This might be my favorite bill introduced so far this session:
Senate Bill 55 has been introduced to ban the blue-state import of another bad idea to South Dakota, in the form of “ranked choice voting.” Ranked Choice removes the one-man, one-vote principle into a lottery of multiple votes based on preference.
As noted in a recent opinion article in TheHill.com, ranked choice is actually biased towards extreme candidates:
For example, in a three-person race, the moderate candidate may be preferred to each of the more extreme candidates by a majority of voters. However, voters with far-left and far-right views will rank the candidate in second place rather than in first place. Since ranked-choice voting counts only the number of first-choice votes (among the remaining candidates), the moderate candidate would be eliminated in the first round, leaving one of the extreme candidates to be declared the winner.
No one except a handful of activists are seeking this kind of system. So there’s no need to create a new system that’s confusing at best, and possibly putting goofballs in office at worst.
Good. We don’t need ranked choice. Why complicate things further?
Because ranked-choice voting is only slightly more complicated than the runoff system currently on the books, it’s much less expensive, and it prevents the plurality election of candidates most of the voters don’t support.
Well the Democratic Socialists of America will not like this bill. They craft a scheme to manipulate it so their candidates come out on top.
In that hypothetical scenario the moderate candidate would lose in both a ranked-choice and a first past the post (if they have the fewest votes, they’d be eliminated anyway).
If you’re too stupid to understand how it works it stands to reason you’d be too stupid to explain it.
Yes, and in fact anyone who voted for the hypothetical “moderate” in that scenario is effectively disenfranchised under the current system, lowering the necessary threshold for the “far-left” or “far-right” candidate to win without a majority. Ranked choice voting is simply a much faster and much less expensive runoff in which everyone’s vote counts.
Who decides whether a so-called “moderate” candidate is better than a so-called “extreme” one? Isn’t that what an election is supposed to determine? If the “moderate” candidate gets the fewest votes, then the “moderate” candidate should lose.
If the “moderate” candidate is really “preferred to each of the more extreme candidates by a majority of voters,” then ranked-choice voting ensures that the “moderate” candidate will win, and that no one has to worry about an “extreme” candidate splitting the vote or spoiling the election.
The Republican left hates ranked-choice voting because it frees “extreme” pro-liberty conservatives to vote for independent and minor-party cadidates without “wasting” their votes. The establishment would gladly risk letting socialists win without majorities rather than letting the heirs of Reagan freely express themselves at the ballot box.
DSA’s Socialists rig the system with multiple candidates so that their preferred extremist candidate will always come out on top. Mpls/St. Paul city mayors and council are a great example where the DFL Speaker of the House referred to the DSA controlled government and politics as a snake pit. That is pretty bad!
I just can’t think of a better bill in recent memory. This is a “must pass” bill.
“… and possibly putting goofballs in office at worst.”
Thank you for at least being honest about one thing here: You don’t want RCV because you’re afraid it might allow someone other than Rs and Ds to get elected (i.e., “goofballs” in your vernacular).
Ranked choice voting eliminates voters’ fears of making the “lesser of two evils” lose to the “greater of two evils”. As a Libertarian candidate, I can’t tell you how many times I heard at the door, “Well, I’d vote for you, but if I don’t vote Republican, I might be helping a Democrat get elected,” and conversely, “A vote for you just takes votes away from the Democrat and will only help to get the Republican elected by a larger margin.”
Under RCV, both sets of voters could have voted their conscience for Yours Truly and put their preferred “lesser of two evils” vote in second place. If I had still lost, their votes would be counted just as if they had voted that way in the first place. And if I had won, it would have meant a true majority (50% plus one vote) would have voted for their representative in the legislature. As it sits, legislators often receive less than a majority. That’s just wrong, in my book.
Also, I don’t know if you actually read the articles you write, but there are goofballs aplenty being elected under the current system. A fairer election system surely wouldn’t be to blame. By definition, someone who willingly puts their hat in the ring to spend countless hours knocking on doors, sitting in 100+ degree heat at booths and spending thousands of dollars to try and earn a $12k/year job has at least a couple screws loose.
Great comment. Ranked-choice voting would also counteract political polarization by encouraging major-party candidates to seek out coalitions beyond their respective bases and by reducing their incentives to distort each other’s positions.
Unfortunately many on the Republican left would prefer to let Democrats win elections without majorities rather than letting alternative parties compete and grow on a more level playing field. Some of them actually seem to like being able to tell people that a vote for an alternative-party candidate is a wasted vote, as well as being able to scapegoat alternative-party candidates when Republicans blow close races.
Ranked-choice voting would be a relatively simple solution.
No thanks!
It would probably be possible to formulate some rational argument against ranked-choice voting without distorting and misrepresenting it, but I’ve literally never seen one.
‘Tis the nature of political discourse in our country anymore. If you can’t formulate a logical argument against it, call it names and lie about it.
Wikipedia(just for laughs) provided me a list of current RCV governments in the US. Not impressed. Harvard Law School has an interesting interview with Peter Brann of Maine. “One citizen one vote” is not as cliched as many think.
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Ranked-choice voting is used for state primary, congressional, and presidential elections in Alaska and Maine and for local elections in more than 20 US cities including Cambridge, Massachusetts; San Francisco, California; Oakland, California; Berkeley, California; San Leandro, California; Takoma Park, Maryland; St. Paul, Minnesota; Minneapolis, Minnesota; Santa Fe, New Mexico; Portland, Maine; Las Cruces, New Mexico; and St. Louis Park, Minnesota.[1] New York City is the largest voting population in the US using RCV.[2]
They also have running water and flush toilets. Guess we should abandon those since so many liberal cities use them.
Don’t throw away perfectly good ideas just because someone you don’t identify with has adopted them already.
No! We don’t need the extreme left and their cousins on the other extreme end the fringe libertarians manipulating elections with ranked choice voting.
The biggest example of election manipulation is our current first-past-the-post system. It ensures a binary choice, leading to the ever-increasing acceptance of “lesser of two evils” candidates, which is what has gotten our country into the mess we’re in.