{"id":28674,"date":"2020-10-13T12:09:13","date_gmt":"2020-10-13T16:09:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/?p=28674"},"modified":"2020-10-16T22:16:26","modified_gmt":"2020-10-17T02:16:26","slug":"should-i-vote-for-ranked-choice-voting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2020\/10\/13\/should-i-vote-for-ranked-choice-voting\/","title":{"rendered":"Should I vote for ranked-choice voting?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The first of my five mail-in ballots has arrived. 3 out of 7 candidates are Democrats running unopposed. The remaining 4 races are 100 percent guaranteed to be won by Democrats. A potential contest: Question 2<\/a> is whether to adopt ranked choice voting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As someone whose political beliefs are most aligned with the libertarians, a last-choice party in a nation where people want a planned economy (my 2012 document<\/a> after watching both the Republican and Democrat candidates promise that government would create jobs, ensure fair wages, etc.), is this for me? I could vote for a libertarian candidate and then also pick a second choice from a party that has a chance in a country whose citizens want government to cater to their every need? Yet in a Massachusetts general election it is almost inconceivable for a non-Democrat to win. So how can this have any practical effect?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The “Independent Women\u2019s Law Center” opposes this question. We don’t know what people identifying with the remaining 50+ genders say. Wikipedia says that Estonia had something like this, but abandoned it in 2001. As government in Estonia is radically more efficient than here in the U.S., that’s a strike against the idea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Readers: What do you say about this proposal?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Update, 10\/16: a friend highlighted “The Ancient Greeks Teach Us The Perils of Ranked Choice Voting”<\/a>, by a political science professor:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As this list [of supporters] makes clear, RCV supporters fall overwhelmingly into two (mostly overlapping) categories: Democrats and groups whose members vote heavily for Democratic candidates; and groups that (Libertarians aside) have practically no chance of winning elections even under RCV, except at the local level. Given Massachusetts\u2019s status as a heavily Democratic state (the state\u2019s congressional delegation consists solely of Democrats, who also have long held a substantial supermajority in the legislature), Democrats have little to fear from losing elections to Republicans as a result of RCV. Rather, they need to court members of left-liberal fringe groups, as well as public-employee unions, to ensure that they turn out to vote \u2014 knowing that those groups\u2019 supporters would almost surely make the Democratic candidate, at worst, their second-choice candidate, further guaranteeing the defeat of any Republican contender.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The first of my five mail-in ballots has arrived. 3 out of 7 candidates are Democrats running unopposed. 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