV. The only people who are harmed by it are people with ideas that most voters disagree with. The fact that the bottom third of the electorate will vote for whoever is not a Democrat says nothing about the positions that the Democrat might stand for. Nor does it say anything about the positions taken by the Republicans. RCV forces people to think about what they want their leaders to do if elected. If all you want is for a rep to wreck things, you may have a third of the population on your side, but the other 2/3 will win every time. That doesn’t mean it’s rigged. It just means that 2/3 of the population cares about what government actually does. It limits the strength of tribalism and strengthens individuals’ choices.
RCV is just run-offs but cheaper. It gives voters more choice in the general and voters can vote for 3rd party candidates more without fearing spoiler effect.
RCV doesn’t mean it helps democrats. In NV it would help republicans as 2 micro parties on the right split the republican vote. Both parties still oppose the ballot initiative. In GA, if they had RCV, then neither Warnock nor Ossof would have won in 2020. Perdue’s vote was greater than Ossof so he’d have won. The combined but divided republican vote was greater than Warnock so Kelly would have won.
In CA, the current and last governor vetoed the RCV bill which just allows normal cities to adopt it.
During the progressive era, some cities used STV (RCV with multi member districts) as voters wanted to constrain the party machine. They all ended up getting repealed (other than Cambridge, MA) as the party machine didn’t like actual competitive elections.
It’s not clear that anyone knows how the system works? The key to understanding how Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) works in Alaska is to answer the question, what happened to ALL of Begich’s votes? Is it possible that some of the voters who had the Democrat 1st might have had Begich 2nd?
Any vote for Begich that was not 1st place was thrown away. These are legitimate votes that are NOT COUNTED. How is that legal?
When the people pushing this non-reform use the term Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) they are talking strictly about IRV, the ranked ballot system that promiscuously throws legitimate votes away. The Borda Count is a ranked ballot system in which a ranking is given a value: 1st place is worth the (N)umber of ballot positions minus 1 – last place – N – N or zero. It is not guaranteed to find the true majority winner but it doesn’t discard legitimate votes. It is also subject to gaming or strategic voting.
The only ranked system that WILL find the true majority winner is Condorcet’s Round Robin voting system where the rankings are used to pair EVERY candidate head-to-head with each other.
IRV, aside from throwing votes away has a nasty property known as non-monotonicity – I call it the rank reversal paradox. Ranking a candidate 1st can actually cause that candidate to lose. This leads to the optimum strategy in an IRV contest being to ONLY RANK ONE CANDIDATE. This is likely the reason that in Australia, which has used this terrible system for over a century requires that even if there are dozens of candidates running, EVERY CANDIDATE must get a ranking. Read up on Donkey Voting.
Are you implying that in a contest where candidate C (10%) was eliminated, the people who voted for candidate B (20%) should be allowed to change it to A (70%) and vice versa? Why would anyone do that? If B is your preference among A, B, and C and your ability to choose C is removed, 99.999999% of breathing humans will maintain their preference for B over A. It is only the people who chose C that must now make a new choice from the remaining options.
No. The implications are that RCV changes the standards from one person one vote to one person maybe 2 or more votes. If a voter wants to choose multiple people they should have to dilute their vote in order to do so. Some voters really will have only one choice. Some voters will by RCV convention only be allowed one vote. While other voters will get 2 or 3.
If your vote is for multiple people it should affect your vote and actually dilute it. If you only find one candidate applicable, they get your full vote. If a 1st and 2nd, split the vote in 2 and dilute it. It would then be an action considered by each voter for the strength of their vote.
As it currently stands RCV favors some voters over others while diminishing voter enthusiasm that would at least apply to a run off vote.
I guess you could call it a dilution. But whatever it’s called, isn’t the idea to at least be governed by someone who comes the closest to the majority position still a good result?
>muh voter enthusiasm
Well, what if I believe that only people enthusiastic enough to pay a $10,000 poll tax and show up to vote in person on a remote Pacific island between the hours of 2:00am and 3:00am on Christmas Day should be allowed to vote? Simply ridiculous. There’s no need for runoff elections if people are simply going to choose the same thing again. Democracy is not supposed to be a battle of attrition.
I disagree with your assertion. Ranked choice voting is not improved by diluting second and third choices. Each voter only gets one vote in each race: if your first choice is dropped in the first round then you haven’t voted yet. No matter how many iterations the program takes to elect a winner, only your final choice counts as a vote, win or lose. The only thing you can say about ranked choice in district-based winner-takes-all election systems is that it’s slightly less odious than the two-party system.
