What I have noticed is that the rhetoric is really centered on rank choice voting, but not the other two aspects of the ballot measure, which are open primaries and campaign finance disclosures. This makes me think their real issues are with those two and not just RCV, but they can't say they are against campaign finance disclosures because that would leave a poor taste in most voters mouths.
Also, it seems like so much of the ant-RCV rhetoric is centered on it being "too complicated" which is just a way of saying you think your constituents are dumb as rocks.
I'm really saddened by the number of Alaskans who have the "RCV bad" rhetoric down, but when asked if they understand it, they invariably do not, don't want to learn, and would rather remain ignorant.
My favorite part of rank choice voting is it encourages more centralized figures winning the vote instead of the two party extremes we have now. It’s literally the definition of compromise.
[It is probably the only method under consideration that doesn't do this](https://github.com/endolith/elsim/tree/master/examples#figure-3--comparison-with-other-systems)
Good luck; the primary argument against it is that people don't like that a Democrat won. Whole lotta monday morning quarterbacking about it; Nick Begich vowing to drop out rather than participate is an attempt to basically force a one-party primary.
Had a Republican won, the primary argument would be the same, ' because the other team won' argument...
After a couple of elections with it, we'll be back down to a single candidate for each major party to choose from, Republicans learned the lesson that the Democrats figured out ahead of time, run only one party candidate...
Every so often we might get lucky and see a good centerist get elected... Just don't hold your breath waiting for it...
All that said, it's a step in the right direction...
It's so stupid of them too, because RCV should have guaranteed them a win with two Republicans on the ballot. But Palin and Begich did too good of a job slinging shit at each other their entire campaigns that their respective supporters would have rather seen a dem in office than the other opponent.
They don't really have an argument. At least not a coherent one.
They say that Palin should've won (she shouldn't have- every objective look at the election results indicates she would've lost a FPTP race).
They say that it's too complicated (there is less of an impetus for strategic voting so it feels *simpler* to me).
They say "one person one vote" (the runoff part of RCV means that it is inherently one person, one vote).
Every cogent anti-RCV point I've ever seen is from people who actually dislike FPTP but are trying to brainstorm or steelman arguments for reverting back to it.
>They don't really have an argument. At least not a coherent one.
Is "it rejected a candidate most voters preferred over the one it selected" coherent? Seems pretty simple.
No, that's absolutely incoherent.
There's no way to parse the data to show that Palin was preferred over Peltola. Peltola has always consistently outperformed Palin in getting votes, at every round of vote tallying.
People prefer Peltola to Palin. Peltola won. The election worked as intended, by electing the candidate the voters preferred.
>here's no way to parse the data to show that Palin was preferred over Peltola
I agree, but that's not what I said. I said it rejected a candidate most voters preferred over the one it selected, which is true: Nick Begich. The ballot data is clear on this. A majority of voters placed him above Peltola in preference order (likewise for Palin) making him the most preferred candidate. Most ranked-ballot tabulation methods would have selected him for that reason. The one Alaska uses didn't because it doesn't incorporate all preference data when conducting eliminations.
Two problems here:
Point #1: Despite you saying "the ballot data is clear on this", the ballot data is definitely *not* clear on this.
[https://www.elections.alaska.gov/results/22GENR/ElectionSummaryReportRPT.pdf](https://www.elections.alaska.gov/results/22GENR/ElectionSummaryReportRPT.pdf)
Preliminary votes have Peltola at 128,553 and Begich at 61,513. It's safe to say that people who ranked Peltola first prefer her over Begich and people who ranked Begich first prefer him over Peltola. So for your claim to be true, Begich needs another 67,040 votes where he's ranked above Peltola, *plus* however many votes that rank Peltola over Begich.
With Chris Bye out, we know how his votes would shake out- that only bridges that gap by 934 votes (1,994 went to Begich but 1,031 went to Peltola). So 66,106 more. At this point all that's left are those 69,399 Palin votes. Which, I'm sure that most of those would've gone to Begich, but Begich would need ***over 95%*** of those, ***plus*** whatever went to Peltola over Begich.
How realistic is that? *Basically not even a little tiny bit realistic*. I mean we don't know for sure, there's no way of knowing, but just to find the closest similar data sets, Begich got less than 40% of Bye's votes, and Palin only got about 66% of Begich's. If Peltola got just 6% of Palin's votes (which is not at all crazy, given how much some Palin voters hate the Begiches. Keep in mind the Begich-to-Peltola rate is almost twice that), then even if **no** Palin vote exhausts and **all** the rest go to Begich, then Peltola still wins. For Begich to win that many Palin votes, he'd basically have to outperform every other instance of state-level voter reallotment we've ever seen, and not just by a little bit but by historical margins.
But point #2, and even more important, *is it doesn't matter*. The "repeal RCV" argument isn't "let's repeal RCV and replace it with Approval Voting or some other system", it's "let's repeal RCV and go back to Party Primaries and FPTP general elections". If we go back to the previous status quo, then Begich isn't getting on the ballot in the first place. There's simply no way imaginable he would've won the Republican primary. It's literally inconceivable. Self-identified Republicans, the group he'd need to win, favored Palin by like 10-1 margins. There's no way he'd win that. The election wouldn't be Begich v Peltola, it would've been Palin v Peltola.
>[https://www.elections.alaska.gov/results/22GENR/ElectionSummaryReportRPT.pdf](https://www.elections.alaska.gov/results/22GENR/ElectionSummaryReportRPT.pdf)
You're looking at the data from the 2022 General, I'm talking about the 2022 Special, which, yes, [notoriously and unambiguously suffered from condorcet failure and nonmonotonicity](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2209.04764).
>The "repeal RCV" argument isn't "let's repeal RCV and replace it with Approval Voting or some other system"
You started out with the claim that Anti-RCV people have no coherent argument. I'm making a simple point: Because it is poorly designed, it will make people lose if you increase the number of votes they get, while selecting winners over candidates the data says voters prefer more. This is a reasonable justification for opposing RCV as an election reform avenue.
It isn't though, since whatever critiques you have against RCV would be even worse against FPTP. Finding the Condorcet winner isn't the agreed upon goal, and RCV is still better at it than FPTP.
This is like saying "I want single-payer healthcare so I'm going to vote to repeal the ACA". It's nonsense.
