Is it patronizong if it's backed by data? The article discusses how they're not just claiming it's confusing for these districts out of nothing, they're pointing to existing voting data that shows when there are multiple seats to fill for the same position, such as City Council seats, voters in these districts neglect to cast votes for the additional seats at a higher rate than other districts. "Undervoting" it's apparently called.

This is a horrifically self-serving bullshit "solution" to this problem, but there does appear to be a real problem that ought to be addressed as part of a ranked-choice rollout.

But undervoting isn't really a problem. No one is being disenfranchised by not casting a second vote (or ranking all options), they just aren't availing themselves of the full range of options. Even just voting for one person could be an intentional choice if you don't really care about the other options or want your first choice to have a better chance of winning an expected head-to-head.

This is at worst an indicator the government should run some informational campaigns, not a reason not to use multi-voting systems.

I get this in theory but it gave me the hilarious mental image of someone gathering their phone, keys, wallet, going to their local polling station, showing their ID, walking to the voting machine, then thinking, "Oh no, I'm allowed to vote for TWO people?" and immediately bolting out the door.

It's a design and execution problem, not a voter problem. The Florida ballots had a stupid design that met the needs of a counting machine, not the needs of voters

Maybe the second candidate was s*** and nobody wanted to vote for them? Or maybe voters really only wanted the one person.

Quick grab your kente cloth and kneel to make it all better!

BeRnIe iS tOO exTreMe!

Demsocs in the corner: Nooo they'll give up power when the will of the people is clear! They promised they love democracy!

I miss r/neoliberal

What?

For profit prisons, and tough on crime policies are two massive contributors to poverty.

Not to mention centuries of racial oppression.

Not defending the DNC, but come on..

"Poor kids are just as bright as white kids."

Ah yes, people so "tolerant" that you'd rather they just call a slur.

Democrats in power love that the GOP has become unhinged

I feel like it's important to point out right now that this was literally Hillary's strategy in 2016. Google "HRC Pied Piper", we have the email where she told the DNC to help boost the campaigns of the crazier republicans like Trump. The theory was that he would be too crazy for the general election. The fact was she vastly underestimated the triumvirate powers of voter apathy, right wing populist rhetoric and the average person's disdain for her personally and was halfway through her victory lap in Texas when she realized that she actually lost.

So yeah, if you were one of the people harmed by the hateful rhetoric and incompetent policymaking of the Trump administration he's absolutely at fault, but it's important to remember that the DNC was willing to gamble with your safety and stability in order to maintain power. They're aristocrats first, then they choose what flavor of aristocrat to be.

Which is exactly where the "both sides" arguments come from. Sure, the Democrats aren't openly pushing the country towards fascism, but they also aren't interested in real change that would fix some of the fundamental problems, like with the electoral system. They'd rather be the one rational choice in a system that enables the Republicans and all of the risks that go along with that than support a system that would have a better chance at making real progress.

Democrats in power love that the GOP has become unhinged. It makes the rational choice incredibly easy.

This dynamic frightens me so much.

They may not be the same but they're both racist as fuck. Republicans see POCs as animals and Democrats see them as children.

Got what? Both sides are the same? Let me check the list:

Nah, still not the same. It just sucks you are stuck with two parties that don't completely oppose each other on all policy points.

From the article:

The lawsuit notes that in elections for at-large seats on the DC city council — where voters can currently choose two candidates — voters in Wards 7 and 8 are less likely to cast a second vote, a phenomenon known as "undervoting."

"Many of those voters report their confusion about selecting more than one candidate for what appears to be the same office," said Wilson in the lawsuit, arguing that implementing ranked-choice voting "would introduce an additional layer of confusion to the electorate."

They aren't saying black people can't figure it out, they're reporting that voters in predominantly black areas haven't. It's not a statement of belief, it's a statement of fact. Now, the solution should be to provide resources to educate them on how the new system works, not to abandon it. That would take effort though, and wouldn't work to maintain the status quo.

It's the "noble savage"/"white savior" trope again. People really think they're fighting racism by implying minorities can't make their own decision.

In not criticizing allies, to be clear. I'm criticizing people who aren't comfortable having personal relationships with minorities, and abuse progressivism to make themselves feel like they aren't part of the problem.

The dude who said it is himself black.

Either he's a self-hating black person, thinks it's too complex for anyone, or more likely he's being disingenuous because he thinks this is bad for the party.

if after points to literally fucking everything we can't get done, and are losing ground on" everything, you're STILL not "blue-no-matter-who" you're in league with the fascists, and garbage.

I mean they are but they aren't. They are doing this because it only benefits them to deny ranked choice voting. There is literally no negative to it beyond it being only slightly better than FPTP, which we have been stuck with for centuries.

Note: Splitting the vote and the spoiler effect are stupid problems of FPTP and we shouldn't have to deal with them.

That doesn't sound like a failure to me, unless you wanted a Republican representative. And saying "if more people had voted for Palin she would have won" is pretty laughable. All Republicans had to do was vote Palin 1st, Begich 2nd (or vice versa) and they would have then had their pick in the next round, but Palin was such an awful candidate, Begich's supporters would rather see Peltola over her (as they should), and Palin's supporters seemingly didn't vote for Begich either. No matter how you slice it, the Republicans screwed themselves, and I am here for it.

We wanted Bernie. We got a Clinton.

The polling place where I was during Bernie's first primary was turning away people with provisional ballots, telling them they weren't allowed to vote with those in a primary. They were allowed, it was just that the vast majority of provisional ballot holders were Bernie voters who were voting for the first time because there was finally someone they felt excited to vote for.

