Ranked choice voting systems are a big step towards enhancing democracy and building consensus. So, naturally Republicans are calling them a scam because, you know, they lost.
There is growing reason to believe that the predicted Republican tsunami in November is crashing on the rocks. There was the vote in Kansas showing the impact of Dobbs. There was the special election in NY-19th. There is polling in Senate races in PA, AZ, GA, FL, NC, OH, etc. where MAGA candidates are floundering where Republicans should be winning. And now this historic victory for a Democrat in Alaska which was, I will be the first to admit, handed to the Democrats by a whiny MAGA-Republican loser.
And hanging over all this is the zombie and increasingly desperate presence of Mr. Donald Trump. The whiniest MAGA loser of them all. Thanks Trump!
Tidewater News and Opinion Forum 
RE: “Ranked choice voting systems are a big step towards enhancing democracy and building consensus.”
Some people think so, but the hypothesis has never been proved. My own view is that it is impossible to determine the true will of the people in any form of election, but it shouldn’t matter in an ideal world where all candidates truly want to do right by their constituents and failures in office can be removed.
Wikipedia has an article on ranked voting systems that explains some of the history and formal criticism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked_voting
LikeLike
There is no one “will of the people.” People will always have different opinions. But, in a democracy, the will of the majority of the people is supposed to rule. Unfortunately, we are saddled with an Electoral College that has twice in this century given us Presidents that the majority of the public did not want. In this past election, we came very close to having the party that controlled the state, rather than the people of the state, deciding who those electors were. We managed to survive being lied into a war by one appointed President. It remains to be seen whether we will survive having had a traitorous seditionist appointed President. Both times, the will of the majority was ignored. Both times ended in disaster.
LikeLiked by 3 people
RE: “But, in a democracy, the will of the majority of the people is supposed to rule.”
If that’s what you want, ranked voting is not a good way to get there. Personally, I don’t want majority rule.
LikeLike
“Personally, I don’t want majority rule.”
So, who DO you want to rule?
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’m happy with the Constitutional system we have in place, although I favor repeal of the 17th Amendment.
LikeLike
“but it shouldn’t matter in an ideal world”
There’s the rub. We do not live in an ideal world.
Here in the real world “democracy is the worst form of government – except for all the others that have been tried.” – W. Churchill.
LikeLiked by 3 people
RE: “We do not live in an ideal world.”
Irrelevant. We can and sometimes have lived in a “world where all candidates truly want to do right by their constituents and failures in office can be removed.”
LikeLike
“Irrelevant. ”
That we don’t live in an ideal world?
I see this conversation going down the same old path of goofy counterfactual obtuseness, so I will just say . . . Okay.
LikeLiked by 3 people
RE: “That we don’t live in an ideal world?”
Yes, that’s irrelevant because you left out the definition. So yet again you are forcing a conversation to conform to your own fantasies.
LikeLike
“So yet again you are forcing a conversation to conform to your own fantasies.”
My fantasies?
YOU defined it . . . “an ideal world where all candidates truly want to do right by their constituents and failures in office can be removed.”
I stated a fact – we do not live in such a world that YOU defined as ideal.
With that, I am done. Not worth trying with you.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yes, reality is irrelevant to you. I noticed that a long time ago.
You say failures in office can be removed. Yes, they can if their own party doesn’t block their impeachment… TWICE… and doesn’t riot in the Capitol when they lose the following election… or threaten civil war if that failure is prosecuted for crimes committed while in office.
LikeLiked by 3 people
RE: “Yes, reality is irrelevant to you.”
Perhaps you misunderstand me. I don’t care for realities that require personal attacks and misrepresentations.
LikeLike
What exactly did Ms. Radford mischaracterize? Everything she stated is real, the truth, and should not be up for question. Except in the mindless unraveling of a political party and its orange-haired god-king and the drooling minions who support his anti-democratic ravings, lies, and total bullcrap..
LikeLiked by 1 person
Truth at last! You don’t want majority rule. You don’t want democracy.
You want a dictator who, of course, will dictate whatever laws you yourself want. Well, good luck with that because, unless you yourself are planning on being the dictator, your elected overlords will, sooner or later, come for you.
Most people who want dictators want them because they want someone who will do all of the rotten things they want done, but don’t want to take any responsibility for doing them. Throw those people into the oven! I want them out of my way, but I don’t want to be responsible for doing it.
I’m with Paul. I’m outta here.
LikeLiked by 2 people
RE: “You don’t want democracy.”
Neither did Plato, or the Founding Fathers.
RE: “You want a dictator who, of course, will dictate whatever laws you yourself want.”
I never said so. I’m actually happy with the Constitutional system we have, minus the 17th Amendment.
LikeLike
Mr. Roberts, thank you for your patience in constantly having to repeat your well stated points. I appreciate it.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Mr. Roberts once again pats himself on the back.
LikeLike
No rational person wants a democracy. I doubt if you really want one.
In a democracy, the majority could outlaw golf. Or live theater. Or Jazz Just because they don’t like it.
What we are supposed to have is a representative republic with limited powers. The Constitution does not authorize the government to decide what games you can play, what entertainment you can enjoy or what kind of music you can listen to.
It also doesn’t authorize the government to tell you what kind of car you can drive or where you buy health insurance, but the government does so anyway, so we are straying dangerously close to democracy.
So, what we should be doing is getting really strict about the Constitution, to protect us from the horrors of democracy..
LikeLike
“No rational person wants a democracy. ”
You are beating up a straw man. We have Constitutional protections against each of those bad thing you say a democracy would do.
But speaking of what rational people do not want – that would be rule by an ignorant, violent minority that does not share the values of the majority. That is what we have now.