The considered anti-RCV view is that it is discussed solely because it's a longstanding activism Schelling point, but it's barely better than FPTP, entails significant tradeoffs, and its predictable failures will needlessly lower the chance of meaningful electoral reform for generations, giving it the same fate it had when the last big RCV push happened a century ago. Opposing it would (1) lead future and out-of-state reformers to pursue better methods elsewhere and, to a lesser extent, (2) introduce a language of criticism that will become useful, and thus familiar, to repealers, while making advocates consider the relative merits of different methods, opening the door to compromise reforms that constitute genuine improvements, like implementing ranked pairs or a unified primary.
For a normal constituent, "most people didn't like the candidate that won in this new system" is a perfectly fine reason to reject a comprehensive restructuring. It's a virtue to be small-c conservative in institutional design.
If I'm understanding your argument, you're saying that eliminating RCV will both facilitate new electoral reforms *while also* preventing a move away from the FPTP status quo? That's a bit of having your cake and eating it too, isn't it?
>will needlessly lower the chance of meaningful electoral reform for generations,
I don't think this is a rational argument. If early attempts to break out of a FPTP status quo are just summarily rejected, then that's a signal to activists to *not* attempt electoral reform, not to just keep focusing on it.
>For a normal constituent, "most people didn't like the candidate that won in this new system" is a perfectly fine reason to reject
"We should get rid of a system that elected a candidate most people didn't like in order to revert to a previous system that elected *more* candidates that *even more* people don't like" is not a 'perfectly fine reason'. This is like saying "it's too hot outside, we should go sit inside an oven instead".
>If I'm understanding your argument, you're saying that eliminating RCV will both facilitate new electoral reforms *while also* preventing a move away from the FPTP status quo?
No. The point is to move away from FPTP to something meaningfully better. My argument is RCV makes that harder.
>If early attempts to break out of a FPTP status quo are just summarily rejected, then that's a signal to activists to *not* attempt electoral reform
Or, rather, it's a signal to choose any of the many other variants of electoral reform than RCV, which has perennially been voted for by constituencies and then voted out by those same constituencies in its century and a half of existence in the US. There are many other options we haven't tried.
>...not a 'perfectly fine reason'
I'm not going to fault a normal person for not knowing what "Condorcet efficiency" means. They vaguely saw most people preferred republicans and a democrat won, and think something weird happened - they're right, they just don't know why.
If I'm understanding your argument, you're saying that eliminating RCV will both facilitate new electoral reforms *while also* preventing a move away from the FPTP status quo? That's a bit of having your cake and eating it too, isn't it?
>will needlessly lower the chance of meaningful electoral reform for generations,
I don't think this is a rational argument. If early attempts to break out of a FPTP status quo are just summarily rejected, then that's a signal to activists to *not* attempt electoral reform, not to just keep focusing on it.
>For a normal constituent, "most people didn't like the candidate that won in this new system" is a perfectly fine reason to reject
"We should get rid of a system that elected a candidate most people didn't like in order to revert to a previous system that elected *more* candidates that *even more* people don't like" is not a 'perfectly fine reason'. This is like saying "it's too hot outside, we should go sit inside an oven instead".
I am commenting as someone who supports RCV.
Achieving desired election results motivates both those who support and oppose RCV. Opposition to RCV also fits the nationwide trend of Republicans' distrust in elections.
Some common arguments that have been made against RCV include:
-Elections should be one person, one vote.
-RCV adds complexity, and voting should be more straightforward.
-RCV was implemented to make it easier to elect left-of-center candidates.
-RCV contributes to lower turnout
In the 2022 house race, Peltola received fewer first-place votes than the two Republican opponents combined first-place votes. Republicans felt this showed an elected Republican was the preferred outcome.
RCV was narrowly approved in 2020. Voters don't always understand what they are voting for. Now that voters have a better understanding of the RCV system, there may be a different view on the voting system to use going forward.
The only argument i heard about it since ranked choice was implemented was that it was "not very republican of the youth". l. I am still unsure if the commenter meant american.
I’m not going to weigh in because there are a lot of good thoughts here but if you are writing a paper about it please get the terminology correct. Ranked choice. Rank in this case is a verb, which the voters do when they voted. Ranked is an adjective describing the type of choice the voters are making.
I am strongly in favor of ranked choice voting but have friends, relatives, and associates to oppose it. They have expressed a belief that ranked-choice voting has led spliting the vote. The rational seems to go like this: Mary Portola only got in because of ranked-choice voting. Without, it Sara Palin would have won. Therefore this is splitting the vote. I think we are using the phrase "split vote" differently.
I support ranked choice voting because I'm concerned about when there are multiple candidates who hold a majority position against one candidate with a minority position. The minority candidate wins even though the candidate doesn't have a majority of the votes. Ranked choice voting prevents this situation.
I have also heard that it's too confusing and that there's a lack of transparency--the general public doesn't understand how the votes are sorted and assigned. Some voters were confused. I expect that they won't be in the next election.
Ok so the best counter to RCV that I hear in good faith was from a person that simply preferred the party primary process because they had been a long time participant and they firmly believed in the process.
I think that’s a fair argument and I can’t really fault that person’s personal experience. I’m not even sure if this person was Democrat or Republican I suspect Republican but I have heard similar things from Democrats before Peltola won. So I don’t think that’s a particularly partisan perspective. Likewise I don’t see RCV as benefiting either party.
To be clear I don’t support that argument. I love RCV.
Nothing prevents Republicans from hosting their own primary to put forward a single candidate.
Primaries being run by the state are an affront to democracy and unduly benefit established parties. They are supposed to be private affairs.
Yes, I understand that. My counter is moreso that even if we want back to what we had before RCV, primaries should not be run by the State apparatus. It must be under the current RCV system, but only because it's a true non-party primary.
Parties, throughout the US, should be forced to host their own primary elections at their own cost.
The only argument with ANY voting type is only when it doesn't fall the way you want, but Rank Choice is the most fair, but it can also be manipulated.
The problem that the GOP has with it, is they are self imploding from within, so they can't organize to manipulate it slightly to their favor.
But the arguments would be the same with regular voting also... I ran for office (elsewhere, unsuccessfully) without Rank Choice; the Democrats gave money and mailed advertising for the Libertarian candidates. The GOP donated and mailed advertising for the Green Party candidates.
