Range Voting

I don't care who does the electing, as long as I get to do the nominating. Boss Tweed

Is ranked-choice voting a better way to run elections? (

The Rise of Ranked Choice Voting (7/2/2020)

A Better Electoral System in Maine (6/10/2018)

Vote For Me! For Second Place, at Least? (6/10/2018)

One Reform to Save America: David Brooks (5/31/2018)

How to Move Beyond the Two-Party System (10/7/2016)

For all practical purposes, we are not allowed to have minor parties, because they are spoilers. Voting for them can result in the victory of the Party you do not like. The simple solution for this: implement range voting in which you rank the candidates and your second and third choices can count. A Maine ballot initiative passed for this, and should be a model for the nation. Lacking IRV or range voting, just hold your nose and pick the least worst.

Not only would RCV allow more parties, prevent Tweedism, it could improve the dialog since more voices would be heard, and it could reduce polarization.

It is also important, because elections can be strongly influenced by sham candidates.

Aren't you disgusted that you have to vote for the candidate most likely to win instead of the one that you like ? A vote for a Presidential candidate is a vote for an agenda, and usually a candidate with an honest agenda is unlikely to have any chance of winning an election. Take Bush for example, was backed by corporations, selected by the Supreme Court, and he governed FOR corporations. (That, by the way, is the definition of Fascism.) Judging from polls, our democracy is weak.

Trump presided over a government of billionaires who were not elected by the popular vote, and they rewarded themselves handsomely with tax cuts at the cost of $1.5 trillion in new taxpayer debt. Since Social Security payroll taxes were cut, it dipped into its reserve and will need "reform".

Links

Elections

Voting Machines

Citizens United

Election 2016

The Voting News

Vast Right Wing Conspiracy

National Popular Vote

Break the Duopoly

Brennan Center

National Ranked Choice Voting

Greg Palast

Election Integrity News

Defence of the National Popular Vote

Wesleyan Media Project

Fair Vote

Election Law Blog

Unrig The Map

Get Money Out

Voter Rights Action

USVRA

The Carter Center

Open Debates

Andrew Krieg

Superpacs

Election Protection Action

Election Reform Resources

Richard Charnin

Unequal Access

Issue One

Civil Politics

My Fair Election

Elections Not Auctions

Election Defense Alliance

Fair Elections Now

Campaign Legal Center

Public Campaign

Protecting the Vote.org

Americans-Elect.org

No More Stolen Elections

Swing State Project

Verified Voting Blog

Voters For Peace

Elections At Risk

CTVotersCount

League of Women Voters SE Connecticut

Common Cause

Public Campaign

BISC

Swing State Project

Project Vote Count

Video the Vote

Elections At Risk

Open Voting Consortium

Steal Back Your Vote

ElectionLine.org

FEC Info

CSES

Ct Citizens for Ballot Initiative

Price of My Vote

American Blackout (a movie you should see.)

Election Protection Wiki

Raleigh Myers election talking points

Campaign Money

Campaign Finance Information Center

CT Citizens Election Program

Campaign Underground 2006
Campaign Underground Tips and Tricks

See these Election Reform Reports.

EPIC notes on voting

Politics of Voter Fraud

Competetive Democracy

Project Vote Smart

Why Election Fraud is NOT in your newspaper

WheresThePaper

When we have primaries in which there may be as many as ten choices for each major party, it would be much fairer if we could rank them according to our individual preference. If there were more than two parties, there need not be 'spoilers'. We could change the way we vote. Rather than the flawed current technique we use, we could improve outcomes by using range voting aka Instant Runoff Voting. William Poundstone's book, Gaming the Vote, is a thoughtful discussion of alternative voting techniques and argues that range voting would be better than IRV.

Range voting allows rating of candidates on a scale that indicates relative preferences. You could rank each candidate on a scale of, say, 1 to 10.

Our current system, a two party monopoly, is an insult to democracy and it guarantees that we can have only two parties, both in thrall to the funders. Any third party is likely a spoiler.

After Maine elected Paul Lepage Governor over two strong candidates, a referendum chose Ranked Choice Voting.

New Mexico had a Senatorial election in which a Green Party candidate ran strong. Although the majority would not have wanted it, the Republican won. This would not happen using Instant Runoff Voting or range voting.

Using Instant runoff voting (IRV) " voters rank candidates in order of preference. If no candidate receives an overall majority of first preferences, the candidates with fewest votes are eliminated one by one, and their votes transferred according to their second and third preferences (and so on) and all votes retallied, until one candidate achieves a majority . The term 'instant runoff voting' is used because this process resembles a series of run-off elections ." ( wikipedia points out a number of places IRV is being used. Currently there is little choice except the two major parties, and third parties are rarely heard. Until instant runoff voting (IRV) becomes widespread reality, third parties can only be spoilers. Being realistic, we are not allowed third parties.

What we have is Tweedism. "I don't care who does the electing, as long as I get to do the nominating." Boss Tweed

A modified voting procedure would be the single best change we could make to our elections: it would make more parties possible, enlarge the dialog, It would be more democratic; it would produce better outcomes. and newer parties would not be spoilers. So why don't we have IRV ? Most likely: our major parties are blocking it.

"in Australia and in Ireland they use a system of preferential voting where voters have the option of ranking candidates in their order of preference and if no candidate receives a majority of first choice votes, the lowest vote getter is eliminated and the ballots of the people who voted for that candidate are distributed to their second choice candidates. And if necessary, this elimination recount process continues until one candidate surpasses fifty percent.

Preference voting insures that the candidate elected has majority support among voters. ...has the added benefit of encouraging greater diversity of candidates since independent and third party candidates do not have to worry about splitting the vote by running and voters are able to vote their conscience without having to worry about throwing away their vote.

This greater diversity of candidates would likely increase voter participation. The other advantage of preference voting is that it creates a disincentive against negative campaigning because candidates would be reluctant to alienate supporters of their opponents because they might still be able to get those voters to vote for them as their second choice."

Many politicians, including Howard Dean and Susan Bysiewicz, publicly support the idea.

With many candidates in each party primary, if democracy is an American value, we should move to a better voting procedure. We should insist on it for elections at every level.

Instant Runoff voting is a prerequisite to break the two party monopoly of US elections.

Instant Runoff Voting page of fairvote.org

Voting machines with open source code, reasonable security precautions, and verifiable results can easily accommodate better techniques such as range voting.

So why is this issue not on the table ? Republicans have to cheat at elections. Mitch blocked any reform. Maybe it is that the major parties can't stand the competition. One thing I think we have learned from the last few years is that a major party grown too strong can trump the Constitution. That's why we need to reconsider how we vote.

See the elections page also.

Links

RangeVoting.org

Bibliography

See elections.htm for links to related information..