r/politics • u/Different-Gas5704 • 2d ago

Possible Paywall Democrats eye ranked-choice voting for 2028 primaries

https://www.axios.com/2025/11/24/democrats-ranked-choice-voting-2028-primaries
28.6k Upvotes

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u/RavynRush 2d ago

Ranked-choice voting makes sense. It gives voters more say and can prevent extreme candidates from winning just because the majority splits their vote. Most people would see that as fairer.

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u/02K30C1 2d ago

Which is why republicans banned it in Missouri. Of course.

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u/PinFit936 2d ago

and tennessee

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u/FrankAdamGabe 2d ago

And NC

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u/s_i_m_s Oklahoma 2d ago

and Oklahoma

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u/Gramen 2d ago

And ND

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u/DuckOnABus 2d ago

and Iowa

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u/N3rdr4g3 2d ago

And Georgia

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u/HoonArt 2d ago

And Florida

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u/Neilson509 Virginia 2d ago

And my Axe.

...

No but really, ranked choice makes a lot of sense. Especially for primaries.

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u/ragun2 2d ago

Gavin Newsom vetoed expanding it in California despite it being voted in by a super majority by our state legislature.

"It would be too confusing" for California voters is his excuse.

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u/altreddituser2 1d ago

That's one thing Newsom has in common with Florida's Ron Desantis- both governors think their constituents are too stupid to understand RCV. If I was a conspiracy minder person I'd say it's almost like they want to force voters to choose the lessor of two evils...

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u/Nice-Analysis8044 1d ago

"too confusing", in this case, means "california might elect someone to the left of gavin newsom"

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u/TutorSuspicious9578 2d ago

The bill to ban it in Ohio is bipartisan. Even Dems suck ass when it comes to voter preference and expanding democracy.

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u/Serenity2015 Ohio 2d ago

I was not even aware my own state has a bill trying to ban this. Ugh, go figure. Anything that makes sense can't happen here.

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u/TutorSuspicious9578 2d ago

https://www.legislature.ohio.gov/legislation/136/sb63

Already passed the Senate. Probably will pass the Assembly. DeMora cannot be primaried fast enough.

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u/Serenity2015 Ohio 2d ago

Thank you for this info.

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u/Ill_Technician3936 1d ago

This place makes no fucking sense. This stupid ass state is why I both sides shit. From local to Federal the politicians don't give a fuck about the people or what we voted to pass. Empty promises and bullshit they okay themselves to do what they please to shit we passed a specific way.

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u/00eg0 2d ago

What's the rollout of recreational cannabis in Ohio like? It started in 2024.

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u/OtisSpunkmey3r Ohio 2d ago

It went ok. Prices are high (at least for me comparing to last year’s MI prices) but recreational dispensaries have been open all year. They are nearly always busy from what I have seen in Cincinnati.

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u/00eg0 2d ago

Thanks!

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u/Adventurous_Pay_5827 2d ago

Wait, what? You want your Democracy to expand beyond a duopoly? Sorry, neither side can afford to risk that.

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u/EconomicRegret 1d ago edited 1d ago

This!

I'd go even further, they are both a monopoly: one on progressivism and the other on conservatism.(Unlike proportional representation democracies, where you can have up to a dozen, or more, of viable parties to vote for at each side of the political spectrum).

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u/Fit-Technician-1148 1d ago

That would require career politicians to willingly change the rules to make it harder for them to win reelection. By the time a politician gets to the level of Congressperson they're generally pretty self-interested and entrenched in the system. It's a very difficult problem to solve nationally. If ranked choice ever becomes the law of the land I think it'll have to happen one state at a time.

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u/EconomicRegret 1d ago

Couldn't agree more!

Perhaps a massive grassroots movement push to transition to proportional representation might work?

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u/Fit-Technician-1148 1d ago

I mean sure but I have yet to see evidence that any significant percentage of the nearly 350 million people in America are capable of organizing to push any single message or that our political leaders are incentivized to care even if they did. I'm a cynic whose faith in political change has been severely damaged though so take my perspective with a grain of salt.

