this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2024
465 points (98.7% liked)

News

23322 readers
3928 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Seeing as how some people here on Lemmy get upset at any mention of Ranked Choice Voting and respond that, in their opinion, it's not perfect, and that we should therefore keep the voting system we have while we debate which alternative is perfect for several decades, allow me to preemptively respond.

========

RCV has the momentum and is infinitely superior to what we have now. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of fantastic.

I’d be happy if a community chose one of the other options. I don’t care. They’re all better than what we have and we should be celebrating every city, county and state that switches to any of them. That's the purpose of this post.

Trying to demonize one option because you don’t think it’s perfect is just muddying the waters and subjecting us to decades of more of the shit sandwich we have now while we debate which alternative is flawless (hint: none of them are).

You'll never get everyone to agree on which option is best. A vast majority of us can agree, though, that FPTP is garbage, and RCV is way way better.

It's like you're sitting there with nothing to eat but spoiled meat and it's making you deathly sick, someone comes by and offers you a fresh juicy hamburger, and you respond, "No! I'll accept nothing less than Filet Mignon!" Dude! You're eating spoiled meat! Take the damn burger!

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 63 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I hope they implement ranked choice, so many of the current problems are from the two party system which is inevitable from first past the post.

[–] themeatbridge 10 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Unfortunately, RCV doesn't end the two party system. It's better than what we have, but only marginally. My hope is that when voters complain about it, the next step is not to repeal RCV but to evolve into Star voting.

[–] [email protected] 43 points 4 months ago (2 children)

RCV at least allows for options, and it's pretty easy to understand. First past the post is literally the worst.

[–] themeatbridge 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Agreed. But it still encourages strategic voting and discourages third-party spoilers. It's fptp with extra steps, and it gets worse the more candidates you have. If you don't pick a frontrunner first or second, there's a chance your vote isn't counted at all.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Uhhh, no. That’s not how RCV works at all.

Let’s say there are five candidates - A, B , C, D, and E.

Let’s assume candidates A & B are the most popular.

Personally I choose to rank them as C, E, D, B and then A.

Out of all of them, no one gets over 50% of the #1 vote. Whoever gets the lowest #1 vote is knocked out first. Let’s suggest that this is C. All of their #1 votes and therefore my vote is then transferred to E.

Let’s suggest that after this there’s still no one who has over 50% of the vote between the other four candidates. Let’s further assume that candidate E has the lowest resulting vote after the first round of knockout. My vote is then transferred to candidate D.

Out of A, B, and D, let’s assume none of them still have over 50% of the vote after this redistribution. Let’s further assume that D has the lowest vote of the three. My vote is then transferred to B.

Given there are only two candidates left, one will have to have a majority. That candidate wins.

Under RCV, as long as you mark every box with a preference your vote can never ever be wasted. It will always end up with a candidate that wins or one that loses, but it cannot ever be exhausted and therefore meaningless.

[–] themeatbridge 1 points 4 months ago

Thank you for providing an example.

Let's say E is everyone's second choice, but nobody's first choice. E is the first candidate eliminated because E got 0% of the vote.

Let's say it shakes out like this:

40% A E C B
21% B E A C
20% D E C B
19% C E D B <- You

40 A D 39 D B 21 B D

60 D 40 A

First round, E is eliminated despite being the most popular candidate by far.

Second Round, C, followed by B. D wins.

But if 3% of A voters switched to C, then A would have won because D would be eliminated, sending their votes to C, which would have eliminated B, sending those votes to A. But D and C voters hate A, so it's in their best interest to also vote for B. And now we're back to fptp

When considering the quality of a voting system, you want voters to be honest (i.e. not strategic in their votes). Voters should pick the candidate they agree with, not the candidates they think they must support to avoid a catastrophe.

Read more here.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 4 months ago

First past the post is literally the worst.

A Nice funnel for the public sentiment tho

[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

I agree it does not solve our problem but it would make more than just a marginal difference. It would heavily disincentivize going too far politically one way to win your primary.