1y ago

DC Democrats argue ranked choice voting is confusing to voters in predominantly Black areas as they seek to block potential vote on implementing the system

www.businessinsider.com DC Democrats argue ranked choice voting is confusing to voters in predominantly Black areas as they seek to block potential vote on implementing the system

The District of Columbia Democratic Party filed a lawsuit this month to prevent a vote on implementing ranked choice voting in the nation's capital.

DC Democrats argue ranked choice voting is confusing to voters in predominantly Black areas as they seek to block potential vote on implementing the system

Businessinsider.com

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This is the same, tired argument Sarah Palin and other Republicans made here in Alaska when it didn't go their way. How stupid do you think voters are? If they're that easily confused, maybe do a better job at educating them, in say, a classroom when they're young. Maybe bring back Civics classes.
- Then they couldn’t push blue-no-matter-who. The threat of the republic party is their primary means of staying elected. They can’t give us more options. It’s be against their interests.
  
  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.
  
  That's... that's literally what they're talking about. That, because we are forced to decide between two major parties, we have to "vote blue no matter who" in order to not get the worst possible deal.
  That doesn't mean that Democrats are universally the good guys, it just means they're better than the worst possible option.
  I don't know about you, but I'd rather have another option.
  
  I think you are sort of missing the point. Currently Blue no matter what is sadly the best choice right now. Its clear we are seeing that democrats are 100% willing to screw over others to get theirs as well seeing as they are trying to block ranked choice voting, which is a net good thing. Its just straight up first past the post+ (FPTP+).
  Edit: This isn't to advocate against democrats at the current moment because clearly Republicans are just worse in almost every fucking way but we need to be vigilant and its clear we need to fight for Alternative vote/Ranked Choice Voting since the other poster is right, right now Democrats are relying heavily on you have no fucking option besides us. So sit down and shut up and we will give you crumbs rather than the Republicans just shitting in your mouth calling it chocolate.
  
  When the alternative is “cut taxes, hurt people and burn it all down”, blue isn’t a great choice, but it currently is the only one.
  
  Fuck yeah
  This was a novel argument in 2016, by now we're all wise to the "don't vote, surely that will make things better" propaganda
  
  Guess I'm fash for wanting more than what dems will deliver. Like healthcare, student debt relief, free higher education, unions… holy shit, I just realized I'm a fascist fuck. /s
  
  You can SAY whatever you want, but at the end of the day if you don't vote Democrat then yes you're a fascist and/or a moron.
- How stupid do you think voters are?
  Extremely.
  To be fair for about half the population they're kinda right.
  
  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.
- Most of the arguments Republicans made after that election were bad.
  But that election was genuinely an example of a number of the unfortunate pathological edgecases in ranked choice.
  In particular, it failed a number of the mathematical fairness criteria that people have come up with over the years to compare voting systems. Much of it stems from the failure to elect the Condorcet winner, Begich. Basically, Begich could have beaten either Peltola or Palin in a head-to-head election, but he had fewer first place votes than either so he was eliminated first and Peltola beat Palin in the last round.
  So first, it failed 'favorite betrayal' - Palin voters would have been better off voting for Begich. It failed participation: if a bunch of Palin voters stayed home, Begich would have won and they'd be better off. It failed monotonicity: Palin voters could have defeated Peltola by voting for her. Obviously, it failed independence of irrelevant alternatives; Palin acted as a spoiler candidate to Begich.
  All of which isn't an argument for regular party primaries + plurality, which is theoretically much worse. But it's the example advocates of alternative systems like approval or STAR will reach for for a while, just like Burlington used to be.
  
  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.
  
  Failures shouldn't be judged by a standard of "this worked in my favor this time so it's good".
  This time, it benefitted Democrats. Next time, with a different set of candidates, it could elect someone alt-right when most voters preferred an establishment Democrat.
  And Palin definitely shouldn't have won. Most other voting systems would have elected Begich.
  The problem is that IRV genuinely has a lot of weird behavior because the results are so tied to elimination order. You can actually see that visually in a kind of election visualizion called a Yee diagram, where you put candidates on a political compass and color the regions that they'd win if the center of opinion is in that region. Most systems produce sensible diagrams, IRV often produces bonkers ones.

298 comments