Each voter only gets one vote in each race: if your first choice is dropped in the first round then you haven’t voted yet.
Yes, you did.
You voted and LOST.
Why the fuck should you get to go again unless everyone can go again? You voted for the LOSER.
That’s how this works. One person wins, the other candidates lose.
If there’s two, it’ll be 50%+, if there’s three it’ll 34%, if there’s four it’ll be 25%.
And that 25%+ will be the one person who, individually, got the most support.
You don’t get to go again if your guy doesn’t win. What an asinine idea.
You do understand that votes are thrown away don’t you? Wouldn’t counting ALL of the votes/rankings be better? Fact is that IRV (the particular form of ranked voting being discussed) does NOT eliminate split vote. Only Condorcet’s system will.
Voters, who chose A, don’t get another vote, nor do voters, who chose B, but those, who chose C, do.
Why should the ones, most out of step with the rest of the voters, get another bite of the apple?
And those “second choice” votes count just as much as the votes, that the “first choicers” cast.
If it was to be fair, and you need to go to “second choices”, every voters’ – including A and B – “second choice” should be counted, with any “second votes” for C being discarded.
The first time I saw RCV used, there were more than three candidates and the initial third-place finisher ended up the winner.
It doesn’t produce any more of a fair election that just sticking with the candidate that gets a plurality.
But isn’t electing the person who best represents the majority of the voters the best outcome?
No, almost all voters ending up with the representative who most closely represents their political positions is the best outcome. Only proportional representation can achieve that. Ranked choice only improves the outcome slightly over the current despicable system.
Fuck off, slaver
Absolutely, the “majority winner” is best. The dirty secret of IRV is that it DOES NOT FIND THE MAJORITY WINNER. Only Condorcet’s system does that. In Social Choice Theory (voting science) the technical term for that candidate is the “Condorcet Winner”. IRV does not satisfy the “Condorcet Criteria” because it often discards the true majority winner.
Voters, who chose A, don’t get another vote, nor do voters, who chose B, but those, who chose C, do.
They do get another vote. In the runoff their vote is presumed to be the person they voted for the first time since that choice is still available.
‘Presumed’.
That’s not getting another vote.
That’s having your choice assumed while others, who chose differently, who chose someone who lost, get to have a different choice.
Imagine betting on a horse race, having your horse lose, and then insisting on a payout anyway because the horse that won was your next choice. Think you’d collect?
That’s the problem. Here is the way to think of it: EVERY RANKING IS A VOTE. The IRV people do some hand-waving and refer to lower rankings as “potential votes” to disguise the fact that those votes are never counted, yet they are essential in finding the candidate the voters ACTUALLY PREFER.
I actually show how IRV actually fails and how Condorcet’s system succeeds in ending split vote and finding the true winner in my YouTube talk, “Count Every Vote”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btDyhNiTfeM
Yeah online voting is the answer, lmao.
That is horrible. RCV or instant runoff or other tech solution (esp eliminating polling places) is nothing but a way too idle pajama class of political junkies attempting to pretend that they are the know-it-alls of political choice.
Please, no, to some.
Bank-level security works because it’s fully authenticated and attributed. You can’t do bank-level security and retain the principle of a secret ballot.
At-large elections are also called “jungle primaries” for a reason. They are messy, ugly, destructive and set things up for gamesmanship. If there’s a way to do jungle-primaries right, I haven’t see it yet.
Primaries should only be for party members choosing the candidate for that party.
If your party doesn’t have a candidate, you’re SOL.
“Open” primaries allow the opposition to choose the weakest candidate of your party, if the opposition one is a sure thing, which it frequently is.
The “jungle” primary is one where parties aren’t considered – all those emerging, most often two, could be from the same party, disenfranchising voters from the party not chosen for the general election.
The only fair way to run a primary is for it to be strictly for those registered for that party’s candidates, and with no ability to switch sides, once candidates are announced.
Ranked choice voting is just that: RANK.
+1000
Ranked choice voting almost always produces perverse results, like we just saw in Alaska. 60% voted for a republican, yet a democrat is the Alaska Representative. This happens because of ballot exhaustion.
Voting really should happen on one day, so that all voters have the same information.
How is it perverse, though? What you had was a fracture with Repubs who would rather have had a Dem representing them as a second choice than the other Repub. Still seems like the person who commanded the majority of support won.
