Ranked choice voting: does your state currently have it? Or considering it?

[Guest]

25 minutes ago, shawthorne44 said:

You have convinced me.  

Well that was easy. 😃

[Guest]

4 minutes ago, Grace Hopper said:

That raises an interesting idea. Wouldn’t it be better to have standardized voting days? I totally understand why it would never happen, states’ rights and all that, but what if all the primaries were held on the same day?

I have wished it could be like this (although I am still pro-early voting), but I would LOVE it if all the votes have to be within, say, a two-week window. There has only been one or two times in my voting career that the person I wanted as nominee was still in the race when my state voted. I think it happened in 2012 and it happened one other time in the 90s. All other times I have had to pick from whatever choices were left, if there is any choice at all, or don’t vote. 

[Pam in CT]

Thanks for all replies - I've got a lot going on today and can't respond post by post until later, but am loving hearing all these experiences & feedback & ideas. Please keep them coming.

Closed v open primaries, and the schedule of (particularly Presidential; the others don't matter so much) primaries, and many voters' dissatisfaction with the binary-choice-of-two on the ultimate ballot are all among reasons voters cite -- including on the thread so far -- for feeling like our votes don't matter.

Part of the goal in considering how municipalities & states might tweak their systems within the authority they have to tweak their systems is to address two elements: [within the full registry of all registered voters] who is eligible to vote on which ballots (ie open/closed primary question) ; and what candidates are on the ballot (which gets to candidate ballot qualification criteria -- number of signatories, endorsement by all -- not just the major two -- qualified parties, sometimes there are other routes to get on). It's wonky weedy details but every state has some mechanism to get onto the printed ballot.

One of the reasons I appreciate RCV as an option that has the potential, at least, to address some elements of both those "levers" is that RCV is a tweak that states and even municipalities have the actual authority to do.  It's a change that can be made (Maine) or piloted on a trial basis (New York City) without any kind of federal legislation or Constitutional amendment (which anything touching the EC would require) or joint concurrence between the two major parties (which changing the primary schedule would require) or between both major parties and state elections authorities (which changing the primary schedule would also require).

I'm always acutely conscious of path dependency, is there actually a feasible way to move from where we are to something Better?  In a perfect world starting from a clean sheet of paper I probably would, net-net, favor a proportionately representative parliamentary system. A full overhaul. That isn't on our table however. I'm interested in feasible tweaks, that move us toward Better.

[Murphy101]

21 hours ago, Pam in CT said:

Ah.

So, in ranked choice voting, the general idea is, there are multiple names -- typically anywhere from ~3-6 on the ballot. (How those names get onto the ballot depends on the mechanics of how it's set up.)

From the voter's POV, you can vote for anywhere from just one, to as much as maybe ~4 (again, depending on mechanics of how it's set up) and denote on your ballot which is your 1st, 2nd, 3rd,4th choice.

[The tabulator machines have to have the technical capacity to record not just your selections, but the order of your priorities -- so *two* bits of information per ballot rather than just one. Newer ones can, older ones, including CT's, cannot; so, that cost is one of the implementation issues.]

After the votes are cast, the [district / municipality / state] counts all the *first choice* votes.

If a candidate wins > 51%, we're done! That candidate wins.

But since there are so many candidates, that's unlikely. So the bottom vote-getter is eliminated, and all the ballots of all the voters who voted for that now-eliminated bottom choice are (automatically) re-counted, with their second-choice names added to that candidate's tally.

If after that re-calculation with one fewer candidate, someone NOW is > 51%, now we're done! That candidate wins.

And so on, until -- as the re-calculation keeps re-shuffling the "eliminated" candidate votes over to candidates still standing -- someone breaks 51%.

Okay. I can see the appeal of that. However wins may not have been the first choice of their votes but they wouldn’t have been the last. So I’m theory less chance of stark polarization. But I have serious concerns that this will also further entrench the current 2 parties. It’s extremely costly for any 3rd party to even scrap one candidate to compete one on one. 

There’s other things I’d like to see legislated too. A mandatory inclusion on ballots and in debates for all candidates from any party and independent.  Maybe a series of debates that weeds them out as it gets closer to election.  I’m willing to have a low minimum backing requirement too.  But I desperately want more options than dem or rep.

And I also think we need to be careful not to over estimate American reading comprehension or basic literacy. Seriously. I hate writing that but denial won’t change it. 

2 hours ago, shawthorne44 said:

The reason I'm really against forced voting can be boiled down to, that guy who renamed himself Jack Sparrow would win.    Even if there was None of the Above as an option.  You force someone to vote, they'll be cranky when there.    Even if it was just a heavily Get-Out-The-Vote area but not forced, people won't be cranky but they won't know who to vote for and will go for name recognition.  

There’s things we can do to make voting easier for everyone regardless of mandatory voting.

I don’t think people know who to vote for now and vote for name recognition/brand already.