It's not completely up to voters, it also requires credible third party to exist and gain traction. Because both Republicans and Democrats seem incapable of such reforms.
Do not imply that both parties are the same on this. That is factually incorrect and Democrats have repeatedly demonstrated an interest in improving democracy.
The GOP, on the other hand, is cheering Trump on as he arrests judges and ignores due process.
While Democrats don't like losing to Republicans they also don't like losing to a third party. Elected Democrats oppose any system that modifies the status quo that "correctly" elected them.
These are not the same.
Honestly IRV is worse than plurality so there are plenty of reasons to oppose it other than a two-party domination conspiracy theory. Using IRV gives up monotonicity, possibilities for a distributed count, and some elements of a secret ballot (for even a medium-sized candidate list) for basically nothing.
Monotonicity is not a theoretical concern. Alaska almost immediately ran into a degenerate case [2].
[0] https://rangevoting.org/NoIrv.html
[1] http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Alaska%27s_at-large_congr...
And probably without even trying. Once it becomes better known, gaming the system like this will happen more often.
It's a shame that's not what everyone uses :/
though: this does go the right way. Condorcet methods are worth discussion. IRV, not so much.
IRV gets implemented a ton in the US, surprisingly. It tends to get enacted because people understand it really quickly, and it tends to get repealed because of center squeeze.
Range voting may well be much better, and there are certainly more mathematically sound versions of ranked-choice than IRV, but I think they utterly fail to convince that IRV is just as bad as plurality. They also seem to only take their game theory as far as necessary to reflect Range Voting in the best possible light. For instance, they argue that voters will almost always rank their less preferred of the front-runners last even if they have greater opposition to other candidates, but they don't explore that candidates can and do chase higher rankings among voters that won't rank them #1. It's an obvious and common strategy (candidates were already doing it in my counties first ever RCV election) so I can only assume the reason its not mentioned is that it improves the soundness of RCV in practice.
Their link is referring to the Irish presidential election, which does use IRV—but it’s a meaningless figurehead position, so it’s unclear how relevant the comparison is.
Also to note, there's nothing technically stopping the US House from moving to proportional representation along with ranked-choice and dems have proposed it recently: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Representation_Act_(Unite...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote#Unite...
Because we have a two party system. Third parties are nothing more than spoilers. If their ideas were good enough, they could gain traction with one side or the other, and build a caucus to get their candidates elected. But they don't, because that's never the actual goal.
I don't see any reason to think this is accurate.
We are living through a successful attempt at this right now. The Tea Party completely engulfed what was once the GOP and morphed into MAGAism. Sadly the progressive wings of the Democratic party never got the memo, and wrote them off until it was too late.
Eh? They've never meaningfully had control of the party, and are surely far more willing to e.g. abandon neoliberalism to avoid that handicap vs. a MAGA-ified Republican Party that's abandoned neoliberalism, than most of the rest of the Democratic Party is. It's the 3rd-way sorts and "centrists" who've been, and remained, in charge of setting direction and who've just kept on trucking with the "we mustn't upset the status quo!" and "maybe courting traditional Republicans will suddenly start working, so we should keep trying that" strategy, no?
What we've lost is independent media having outlets to reach an audience. Pre proliferation of centralized social media platforms, it was easier to find independent voices on the internet through more de-centralized means. I remember coming across the works of Fredrich Hayek and Paul Krugman via the same message board in the early 2000s. Diversity of thought was at least respected, even if it got heated.
I've noticed a steady decline in diversity of thought co-existing on the internet as general social media coalesced around Meta (Facebook, Instagram), Snapchat, Twitter and TikTok. Reddit has also had a slower but meaningful decline in the co-mingling of ideas on merits, and perhaps subjectively, I feel it took longer to get there but ultimately has ended up in the same place, an echo chamber.
There was a time I remember, when progressive, liberal, and conservative people also could seem to agree on some baselines, like not enabling racists.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked-choice_voting_in_the_Un...