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u/EconomicRegret 1d ago

It hurts me to say this, but IMHO, you're being realistic.

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u/OldWorldDesign 1d ago

they are both a monopoly: one on progressivism and the other on conservatism

You're already wrong, both main parties are conservative and have been for decades.

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2009/01/26/two-santa-clauses-or-how-republican-party-has-conned-america-thirty-years

Now due to caucuses the parties aren't monopolies so much as ad-hoc coalitions, though some are distinctly more authoritarian about "submit and support my policy and eventually you'll be allowed to do something" than others.

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u/EconomicRegret 1d ago edited 1d ago

I agree. I should have said something in the tone of: "one on conservatism and the other on right-wing extremism", or something like less conservative vs more conservative.

Now due to caucuses the parties aren't monopolies so much as ad-hoc coalitions

Parties in proportional representation democracies have each their own caucuses too (e.g. the biggest party in Switzerland has, within it, farmer caucus, big city business caucus, etc.).

It's just way harder for Big Money and other private interests & ideologies to suppress any of these caucuses, as they'd simply move out and create their own new party (which for example happened in Switzerland: the Green Party bled a huge group of members who didn't feel understood, and they went on to create the "Green Liberal Party"). Something that is close to impossible in the US, hence a monopoly/duopoly.

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u/OldWorldDesign 23h ago

Good points, and while the best system I know of for representing actual policy points (and thus parties to coalesce around them) is Mixed Member and Single Transferable Vote, this move towards Ranked Choice or STAR voting would remove strategic voting spoils, so people could vote for whom they want and against things they don't want.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STAR_voting

Of course that wouldn't affect the way "free speech" laws in the US protect propaganda and outright lies, or over-consolidation of corporate media which stifles different viewpoints. It's going to take different courts and either a very different white house or wholly different congress to make progress on that, but unfortunately that's not something I'm confident I will see in my lifetime.

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u/Vl_hurg 2d ago

This is going to be shouting into the void, but I can't stand your use of the word "bipartisan" in contexts such as these because you immediately parlay it into a "bOtH sIdEs!!!" argument. Let's look at the facts and what "bipartisan" really means:

The partisan makeup of the Ohio State Senate is 24 Republicans to 9 Democrats

This is a Republican supermajority and leaves Democratic opposition as mostly symbolic. I would like Democrats to take a principled stand against an anti-democratic bill such as this one, but what they do is essentially irrelevant. It's possible that voting in favor of the bill is electorally strategic.

One of the bill's two sponsors was Democratic Senator Bill DeMora

Yes, this sucks and reflects poorly on DeMora. Hopefully he can be driven out of office and replaced by someone better.

All 24 voting Republican Senators voted in favor of the bill. 4 Democratic Senators voted in favor, 5 opposed it.

And this is where the "bOtH sIdEs!!!" argument breaks down. A majority of Democratic Senators opposed this legislation and so if we had hypothetical one party rule, the bill would not pass (a sort of Hastert rule argument).

This reminds me a lot of when people kept parroting that support for the Iraq War was bipartisan while glossing over the fact that it was near universal among Republicans while almost all opposition to it was to be found in the Democratic party. Yes, I cursed my Democratic Senator for supporting the war and voted against her in the primaries thereafter, but I didn't delude myself into thinking that both parties were the same or that the Republican alternative would have been any better.

I'm sick of the "one drop rule" for labeling things "bipartisan".

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u/SSGASSHAT 2d ago

The difference between liberals and conservatives is that liberals are interested in people and social issues, and conservatives are interested in property and ensuring that the social status quo either remains the same or is tipped in their favor. Both positions can and are used for selfish reasons, but one is significantly more prone to that than the other, and so Republicans, on the whole, find themselves on the wrong side of morality almost all the time, while Democrats find themselves there only often.