LikeLiked by 2 people
If we went by the values of the majority, there would be no golf, live theater or Jazz.
LikeLike
“If we went by the values of the majority, there would be no golf, live theater or Jazz.”
I find it telling that your take on sharing values lands on recreational choices. I was referring to far more fundamental values.
LikeLiked by 1 person
That is the point.
Once the tyranny of the majority is established, there is nothing too trivial for the mob to control.
You might get lucky and get a wise and benevolent king, but the mob is never either.
Democratic processes must be held in check by a strictly enforced Constitution of limited government powers are it quickly descends into the worst form of government,
LikeLike
“That is the point.”
You are still pummeling an imaginary straw man. We have a Constitutional system that protects individual rights. Within that system, rule of the majority is inherently preferable to rule by a minority.
There are MANY countries that are far more democratic than we are and they have had decades to descend into the horrors of your imagination. That has not happened.
LikeLiked by 1 person
That really wasn’t ranked choice as intended, that was a Jungle Primary.
Ranked choice could be used by each party to select its candidate and again for the general election if there are multiple parties, but it produces adverse results when used with multiple candidates from multiple parties.
That’s how David Duke wound up as the GOP candidate in Louisiana years back against Edwin Edwards.
Properly used, ranked choice provides opportunity for more than 2 parties to be viable.
LikeLike
“Properly used, ranked choice provides opportunity for more than 2 parties to be viable.”
As I understand it, anybody could have joined in the first round. I am not sure how that is unfair to Libertarians or anyone else. You just want to be able to skip over the hard part and be guaranteed a place in the final.
You say it produced adverse results? I guess that means results you do not like. In effect, their were three parties in the Alaska process – Democrats, Republicans and MAGA-Republicans. The Democrat had the plurality of the first choices at each stage of the process. And she was second choice of enough Republicans to put her over the top in the end. So basically a consensus of Democrats and Republicans carried the day and the extremist lost out. Seems good to me.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Parties should be able to select their candidates without interference from other parties.
Louisiana has had so-called open primaries a long time,
David Duke, with zero support from Republicans, entered the governor’s race after changing his registration to Republican. Drawing support from the redneck Democrats North of the Lake and from North Louisiana, came out ahead of the GOP candidate and ran in the runoff with Edwin Edwards.
The LA GOP handed out bumper stickers saying “Vote for the Crook, It’s Important” supporting the Democrat Edwards(before he went to prison) to prevent Duke from winning claiming to be a Republican.
LikeLike
“Parties should be able to select their candidates without interference from other parties.”
Should?
Political parties are not part of the Constitution and, in fact, were anathema to the Founding Fathers.
The sad but true fact is that David Duke is a popular guy in Louisiana.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Duke was popular in parts of LA at the time. I don’t know if he is even popular North of the Lake any more.
But I didn’t say it wasn’t constitutional, I simply said that parties should be able to select their candidates without outside interference. Not as a matter of the Constitution but as a matter of ethics.
LikeLike
Ethics?
A complete overuse of that word. The Alaska primary had at least one Libertarian in it. He did not make the top 4? Unethical?
I think I got it Above. You want a free pass to the finals for your extremist party. Here is an idea – field candidates and policies that people want. Crazy, huh?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Regardless of what you may think about political parties, the US has a unique problem. We only have two of them. And at this point, the polarization is so strong, that many Americans, myself included, have to acquiesce on issues that we don’t agree with at all to select a candidate. A blend of cultural, economic and foreign policy issues make such choices difficult and unsatisfying. For example, you can’t support a party for its views on fiscal restraint if its cultural issues are an anathema to you. But you have little choice other than weighing which is more important.
And if we have a party that is “you are either with us or against us” and labels you as an “enemy of the people” unless you toe every plank in the platform, what to do?
We are not a pure democracy. Few countries, if any, are. For one thing, it would be very unwieldy and devolve into some kind of autocracy by majority. So the founders decided a representative form would be better. And of course, in the early days, universal suffrage was not even on the radar. But voting rights have expanded and as such, both parties have worked diligently to make sure each gets as big a chunk of the electorate as is possible, ethically or not. Gerrymandering comes to mind as a huge flaw in the Constitution. That the controlling party in each state gets to keep control by selecting districts. That might have been thought to be ok so long as only the elite, landowners and the educated still got the vote. But that has left the station a long time ago.
So the conundrum is how to keep our country open, fair and free under the current mess. Education, communication and a broad based middle are the best solutions, in my opinion. We have the tools, but not necessarily the political will…yet. We are so wrapped up in cultural issues amplified by a “no compromise” stance by some, particularly in the party of Newt who demanded that in the mid-nineties.
I still think democratic principles are the best. An educated and prosperous electorate is the best way to keep it. In other words, politically we need to “smarten up” rather than “dumb down”. And if we do that, we can keep the wannabe autocrats at bay.
IMO
LikeLiked by 2 people
With these jungle primaries (anybody from any party in what is in effect a general election) you’ll be lucky to have 2 parties.
Let’s say the Ds and the Rs find that an L candidate is in the election too, The Rs think the L might beat them out for 2nd place in the first round, so they sponsor 3 more phony L candidates to spit that vote. The L candidate comes in third and the R & D go on to the final round,
The next election, the Ds find that worked for the Rs and they put up one D candidate and sponsor a number of R candidates one of whom is really a D and supported by a public employee union.
The R vote is spit with the fake candidate coming in 2nd, and in effect the general election is between 2 Ds’
The Democrats used that tactic successfully in LA for decades.
Open, or jungle, primaries are the road to one party rule.
LikeLike