The titanic Biden-Trump election likely will be decided by roughly 6% of voters in just six states, top strategists in both parties tell us.
The titanic Biden-Trump election likely will be decided by roughly 6% of voters in just six states, top strategists in both parties tell us.
I mean… how long has it been this way though, and we are only just now deciding to care?
Put this another way, if it was deciding between valid candidate A vs. valid candidate B, who would even care who wins?
Even so, ranked choice would solve a lot of our current ills, so we should get on that.
Playing devils advocate here, wouldn’t progressive states using progressive voting systems water down their chances versus republican states who would not have them?
Maybe, depending on the system, although if a state is truly progressive, then it may be less likely to ever vote that way in the first place?
One such system that is gaining popularity is to state that whoever wins the popular vote across all of America will win that state’s electoral votes - essentially abolishing the entire electoral college system, although just for that coalition of states. They basically are saying that they don’t want the outdated electoral college system, and that whoever wins the popular vote truly deserves their votes. Plus again, Democrats tend to always win the popular vote lately so… it’s not that big of a risk, although in the future I suppose that could change, and yet, still it is a nice gesture to lead the way in doing the correct thing, even if not everyone chooses to follow.
Another system that is even better at giving us real, actual choices (yay!) is the “ranked choice” system - the normal system btw is often called “first past the post”, and tends to devolve into voting against the other side, rather than taking a risk on picking someone who will actually step up and DO well… anything at all. I put links in there - the suggest ordering is the second one (normal voting) first, then the alternative system.
This one at first glance seems to have few risks for the “other side” winning, since it would mainly apply to the primary elections where the chief candidate for each of the two parties is selected - i.e. “the” Republican and “the” Democrat candidate, who then subsequently go head-to-head in the main election. One huge caveat though is that someone could e.g. vote for a third-party candidate, followed by the candidate that they think has a better chance of winning the election. Even if we took it as a given that the third-party candidate is guaranteed to lose, they still can influence the election and have major impacts on politics overall. Which sadly, seems naively to explain why even liberal states don’t want to switch to it: they don’t want to lose their power to Republicans, but if they do, they know that they can turn around and use that to fuel people’s anger and resentment and thereby win the next election more readily. But what they CANNOT condone is someone splitting from their power base and going off to do wild things on their own - why, they might even do something as radical as (gasp!) “tax the wealthy”!?! Don’t forget that even liberal politicians are just as slimy, self-serving, power-hungry, greedy, corrupt, etc. as conservative politicians. Well, perhaps not AS much, but they are no shining sainted angels either. Maybe, MAYBE if the literal fate of democracy itself was on the line, they might at least consider doing the right thing… but I would not bet on it. They will do whatever they think serves their interests best, that’s it and that’s all. The rest is a mere academic discussion in theory.
I think you didn’t get the idea, but posted a copy pasta?
I mean I’m all for more modern voting systems, and ranking (with low entry bars) is probably the best I have heard of today.
The idea the devils advocate posted was; if a swing state decides to do ranking voting (for the precedency) and they select Sanders, it would make Bidel lose out vs Trump.
I know it’s because your voting system is like european 1850 though.
There are multiple ways to interpret what you said.
If one state uses RCV only for their primaries, then they could do something like vote for Sanders - let’s say that e.g. 42% of votes do that - but then unless Sanders got the top vote, redistribute all of the votes that would have gone to him to someone else. So if, say, Biden got 45% of votes, then Biden now wins, but still there was value in allowing people to vote for Sanders who otherwise would have been too afraid that a vote for him would have split the vote away from Biden and towards some crazy candidate instead. Also, being able to see those stats can be really helpful for the next election, if Sanders were to run again, or even for the current one to let Biden know that he should perhaps adjust his stance to court those other voters.
But the above is to use it purely for the primaries, and yet RCV could also be applied to the general election too. Although really, what need do you even have for a primary anymore, since you could just use RCV straight from the start? If the Dem vs. Repub voters are split 50/50, then 42/2=21% of voters picked Sanders, and 22.5% picked Biden, yet with the latter as the 2nd choice on all votes for the former, Biden would get rather 43.5% of the vote overall, and the same with the other Dem candidates, and similarly on the other side as well.