You assume 60% of those voting for republicans were republicans. We know that AK is one of those states with high numbers of independents. The result of the AK race was the same as if it was the standard FPTP system. Palin would have won the republican primary and lost in the general to Peltola.
You assume all of Begich’s 2nd choices would go to Palin simply because they voted for a republican. That’s like HRC expecting to be coronated and feeling like she was deserving of votes.
While I think American early voting is excessive, voting cannot all happen on one day due to postal votes. Overseas military ballots can take a while. So if they were not allowed to submit them until election day it would cause a bit of a delay in getting results, even more than now.
Remember, RCV is IRV.
I explain precisely why IRV is a terrible system on youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btDyhNiTfeM
Nothing clear about it. People don’t pay close attention to 2nd, 3rd, and 4th choices, especially in down-ballot races.
I fail to see how ranked choice voting would benefit a third party candidate, other than give a few ticks in percentage points before they are eliminated. In the most rosy scenario, they might eke out a top 2 finish in the first round and the get trounced subsequently as th remaining majority part candidate garners the most 2ndcround votes. Ranked choice is an establishment protection device and third party candidates are, almost always, radical outsiders. It makes the already hard road to victory for 3rd parties even more difficult.
If it did, the Republican secretary of state wouldn’t propose it. And apparently he didn’t, just “indicated” he would. Presumably this is another example of a politician briefly pretending to care about what his constituents want.
That’s because it would not benefit third party candidates. It would only keep the two-party system in place with shorter time frames and lower costs. In the spirit of grid-lock, I don’t want to help the bipartisans maintain the status quo in any way, even by improving their optics as this proposal is clearly intended to do.
Consider a 3rd party candidate who is actually popularly electable but we don’t know it yet. Voters going into the election must decide not only their personal preference but must also try to guess how the bulk of others will vote. If I believe (wrongly) that by voting for my preferred 3rd party candidate, I will “split the vote” for my second choice and allow my enemy to win, then I am incented to vote for my second choice instead of expressing my true preference.
With ranked-choice voting, you don’t need to try to guess about your peers’ preferences. You can vote your own preferences knowing that at worst, it will trigger a run-off where your second preference will be counted.
Right now the biggest obstacle to 3rd parties is the spoiler effect causing both parties to use various methods to keep them from even running. Dems kicked the Green party off the ballot in the NC senate race for no justified reason as they didn’t want them siphoning votes. There are often higher barriers to 3rd parties to get on the ballot. Both parties use litigation and other barriers to exhaust them. If spoilers were no longer an issue there would be less incentive to stop them running.
They likely would not win many seats but just being allowed to run is an improvement. The downside is they cannot eke out a plurality win in a black swan event. I think RCV first and hope for multi member districts as well for legislative races in the future could let 3rd party candidates or just the minority faction of the 2 main parties to win some seats. That helps weaken the duopoly a bit.
IRV doesn’t help – look at Australia.
Finding the majority winner will very frequently fail in ALL plurality systems. The reason is split-vote and the Nash Equilibrium strategy of voting for the candidate who has the best chance to win even if (s)he is not the voter’s true preference.
Everybody understands voting for the “lesser evil”. This is game theoretically optimum. Sadly, people have been gulled into believing that IRV avoids split-vote. Actually runoff voting is iterative plurality voting. Because of this the true winner can be eliminate before reaching the final two.
Again, check the YouTube video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btDyhNiTfeM
In the Trump v Clinton presidential race, it is said that most votes were cast not in favor of a candidate, but as a “not” vote for the despised other side. If there was a “neither of these two clowns” vote, it would have won by a landslide.
“If there was a “neither of these two clowns” vote, it would have won by a landslide.”
I would like to think so. There was definitely something about the “turd sandwich” vs “the douche bag.”
Apparently not. The name “Gary Johnson” appeared on the ballot, but only drew 3%. And he wasn’t some academic theorist or hard money self-trained economist, he was a popular two-term governor and successful businessman.
“Apparently not. The name “Gary Johnson” appeared on the ballot, but only drew 3%.”
I actually liked Johnson, overall, though I am not a “fan.” After watching him on TV doing some version of a “town-hall meeting,” I was seriously disappointed in his responses to several really easy questions. I think he was trying to be a “nice guy” instead of actually promoting a libertarian platform. Most notably, his response to the mother who had lost a son due to a heroin overdose was, quite frankly, lame as hell.
What’s a leppo?
Heck, I have a leppo in my back yard… chained, of course.
Just keep feeding it pseudo-libertarian dbags, it’ll do fine.