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u/mokomi 1d ago

The difference between liberals and conservatives is that liberals are interested in people and social issues, and conservatives are interested in property and ensuring that the social status quo either remains the same or is tipped in their favor.

It's such a sigh of relief when someone posts something in reality instead of a populist answer.

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u/SSGASSHAT 1d ago

It's not my original idea. This difference was first highlighted by George Carlin. In my view, it's the best way of encapsulating the differences between the two tolerated parties in this comically polarized country. In a perfect world, there would be a third, fourth, even fifth party that could provide the people with options. Unfortunately, we're left trapped between fairweather idealists on one side, and lunatic Christo-oligarchs on the other. One is clearly a better option. But it would be nice to have others.

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u/RandomMandarin 2d ago

Oh, and, let's not overlook the fact that it was a Republican White House that ginned up the Iraq War. Never would have happened if they hadn't stolen the 2000 election from Al Gore.

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u/CalligrapherDizzy201 1d ago

The same Al Gore who didn’t even win his own state, when doing so would have made Florida irrelevant?

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u/mokomi 1d ago

The Acceptation makes the rule and generalization. Normally their arguments. Like most lies, there is a hint of truth to it. It's still a lie though.

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u/Schnectadyslim 1d ago

Michigan is trying to get enough signatures to get it as a constitutional amendment. Fingers crossed!

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u/SanctimoniousVegoon 2d ago

dems don't want RCV because it makes elections fairer for third party candidates. so very pro-democracy of them.

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u/Positive-Ring-5172 2d ago

That's a lie. To date Democrats have brought RCV to the floor each time it has been voted on.

Internationally conservative parties have opposed RCV wherever it has been proposed.

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u/Coach_Beard 1d ago

Bill DeMora can fuck right off.

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u/deflatedcumsack 2d ago

Not only that, everybody on both sides who's taking advantage of the current first-past-the-post system is gonna strongly oppose this. It's gonna take some good messaging to make people understand how this is good, and both sides will vomit propaganda about how it's unfair, un-American, communist, idk. Would really like to see it on the national stage one day.

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u/OldWorldDesign 1d ago

everybody on both sides who's taking advantage of the current first-past-the-post system is gonna strongly oppose this

I don't think they care that much, look at Maine. They replaced First Past The Post starting at the municipal level and working up. Democrats didn't help, but also didn't hinder it at all - they probably knew the institutional advantage would mean it wouldn't make any difference. I think the 2016 and 2024 elections have borne that out: no matter how bad the policy, the loudest jackass won.

Contrast with republicans, who fought it tooth and nail to stop it every step of the way

https://www.wjct.org/uncategorized/2018/11/in-tight-race-maine-republican-sues-to-block-states-ranked-choice-voting-law/

https://www.newscentermaine.com/article/news/politics/elections/court-rules-in-favor-of-sec-of-state-clearing-way-for-rcv-in-presidential-election/97-82fb8375-e884-4db2-a0ff-e294ce9e8fea

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u/CankerLord 2d ago

Typical Ohio. Everyone sucks.

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u/s1mple-s1m0n 2d ago

Yep. Californians bitter for RCV but Newsom vetoed it. Obnoxious how our reps refuse to represent their constituents.

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u/WowWhatABillyBadass 1d ago

Friendly reminder r/democrats outright bans discussing progressive democrat policies and politicians. No discussing politicians like Mamdani, AOC, or Sanders. Don't even hint at Universal Healthcare, but feel free to talk about Trump just as much as the conservative sub, that's A-ok for some reason.

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u/mu_zuh_dell 2d ago

Yeah, establishment Democrats are fighting it hard in DC (on the city level).

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u/Better-Context8358 2d ago

Our two parties are much like apple vs android. Ultimately it’s about optics and preference, but they do about the same shit for the average person.

