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Should the US use Ranked Choice Voting in its Presidential Election?

Should the US use Ranked Choice Voting in its Presidential Election?

  • Yes

    Votes: 9 60.0%

  • No

    Votes: 6 40.0%
  • Total voters
    15
JasperL said:
I don't really understand this objection. The method objectively throws out the least competitive choice each round, and at the end, the most popular/competitive candidate wins. I guess it would depend on the specific proposal, but the versions in practice AFAIK do not require anyone to rank more than one candidate.

The advantage as I see it is a lot of voters like me consider third party voting for roughly 99.9% of elections to be futile and counterproductive, and therefore stupid, unless we truly do not care which of the major party candidates win and it would be an amazing thing to be perfectly indifferent between, say, Trump OR Hillary - on a 1-100 scale to give them the identical rank. And if we do care, then the ONLY rational option in our system is to disregard third party choices and vote for the lesser of evils among the major party candidates. RCV allows everyone to vote their 'conscience' on the front end but also express (if they want) a clear preference among the remaining candidates.

I also don't understand the claim that it's 'stupidly-complicated.' What's hard about "this is my first choice, and this is my second..." If the Green Party had run Bernie instead of fruitloop Jill Stein, Bernie would have been a clear 1st choice, with Hillary a clear 2nd choice, Johnson 3rd, and Trump would not make it on my ballot.

It's a big boost to third parties, which I think is a good thing. No particular reason we should have a two party system, and institutional changes like RCV that reduce the institutional advantages of the duopoly are as I see it a good thing, unless one has a vested interest in one of the major parties.
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The basic objection is why replace a simple system that works, with a complex system that offers zero improvement? The candidate with the most votes wins, simple, easy, works.
 
Redress said:
The basic objection is why replace a simple system that works, with a complex system that offers zero improvement? The candidate with the most votes wins, simple, easy, works.
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It's not complex unless you believe shopping is complex, and if you're going to ignore the arguments for why it improves the process, then I guess no point debating. :shrug:
 
Redress said:
The basic objection is why replace a simple system that works, with a complex system that offers zero improvement? The candidate with the most votes wins, simple, easy, works.
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There are two fundamental improvements that would occur, the first is that RCV would require a majority vote in order to elect a candidate, rather than have someone get elected on just 46% of the vote as our current president was (not saying anything about legitimacy, just using him as an example). Second, it would eliminate the effect of "spoiler" candidates and potentially increase turnout as voters would feel free to vote for the candidate they prefer without fear of spoiling the election for their second choices. This second improvement helps everyone involved, regardless of whether you support a third party or one of the two major parties.
 
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