A new poll finds that only about 1 in 10 U.S. adults give high ratings to the way democracy is working in the United States or how well it represents the interests of most Americans.
The TLDR is that Ranked Choice is complex, meaning that it cannot be counted at the polling location. It must be counted at a single location, which is a single point of failure. This has led to real world failures in the 2011 Alameda County election and the 2021 NYC Mayoral Election.
Note that these were direct failures that were only possible under Ranked Choice.
Then there are cases like the 2009 Burlington Mayoral election that resulted in the repeal of their Ranked Choice election laws.
Which is the main issue I have with the system. It’s so bad that it actually sets voting reform efforts back. It makes it that much harder to implement an actually good voting system.
I am currently recommending STAR. It’s easy to understand because everyone knows how 5-star reviews work. It’s easy to count, because it’s just addition, and then a second round of addition. It can be counted at the polling locations, so there’s no single point of failure.
Australia chiming in here. I’d encourage you to dive into how counting works over here.
I’ve worked at poling places several times.
We have ranked choice voting. Always have as far as I know.
We definitely undertake a first count at the poling place. It is then send to a hub location and verified, then if close enough it is recounted.
For many poling places there is a large clear majority so the ranked choices do not impact the outcome.
For those that are close, there are many recounts with a significant amount of redundancy and scrutiny.
I remember watching tutorial videos from the Australian Electoral Commission when I started, not sure if they are publicly available but they would be a great starting point for you!
I know that the counting can be better. However, that wouldn’t fix what happened in Burlington.
That case is an example of how fucked the system is when everything is working as intended. The result was so bad that Burlington repealed their Ranked Choice law, because in that election, Plurality would have given a better result.
It really says something about a system when Plurality can do a better job.
Then there’s the fact that Ranked Choice doesn’t actually get rid of the spoiler effect, or really encourage the growth of viable third parties. Which are the two major claims about the system.
And the very worst part of the system, ballot exhaustion. Imagine that you’re only allowed to rank 5 candidates and there are a dozen in the running. Now imagine that your 2nd through 5th choices are eliminated before your 1st choice is. At the 6th round, you might as well not have cast a ballot, but if your 1st choice was eliminated first, one of your other choices could have won.
Ranked Choice is about the worst voting system designed. Possible only beaten by Plurality.
This 3-hour long video goes pretty in depth on why it’s horrendously bad. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-dzK3YIAf8
The TLDR is that Ranked Choice is complex, meaning that it cannot be counted at the polling location. It must be counted at a single location, which is a single point of failure. This has led to real world failures in the 2011 Alameda County election and the 2021 NYC Mayoral Election.
Note that these were direct failures that were only possible under Ranked Choice.
Then there are cases like the 2009 Burlington Mayoral election that resulted in the repeal of their Ranked Choice election laws.
Which is the main issue I have with the system. It’s so bad that it actually sets voting reform efforts back. It makes it that much harder to implement an actually good voting system.
I am currently recommending STAR. It’s easy to understand because everyone knows how 5-star reviews work. It’s easy to count, because it’s just addition, and then a second round of addition. It can be counted at the polling locations, so there’s no single point of failure.
Australia chiming in here. I’d encourage you to dive into how counting works over here.
I’ve worked at poling places several times.
We have ranked choice voting. Always have as far as I know.
We definitely undertake a first count at the poling place. It is then send to a hub location and verified, then if close enough it is recounted.
For many poling places there is a large clear majority so the ranked choices do not impact the outcome.
For those that are close, there are many recounts with a significant amount of redundancy and scrutiny.
I remember watching tutorial videos from the Australian Electoral Commission when I started, not sure if they are publicly available but they would be a great starting point for you!
.
I know that the counting can be better. However, that wouldn’t fix what happened in Burlington.
That case is an example of how fucked the system is when everything is working as intended. The result was so bad that Burlington repealed their Ranked Choice law, because in that election, Plurality would have given a better result.
It really says something about a system when Plurality can do a better job.
Then there’s the fact that Ranked Choice doesn’t actually get rid of the spoiler effect, or really encourage the growth of viable third parties. Which are the two major claims about the system.
And the very worst part of the system, ballot exhaustion. Imagine that you’re only allowed to rank 5 candidates and there are a dozen in the running. Now imagine that your 2nd through 5th choices are eliminated before your 1st choice is. At the 6th round, you might as well not have cast a ballot, but if your 1st choice was eliminated first, one of your other choices could have won.
Ballot exhaustion means that an average of 10% of the vote is just thrown away. Those people’s opinions don’t matter, they might as well have not voted at all.
Elections in the states are often won by less than 10%. I can say with certainty that RCV has elected the wrong people, time after time.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=O-dzK3YIAf8
https://piped.video/watch?v=O-dzK3YIAf8
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
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