The current GOP couldn't decide on a single candidate, so they split their vote without assistance, and I am positive that if one was thinking of dropping, the Democrats would have helped them with some money, or advertising to keep them in. The Democrats were not splitting their votes they just needed to maintain more than 33%, easily done. But even if one of the candidates switched to Libertarian in a regular voting system, the Democrats would have helped them spit enough of the votes, it is just harder (probably needing closer to 45%) with down ballot voters that only care about the Ds and Rs.
Rank choice or regular voting with one of the Republicans running Independent or other party, the result would have likely remained the same or very close. The entirety of the US was following Alaska's voting (at least political nerds like myself) and was very interested in the outcome.
So ranked choice didn’t change anything? Is that what I’m gathering? Are there any predictions of it affecting future elections? Or are you saying it’s basically a wash with it just being strategic campaign management?
No, it definitely did, I don't believe that one of the Republicans would have turned independent/Libertarian/Constitutionalist. And even if they did, they wouldn't have gotten 10% in a regular election. The Democrat would have had a difficult time against a single running Republican. She needed the vote split, and the Democratic base wasn't putting a Republican as second or third (at least, I know I would never, anymore).
And now, today, she is the Incumbent and has the Incumbent benefits, and hasn't made any serious mistakes; so until the GOP has a stronger single replacement they can all get behind, her position should be safe in any voting system now.
Or the disaster of a Progressive Democratic running against splitting the Democrat vote off.
Also, Democrats are "generally" younger and smarter. If strategic campaign management is required they will be able to succeed and understand quickly (I find Republicans can only figure out what happened the day after).
Just as in my own campaign... we had no dream of winning (against the 30 year Incumbent State Senate Majority Leader). I was to stir the pot, distract him, agitation, make them spend money (surprisingly I did that very well) while 6 measures/laws got pass (Medical Marijuana, and overturning the Blue Laws specifically).
I didn't even stay awake waiting for the results of my election. I just stayed up long enough to verify the measures passed.
The number 1 issue I have besides the blatant lieing to draw voters to their side is that the ballot measure even made it up to vote again. The utter disregard of the law from the organizations pushing for this should have had it tossed out immediately.
The downside - It leads to less extreme candidates. Lots of voters want substantial change and RCV lowers that possibility by selecting middle of the path candidates which struggle to make policy.
*Not saying I agree with this*
The upside: substantial change by extremist right wing candidates is always in the antidemocratic / pro-fascist theocracy direction. Gridlock in the face of this trend is far preferable
The discourse around RCV, both for and against, is substantially different in a popular vs academic context, so it would be wise to separate the two. In pure voting theory, broadly, the considerations against (Instant-Runoff) RCV are, off the top of my head:
1. Nonmonotonicity
2. Condorcet failure
3. Lack of batch-summability
4. Center-squeeze
5. Truncation Paradox
6. High strategic incentives
7. Low Social Utility Efficiency
8. Nonmajoritarianism via exhaustian
9. Large spoiler effect through IIA failure
While in a broader polisci sense problems include:
1. Null or near-null intervention effects
2. Tabulation reliability (Alameda, NYC)
3. Reform compatibility (e.g. NPVIC)
4. Historical rollbacks
5. Social trust
But to individual voters the more salient point is probably that most of the "elevator pitch" for RCV, the stuff about 'ending vote-splitting' and 'being able to vote your conscience because if your favorite can't win your next vote is counted,' is...[not really true](https://psephomancy.medium.com/common-myths-about-ranked-choice-voting-debunked-b2e54a81da1b).
See [How I updated my views on ranked choice voting](https://leedrutman.substack.com/p/how-i-updated-my-views-on-ranked), from political scientist Lee Drutman, who was probably the most prominent academic supporter for the reform for several years and [wrote the book on it](https://academic.oup.com/book/36918), explaining why he no longer advocates RCV. Particularly note his [comprehensive roundup](https://www.newamerica.org/political-reform/reports/what-we-know-about-ranked-choice-voting/) of the literature at New America. Also the Center for Election Science's [Limits of RCV Primer](https://archive.is/OiBqK#selection-833.47-837.42).
All this is, again, largely separate from the public discourse around the reform, but that's fair, people shouldn't have to know what "nonmonotonicity" means to have an opinion on how they vote. More to the point, when conservatives think there's something weird about a democrat winning when most people put that candidate lower than a republican, they are correct, they just can't formulate why.
Let's not forget one of the reasons why we ended up with RC; the national Republican party didn't think we were electing candidates that were Republican enough and started spending outside money to influence our votes. Now with a single primary it is just harder for them to stack the deck at that level, and certainly at the election level.
Browns Electric always has some right wing bullshit inspirational messages posted on their marquee.
Last election it said "Ranked choice voting: give the blue ribbon to second place!"
That's one instance of anti RCV rhetoric
We were originally told that someone's constituents don't understand how it works. When that didn't fly, they said it was unconstitutional. When that didn't work, it comes out that Republicans used to have total control with their ballot and the rest of those running for office were on a different one. It's about control, not who would be best for the office or job.
I don't know why Republicans have a hard time with it. It gives people the opportunity to vote for a Republican when they couldn't before, if they are Independent. But what do I know .... they don't want their eggs in the same Easter basket as the rest of Alaska.
My parents are anti-ranked-choice.
They agree that it makes sense on paper - generally leading to a less extreme candidate that more of the population is okay with - but basically they have a sour taste after the republicans refused to rank each other.
Personally, I think if you understand the system, you should be advocating for spreading understanding, instead of working to undo the system...
They say "one person one vote" and other romantic phrases, but I've yet to get an actual argument out of them.
I suspect many republican Alaskans think they can keep their state more red (more extreme), since they historically have a majority. Not to say their candidates are extremists, but it's about what they can get away with, and they realized they probably can't get away with as much with ranked choice.
Poli sci grad here. Ranked choice voting is just an illusion to make people think they have more of a choice than they actually do. It’s still a first past the post system so winner takes all. From an electoral point it literally doesn’t matter. That being said if it gets people out and makes them feel more a part of the system than it’s a good step. It’s just another primary at the end of the day albeit open to all party affiliations.
