Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Compulsory voting is a dumb and scary idea in my opinion. If a person has no interest in politics and has no interest in assessing the qualifications of the various candidates, then why on earth would you want them to cast a vote that could nullify a thoughtful, well-informed vote by someone who pays attention to the issues and really cares?
If someone tells you by their actions that "they don't care", then take them at their word and leave them out of the decision making and leave it up to the people who DO care.
Compulsory voting is a dumb and scary idea in my opinion. If a person has no interest in politics and has no interest in assessing the qualifications of the various candidates, then why on earth would you want them to cast a vote that could nullify a thoughtful, well-informed vote by someone who pays attention to the issues and really cares?
If someone tells you by their actions that "they don't care", then take them at their word and leave them out of the decision making and leave it up to the people who DO care.
I'm somewhat maybe inclined to agree with this opinion. People forced to do something that they don't want to, will sometimes look for ways to undermine the task that cause unnecessary problems. I see no benefit to forcing someone to vote, who is only going to spoil their vote. OTOH, you'll likely get more people to show up who won't spoil, but is the benefit worth the cost?
Two good pieces on RCV. The first against, the 2nd a reply.
Quote:
To be clear, ranked-choice voting is perfectly suitable for low-stakes elections; the problem comes when one gets down to serious business. Electing the right people requires that voters have the ability to see and evaluate their most viable options in direct comparison with each other. That is a feature missing from, and apparently anathema to, RCV.
Mickey Edwards, who served as a member of Congress for sixteen years from Oklahoma, has performed lifelong service to American democracy—including his opposition to “sore loser” laws that, in forty-seven states, prohibit candidates who lose party primaries from running as independents in the general election.
In 2006, Joseph Lieberman lost to Ned Lamont in the Connecticut Democratic senatorial primary. Because Connecticut does not have a “sore loser” law, Lieberman then ran in the general election as an independent—and won. Many who voted for Lamont in the primary may have switched to Lieberman in the general election to ensure his victory over Republican Alan Schlesinger. Thus, Connecticut’s Democratic primary voters had the chance to vote for more than one candidate. That is what ranked-choice voting (RCV) lets voters do—and what the current system, first-past-the-post voting (FPTP), does not.
We were surprised, therefore, to see Edwards, in his recent essay for American Purpose, reject RCV as a replacement for FPTP.
Of course, the ranked choice voting is far from reality. I am also not sure if it can save the day given how much money is driving the rush to the extremes. But, it is a positive trend that I see. Hopefully others can see more.
I look forward to reading what others think on this topic.
The majority of State constitutions prohibit it by default.
That is to say, the State constitutions do not expressly ban or bar ranked-choice voting, rather those constitutions state rather emphatically that certain offices must win by a plurality.
Accordingly, nearly all State constitutions would have to be amended and that is not gonna happen.
Second, rank-choice voting is a degenerative back-door virus.
You need only look at where ranked-choice voting was implemented on the local level, such as mayorial or council races.
Example: Turd City has 4 candidates running for mayor. Ranked-choice voting morphed into allowing you to cast 4 votes for any one candidate, or 3 votes for one candidate and 1 vote for another.
Finally, ranked-choice voting will in no way alter the course of US history on its current trajectory.
The Liberal agenda-driven Media is 100% responsible for the polarization and so long as they continue to profit off of it, it will not cease.
Right?
Why would I wanna publish Truth with no omissions of material facts? That's boring, which means no click-bait advertising revenues.
If I lie or lie by omission, and inflame and incense, I get lots of click-bait and I'm making a dozen trips to the bank every day.
I have long favored ranked choice voting, but I appreciate there are varieties of what that term means. To Mircea's point, I would not support cumulative voting (where someone can cast multiple votes for a candidate). The RCV structure I would like to see tried more widely is also called the instant runoff. Voters rank their choices among the candidates. First pass through every voters first choice is counted. If a candidate receives a majority, that candidate wins. However, if no candidate wins an outright majority then the next step could be either to (a) advance the two candidates receiving the highest number of votes to the instant runoff or (b) advance all the candidates except the one with the lowest number of votes to the instant runoff. In the next round. if a voter's first choice is in the round, that first choice continues to be counted. For voters whose first choice did not advance, then the highest choice still in the running gets counted. If the process is the simpler version where only two candidates advance to the second round, this second round will decide it. If only one candidate is knocked out in each round it may require additional rounds. Again, these rounds aren't actual rounds of voting, just rounds of counting the ballots based on ranked choice, and this should be achievable by computer.
The biggest reason I favor this system is based on the fact that one of the things I find most corrosive about the current U.S. political system is the biopoly of power between the Democrat and Republican parties. Those of us who support neither find ourselves with the Hobbesian choice of selecting the Democrat or Republican candidate we think is the least objectionable or "throwing away" our votes on a third party or independent candidate. I believe the instant runoff style of RCV frees people up to rank their actual first choice first because they know that if no candidate gets an outright majority then in the next round their "lesser of two evils" vote will be counted.
Is it perfect? Far from it. For one thing, there would still be people who would take the lesser of two evils approach for fear of one of the candidates achieving an outright majority. But it's a start.
