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If I were forced to choose between two choices and I didn't like either, I would not consider myself living in a democracy. Democracy is pointless if you aren't able to vote for a candidate that you actually like.
The solution is reform. If your democracy is not proportional, then it is not a democracy.
Without RCV, there is no path to better candidates. There is a reason so many conservative states have been proactively banning it.
No voting system by itself will do much. We need to switch to a proportional system or else minority parties won't have a fair shot at representation. If a party gets 2% of the vote, they should get 2% of the seats. Not possible with single-winner methods.
Ranked Choice Voting is an improvement over plurality voting, but as I've written elsewhere (too lazy to look it up), I think any election with a single winner is still going to end up with weird/disappointing outcomes at least 90% of the time. I think this post is referring to the governor of New York, no? I would rather see a system where the state legislature is elected proportionally, and then the governor would be selected from a coalition agreement between the governing parties - similar to what you see in many national, state and provincial systems across Europe. This system isn't without its downsides, but at least it's harder for incumbent parties to force voters to support them even if those voters don't want to.
Of course, this is a much more fundamental reform, so it's harder to adopt. RCV is definitely an improvement. It's great to see some progress happening out there in the USA.
Tbf, you can write in anyone you like. Will they win? No. But you can do that.
Tbf, that's not really fair, is it?
Perfectly fair. Fair doesn't mean you get your way every time. If they did get enough votes they could win, but by virtue of not being on the ballot it's harder to do. What do you suggest, adding all 350mil+ US citizens to the ballot?
I suggest moving to proportional representation. Essentially, proportional systems try to ensure that if a party gets 5% of the votes, they get 5% of the seats. It's obviously not a solution for single-winner elections like mayor, but it's a great system for councils and legislatures. That way, it's much more likely that voting for a minority party candidate will actually get you some representation in office. (There's a million ways to it, with some trying to place an emphasis on local representation and others trying to get as close to proportional as possible, but they're all leagues ahead of pure single-winner systems.)
Now, you might be saying "you didn't solve the problem for single winner methods!" Never fear, we can use a voting system that satisfies the sincere favorite criterion. My favorite is Approval Voting, but any of them will do. The sincere favorite criterion says that the optimal voting strategy should always include giving your true favorite maximum support, whatever that means under that particular voting system.
I didn't see this comment when I wrote a few other ones, but you can absolutely use proportional representation as a solution for single-winner elections. Just look at how most prime ministers are chosen in any country that uses proportionally-represented parliaments.
I mean......I guess. That's kinda a solution. Ish.
It brings up an interesting question of wasted votes. By definition, in plurality voting, at least 50% of all votes must be wasted. Anyone who votes for a losing candidate (and thereby doesn't receive an elected representative) wasted his/her vote. And anyone who voted above the threshold for the winner also cast a wasted vote (because the candidate wouldn't win anyway). It's easy to see why turnout would be low in such a system.
(You could of course argue that a candidate winning a race with 60% of the votes is much stronger in the office than a candidate that wins 51:49, so this is a bit of an oversimplification, but hopefully you get the idea of how wasted votes work solely within the context of decided who wins the race.)
Then it's not a democracy. But you still live here.
Apparently some need education on what a primary is.
They were all running to “be the blue.” This is how WE pick the candidates that run for the Democratic Party. Yes. That’s right. They’re not selected by the DNC as many believe.
Congressional primaries see less than 15% turnout, yet people love to complain about the career centrists. Well, this is EXACTLY how it’s done.
Mamdani won because WE SHOWED UP. Stop letting retirees with nothing but time on their hands pick our candidates and VOTE FOR PROGRESSIVES IN THE PRIMARIES.
The joke is that the NYC Dems are making the DNC eat their words with a candidate that they didn't want
Oh I totally missed that. Thanks. Too many people still ignorantly commenting about how the DNC picks all the candidates, after NYC just proved that it’s always been about us showing up, has me on the defense. My bad.
I think you're missing the joke here?
Didn't the democratic party in America like completely die with president Orange?
Nah. We’re taking it over. Thirty years of retirees picking our candidates in the primaries gave us the centrist party. People are finally waking up and turning out.
id argue that if they failed so badly, they were dead already.
I've seen a lot of people insist that we were going to stop doing democracy going forward.
I was skeptical, precisely because the Mamdani race appeared to illustrate how an unpopular incumbent friend-of-Trump could absolutely still lose to a socialist outsider campaign by a local town populist hero. But now I'm seeing the Dem national establishment freak out in such a way that... Idk, maybe they really will try to toss the results of the primary in the trash and tell Zohran he's not welcome in the general.
Yes, the current cohort. With Mondoni, AOC and Bernie, The hope is more people will vote for progressive candidates and bring back the Democrats from the dead.