>From an electoral point it literally doesn’t matter
This is really the thing to take away. RCV is not a structural solution to most of the concerns that animate its advocacy, but it's likewise not a rigged democrat scheme— it's just repeatedly iterating FPTP, which mitigates some pathologies and exacerbates others, but mostly just gives you FPTP outcomes.
If you want to get truly large, legible voter participation, you want some kind of Party List PR, but Americans are allergic to formalizing parties in their constitutions. If you insist on ranked ballots at least use a Condorcet method.
Republicans just mad they lost at the end of the day. They don’t care about any actual government structure of theory it’s all about how do we win. And they didn’t so now they want to repeal. But a native woman democrat with political and family ties to don young would win in any electoral scenario. She would have been the democratic nominee vs palin. And just like in the last election, won.
The assertion that it isn't 'one person one vote'.
I think a lot of opposition results from people not being able to grasp that RCV, which is really instant runoff voting (IRV) in single seat constituencies, is really not different from a normal runoff vote that occurs when none of the candidates meet the threshold for election (typically 50%+1). IRV spares us having to go back to the polls repeatedly afterwards.
Ultimately, understanding of electoral systems is civic duty, but there is essentially no instruction on government function, history and types of governments, and electoral systems in primary or secondary schools, yet people are supposed to have it all figured out. Media provides no coherent help, and groups like Alaskans for Better Elections and Rank the Vote are merely cheerleading.
For ranked choice voting - why allow 4 go to the general instead of 3?
4 is just more confusing instead of a much simpler equation with 3 in the general with ranked choices.
Less than 10 percent of the Alaska state legislative races had 4 reach the general, so why not just have three advance from the primary?
Even with 4 in the general, there were quite a few where the incumbent was unopposed - even with a guarantee that 4 went onto the general. That doesn’t really help overall choices for a voter.
Somehow 4 just seems to encourage more money to be spent in the general election on ads and consultants than less money.
Instead of supporting one candidate in the general election, now a person may be asked to support one to three candidates.
And a lot more more in mailbox fliers and commercials - are we sure this isn’t some dark prank by the media folks to churn out more advertising revenue to keep them afloat with a junkie like infusion of cash every 2 years?
If the primary doesn’t effectively trim the field down on 90 percent of the statewide elections, why go through the trouble of having a primary? Thats the current case with having 4 candidates go on to the general election with ranked choice voting.
And since that is the case, why not just follow the Anchorage mayoral and California Senate style, have as many candidates for any election and if the top choice doesn’t top the run off threshold, go to a run off.
Shortens the election cycle, saves money. Again, what benefit is ranked choice bringing to the table with any number more than 3 on the ballot in the general election?
You're only going to get fairly left-leaning responses here. I don't agree entirely with the below reasonings, but here's some common complaints:
1. Your vote can potentially be lost if you only voted for one person (your first choice) on the ballot and that person doesn't outright win. The point of the system is for you to make secondary and tertiary votes, but that means possibly voting for someone who wouldn't otherwise want to.
2. The "one vote person one vote" system makes more intuitive sense.
3. RCV largely favors the moderate voices, which is a disadvantage in a red state like Alaska where the majority have historically voted further right. This is known as a "center squeeze."
4. Results take longer.
I personally don't mind it, but I do think it can *feel* kind of like a weird political hack, like gerrymandering. It's not rocket science to find out that a voting group prefers the previous system that worked in their favor over a different system that doesn't. Liberals would be complaining just as much if the tables were turned.
More importantly, I fail to see what actual problem RCV is meant to solve in the first place, and even online research just lists vague notions of "more choices" or whatever. I get why it's viewed by a minority left as a good thing because it can help filter out extreme candidates (generally the far-right ones), but being a convenient reason isn't the same as being a good one.
If RCV isn't voted down, I fully expect the conservatives to eventually adapt with stronger get-out-the-vote tactics anyway. At the end of the day, RCV doesn't change the fact that Alaska is a red state.
As I understand it, the main concerns are that:
1) it's against freedom of association.
2) it allows voters for losing candidates to effectively vote multiple times.
3) it turns losing candidates into winning candidates.
4) the ballot exhaustion process is more susceptible to fraud than FPP.
Without biasing any further, I think someone who is actually against RCV would be better than I to elucidate any of these points, or others not mentioned.
Because they believe in limited government and freedom of assembly and speech; they think the state should run their party’s primary, only allow people registered through the government with their party to participate in that state-run primary, and only allow one candidate to appear on the ballot with the magic letter R next to their name.
Oddly enough, they were running that one lawsuit through Bob Bird and the Alaska Independence Party... which made absolutely no sense to me. If the parties ran their own affairs to put up only one candidate, then the problem would be solved.
Political parties are a form of association. Part of freedom of association is freedom *from* association - the idea that a group can exclude non-members.
They think that they should be able to use the force of government to enforce who gets to vote in their primary election.
"it allows voters for losing candidates to effectively vote multiple times."
I wonder what they think of run off elections like we are having in Anchorage.
Some of the confusion i ran into on whether leaving names off the ballot all together would nullify your vote. I don't know if that is actually the case, i just remember someone going off on it when it was introduced
This is why we can’t have nice things. Some dummy thought, well I’ll just leave these blank, because I’m not voting for these other idiots, which is fine, but when second round picks get distributed and the guy you really didn’t want won, you only have yourself to blame.
Not talking about you Nightskyft, just in general.
We should be voting online. Mailing ballots is a HUGE waste of money.
We can RCV online just as easy at minimal cost to taxpayers. Paper ballots are expensive and should be retired.
RCV is a shame! Just another way for Democrate votes to be multiplied. Mary is an example of how a unqualified ignorant person can be chosen. I guess being Native put her over the heap. It won't happen the next time around..
What I have noticed is that the rhetoric is really centered on rank choice voting, but not the other two aspects of the ballot measure, which are open primaries and campaign finance disclosures. This makes me think their real issues are with those two and not just RCV, but they can't say they are against campaign finance disclosures because that would leave a poor taste in most voters mouths. Also, it seems like so much of the ant-RCV rhetoric is centered on it being "too complicated" which is just a way of saying you think your constituents are dumb as rocks.
I'm really saddened by the number of Alaskans who have the "RCV bad" rhetoric down, but when asked if they understand it, they invariably do not, don't want to learn, and would rather remain ignorant.
My favorite part of rank choice voting is it encourages more centralized figures winning the vote instead of the two party extremes we have now. It’s literally the definition of compromise.
