The New York mayoral Democratic primary quickly turned acrimonious with a bruising few last days before polls opened on Tuesday.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1378555
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1378555
I’m not so sold on ranked choice voting. The primary has been a complete shit show. And our reward will be Eric Adams.
And remember how ranked choice was going to doom Susan Collins and deliver us a Manchin proof majority?
I think the general idea is fine, I’m not so sure about the implementation bit of dropping the lowest candidate and redistributing, then the next last and so on. Seems to me that that can open up a different result than if you, say, tallied the second choices of the top two candidates, or second choice of all candidates.
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Not knowing all the features of rank voting and guessing it can be different in different jurisdictions and being to lazy to look up New York’s system, I have some questions.
Is it only first and second choice or can you give a third, forth…?
Also, is it applicable to both the primary and the general election? In my opinion it “ranked choice voting” should only be in a primary where you are picking within a Party and therefore the differences between candidates is less pronounced.
The great thing about ranked choice voting is that it lets you vote against “that guy”, without having to vote for a different and slighly less odious asshole. I’ve done that a few times where I filled in my rankings to reflect that. It helps prevent a plurality winner that never should have happened except by getting lucky with two other candidates splitting a party’s vote.
Also, I wonder if it would help prevent the florida gop tactic of running fringe third candidates with similar sounding names to the democratic candidate, to split off enough of the vote to make a difference.
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I think NYC allows up to five options. Definitely are variants. Conceptually it’s good, because you don’t have the same third-party spoilers, but the design could be better.
Any chance Adams knows that, even if he has a lead in a crowded primary, he may not be many voters second choice which he will need to be to get to 50%?
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You need to go look at the wiki on the 2020 Maine senate election. Collins clearly won without going to a second round. She more first choice votes that the total of all other candidates. It wasn’t even a “wasted vote” thing like Ralph.
@castor_troy: there are good arguments for the method you suggest as well as good argument for the method they used, which, after all, is what the voters chose, and by entering the election, everybody acknowledges.
It is NOBODY’S FAULT. The bitch won fair and square and our side lost. Don’t be GOP.
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Exhibit A:
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Eric Adams is a low rent corrupt hypocritical political hack. He will say anything, including using the race card in a particularly dumb and obvious way like he just did. Like Yang said in response, “I’ve been Asian all my life”.
Not his biggest lie, but he even claimed he likes to take a bath with candles, and then showed reporters his (actually his son’s) apartment - which only has a shower. He lives in New Jersey and sleeps over in his office.
Everyone with experience with his Brooklyn borough president office say it’s a corrupt mess.
Do not rank him anywhere on your ballot.
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I expect the polling is pretty tight, and without ranked choice he would be a clear plurality winner so he’s pissed at that. Stupid to show it, though.
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Thank you. I was wondering how ranked choice could have possibly come into play there given the size of her margin, and that she whomped Gideon by 18% relative to how the state voted for Biden.
That’s the part that I have a little issue with. When the maths get complex, did the voters really choose that, or did they choose a concept, and the maths and possible permutations make it something less than the conceptual thing they bought into.
What I would love to see is a comparative analysis of different types of ranked-voting and how that could result in different outcomes, then see if everyone is still on board with the current processes. For example, if one of the typical libertarian spoilers is the bottom vote-getter, their voters’ second choice may well be the republican. Which would swing an advantage to the republican in the race if those are the first votes redistributed. Or a green could swing the advantage to the Democrat. Things like that.
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@castor_troy
Yah. I agree. My “feeling” is that there was discussion like you say, and people looked at the version used as the second choice of the people voting for the last place candidate is “still in the running”. My choice would be as you suggested. I don’t know, but I think it would lead to a decision with fewer round and actually be more representative. I tend to think that those voting for the last place slots are well…
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Just this morning I got robo calls from Ms. Ocasio asking me to vote for Wiley and Adams telling me to vote for him. By the way, I don’t live in NYC.
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I wonder how.much money has been spent on this race? Every time I turn around there’s an ad on TV
Exactly. They were already third-party spoilers, now we’ve set them up to continue to be third-party spoilers, just counted differently.
and with significantly reduced spoil power.
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No they aren’t; they’re simply third-party or minor candidates, without the spoiler part.
Also, while Collins won a majority on the first round, RCV did allow Jared Golden to win in ME-2. Without it, his Republican opponent would have won.
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Even with ranked-choice voting, presumed leaders of races will be targets.
Adams may find that he’s lost a large amount of #2 and #3 support in exchange for a small number of increased #1 votes.
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