Gary Johnson opposed drug (other than marijuana) legalization and supported “humanitarian wars” not in the US interest. That’s how “libertarian” he is
Yep. That 3.285% came to four million votes, enough to cover the gap in thirteen states. The idea is to change the laws and increase freedom. Getting libertarians elected is the threat, and the icing on the cake. https://bit.ly/3PEuOoF
He was such a good candidate “What’s Aleppo?” sank whatever chance he had to poll over 3%.
And his running mate endorsed Hillary.
I pulled the lever for Gary’s Johnson.
I pulled that same lever and lookit the leverage it wrought! (https://bit.ly/3FnmxRb)
That is what has been changing laws for 50 years.
Maybe it was the clown hat.
>>if that candidate doesn’t win, then the ballot will simply be retallied with the second choice first.
“vote for your 3d party candidate for your feelz, we’ll collect the actual vote after.”
Which is exactly what a runoff does, only faster and cheaper.
if I show for the 2d vote.
An actual runoff allows everyone to decide how to vote when not everyone makes the runoff. RCV just allows people with way too much time on their hands to pretend that they would have voted a particular way in a hypothetical runoff.
https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/1602364197194432515?t=Qfy-KH09YhV6mLSeOUiQjA&s=19
THREAD: THE TWITTER FILES PART FIVE.
THE REMOVAL OF TRUMP FROM TWITTER.
[Thread]
7. There were dissenters inside Twitter.
“Maybe because I am from China,” said one employee on January 7, “I deeply understand how censorship can destroy the public conversation.”
Yet,
9. After January 6, Twitter employees organized to demand their employer ban Trump. “There is a lot of employee advocacy happening,” said one Twitter employee.
However,
18. Next, Twitter’s safety team decides that Trump’s 7:44 am ET tweet is also not in violation. They are unequivocal: “it’s a clear no vio. It’s just to say he’s not attending the inauguration”
The ban was totally political and based off the political wishes of much of the staff and those at the top like Gadde and Roth.
One would force large counties to open more locations for voting early. Another would lower the vote total needed to avoid a runoff from 50 percent to 45.
The third proposal is the most consequential, and the most interesting.
WTHF? This is dumb. Seriously, my 9-yr.-old would be furling his brow and saying “Wait… What?” to this.
It seems reasonable to make someone win the approval of a majority of the voters before granting them power.
If you wanted to reduce IRV “back” to FPTP, lowering the threshold to avoid a runoff to 1 vote is how you would do it.
If anything, just to save the state a tremendous amount of money. I mean, how costly is it to have to keep doing runoff elections.
Depends on how many it takes to get the desired results.
I don’t know what this means?
You demand runoffs and recounts until your team wins, then declare “The People Have Spoken!”
Where did I demand runoffs and recounts?
Did you mean to respond to someone else?
You asked how costly it is. The answer is that it doesn’t matter to the people who will demand that it happens again and again until they get the results they want.
So, you took my comment to reply with a non-sequitur in order to address a pet peeve that you have?
My pet’s name is not Peeve.
What?
I do not have a pet called Peeve. Don’t know how to say it any clearer.
Oh, I understand what you were saying. I should’ve been more clear for the slow of learning. What does that statement have to do with what was being discussed?
You declared I have a pet peeve. I’m not responding in a way that validates your premise. Sorry. And I’ve got other things to do.
No, you were just doing your “jokey” deflection thing after being caught in an absurd non-sequitur. This is why it’s so hard to take you seriously.
Why not just have the plurality winner like most states? Same outcomes for the most part.
That’s fine, too. I think both methods are worthy of replacing the runoff concept.
Now that the party with the spoiler votes supports the voters, not the looters, that IS the standard flipflop. Just remember: when that fails, there remains the option of deleting tax and prohibition planks and repealing those laws to curry favor with the hosts on which looter parties are parasites. The only reason you need not fear a libertarian takeover is that hatred of the other looter kleptocracy faction overrides all external considerations.
Plurality/FPTP voting not only breaks down when there are more than two candidates, is produces the voting strategy (Nash Equilibrium) of voting for the lesser evil. Over time this ALWAYS produces a two-party system.
If we are going to have direct, single seat representation (arguably the best system) then we must eliminate split vote. The best system to accomplish that is Condorcet’s Round Robin System.
