this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2023
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United States | News & Politics
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Ranked choice would absolutely still help. The two party state is utterly awful. And while primaries exist and people should use them, let's be honest: most people won't. We need it to be easier to vote for who people like. Primaries aren't that, since they're an extra vote you have to be aware of and take the time to research and vote for.
As an aside, ranked voting isn't what I'd consider ideal for the general election, either. It's still heavily disproportionate. Proportional voting is far superior for ensuring representation. Eg, suppose 25% of the population likes progressives, 50% likes centrists, and 25% like conservatives. Any form of single winner ballot (ranked choice or FPTP) is gonna favour the centrist, even though that means 50% of the population don't get their ideal representation.
Depends which form of ranked choice. The naïvely-designed ones like Supplementary Vote, Contingent Vote, Instant-Runoff Voting, Top Four, Final Five, etc. don't fix the two-party system at all, since they only count first-choice rankings in each round, just like our current system. Unfortunately those are the only ones being advocated in the US. We need Condorcet-compliant systems if we actually want to fix the spoiler effect and end the two-party system. Total Vote Runoff/Baldwin, Ranked Robin, Schulze, etc.
Yes!
Actually, both FPTP and RCV suffer from the "center-squeeze effect", so centrist candidates are at a disadvantage and they favor more polarizing candidates.