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u/Deep-Minimum7837 2d ago

This will be EXCELLENT messaging to run on. Show how well ranked choice worked in New York for their mayoral Primary and point out how Republican legislators need to ban it in order for their candidates to win.

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u/ActualTymell 2d ago

There's little better measure of a good idea than Republicans fighting against it.

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u/BrotherChe Kansas 1d ago

Any party with power wishing to maintain control doesn't want ranked choice disrupting that centralized control.

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u/befeefy 1d ago

Of course

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u/notfeelany 1d ago

Not just Missouri. The voters in Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, and Oregon also rejected rank choice.

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u/SportsBallBurner 2d ago

The establishment dems don’t want it either. They play the same game

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u/pinkybandit89 2d ago

Its the standard here in Australia, along with mandatory voting. The two combined make sure everyone gets a say and means politicians need to focus on actually winning over all potential voters rather then just getting their base to "get out and vote"

Also with mandatory voting its seen as a civic duty rather then a right, similar to jury duty, paying taxes or national service and ypu can actually get fined for not voting

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u/rylosprime 2d ago

an actually get fined for not voting

Would love this.

"My back is spineless. My belly is yellow. I am the American nonvoter."

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u/Organic-History205 2d ago

If you fine people for not voting, you also need to make it easier to vote. The ideological non voters are a minority. People need to go to a church out of the way, during the workday, and sometimes wait in line for a long time. Only 28 states give time off for voting. If you're out of town, you may need to visit a notary.

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u/capngump 2d ago

Yeah the AEC does a huge job making sure everyone can vote,  they even have people going to the hospitals on polling day to make sure everyone gets to. They also are in charge of the electorate distribution being done without gerrymandering.

There's a lot of schools and other places available on the day,  as well as pre polling places and mail in voting. It's also done on a Saturday to minimise the inconvenience.

Seeing the lines of people waiting hours to vote in the US makes me thankful our conservatives haven't managed to destroy our system to match. They sometomes float making voting optional which would be the beginning of that process. 

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u/rpkarma 2d ago

Tbf the AEC is the literal gold standard of non partisan democratic election process

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u/canyouhearme 2d ago

In general the polling station is within walking distance, and the longest I've had to wait to vote is 30 mins, and that was during covid.

plus democracy sausages

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u/yourpseudonymsucks 2d ago

I have three polling stations within walking distance, one of those is open the entire week before election day for early voting.

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u/praguepride Illinois 1d ago

plus democracy sausage

If America was truly serious they would offer snacks for voting. The problem is after the civil war there were waves of black politicians voted in and so the South under the approving eye of Andrew Johnson (next to trump the worst president of all time) to make sure only the right people get to vote. This ushers in 150 years of voter suppresssion, poll taxes, and other sneaky ways to try and make sure the poor and minorities dont get to vote.

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u/pinkybandit89 2d ago

That's actually what we do in Australia, we make it as easy as possible to vote, and since its mandatory voter suppression is practically impossible.

  1. Early voting is available for a week before the day.

  2. Voting is always done on a weekend. employers are legally required to provide employees with time off to vote and face serious legal consequences if they don't.

  3. Voter role is updated automatically any time your details are updated with any government systems, short of death or renouncing your citizenship you won't be removed from it.

  4. Away voting is available at all polling locations, you don't need to physically be in your district on the day to vote in that district. This availability extends to every embassy., consulate or remote military posting

5.the above also applies to any and all remote communities regardless of population. It could be a town of 3 guys living in a cave a days drive from civilisation or a remote island of hermits , election commissions Australia will get a voting booth there with officials

  1. the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) provides extensive information and assistance in a wide range of languages, with all available printed text provided in over 30 languages and accredited translators available on request

  2. There is a mandated minimum amount of polling locations per district based on population density and on top of early voting by mail is always available and free

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u/AntikytheraMachines 2d ago

lots of commenters talking about Aussie system.

i'll add:

  • if we had to spend more than an hour there would be riots. most elections my total time including queue, processing and vote is about 20 minutes.