I explain it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btDyhNiTfeM
Costly to whom? The state produces zero with which to meet expenses, and stands to gain boodle, pelf, payola, bribes, paychecks and commissions by using whatever means gets rid of the mostest LP spoiler votes the fastest. After voters have watched the Libertarian KO the Mohammedan girl-bullying brute and cause Dem dupes to spend twice as much to support the looter who at least recognizes females as individuals, not chattel, a message begins to sink into the low foreheads of onlooking Neanderthal partisans. Gaining individual rights is well worth the cost.
Ranked-choice voting is pushed almost exclusively by whose political views I despise, which tells me everything I need to know about it.
Always judge the person. Not the idea.
Go fuck yourself.
It’s what you just said. Principals, not principles.
Then I told you to go fuck yourself.
I hope you have found this summary of our conversation helpful.
Oh, I get it. You don’t like it when someone points out that you judge ideas based upon the source rather than merit. Thing it, I like pointing that out. Especially when it pisses the person off. It’s always entertaining when people on the right behave like the people they hate. Your moral high ground is receding faster than my hairline.
Actually he’s on principles–
He literally forgot to include ‘people’. So he’s not focused at all on the individuals, only on their disgusting principles.
Always judge the person. Not the idea.
He literally wrote “whose political views I despise”.
FFS, he even left out the word ‘people’.
That’s normal when you dehumanize your enemy.
Exactly. He judges the idea based upon the politics of the source.
And? Anybody judging any idea as bad because of one group of partisans, the other, or both, is judging the idea based on the source.
You’ve either confused two logic fallacies, ad hominem (to the *person*) and argumentum ad populum (appeal to the *people*) or one (or both) of those with the established logical functions of (algorithmic) bias or GIGO.
It’s just normal tribalism. Nothing special.
Here’s a novel idea. You won’t like it though.
Judge people by their intentions and policy by the results. If you do that then you can often agree with your political enemies about a desired outcome, and instead argue over the means.
But I think the issue raised is specifically about people’s intentions. As such, wouldn’t they be doing exactly what you are advocating for.
I think the intentions are to allow people to rank their choices and have a greater voice. I’m still not sure about the result.
What? I’m not talking about the process, I’m talking about your responses to Derp and mad.casual. You explained they are judging people rather than substance, yet you explained that judging people’s intentions is okay. As such, isn’t mad and Derp doing exactly that? Judging the intentions of those advocating for ranked choice voting?
They assume the person they disagree with politically has bad intentions because they disagree politically.
Why else could someone disagree on policy if not for bad intentions, right?
But now you are getting circular. You can’t claim that people are free to challenge the intentions of others, but also that they can’t use the positions of others as a basis to challenge people’s intentions.
I think that the challenges are coming from the wrong place.
Someone who I agree with about a desired outcome comes up with an idea that I foresee to have bad consequences. They push on anyway, because their good intentions blind them to the consequences.
Do they have bad intentions? Probably not. But in today’s politics, their intentions will be judged by the foreseen consequences, not the intent.
I think it’s fair to say that most of the political establishment, especially the self-described “moderates” who seem to be bent solely on surrendering to the far-left, do not have good intentions.
Sure. We have a problem with assuming bad intentions of political opponents. But that doesn’t mean that assumption should be altruism either.
And when one side is vociferously for a particular electoral process. The chances for why they are for it most likely based on the results that it brings. That’s just common sense.
especially the self-described “moderates” who seem to be bent solely on surrendering to the far-left
I don’t know what that means. I see any disagreement with A interpreted to be support for B. Yeah, it’s logically incorrect, but it’s how people sure seem to act around here.
The chances for why they are for it most likely based on the results that it brings.
Let’s see how it works out in real life.
sarcasmic,
“Let’s see how that works out in real life.” What does this even mean? This has nothing to do with what we were discussing?
Is non-sequitur commenting just part of what you do?
Judge people by their intentions
This is ad hominem.
It’s not being an asshole.
“Judge people by their intentions and policy by the results.”
Then sarc must have been a yuge fan of Donald Trump, whose intention was to put America first, and whose policies had the economy on an upward trajectory unseen in decades.
For the good people on both sides.
Logically that implies that he favorably views ideas from people with politics that he likes, without considering the merits of the idea.
False. “I don’t like the fruit from this tree.” does not imply “I like the fruit from any/all other trees.”
Edit: Unless you’re conceptually trapped in some sort of partisan microcosm where there are only two trees to pick from and you must pick a tree.
No it doesn’t, but good try at basic logic. Maybe you’ll get it some day if you keep at.
[A –> B] does not mean [~A –> ~B].
A = B
-A = -B
Nice try, but this isn’t implication. B is dependent upon A.