RCV is all about increasing choice. According to the devil’s advocate argument you put forth:
No, b/c Biden would still get all 43.5% of the votes that he would have before. So according to this, nothing would be lost?
Although that ignores what would happen if people were not divided solely into two camps: if a bunch of Dem voters picked Sanders as their first choice, and a bunch of Repub ones did the same, then that is where something could get “lost” - Biden in that case could have lost to Sanders!! In that case, yes something gets “lost”, but that is the very intent of the design, to allow voters to choose such a scenario in the first place!?!?
Whatever the people want, that’s what they should get. As opposed to right now where you have to make a guess about who you think is more likely to win, regardless of who you want. No matter how you slice it, RCV increases choice.
With one exception, which I mentioned: if a progressive state gives up their vote to whatever the will of the country is overall, then they lose some of their power. However, (a) the candidate would have to win the popular vote - which in some sense means then that they should deserve that vote?; (b) lately liberals always win the popular vote, so it is not much of a risk. But it is an - admittedly odd - way to go about setting up a RCV-like system, where a state could e.g. vote for Sanders, but then if Biden overall won the popular vote, then switch it over to him. So there, people still end up not having to play that “guessing game” where they pick whoever they think can win, b/c with that fallback mode engaged, they can afford to be more risky, and e.g. vote for Sanders. Again, the risk would be if Trump somehow won the popular vote instead but… that seems extremely unlikely, and yet if he did, then wouldn’t he “deserve” that vote? Yeah this one is a bit round-about and backwards, but it does work towards the same goal… if I am understanding it correctly, which I may not?
I just wanted to highlight that voters aren’t stupid so today the overwhelming majority will vote for biden or trump, not for a third party.
With a better progressive voting system, better candidates will be elected, but only in progressive states. Whereas in the other ones trump will be elected.
If your electoral system is so complicated and convoluted to the point where elections representing 300 million people are decided by only 6% of the population who will more than likely be influenced by those with 99% of the wealth … why bother referring to it as a democracy?
6% of six states. Because of the Electoral College, any majority wins all of a states votes (for most states), regardless of 51% or 75%. The only states that matter are where the election is even enough where that states electoral votes can go either way.
Of course I’ll vote for whoever is more likely to improve society, but my state has historically overwhelmingly voted for one party, so adding my vote to that doesn’t affect anything — this is where you’ll read complaints that for quite a few recent elections, the declared winner was NOT the one with the most popular votes
… and America is supposed to represent the standard for the rest of the world’s democracies?
In that system, people have absolutely no power other than to feel good about themselves while having a confused look on their face.
Fwiw, America started to make its democracy prior to the French revolution, i.e. it is old as fuck. The USA has encouraged democracy all around the world, ostensibly even serving as a role model to its parent the UK that at the time the USA broke away was still fully a monarchy under King George III, but in all that time it has not updated its own system processes.
Nor did it really see a need - e.g. a few decades ago the two sides were more similar than they had ever been previously (obviously not in their talking points but in their actual actions after being elected) - but recently people have revealed how easily the system is to game.
And even deeper than that, the forces of automation and globalization seem to have pulled the wealthy away from having a sense of investment in the nation doing well, to now no longer caring. So while before, they worked alongside the nation to accomplish all of our shared goals - e.g. to not be nuked by Russia during the cold war - now they just (ab)use its populace until robots can manage to replace them, without paying in anywhere close to what they take out. The CGP Grey video Rules for Rulers really opened my eyes, and supremely depressed me, to learn how that works.:-(
But anyway no, I would not look to the USA as the epitome of democracy in today’s era. It is loud, it has Hollywood, it has nukes, it supplies weapons to other places and has the world’s largest economy, but as far as democracy, it greatly lags behind the likes of the EU, with significantly healthier processes.