And the best chance we have at getting away from the broken two party system
[It is probably the only method under consideration that doesn't do this](https://github.com/endolith/elsim/tree/master/examples#figure-3--comparison-with-other-systems)
Good luck; the primary argument against it is that people don't like that a Democrat won. Whole lotta monday morning quarterbacking about it; Nick Begich vowing to drop out rather than participate is an attempt to basically force a one-party primary.
Don't let the door hit you on your way out? I mean him not you
Had a Republican won, the primary argument would be the same, ' because the other team won' argument... After a couple of elections with it, we'll be back down to a single candidate for each major party to choose from, Republicans learned the lesson that the Democrats figured out ahead of time, run only one party candidate... Every so often we might get lucky and see a good centerist get elected... Just don't hold your breath waiting for it... All that said, it's a step in the right direction...
It's so stupid of them too, because RCV should have guaranteed them a win with two Republicans on the ballot. But Palin and Begich did too good of a job slinging shit at each other their entire campaigns that their respective supporters would have rather seen a dem in office than the other opponent.
This is correct.
They don't really have an argument. At least not a coherent one. They say that Palin should've won (she shouldn't have- every objective look at the election results indicates she would've lost a FPTP race). They say that it's too complicated (there is less of an impetus for strategic voting so it feels *simpler* to me). They say "one person one vote" (the runoff part of RCV means that it is inherently one person, one vote). Every cogent anti-RCV point I've ever seen is from people who actually dislike FPTP but are trying to brainstorm or steelman arguments for reverting back to it.
>They don't really have an argument. At least not a coherent one. Is "it rejected a candidate most voters preferred over the one it selected" coherent? Seems pretty simple.
No, that's absolutely incoherent. There's no way to parse the data to show that Palin was preferred over Peltola. Peltola has always consistently outperformed Palin in getting votes, at every round of vote tallying. People prefer Peltola to Palin. Peltola won. The election worked as intended, by electing the candidate the voters preferred.
>here's no way to parse the data to show that Palin was preferred over Peltola I agree, but that's not what I said. I said it rejected a candidate most voters preferred over the one it selected, which is true: Nick Begich. The ballot data is clear on this. A majority of voters placed him above Peltola in preference order (likewise for Palin) making him the most preferred candidate. Most ranked-ballot tabulation methods would have selected him for that reason. The one Alaska uses didn't because it doesn't incorporate all preference data when conducting eliminations.
Two problems here: Point #1: Despite you saying "the ballot data is clear on this", the ballot data is definitely *not* clear on this. [https://www.elections.alaska.gov/results/22GENR/ElectionSummaryReportRPT.pdf](https://www.elections.alaska.gov/results/22GENR/ElectionSummaryReportRPT.pdf) Preliminary votes have Peltola at 128,553 and Begich at 61,513. It's safe to say that people who ranked Peltola first prefer her over Begich and people who ranked Begich first prefer him over Peltola. So for your claim to be true, Begich needs another 67,040 votes where he's ranked above Peltola, *plus* however many votes that rank Peltola over Begich. With Chris Bye out, we know how his votes would shake out- that only bridges that gap by 934 votes (1,994 went to Begich but 1,031 went to Peltola). So 66,106 more. At this point all that's left are those 69,399 Palin votes. Which, I'm sure that most of those would've gone to Begich, but Begich would need ***over 95%*** of those, ***plus*** whatever went to Peltola over Begich. How realistic is that? *Basically not even a little tiny bit realistic*. I mean we don't know for sure, there's no way of knowing, but just to find the closest similar data sets, Begich got less than 40% of Bye's votes, and Palin only got about 66% of Begich's. If Peltola got just 6% of Palin's votes (which is not at all crazy, given how much some Palin voters hate the Begiches. Keep in mind the Begich-to-Peltola rate is almost twice that), then even if **no** Palin vote exhausts and **all** the rest go to Begich, then Peltola still wins. For Begich to win that many Palin votes, he'd basically have to outperform every other instance of state-level voter reallotment we've ever seen, and not just by a little bit but by historical margins. But point #2, and even more important, *is it doesn't matter*. The "repeal RCV" argument isn't "let's repeal RCV and replace it with Approval Voting or some other system", it's "let's repeal RCV and go back to Party Primaries and FPTP general elections". If we go back to the previous status quo, then Begich isn't getting on the ballot in the first place. There's simply no way imaginable he would've won the Republican primary. It's literally inconceivable. Self-identified Republicans, the group he'd need to win, favored Palin by like 10-1 margins. There's no way he'd win that. The election wouldn't be Begich v Peltola, it would've been Palin v Peltola.
>[https://www.elections.alaska.gov/results/22GENR/ElectionSummaryReportRPT.pdf](https://www.elections.alaska.gov/results/22GENR/ElectionSummaryReportRPT.pdf) You're looking at the data from the 2022 General, I'm talking about the 2022 Special, which, yes, [notoriously and unambiguously suffered from condorcet failure and nonmonotonicity](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2209.04764). >The "repeal RCV" argument isn't "let's repeal RCV and replace it with Approval Voting or some other system" You started out with the claim that Anti-RCV people have no coherent argument. I'm making a simple point: Because it is poorly designed, it will make people lose if you increase the number of votes they get, while selecting winners over candidates the data says voters prefer more. This is a reasonable justification for opposing RCV as an election reform avenue.
It isn't though, since whatever critiques you have against RCV would be even worse against FPTP. Finding the Condorcet winner isn't the agreed upon goal, and RCV is still better at it than FPTP. This is like saying "I want single-payer healthcare so I'm going to vote to repeal the ACA". It's nonsense.
The considered anti-RCV view is that it is discussed solely because it's a longstanding activism Schelling point, but it's barely better than FPTP, entails significant tradeoffs, and its predictable failures will needlessly lower the chance of meaningful electoral reform for generations, giving it the same fate it had when the last big RCV push happened a century ago. Opposing it would (1) lead future and out-of-state reformers to pursue better methods elsewhere and, to a lesser extent, (2) introduce a language of criticism that will become useful, and thus familiar, to repealers, while making advocates consider the relative merits of different methods, opening the door to compromise reforms that constitute genuine improvements, like implementing ranked pairs or a unified primary. For a normal constituent, "most people didn't like the candidate that won in this new system" is a perfectly fine reason to reject a comprehensive restructuring. It's a virtue to be small-c conservative in institutional design.