But it is, retard. And it sure as hell wasn’t just an assertion that one thing is identical to another, as you seem to believe.
“I despise these people’s politics, therefore I am skeptical of policy they support.”
Does not imply
“I don’t despise these people politics, therefore I am unskeptical of policy they support.”
You are truly awful at this.
I was equating skepticism with despise. If you despise the politics you are skeptical. If you don’t then you’re not. We’re doing different proofs.
Whatever it doesn’t matter. All I’m saying is that maybe the people you hate have good intentions, and it’s the means they use to achieve their goals that suck.
That isn’t at all what you were saying. And experience has demonstrated time and again that the people in question value their continued self-aggrandizement, self-enrichment, and will say or do anything to maintain their grip on power and prevent outsiders from disrupting their comfortable status quo. So when they’re pushing RCV as hard as certain groups are, that is in and of itself enough for me to oppose it.
I don’t know enough about it to really have an informed opinion. I do see how “Wherever it’s been tried my team loses” could discourage support for the idea.
I was equating skepticism with despise.
How does this make any sense at all? I did not equate two things.
If you despise the politics you are skeptical. If you don’t then you’re not.
This is literally what I said. It’s a conditional proposition.
Fine. I used “logically” in the way people say “literally” and I was incorrect. Happy?
But it didn’t imply that. You are conceding that you just ascribed a viewpoint to me that did not follow from the statement I made.
So again, I say to you: Go fuck yourself.
I still stand by my first statement. You oppose RCV because you don’t like the politics of the people who support it. I do apologize for implying that you’d support it if you liked the politics of the people who support it.
The question is what political view you despise? The RCV method is a threat to the party system. It allows people to stray from voting for one major party or another. So are you suggesting you despise people who don’t support the party system of picking candidates?
Correct. Lefties and Democrats in general always want it, and always win wherever it is put in place. So, it stinks.
Well, yes. The FairVote people wanted to bring proportional representation to the USA thirty years ago but realized that it is very unpopular (for good reason, BTW). They decided to push Australia’s system as a Trojan Horse. They were making no progress until they started calling it Ranked Choice Voting and flat-out lied that it would find the majority winner (no, Condorcet does that), that voting for your first choice could never work against you (no, non-monotonicity can result in having a 2nd choice on your ballot causing your first to lose), and using terms like “potential votes” to disguise the fact that not all votes are counted. It’s easy for more votes to be thrown away than are finally counted.
These days, lots of people are in favor of IRV because they are ignorant of how it works and what the alternative is.
Again, here’s my link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btDyhNiTfeM
How about allowing the parties to have primaries (preferably closed primaries) and then whoever gets the plurality of the vote on election day is named the winner? Seems to work in every other state.
Republicans like the runoff because for many years it gave them a second bite of the apple.
If a state wants a runoff, then do it in one election with RCV. Otherwise accept the top vote getter on the first ballot.
Sorry, no. Plurality rule sucks. If you can’t command the support of at least half the population, you have no claim to represent them.
That makes sense if you can get at least half the population out to vote. Usually, we don’t.
Agree here. In an election with 60 percent voter participation a candidate would need 85% of the vote to have a majority of the voting population.
I’d be fine with leaving the office empty if nobody got more than 50% of the voting population. The ruling class would never allow it, though.
In the 1990s one of the countries formed when Yugoslavia split up had such a rule. After a couple of elections in which the voters basically said “no thanks, we don’t want a President” the rule was changed to stick them with one anyway.
Which country was that?
“We” don’t, but Nazi billionaires looking to spend surplus funding from their failed attempt to Bring Back Hitler as an Alternative for Germany could make it pretty easy to stop the LP from convening in Austin (home of Roe v Wade) and instead get “the right delegates” to show up at Reno. That–on top of packing the LP with anarcho-communist infiltrators after 2016–has cost us ballot access, hence most of the 4M law-changing spoiler votes so irritating to The Kleptocracy.
Hitler did. Then, after getting rid of those pesky opposition parties, often managed to claim 90% of the vote with his guys doing the counting. When Brazilians voted in March 1926, 99% of eligible voters (comprising 2% of the population) cast their non-secret ballots for Washington Luís. That is troublesome if you like openness and transparency more than secret ballots. The current system enables Libertarians to change the law the way Prohibition, Socialist and Communist parties have since the Secession War. Its flaw is Nixon’s subsidies for looters.
I’ll support plurality as soon as a libertarian candidate gets one.
