I won’t speak for anyone else but that’s not what I’m trying to discuss. I’m simply thinking in terms of allowing people to vote third party for their first choice yet allowing their vote to move to a major party candidate if/when their first choice is eliminated. I don’t foresee that ever allowing a third party to win a presidential election, but I DO see it helping to stem a repeat of the hard feelings of 2016 by eliminating the spoiler/damage aspect of the third party vote.
I have no personal experience with RCV. Missouri never had it and I don’t live in an area of Colorado that has it today. What made you a believer? Do you see any drawbacks to RCV?
RCV might help third parties in a “top two” primary system such as in CA. It also might help in a situation such as the one in Maine when LePage was first elected, when an “independent” candidate got more votes than the Dem candidate.
Probably not in the presidential election. The EC (as others noted) would still be a tough road to climb.
Would be great for primaries so we don’t get a candidate that 70% or primary folks voted against when a crowded field. (Still no help for 3rd parties there)
Would also be great for all other general elections but Presidential. RCV allows (as Ryan noted) a 3rd party a chance by taking away the spoiler fear, which could be enough to push a 3rd party candidate over the hump.
(or give reason for dems to not be scared to take a run at Bernie or Angus King without risking their seats as much)
What RCV (potentially) does is help third-party candidates downballot, because people still tend to vote along party/affiliation lines. But mostly what it does is reverse the preference question. Right now it’s about whom you would prefer to see in an office, but with RCV voters can express their intent about whom they would absolutely not want to see in an office.
The candidate I was pulling for is very likely to win the mayoral race and it had much to do with shifting votes from the second place candidate. The third place candidate was out of the running early on. The candidates were in order London Breed, Mark Leno, and Jane Kim.
Breed has held fast to a healthy lead of first-place votes throughout the week, a sign of her broad popularity across the city. By contrast, Leno has relied on the huge number of second-choice votes he received from supporters of Supervisor Jane Kim. Kim and Leno endorsed each other as their No. 2 picks on the city’s ranked-choice ballot.
A more cogent explanation of RCV is this
Rather than checking a box for just one candidate, voters rank all candidates in order of preference. If a candidate earns a majority of the votes, he or she wins. If not, the candidate with the fewest first-choice votes is eliminated, and his or her ballots get redistributed to whomever those voters ranked second. If another round is needed, the process continues, eliminating the candidate with the next fewest votes, until one candidate has a majority.
This. We get caught by the third party votes that syphon votes from the more viable candidate and so swing the election. There are people, myself included, that have voted for the ‘lesser of two evils’ so that that does not happen. With ranked choice voting we will be able to make our 1st preference known without voting for a spoiler.
For the record, yes I voted for Bernie in NH Primary, but as with any election it is about that election. In the primary it was HRC vs Bernie (and others). With those options I chose Bernie.
In the General the options changed. Even ranked choice, HRC would have gotten spot #1 from me because she was the best choice of available options.
If Stein was my preference I would have had to consider the spoiler issue, as she wasn’t, I didnt.
I think Ranked choice saves states from folks like LePage in statewide and local elections, including house races
A fun fact is that we got to use ranked choice voting in the governor primaries, so the the voters who voted to keep it were all people who had the opportunity to try it.
Maine has a strong tradition of independents (note our Senator King) so RCV makes it easier for independents to get elected.
Maybe I’m not seeing how the EC would prevent this from helping with Presidential elections, but maybe I’m not being clear about my thoughts. The EC would still be winner take all with a 270 threshold, but if each state used RCV then everyone would be free to vote their third party choice without fear of being a spoiler. RCV wouldn’t help third parties win elections but it would help with other bits like the 5% threshold for matching funds and highlighting public opinion on policies that are important to third parties.
It may. Other than the EC wrinkle to the presidential election. If enough folks vote 3rd party because they don’t fear spoiler, they may win some elections for house or other statewide election.
Our two party system is not serving us well now. Many Democrats are sick of being moderates and want to go for single-payer health care, help with college and strict gun control. The GOP has gone off the deep end of crazy, its policies are more like a fringe party than a mainstream party.
Besides, the current system is why Le Page won when 61% of voters voted against him.
My take on the primary results from my state is that the democrats are voting for moderate establishment types to 1) win and 2) because moderate are fleeing the GOP.
What we need is a centrist party and a center-left party. We can’t have a fringe-right party and one rational party.
RCV means you can vote for a third party candidate and NOT spoil things, since you have a second choice.
Further, we voted RCV in the primary, so it was a way of getting a few choices, rather than picking one of seven candidates.
Many people vote strategically. I, for instance, just finished voting, not for the guy I most wanted to be CA governor. But instead, I voted for the guy who had to do well to shut out a Republican from getting in at all (my effort was unsuccessful). Many Page supporters would not vote for the Republican choice for second. Many Bernie supporters would not vote for Hillary as their second choice. Etc.