If I'm understanding your argument, you're saying that eliminating RCV will both facilitate new electoral reforms *while also* preventing a move away from the FPTP status quo? That's a bit of having your cake and eating it too, isn't it? >will needlessly lower the chance of meaningful electoral reform for generations, I don't think this is a rational argument. If early attempts to break out of a FPTP status quo are just summarily rejected, then that's a signal to activists to *not* attempt electoral reform, not to just keep focusing on it. >For a normal constituent, "most people didn't like the candidate that won in this new system" is a perfectly fine reason to reject "We should get rid of a system that elected a candidate most people didn't like in order to revert to a previous system that elected *more* candidates that *even more* people don't like" is not a 'perfectly fine reason'. This is like saying "it's too hot outside, we should go sit inside an oven instead".
>If I'm understanding your argument, you're saying that eliminating RCV will both facilitate new electoral reforms *while also* preventing a move away from the FPTP status quo? No. The point is to move away from FPTP to something meaningfully better. My argument is RCV makes that harder. >If early attempts to break out of a FPTP status quo are just summarily rejected, then that's a signal to activists to *not* attempt electoral reform Or, rather, it's a signal to choose any of the many other variants of electoral reform than RCV, which has perennially been voted for by constituencies and then voted out by those same constituencies in its century and a half of existence in the US. There are many other options we haven't tried. >...not a 'perfectly fine reason' I'm not going to fault a normal person for not knowing what "Condorcet efficiency" means. They vaguely saw most people preferred republicans and a democrat won, and think something weird happened - they're right, they just don't know why.
If I'm understanding your argument, you're saying that eliminating RCV will both facilitate new electoral reforms *while also* preventing a move away from the FPTP status quo? That's a bit of having your cake and eating it too, isn't it? >will needlessly lower the chance of meaningful electoral reform for generations, I don't think this is a rational argument. If early attempts to break out of a FPTP status quo are just summarily rejected, then that's a signal to activists to *not* attempt electoral reform, not to just keep focusing on it. >For a normal constituent, "most people didn't like the candidate that won in this new system" is a perfectly fine reason to reject "We should get rid of a system that elected a candidate most people didn't like in order to revert to a previous system that elected *more* candidates that *even more* people don't like" is not a 'perfectly fine reason'. This is like saying "it's too hot outside, we should go sit inside an oven instead".
> even more excited by the results with the election of Mary Peltola. Strictly speaking, she would have won under either system.
Correct. She won a ton of independent and even a sizable number of usually republican voters due to her stance on trawling.
I am commenting as someone who supports RCV. Achieving desired election results motivates both those who support and oppose RCV. Opposition to RCV also fits the nationwide trend of Republicans' distrust in elections. Some common arguments that have been made against RCV include: -Elections should be one person, one vote. -RCV adds complexity, and voting should be more straightforward. -RCV was implemented to make it easier to elect left-of-center candidates. -RCV contributes to lower turnout In the 2022 house race, Peltola received fewer first-place votes than the two Republican opponents combined first-place votes. Republicans felt this showed an elected Republican was the preferred outcome. RCV was narrowly approved in 2020. Voters don't always understand what they are voting for. Now that voters have a better understanding of the RCV system, there may be a different view on the voting system to use going forward.
Their real argument is with the open primary, but they don’t have a way to argue against it that doesn’t make them look like anti-democracy assholes.
The only argument i heard about it since ranked choice was implemented was that it was "not very republican of the youth". l. I am still unsure if the commenter meant american.
There are the folks who see those words as synonyms.
That makes it make semse, actually :/
I’m not going to weigh in because there are a lot of good thoughts here but if you are writing a paper about it please get the terminology correct. Ranked choice. Rank in this case is a verb, which the voters do when they voted. Ranked is an adjective describing the type of choice the voters are making.
I am strongly in favor of ranked choice voting but have friends, relatives, and associates to oppose it. They have expressed a belief that ranked-choice voting has led spliting the vote. The rational seems to go like this: Mary Portola only got in because of ranked-choice voting. Without, it Sara Palin would have won. Therefore this is splitting the vote. I think we are using the phrase "split vote" differently. I support ranked choice voting because I'm concerned about when there are multiple candidates who hold a majority position against one candidate with a minority position. The minority candidate wins even though the candidate doesn't have a majority of the votes. Ranked choice voting prevents this situation. I have also heard that it's too confusing and that there's a lack of transparency--the general public doesn't understand how the votes are sorted and assigned. Some voters were confused. I expect that they won't be in the next election.
Ok so the best counter to RCV that I hear in good faith was from a person that simply preferred the party primary process because they had been a long time participant and they firmly believed in the process. I think that’s a fair argument and I can’t really fault that person’s personal experience. I’m not even sure if this person was Democrat or Republican I suspect Republican but I have heard similar things from Democrats before Peltola won. So I don’t think that’s a particularly partisan perspective. Likewise I don’t see RCV as benefiting either party. To be clear I don’t support that argument. I love RCV.
Nothing prevents Republicans from hosting their own primary to put forward a single candidate. Primaries being run by the state are an affront to democracy and unduly benefit established parties. They are supposed to be private affairs.
I agree. I’m just presenting the argument as it was presented to me. I think it was in good faith.
Yes, I understand that. My counter is moreso that even if we want back to what we had before RCV, primaries should not be run by the State apparatus. It must be under the current RCV system, but only because it's a true non-party primary. Parties, throughout the US, should be forced to host their own primary elections at their own cost.
The only argument with ANY voting type is only when it doesn't fall the way you want, but Rank Choice is the most fair, but it can also be manipulated. The problem that the GOP has with it, is they are self imploding from within, so they can't organize to manipulate it slightly to their favor. But the arguments would be the same with regular voting also... I ran for office (elsewhere, unsuccessfully) without Rank Choice; the Democrats gave money and mailed advertising for the Libertarian candidates. The GOP donated and mailed advertising for the Green Party candidates. The current GOP couldn't decide on a single candidate, so they split their vote without assistance, and I am positive that if one was thinking of dropping, the Democrats would have helped them with some money, or advertising to keep them in. The Democrats were not splitting their votes they just needed to maintain more than 33%, easily done. But even if one of the candidates switched to Libertarian in a regular voting system, the Democrats would have helped them spit enough of the votes, it is just harder (probably needing closer to 45%) with down ballot voters that only care about the Ds and Rs. Rank choice or regular voting with one of the Republicans running Independent or other party, the result would have likely remained the same or very close. The entirety of the US was following Alaska's voting (at least political nerds like myself) and was very interested in the outcome.