Observe that pushers of Sloppy Seconds Voting are so ashamed of what it is that they invent acronyms as sockpuppets, masques and disguises. But Nixon already spoon-fed them the Anti-Libertarian Law. Nobody mentions repealing that before instituting Sloppy Seconds in its stead.
Uphold the US Constitution the very definition of the USA…
The people’s law over their government….
And all this chaos and Party-Power alignment would mostly just disappear. This chaos is the historical route of every fallen National Socialist and Communist Nation. We’re just *repeating* cursed history that has been written over and over and over again.
Nazi(National Sozialists) should’ve never been granted use of this nations Gov-Guns no matter how much *free-stuff* propaganda they pitched to ensure their POWER.
Surprising! I’ve been making 100 Dollars an hour since I started freelance on the Internet six months ago. I work long hours a day from home and do the basic work that I get from the business I met online. share this work for you opportunity This is definitely the best job I have ever done.
Go to this link…………….>>> onlinecareer1
Yes, peasants, squabble over the form your illusions will take.
“All we have to do to get out of totalitarianism and avoid ruin is vote smarter!”
+1 “Two wolves and a sheep voting on
whats for dinnerwho gets to eat in what order.”That’s always been a bad saying. Wolves and sheep have no common interests. Citizens always have at least some shared interests and incentive to work together.
Sure, sure; Packing Gov-Guns is always a good sign of “working together”. /s
Probably the biggest curse of the Democrat mind; total and absolute dissonance on what ‘Government’ actually is.
That’s why it’s a good saying. Why does the Marxist cat lady get to decide how to deal with the homelessness situation? I have no common interest with her.
Not to mention that the whole point of voting, despite the overtures and sales gimmicks, is about unknown, uncommon, or even lack of interests. And, per Nietzsche, not everyone is always the sheep. Pretty sure cat lady would consider me a wolf relative to her clowder or destruction of cats.
The DNC and RNC are PRIVATE organizations. Why is the Federal government running their primaries? Each party should run and PAY for their own primary. Registered party members only, that should put and end to shenanigans. Don’t like that, join a party. The general election then should have one democrat and one republican candidate. Others that want to run can run third party or independent. Problem solved, taxpayer money saved.
Then the Government runs the general election according to the US and each states constitution.
Why is the Federal government running their primaries?
Congress has the constitutional authority to set regulations for elections, but the federal government doesn’t “run” any elections. (Well, perhaps within D.C., but it would still probably be ‘run’ by the local D.C. government rather than federal government directly.) And Congress is limited in setting regulations for state and local offices to ensuring basic voting rights. It has a lot more authority over elections for federal office, though.
The states run elections mostly how they want to. Some have open primaries (voters can vote for one candidate for a particular office from any party regardless of their own registration) and some have closed primaries (voters can only vote for primary candidates in their registered party). I think California went with a “jungle primary” a few years ago, which goes even further than the open primary. The top two recipients of votes go on to the general election no matter what party they are from. So you can end up with two Republicans or two Democrats (which was probably the reason why California’s government wanted that).
I think that closed primaries combined with first-past-the-post, plurality winners is what makes a two-party system inevitable over the long run.
Next step – L’s get ‘lesser evil’ votes and L’s win
That does kinda make sense from a single looter Kleptocracy soft machine standpoint. It doesn’t explain why the Libertarians got votes for 10¢ apiece while the looter machine had to shell out some 200 times as much per vote, or why LP spoiler votes covered the gap 2.3 times. With the pro-choice LP guy out of the running, women voters faced a choice between Texas-style loss of individuality and conversion into the race-suicide breeder conscripts Theodore Roosevelt suggested twice. The Dems were able to spend 4x as much per vote as the Grabbers Of Pussy. This information made attempting to bring back Comstockism a clear waste of gas.
It seems illogical to claim that Warnock did not earn reelection with 1.9 million votes, but he did a month later with 1.8 million.
Another would lower the vote total needed to avoid a runoff from 50 percent to 45.
1. Warnock received 1.816m initially – rounding would be 1.8m.not 1.9.
2. “Illogical” would be ignoring that fewer people voted.
3. “Illogical” would be ignoring that Warnock’s “vote total” rose from 49.4% to 51.4%. (A % is not a total: It’s a proportion)
4. “Another (voting protocol) would lower the vote total needed to avoid a runoff from 50 percent to 45.” Imagine if Warnock had lost the runoff after exceeding 45% in the first election.