I raised a fuss and Karened my way to getting the director on the phone and demanded that she tell the supervisors that they needed to allow the voters to vote. I said that this was a huge problem and had obviously been happening all day. She said "Were you there all day to see it? No? Then there is nothing you can do about it!"

Also there is the part where the DNC's defense in court (when they were sued for taking donations from Bernie supporters who believed they were unbiased) was "We were so obviously biased that anyone who didn't notice was not paying attention, we gave no illusion of fairness. Also, the rule that says we have to be unbiased is our own rule, not a law and we can break our own rules if we want to!" And they won.

Party primaries are under no legal obligation to be fair and thr DNC are pretty open about changing policies to rig the outcomes of their primaries.

That's a bit backwards.

Instant runoff voting makes it so ranking a second choice can't hurt your first choice. But voting honestly for your first choice instead of e.g. staying home could cause your second choice to lose and your last choice to win.

That happened in the recent Alaskan election. If a bunch of Palin voters stayed home, they'd have gotten Begich. Instead, Palin voters single-handedly elected Democrat by voting honestly.

That said, “because we might lose” is not a good reason to not make the system better.

Establishment Democrats aren't refusing to make the system better because Democrats in general might lose; they're refusing because each of them individually is worried he might lose to a more progressive or leftist challenger. It's blatant power-hungry selfishness.

Establishment Dems cutting their face to spite their nose. Everyone knows ranked choice means more Dem support than Repub, but also opens up 3rd party influence.

This shit is why the rest of the developed world says the US has two right wing parties.

Really I am not even talking about voters when I am talking about power, I am talking about funding.

The duopoly grants the 2 parties extra funding that third parties can't access. This prevents real third party candidates from running unless they are already billionaire-connected. It saves the billionaires the trouble of trying to buy many parties. They can just buy the 2. So Dems and Republicans have safe sources of funding / power that can't be challenged by more competent representatives.

I think dems and republicans both correctly see their representatives as 'bought' to some extent and want real alternatives.

Holy shit, this makes sense to me. I'm in a historically red state and our RCV is massively disliked by the Trumpers. They also lost the last election. If the incumbent DC voters see RCV as a reason they would lose their current candidates, they would say the same shit. And they are.

Yes exactly. Whichever party has a stranglehold in a given state/county/whatever will object because ranked choice voting has the potential to allow previously marginal (or zero chance) candidates to be elected.

Democrats are not inherently more fair-minded than conservatives. Both parties' (all parties, actually) first priority is to maintain power. Everything else is secondary to that.

That's the exact opposite of the situation. The tax code is so outrageously complicated and obtuse that only the rich can afford the sort of accounting to take advantage of it.

Don't give ammo to a shit takinge point.

You need to be addressing this complaint to the Democratic party officials in this story who are doing that. The Republicans didn't start off with a coup, they started with years of lesser voter suppression/democracy undermining methods that escalated to a coup when they got backed into a corner, but it's been the same basic "to hell with the voters, we want power" thinking the whole time, and that's the exact same kind of thinking Dems are engaging in here.

I get what you're saying, but "liberal progressive" is an oxymoron. Progressivism is center left/left while neoliberalism is center right/right.

Not everything to the left of fascism is left of center.

People aren't stupid we know how to fucking rank things. Undervoting occurs when they don't like any of the candidates, having ranked choice means independents and non dem/rep parties can actually have a chance and so people will be more willing to vote. You act like this isn't a wildly successful model for democratic voting used throughout the rest of the world. Fuck off...

Changing the system to be less representative isn't fixing the problem

AT ALL

They should be leading the charge. You know -- educating people how to be better. Like good leaders do.

Ranked choice will definitely encourage third, fourth, fifth and maybe even a sixth party.

The two party system you have in the US is a stunted version of the party system.

https://youtu.be/s7tWHJfhiyo explains how our current system works and alternatives

You're topping the list for me, right now.

Sounds like they need to explain the system instead of crying about it.

Its still a bad reason for stopping ranked choice. Those at-large sections are different than the rest of the ballot. Is that a good enough of a reason to keep a system that limits competition between political parties?

nowhere in the article is there an explanation by anyone why ranked choice voting would be worse for these groups, just that it would be confusing.

Uh, being confusing is what would make it worse.

I'm not saying that they're right or wrong. What I'm saying is that the reactions in this comment section of people saying "oh the racist Democrats think black people are too dumb to understand ranked choice" is a complete misrepresentation. The Democrats are saying that the evidence has shown that people in these low-income, predominantly black areas, under-voted when expected to choose two candidates on a ballot, and they're concerned that this will be an even worse problem on a ranked choice ballot where people may be expected to choose up to 5 candidates.

Disenfranchisement of poor and minority voters should be a concern.

It's racism point blank, no need to act like these assholes are anything more than that. Democrats are now also trying to pander to some of the racists as Trump has, we need ranked choice now more than ever.

Voters were able to select two candidates and only voted for one

Clarification: low-income voters from predominantly black areas did this, which is effectively disenfranchisement. That's the concern: that low-income minorities may be disenfranchised by more complex/confusing ballots. The concern is real because it already happened.

You guys are exhausting.

No one is saying black people are too dumb to understand ranked choice. They're saying that people from low income, predominantly black areas, under-voted when required to choose two candidates on past ballots. That means those people were effectively disenfranchised. If the evidence shows that ranked choice could potentially disenfranchise people from low-income minority areas, that is something to be concerned about.