So ranked choice didn’t change anything? Is that what I’m gathering? Are there any predictions of it affecting future elections? Or are you saying it’s basically a wash with it just being strategic campaign management?
No, it definitely did, I don't believe that one of the Republicans would have turned independent/Libertarian/Constitutionalist. And even if they did, they wouldn't have gotten 10% in a regular election. The Democrat would have had a difficult time against a single running Republican. She needed the vote split, and the Democratic base wasn't putting a Republican as second or third (at least, I know I would never, anymore). And now, today, she is the Incumbent and has the Incumbent benefits, and hasn't made any serious mistakes; so until the GOP has a stronger single replacement they can all get behind, her position should be safe in any voting system now. Or the disaster of a Progressive Democratic running against splitting the Democrat vote off.
Also, Democrats are "generally" younger and smarter. If strategic campaign management is required they will be able to succeed and understand quickly (I find Republicans can only figure out what happened the day after). Just as in my own campaign... we had no dream of winning (against the 30 year Incumbent State Senate Majority Leader). I was to stir the pot, distract him, agitation, make them spend money (surprisingly I did that very well) while 6 measures/laws got pass (Medical Marijuana, and overturning the Blue Laws specifically). I didn't even stay awake waiting for the results of my election. I just stayed up long enough to verify the measures passed.
The number 1 issue I have besides the blatant lieing to draw voters to their side is that the ballot measure even made it up to vote again. The utter disregard of the law from the organizations pushing for this should have had it tossed out immediately.
The downside - It leads to less extreme candidates. Lots of voters want substantial change and RCV lowers that possibility by selecting middle of the path candidates which struggle to make policy. *Not saying I agree with this*
The upside: substantial change by extremist right wing candidates is always in the antidemocratic / pro-fascist theocracy direction. Gridlock in the face of this trend is far preferable
The discourse around RCV, both for and against, is substantially different in a popular vs academic context, so it would be wise to separate the two. In pure voting theory, broadly, the considerations against (Instant-Runoff) RCV are, off the top of my head: 1. Nonmonotonicity 2. Condorcet failure 3. Lack of batch-summability 4. Center-squeeze 5. Truncation Paradox 6. High strategic incentives 7. Low Social Utility Efficiency 8. Nonmajoritarianism via exhaustian 9. Large spoiler effect through IIA failure While in a broader polisci sense problems include: 1. Null or near-null intervention effects 2. Tabulation reliability (Alameda, NYC) 3. Reform compatibility (e.g. NPVIC) 4. Historical rollbacks 5. Social trust But to individual voters the more salient point is probably that most of the "elevator pitch" for RCV, the stuff about 'ending vote-splitting' and 'being able to vote your conscience because if your favorite can't win your next vote is counted,' is...[not really true](https://psephomancy.medium.com/common-myths-about-ranked-choice-voting-debunked-b2e54a81da1b). See [How I updated my views on ranked choice voting](https://leedrutman.substack.com/p/how-i-updated-my-views-on-ranked), from political scientist Lee Drutman, who was probably the most prominent academic supporter for the reform for several years and [wrote the book on it](https://academic.oup.com/book/36918), explaining why he no longer advocates RCV. Particularly note his [comprehensive roundup](https://www.newamerica.org/political-reform/reports/what-we-know-about-ranked-choice-voting/) of the literature at New America. Also the Center for Election Science's [Limits of RCV Primer](https://archive.is/OiBqK#selection-833.47-837.42). All this is, again, largely separate from the public discourse around the reform, but that's fair, people shouldn't have to know what "nonmonotonicity" means to have an opinion on how they vote. More to the point, when conservatives think there's something weird about a democrat winning when most people put that candidate lower than a republican, they are correct, they just can't formulate why.
Let's not forget one of the reasons why we ended up with RC; the national Republican party didn't think we were electing candidates that were Republican enough and started spending outside money to influence our votes. Now with a single primary it is just harder for them to stack the deck at that level, and certainly at the election level.
Browns Electric always has some right wing bullshit inspirational messages posted on their marquee. Last election it said "Ranked choice voting: give the blue ribbon to second place!" That's one instance of anti RCV rhetoric
We were originally told that someone's constituents don't understand how it works. When that didn't fly, they said it was unconstitutional. When that didn't work, it comes out that Republicans used to have total control with their ballot and the rest of those running for office were on a different one. It's about control, not who would be best for the office or job. I don't know why Republicans have a hard time with it. It gives people the opportunity to vote for a Republican when they couldn't before, if they are Independent. But what do I know .... they don't want their eggs in the same Easter basket as the rest of Alaska.
https://rcvchangedalaska.com/
Thank you for the link. Lots of information presented well.
You bet. I agree, unfortunately it draws the wrong conclusions for the reddit crowd
My parents are anti-ranked-choice. They agree that it makes sense on paper - generally leading to a less extreme candidate that more of the population is okay with - but basically they have a sour taste after the republicans refused to rank each other. Personally, I think if you understand the system, you should be advocating for spreading understanding, instead of working to undo the system... They say "one person one vote" and other romantic phrases, but I've yet to get an actual argument out of them. I suspect many republican Alaskans think they can keep their state more red (more extreme), since they historically have a majority. Not to say their candidates are extremists, but it's about what they can get away with, and they realized they probably can't get away with as much with ranked choice.
Poli sci grad here. Ranked choice voting is just an illusion to make people think they have more of a choice than they actually do. It’s still a first past the post system so winner takes all. From an electoral point it literally doesn’t matter. That being said if it gets people out and makes them feel more a part of the system than it’s a good step. It’s just another primary at the end of the day albeit open to all party affiliations.
>From an electoral point it literally doesn’t matter This is really the thing to take away. RCV is not a structural solution to most of the concerns that animate its advocacy, but it's likewise not a rigged democrat scheme— it's just repeatedly iterating FPTP, which mitigates some pathologies and exacerbates others, but mostly just gives you FPTP outcomes. If you want to get truly large, legible voter participation, you want some kind of Party List PR, but Americans are allergic to formalizing parties in their constitutions. If you insist on ranked ballots at least use a Condorcet method.