The Republicans of Georgia — half-educated bigots, superstitious gay-bashers, deplorable misogynists, slack-jawed immigrant-haters, drawling Islamophobes, backwater antisemites — are welcome to try to maintain electoral viability for a bit longer, but the culture war has been settled and the conservatives are the losers.
So carry on, clingers . . . so far as your betters permit, that is.
Close, but no cigar. George Wallace christianofascists differ from islamic girl-bulliers mainly in their choice of Jesuses. The first was invented as a historical fiction character set 150 years or so in the past–like Johnny Yuma, The Rebel. The second was an improvement on the first in the sense that Lyndon Johnson was an improvement over King George. Lucky for us they hate each other, for the bloodiest wars are fought between ideologues who believe in aaaaallll-most the same thing–like Homo erectus and the Neanderthals.
Surprising! I’ve been making 100 Dollars an hour since I started freelance on the Internet six months ago. I work long hours a day from home and do the basic work that I get from the business I met online. share this work for you opportunity This is definitely the best job I have ever done.
Go to this link…………….>>> onlinecareer1
Ranked voting is a bad joke. One person one vote. The right answer is to remove the barriers to other candidates outside the major parties to get on the ballot.
That work-around became law in Brazil. Thanks to importation of the Nixon Law that subsidizes looter parties by saying that won’t raise your taxes, everyone is still forced to vote at gunpoint. BUT they get to choose from 16 communist parties and another 16 fascist parties, wit no fear of Libertarian spoiler votes repealing anything. Feel better now?
Nope. Split vote and the optimal game theoretical strategy will always produce a two-party system. Hell, go back to the Roman Republic, which developed a two-party system.
The only historical example I’ve been able to find that avoided a two-party system is the Venetian Republic. It did NOT use ranked voting. However, it did use a form of Approval Voting. In this case, there would be 10 candidates running for the Doge (the leader) of the Republic. This alone likely would have tended to produce multi-parties but the Venetians went a step further and used random lots to generate the electors who would ultimately cast their votes for the Doge. This system was in operation for over 500 years and avoided the creation of any sort of permanent faction or party.
I will recommend the book APPROVAL VOTING by Brams and Fishburn (see 2nd Edition). It’s thick with mathematics but it does show that AV is the best alternative to Condorcet’s ranked system. Not much is said about IRV – the first edition came out in 1983 and it just was that much of an issue. However, the key problems are mentioned.
Sloppy seconds voting only helped break up the Grabber-Of-Pussy soft machine fastened onto formerly Libertarian Alaska because their nazis broke into two factions. It was their Night of the Long Knives that really took them out. Georgia, a Nixon-Wallace Ku-klux-tocracy, had its dumb infiltrator upstaged by libertarians at ten cents a spoiler vote (to their 200 times as much). That crowd would gladly murder every first-born child in Georgia for a chance to add National Socialists to the Supreme Court. In this case, replacing democracy with lifeboat ethics is, as always, a no-brainer.
Maybe Volksgenosse Raffensperger is willing to bet the farm that Germany’s AfD and its Anschluss Caucus can hold onto control of the national LP. This is already good enough reason to join or support the New Mexico LP.
IRV doesn’t negate the spoiler effect, though it does greatly mitigate it.
You are correct about the not eliminating the spoiler effect but, as I’ve said elsewhere, about the only thing is does is to allow one or two minor spoiler parties to maintain ballot access. If any of the tiny parties were to get a large chunk 1st place votes, chaotic situations would arise and non-monotonicity would rear its ugly head.
The biggest problem with IRV is that it prevents the TRUE reform from being adopted.
Do you consider STAR Voting or Approval Voting true reform?
This Ponzi scheme is meant to intentionally eliminate the most popular candidate.
If they WERE to implement such a scheme, half the totals of rank 2 votes should be applied to the remaining candidates. That would invariably push the most popular candidate over the line.
Ranked choice voting is not the solution, unfortunately. While it gets rid of runoff elections, it does not alleviate vote splitting or help third party candidates.
Google pay 200$ per hour my last pay check was $8500 working 1o hours a week online. My younger brother friend has been averaging 12000 for months now and he works about 22 hours a week. I cant believe how easy it was once I tried it outit..
🙂 AND GOOD LUCK. 🙂
HERE====)> http://WWW.WORKSFUL.COM
I get paid over 190$ per hour working from home with 2 kids at home. I never thought I’d be able to do it but my best friend earns over 10k a month doing this and she convinced me to try. The potential with this is endless. Heres what I’ve been doing..
HERE====)> http://WWW.RICHSALARIES.COM