The majority of State constitutions prohibit it by default.
That is to say, the State constitutions do not expressly ban or bar ranked-choice voting, rather those constitutions state rather emphatically that certain offices must win by a plurality.
Accordingly, nearly all State constitutions would have to be amended and that is not gonna happen.
Second, rank-choice voting is a degenerative back-door virus.
You need only look at where ranked-choice voting was implemented on the local level, such as mayorial or council races.
Example: Turd City has 4 candidates running for mayor. Ranked-choice voting morphed into allowing you to cast 4 votes for any one candidate, or 3 votes for one candidate and 1 vote for another.
Finally, ranked-choice voting will in no way alter the course of US history on its current trajectory.
The Liberal agenda-driven Media is 100% responsible for the polarization and so long as they continue to profit off of it, it will not cease.
Right?
Why would I wanna publish Truth with no omissions of material facts? That's boring, which means no click-bait advertising revenues.
If I lie or lie by omission, and inflame and incense, I get lots of click-bait and I'm making a dozen trips to the bank every day.
1st bolded: RCV is a plurality system, so I don't believe it's implicitly banned in the way you suggest. In an MMD when the top vote getter is elected they and their votes are removed from further counts to determine the 2nd, 3rd, 4th positions etc.
2nd bolded: I'm unaware of any voting system where a voter can give a candidate more than one vote.
Can you share a real life example of what you are referring to?
First of all, the US needs to eliminate the electoral college system, or nullify it. The president is a national position that represents everyone, so they should be elected directly by a majority of the voters that they would serve, the same exact way we elect a governor of a state. We don't say you have to win the majority of a certain number of individual counties in order to become the governor, and we don't effectively weigh votes different based on which county of a state you're voting in, and we shouldn't do that for federal positions. The states should have nothing to do with that office.
Beyond that, I'm certainly open to the ranked choice voting, and open primaries and any reasonable suggestions to improve electoral democracy.
Here in the digital age, maybe it's time we should just get rid of the concept of traditional political parties (which came from a way different era), and focus on individuals and policies. Especially since the US seems to have more or less effectively outlawed all but 2 of them. Parties and labels are just a source of endless, mindless fighting and bigotry. I don't see the real point.
First of all, the US needs to eliminate the electoral college system, or nullify it. The president is a national position that represents everyone, so they should be elected directly by a majority of the voters that they would serve, the same exact way we elect a governor of a state. We don't say you have to win the majority of a certain number of individual counties in order to become the governor, and we don't effectively weigh votes different based on which county of a state you're voting in, and we shouldn't do that for federal positions. The states should have nothing to do with that office.
Let's say that a candidate formed the "Pacific Coast Party" or "Calexico Party" and promised to end income taxes in California and all other states with Pacific Ocean beachfront or a border with Mexico (despite constitutional problems with that idea) and keep it in the other 41 states? With overwhelming votes from California and Texas, a popular vote plurality would be easy.
There are reasons for requiring some broad appeal nationwide, and to rural as well as urban areas. That was, after all, part of the rationale for an Electoral College.
Let's say that a candidate formed the "Pacific Coast Party" or "Calexico Party" and promised to end income taxes in California and all other states with Pacific Ocean beachfront or a border with Mexico (despite constitutional problems with that idea) and keep it in the other 41 states? With overwhelming votes from California and Texas, a popular vote plurality would be easy.
I mean, they'd lose in an overwhelming landslide? Especially if they're a Republican, they're not going to get as many votes as you think in California (who largely believe in taxes in order to fund things), and the entire state only has 39 million people anyway, with the US population being 329 million. And Texas has less population than that, is more of a purple state now, so they'll get a somewhat split vote there. And they'll lose overwhelmingly in most of the other 48 states, out of pure resentment if nothing else.
Quote:
There are reasons for requiring some broad appeal nationwide, and to rural as well as urban areas. That was, after all, part of the rationale for an Electoral College.
And broad appeal nationwide would still be quite necessary with a direct election, actually would be more so. Republican presidential candidates would actually start to campaign in places like Massachusetts, which they have no reason to do now under the electoral college. And the handful of "battleground" states like Pennsylvania, wouldn't get a disproportionate amount of focus.
Governor races don't just focus on the largest city or couple of cities, they campaign statewide and travel throughout the state, trying to appeal to rural and urban and suburban voters.
Well in our federal election voting has just concluded in the eastern states, so had my experience with our ranked choice voting. For our local electorate there were six candidates to rank which was easy enough. The Senate was a challenge, where we elect Senators for our state, as there were twenty- three groups with three or four candidates in each group. We could just rank six groups but I had not even heard of most of the groups. The ballot paper was about three feet wide.
It has been a very dull election, for which I actually feel grateful. A lot of the discussion today has been in comparing the cost of the sausage sandwiches at the fundraising stalls at many polling places. At my grandkids school they were $3 and $2,500 was raised from those and the cake stall.
I have never known anything other than our preferential, compulsory voting system so not sure how it really influences our politics here. Could be in for a change of government tonight, too early to call.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