If they don't like it, they should be pushing for ranked-choice voting.
The Washington State Democrats are about to have one of our regular meetings this coming weekend, and I guarantee as is the case all all of our meetings, there will be a contingent encouraging all of us to support RCV. As a candidate, I've already been approached again this year as to whether I will support it. It's absolutely a discussion point within our party.
Oops
https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/3040...
I don't think RCV would do much to change that. In order to be elected, you need to be seen, so you need a sizeable media presence. The billionaire class controls enough of the media (traditional, social and "independent") that the people will keep voting for their servants under pretty much any voting system, bar a few exceptions here and there. It's a fundamental issue of electoral democracy, not of the voting system.
One potential alternative would be to switch to non-electoral democracy, e.g. drawing representatives at random rather than electing them, but that's even less likely to happen, and it may end up having different problems. At least it'd suppress all the circus around elections and all that party nonsense, so there's that.
Example? I hear this constantly and yet there's one party that has spent decades trying to protect the environment, protect workers, fund schools, fund health care, provide day care, prevent gun violence, equalize economic opportunity, increase and protect civil rights -- and then there are Republicans acting to stop all of that. I cannot even begin to fathom how anyone - especially in light of the past 100 days -- can tell me with a straight face that my party is the "lesser of two evils."
And as for RCV - how, please offer me an example - of how you think it makes one bit of difference in freeing us from being the "servants of the billionaire class." You want to actually do that? End citizen united and get money out of politics; and good luck with that.
- Repeal of 1999 Glass-Stegall act, leading directly to the 2008 crisis
- Biden’s support for fossil fuel (Willow Project)
- Obama and Biden’s continued expansions of the mass surveillance state
- Prosecution of whistleblowers under Obama
- Fusion centers and protest surveillance
- Bailing out the investment banks in 2008. Refusing to prosecute bankers.
- The Libya regime change
- Support for Saudi in the Yemen war leading to humanitarian crisis
- Drone warfare including extrajudicial killing of American citizens
- Guantanamo Bay. It’s still open.
- Continued material support for the Palestinian genocide (Biden)
- Sanctions on Cuba
- Obama’s “pivot to Asia” to begin a Cold War with China
- Support for many dangerous Latin American right-wing governments
- the continued rise of wealth inequality
I agree Democrats are still better than Trump. That’s why I described them as the lesser of two evils. I also think it’s rational to support Democrats and other factions against the Republicans - without losing sight of the big picture.
> good luck with that
The billionaire class can only see its own narrow interests and actively engenders destruction in the long run. The fossil fuel industry is going to run us into the ground with climate change. The billionaires are instituting a dictatorship that has a long term goal of war with a China (a nuclear power). The long term plan of many of these billionaires is to live on seasteads and in luxury bunkers - or maybe inhabit a dead planet.
Society is undergoing a deep crisis. You speak with confidence that citizens united won’t be overturned. The fact is society is going to be overturned. It’s already being overturned. The future holds for us outcomes such as mass migration and death due to climate change, political instability, nuclear war. These are the outcomes everyone is faced with. We are collectively choosing our future - and the choice is between self-destruction under the reins of these narrow interests - or the divestment of these interests in the spirit of solidarity and democracy.
If you had open system (not one or two-party system) there would be more than three parties.
The Democratic party is a god damn big tent. It's the equivalent of 3-5 parties in any other country. It is mind-blowing how much diversity of thought exists in the Democratic party and we spent an ungodly amount of time and effort fighting amongst ourselves to produce meaningful policy and platform ideas. If you don't like our party, the best thing you can do is join us and use the party as a vehicle to go in the direction you want. I can't say enough - people need to understand that you don't need another party, you just need to understand how you can shape the party to be what you want. It's absolutely mind-blowing how much opportunity there is to work inside the party and move the ball forward rather than stand on the sidelines trying to form some other party and all the BS that would go along with trying to be viable.