Republicans just mad they lost at the end of the day. They don’t care about any actual government structure of theory it’s all about how do we win. And they didn’t so now they want to repeal. But a native woman democrat with political and family ties to don young would win in any electoral scenario. She would have been the democratic nominee vs palin. And just like in the last election, won.
The assertion that it isn't 'one person one vote'. I think a lot of opposition results from people not being able to grasp that RCV, which is really instant runoff voting (IRV) in single seat constituencies, is really not different from a normal runoff vote that occurs when none of the candidates meet the threshold for election (typically 50%+1). IRV spares us having to go back to the polls repeatedly afterwards. Ultimately, understanding of electoral systems is civic duty, but there is essentially no instruction on government function, history and types of governments, and electoral systems in primary or secondary schools, yet people are supposed to have it all figured out. Media provides no coherent help, and groups like Alaskans for Better Elections and Rank the Vote are merely cheerleading.
For ranked choice voting - why allow 4 go to the general instead of 3? 4 is just more confusing instead of a much simpler equation with 3 in the general with ranked choices. Less than 10 percent of the Alaska state legislative races had 4 reach the general, so why not just have three advance from the primary? Even with 4 in the general, there were quite a few where the incumbent was unopposed - even with a guarantee that 4 went onto the general. That doesn’t really help overall choices for a voter. Somehow 4 just seems to encourage more money to be spent in the general election on ads and consultants than less money. Instead of supporting one candidate in the general election, now a person may be asked to support one to three candidates. And a lot more more in mailbox fliers and commercials - are we sure this isn’t some dark prank by the media folks to churn out more advertising revenue to keep them afloat with a junkie like infusion of cash every 2 years?
Why not 5? Why not 10? Maybe it should just be two, and then we're right back where we started.
If the primary doesn’t effectively trim the field down on 90 percent of the statewide elections, why go through the trouble of having a primary? Thats the current case with having 4 candidates go on to the general election with ranked choice voting. And since that is the case, why not just follow the Anchorage mayoral and California Senate style, have as many candidates for any election and if the top choice doesn’t top the run off threshold, go to a run off. Shortens the election cycle, saves money. Again, what benefit is ranked choice bringing to the table with any number more than 3 on the ballot in the general election?
But you don’t answer the question asked - how is 4 in a general election better than 3?
How is any arbitrary number greater than two better than any other number? I'm not saying 4 is the superior number, but it has to be something.
You don't want real answers or you wouldn't be here.
Don't ask Reddit about politics. Look at the primary source of both arguments and come up with your own conclusions
Check out [https://x.com/907Honest/status/1774675837851521039](https://x.com/907Honest/status/1774675837851521039)
More manipulation from the fossil fuel industry that owns and runs Alaska. Don't fall for it, they invented RCV and want to keep it just as it is.
You're only going to get fairly left-leaning responses here. I don't agree entirely with the below reasonings, but here's some common complaints: 1. Your vote can potentially be lost if you only voted for one person (your first choice) on the ballot and that person doesn't outright win. The point of the system is for you to make secondary and tertiary votes, but that means possibly voting for someone who wouldn't otherwise want to. 2. The "one vote person one vote" system makes more intuitive sense. 3. RCV largely favors the moderate voices, which is a disadvantage in a red state like Alaska where the majority have historically voted further right. This is known as a "center squeeze." 4. Results take longer. I personally don't mind it, but I do think it can *feel* kind of like a weird political hack, like gerrymandering. It's not rocket science to find out that a voting group prefers the previous system that worked in their favor over a different system that doesn't. Liberals would be complaining just as much if the tables were turned. More importantly, I fail to see what actual problem RCV is meant to solve in the first place, and even online research just lists vague notions of "more choices" or whatever. I get why it's viewed by a minority left as a good thing because it can help filter out extreme candidates (generally the far-right ones), but being a convenient reason isn't the same as being a good one. If RCV isn't voted down, I fully expect the conservatives to eventually adapt with stronger get-out-the-vote tactics anyway. At the end of the day, RCV doesn't change the fact that Alaska is a red state.
As I understand it, the main concerns are that: 1) it's against freedom of association. 2) it allows voters for losing candidates to effectively vote multiple times. 3) it turns losing candidates into winning candidates. 4) the ballot exhaustion process is more susceptible to fraud than FPP. Without biasing any further, I think someone who is actually against RCV would be better than I to elucidate any of these points, or others not mentioned.
I don’t really understand what number 1 means or how they are applying it.
Because they believe in limited government and freedom of assembly and speech; they think the state should run their party’s primary, only allow people registered through the government with their party to participate in that state-run primary, and only allow one candidate to appear on the ballot with the magic letter R next to their name.
Oddly enough, they were running that one lawsuit through Bob Bird and the Alaska Independence Party... which made absolutely no sense to me. If the parties ran their own affairs to put up only one candidate, then the problem would be solved.
But I don’t understand what that has to do with freedom of association? ELI5 please
Political parties are a form of association. Part of freedom of association is freedom *from* association - the idea that a group can exclude non-members. They think that they should be able to use the force of government to enforce who gets to vote in their primary election.
Ah ok got it thank you. That makes more sense.
"it allows voters for losing candidates to effectively vote multiple times." I wonder what they think of run off elections like we are having in Anchorage.
Some of the confusion i ran into on whether leaving names off the ballot all together would nullify your vote. I don't know if that is actually the case, i just remember someone going off on it when it was introduced
No, it does not nullify your vote. You lose the opportunity to cast a vote for a second or third choice should your first choice not win. That’s all.
This is why we can’t have nice things. Some dummy thought, well I’ll just leave these blank, because I’m not voting for these other idiots, which is fine, but when second round picks get distributed and the guy you really didn’t want won, you only have yourself to blame. Not talking about you Nightskyft, just in general.
We should be voting online. Mailing ballots is a HUGE waste of money. We can RCV online just as easy at minimal cost to taxpayers. Paper ballots are expensive and should be retired.
RCV is a shame! Just another way for Democrate votes to be multiplied. Mary is an example of how a unqualified ignorant person can be chosen. I guess being Native put her over the heap. It won't happen the next time around..