https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5SLQXNpzsk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNxwMdI8OWw
So, I am currently taking an American Government course at my community college, and one of the topics we had to write on was a proposed voting system called ranked-choice, or instant runoff, voting. I thought it was interesting, so I will post what I wrote about it here, and you guys can give me your thoughts on it. The links above are to two videos explaining how it works.
2. Explore the following website: http://www.fairvote.org/
Summarize the readings from this website. Offer a critical analysis of the arguments made. Explain the advantages and disadvantages if the United States government and/or your state government adopted proportional representation.
This website argues in favor of adopting a ranked-choice, voting system. Under this system, voters may rank as many candidates as they like from first choice down in one election. If a candidate receives the majority of first choice votes, they win. If no candidate receives the majority of first choice votes, all votes cast for the candidate in last place are tallied instead for the second choice of each of those voters, and so on until one person has a majority. The proponents of this voting system argue that it would have numerous benefits, including promoting majority support, discouraging negative campaigning, minimizing strategic voting (voting for the candidate you think has a chance to win, not the one you really want), and saving money by eliminating the need for primaries. Opponents point out that not all of these benefits may materialize. Supporters say politicians would be less likely to smear opponents out of fear of alienating that opponent’s supporters and losing valuable second choice votes, but opponents point out that interest groups supporting particular candidates would have no problem doing so. Proponents say this guarantees the winner will have majority support, but opponents point out that the candidate with the most first choice votes could lose to a candidate with more second choice votes. Since votes are not weighted based on how much a person supports each choice, this could mean that a person with more net support could lose. Although it seems like a miracle solution on the surface, it is impossible to tell what unintended and undetectable consequences this complex system could have, which makes me hesitant to support it. This idea has been around for over 100 years, perhaps there is a reason it was never implemented.
So, give me your thoughts. Should we implement this system, or is it a catastrophe in disguise? I’m really just experimenting with what I may want to post to the blog here.
3 replies on “Ranked Choice Voting: What Do You Think?”
I think that this is far too complicated on its face to implement. I think the unintended consequences would be legion and am extremely skeptical that it would be more tamper-proof than what we have now. I also think that it’s yet another way to attack the electoral college, i.e., get us closer to a popular-vote presidential election, which would further destroy the balance of powers constructed by the framers.
I also think that we should be eschewing electronic and mail-in ballots, and early voting. In my opinion these propagate fraud. We should be, if anything, going in the other direction, where in order to vote you have to present not only valid proof of citizenship, but you get your thumb dipped in indelible ink. That’s what “one person, one vote” SHOULD mean.
Guess I should write my own blog post of all my opinions on voting!
I like the idea but I fear the implementation of it leaves too many options for errors and manipulation of the code. Seat and choice is a pretty simple one to one relationship that can be accomplished easily on paper or electronically. Ranked voting will require computational logic to track the choices and that have human programmed logic which scares me. Especially when no one would know the algorithm used.
That was kind of my thought. I don’t see anything obviously wrong with it, but I can’t quite wrap my brain around whether or not it would really be fair. It just seems too complicated; there’s way too much room for error, and no one would be able to tell if the results were skewed.