My criticisms of the proposed top-five voting system for Nevada: the open primary still uses single choice plurality voting to determine which candidates advance to the ranked choice voting general election; only five candidates advance to the general election which shifts candidate diversity from the high voter turnout general election to the open primary election. A top-eight or top-ten voting system with a ranked choice voting open primary would be a superior election system. With RCV primaries, the candidates advancing to the general election would have a wider support base.
Mostly agree about multi-choice primary voting instead plurality.
Completely disagree about increasing the number of finalists.
You're looking at it from the perspective of a voting methods nerd, who thinks researching ten candidates sufficiently to rank them is a perfectly cromulent way to spend a few weekends.
Most citizens don't have anywhere near that kind of time, interest, and background knowledge. Five is about the maximum number of choices that people can manage.
I agree that five candidates are plenty to rank. However, one voter may want to rank a different set of five candidates than another voter. Most people determine their first and second preferred choice and one or two candidates they want to lose. My favorite voting system is STAR - Score Than Automatic Runoff - provides that capability. But I support RCV because it is more popular and superior to single choice plurality voting.
For good elections, every voter should know the positions of the 2 or 3 most viable candidates (then rank or rate at least one of them). If you have 8+ candidates and a voter reads about the wrong 5, they have completely wasted their time.
Oct 15, 2022·edited Oct 16, 2022Liked by Steven Hill
No one is forcing voters to take the time to learn about all of the candidates. Those of us who want to do the research on more choices shouldn't be prevented from doing so because others don't. Furthermore, this problem still exists for the "primary" or first round election regardless of what voting method we are using. There were 48 candidates in Alaska's US House special election. The internet allows voters to research very many candidates without that much difficulty, and may also offer what are called "candidate calculators."
Limiting choices to four or five candidates for a five or six month campaign is a very undemocratic thing to do, in essence, a violation of the basic principles of free and equal elections. More specifically, it makes third party and independent candidates invisible.
If we choose to limit the number of candidates to five or less, let's mitigate the negative impact of such a stringent cutoff by holding the first round in the middle of October. That gives alternative candidates more of a voice, and also improves participation rates in that first round.
I guess I needed to spell that out for you more, right? LOL It depends on the context. In cities like San Francisco, Oakland and others in which RCV has resulted in consolidation from two elections into one – getting rid of an unnecessary separate runoff election, or a preliminary (primary) election – high-spending candidates who can raise infinite amounts of money no longer have such an advantage. Candidates who can't raise that kind of money only have to compete in one election, instead of two. It's been an obvious impact in those cities that have consolidated from two elections to one. And the gerrymandered districts part was a quick reference to impacts from the proportional form of ranked choice voting. So those were not lies, but quick references that I guess for yourself needed to be spelled out more clearly. I would appreciate it if you would keep the discussions on this more civil. Quickly jumping to the charge of "lies" is not the tone that we are striving toward on DemocracySOS. I hope you will abide by it. Thank you.
States are not doing away with primaries, so yes, the handful of states that do non-instant runoffs could benefit from a more expressive voting method, reducing the need for fundraising. But that's just an edge case, not addressing the great bulk of the problem.
It's certainly true that proportional representation can eliminate gerrymandering, but RCV doesn't get credit for that. There are other proportional voting method options that would do the same.
On the whole, your claim "instead of winners determined by gerrymandered districts or the highest campaign spending" is not an outright lie, but it is substantially more false than true, therefore deceptive and misleading.
My criticisms of the proposed top-five voting system for Nevada: the open primary still uses single choice plurality voting to determine which candidates advance to the ranked choice voting general election; only five candidates advance to the general election which shifts candidate diversity from the high voter turnout general election to the open primary election. A top-eight or top-ten voting system with a ranked choice voting open primary would be a superior election system. With RCV primaries, the candidates advancing to the general election would have a wider support base.
Mostly agree about multi-choice primary voting instead plurality.
Completely disagree about increasing the number of finalists.
You're looking at it from the perspective of a voting methods nerd, who thinks researching ten candidates sufficiently to rank them is a perfectly cromulent way to spend a few weekends.
Most citizens don't have anywhere near that kind of time, interest, and background knowledge. Five is about the maximum number of choices that people can manage.
I agree that five candidates are plenty to rank. However, one voter may want to rank a different set of five candidates than another voter. Most people determine their first and second preferred choice and one or two candidates they want to lose. My favorite voting system is STAR - Score Than Automatic Runoff - provides that capability. But I support RCV because it is more popular and superior to single choice plurality voting.
For good elections, every voter should know the positions of the 2 or 3 most viable candidates (then rank or rate at least one of them). If you have 8+ candidates and a voter reads about the wrong 5, they have completely wasted their time.
No one is forcing voters to take the time to learn about all of the candidates. Those of us who want to do the research on more choices shouldn't be prevented from doing so because others don't. Furthermore, this problem still exists for the "primary" or first round election regardless of what voting method we are using. There were 48 candidates in Alaska's US House special election. The internet allows voters to research very many candidates without that much difficulty, and may also offer what are called "candidate calculators."
Limiting choices to four or five candidates for a five or six month campaign is a very undemocratic thing to do, in essence, a violation of the basic principles of free and equal elections. More specifically, it makes third party and independent candidates invisible.
If we choose to limit the number of candidates to five or less, let's mitigate the negative impact of such a stringent cutoff by holding the first round in the middle of October. That gives alternative candidates more of a voice, and also improves participation rates in that first round.
"instead of winners determined by gerrymandered districts or the highest campaign spending, or spoiler candidates"
Telling bald-faced LIES is not a good look, Steven.
Out of the 3 problems you cite, RCV only addresses spoiler candidates.
Gerrymandering and campaign finance are orthogonal issues, largely unaffected by voting method, that need to be addressed separately.
vote.hr1.us#slide=id.g88c5d15b3a_0_26
I guess I needed to spell that out for you more, right? LOL It depends on the context. In cities like San Francisco, Oakland and others in which RCV has resulted in consolidation from two elections into one – getting rid of an unnecessary separate runoff election, or a preliminary (primary) election – high-spending candidates who can raise infinite amounts of money no longer have such an advantage. Candidates who can't raise that kind of money only have to compete in one election, instead of two. It's been an obvious impact in those cities that have consolidated from two elections to one. And the gerrymandered districts part was a quick reference to impacts from the proportional form of ranked choice voting. So those were not lies, but quick references that I guess for yourself needed to be spelled out more clearly. I would appreciate it if you would keep the discussions on this more civil. Quickly jumping to the charge of "lies" is not the tone that we are striving toward on DemocracySOS. I hope you will abide by it. Thank you.
I apologize for my rudeness.
States are not doing away with primaries, so yes, the handful of states that do non-instant runoffs could benefit from a more expressive voting method, reducing the need for fundraising. But that's just an edge case, not addressing the great bulk of the problem.
It's certainly true that proportional representation can eliminate gerrymandering, but RCV doesn't get credit for that. There are other proportional voting method options that would do the same.
On the whole, your claim "instead of winners determined by gerrymandered districts or the highest campaign spending" is not an outright lie, but it is substantially more false than true, therefore deceptive and misleading.
frankie - RCV can be a part of addressing the ills of gerrymandering through multi-member districts! check it out -> https://youtu.be/l8XOZJkozfI