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Maine votes to use Ranked Choice Voting

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  • #61
    Originally posted by Starlight View Post
    Anyway, regardless of your theories about what I do or don't see, my point was that Republicans seem to like to pick on Nancy Pelosi in their ads - Nancy Pelosi targeted in more than a third of GOP House commercials:

    Nancy Pelosi has long been a favorite target of GOP attack ads. But Republicans seem to be taking it to another level in this election cycle.

    The House Democratic leader has been featured in roughly one-third (34%) of all GOP broadcast ads aired in House races this year


    It has nothing to do with corruption. Your citing of it is off-topic. It was a politician, confessing to a historical crime committed in her past before she became a politician, in order to make a rhetorical point in a speech. Nothing to do with political corruption in any way, shape, or form.
    While Pelosi is the gift that keeps on giving your source appears ignorant (or hopes that you are) of how in 1996 the Democrats ran a huge percent of ads specifically about then Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. So much so that a sizable portion thought he was Bob Dole's running mate.

    I'm always still in trouble again

    "You're by far the worst poster on TWeb" and "TWeb's biggest liar" --starlight (the guy who says Stalin was a right-winger)
    "Overall I would rate the withdrawal from Afghanistan as by far the best thing Biden's done" --Starlight
    "Of course, human life begins at fertilization that’s not the argument." --Tassman

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    • #62
      So since this topic was made, it seems like Ranked Choice Voting has been picking up in popularity. It's been implemented by more cities, but far more notably, it looks like there's an effort to get Ranked Choice Voting enacted statewide in Massachusetts now:
      https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/20...fZI/story.html
      https://voterchoice2020.org/state-ce...voting-ballot/

      Apparently, the way referendums work in Massachusetts is you have to gather some number of signatures for a first stage (this has been accomplished). If the legislature doesn't opt to pass the requested law themselves (the article says they normally do not), then it moves onto another stage with a higher signature requirement. If you get enough it goes on the ballot as a referendum, and if the referendum passes it gets put into effect. So we're still a bit away from it actually being an official referendum, and it of course has to pass, but I still thought it notable.

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      • #63
        Well, now I feel stupid. I made an update post about Massachusetts, but missed the fact Alaska is also having a Referendum to implement RCV!

        https://www.adn.com/politics/2020/01...tatewide-vote/

        Well, okay, it's a good amount more complicated than the Massachusetts case. Massachusetts just wants to implement RCV in all of their elections. The Alaskan one will:
        1) Instead of parties having their own primaries and then nominating one candidate each, everyone who wants to run--regardless of party--is put into the primary election, which anyone can vote in. California has a system like that. But whereas California then only has the top two vote earners advance to the main election, Alaska would have the top four people advance, and then the main election would be decided via RCV. So it's a more complex implementation of RCV than for Massachusetts.
        2) In addition to that, it would require campaigns to disclose the source of all "dark money" contributions.
        3) It's not mentioned in that article, but I've read elsewhere apparently it would have Alaska declare a resolution to make a Constitutional Amendment overturning Citizens United v. FEC. (which has no legal force but I assume it would make some people feel better)

        So that makes the situation more complicated. Still, it means two states will be having referendum to implement RCV statewide (assuming this one clears the Alaska Supreme Court).

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        • #64
          Great to see it improving in popularity.

          I think of the various possible reforms to the US political system, this is one of the easiest and will have one of the biggest impacts.

          I think that US politics will be barely recognizable (in a good way) if this goes nationwide. It will both end the two party gridlock system and decorrupt politics substantially.
          "I hate him passionately", he's "a demonic force" - Tucker Carlson, in private, on Donald Trump
          "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" - George Orwell
          "[Capitalism] as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy" - Albert Einstein

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          • #65
            Originally posted by Starlight View Post
            Great to see it improving in popularity.

            I think of the various possible reforms to the US political system, this is one of the easiest and will have one of the biggest impacts.

            I think that US politics will be barely recognizable (in a good way) if this goes nationwide. It will both end the two party gridlock system and decorrupt politics substantially.
            One definite advantage is the ease in implementing it, as it's ultimately just a tweak to the existing system, compared to the major overhaul something like MMP would require. But while I am for RCV, I'm less sure of it ending the two party gridlock system based on looking at the situation of the countries that have implemented it.

            Based on the Wikipedia page for Instant-Runoff Voting, there appear to be only two countries that have implemented it to any real degree: Australia and Papua New Guinea. From my understanding, it seems that Australia is very much a two-party system. At first glance it seems much better, with various parties in their parliament and a coalition in effect right now... but the "coalition" is between the National Party and Liberal Party, two parties that have been joined at the hip for decades and thus for all practical purposes are the same party. Thus the two parties are the National-Liberal Coalition and the Labor Party, and it's very rare that one of those doesn't have a majority. The last time that didn't happen was 2010, which sounds recent enough, but before that the last time it happened was 1940!

            Granted, Australia isn't as severe of a two-party system as the US. There are more than two parties in their legislature (even if they're barely represented) and, as noted, there are some rare occasions where no single party gets a majority. But these are basically baby steps.

            On the other hand, Papua New Guinea, the other country that uses this system, has an extremely diverse set of parties in their legislature.

            With such a limited sample size, it's tough to really evaluate what the typical effect of IR-RCV is. If one were to look at just the Solomon Islands, one would conclude that first-past-the-post produces a system with a crazy number of political parties in the legislature (no, seriously, look at it! That's one of the most diverse legislatures I've seen!)... but when one looks at the countries with first-past-the-post overall, we can see a clear pattern of two-party systems emerging. Exceptions exist in all voting structures.

            All of that said, I'd think IR-RCV is worth implementing even if for no other reason than the fact it significantly reduces the effect of "spoiler" candidates.

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