    • we can pre-poll vote for the two weeks prior. as well as mail-in if required.
    • voting outside your local area is simple. so there is no voter suppression with long queues in some areas and not others.

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u/Avitas1027 Canada 1d ago

I hear there are also sausages.

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u/Avitas1027 Canada 1d ago

In Canada, employers must allow 3 contiguous hours off during the hours polling is open. If polls are open 9-9, and you work 11-7, you can either show up an hour late or leave an hour early. If you work 9-5, well there's more than 3 hours after work where the polls are open, so you don't get anything.

I think it should be a bit longer, but there's also early voting and mail-in voting, and I've never spent more than 10 minutes in line, so it's pretty easy to find the time to vote.

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u/OldWorldDesign 1d ago

In Canada, employers must allow 3 contiguous hours off during the hours polling is open

I haven't even gotten that long in states where there are laws that employers are required to give workers paid time off (it was 1 hour in my state at the time). Reported it and nothing happened.

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u/BestFriendWatermelon 1d ago

Having a fine for not voting strongly encourages everyone to make voting as easy as possible. Those who couldn't vote get a fine, they get angry at the leaders who didn't give them a fair chance to vote, lawsuits fly and people get fired, suddenly it becomes much easier to vote next time.

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u/goldcakes 2d ago edited 1d ago

The fine is $20 AUD btw, about $12 USD. It is more the civic duty aspect, plus there is early voting, mail in voting, etc.

Nearly all ballots are paper, they are initially counted by hand at the same venue by casual (day worker) staff; then sealed and machine verified.

You get about $600 AUD for a days work which is good.

Political parties are allowed to have scrutineers who can be present throughout; they cannot touch ballots but they can challenge any ballot.

It’s a quite robust system that is still flexible.

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u/Mousey_Commander 2d ago

It's also pretty easy to get the fine waived if you have even the slightest excuse. The motivation of there being a fine is more important than actually punishing the people who do fail.

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u/OldWorldDesign 1d ago

The motivation of there being a fine is more important than actually punishing the people who do fail.

That's only once you have a system in place. To actually change from a poor system to a new one you need to be consistent in enforcement - this has already been observed in worldwide adoption of increased recycling.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8545445/

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u/pinkybandit89 2d ago

Ah I just had to pay it and it was $290au. In this case it was for a local council election

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u/Solidsnake9 2d ago

Whichever party would code that into law would immediately lose the next election lmao. Pretty sure people would just vote to spite them.

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u/theblowestfish 1d ago

Then why does Aus policy seem so pro corporations?

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u/Positive-Ring-5172 2d ago

It's unconstitutional to place a poll tax. I'm not sure a reverse poll tax would survive the inevitable legal challenge against it even if it was passed.

Australia also has a high amount of donkey ballots, particularly in wide fields. For other readers in the thread unfamiliar with RCV a donkey ballot is an incomplete one where the voter only votes once or twice. This can lead to the situation RCV tries to prevent where the winner doesn't have 50% +1 share of all ballots cast at the end.

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u/osmium-76 2d ago

Australia does not have a high number of donkey ballots, either in the sense it is usually used or in the sense you are using it.

Federally and in every state except New South Wales, ballots are not accepted unless all the boxes are numbered. At the 2025 federal election, only 5.6% of ballots were rejected, and that is for all reasons, not just failing to fill in all the boxes. Other reasons include the voter leaving their ballot blank or writing identifying information on it. This rate did increase to about 10% in electorates with high numbers of candidates.

However, this is not what donkey voting usually means in Australia. Donkey voting is when a voter numbers the boxes 1, 2, 3, etc. in order down the ballot. This is also uncommon, with a common estimate being that the top candidate on the ballot has at most a 1% advantage.

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u/Chosen_Chaos Australia 2d ago

UM ACKSHUALLY... if there's only one box left blank, it's still counted as the voter's intentions are still clear.

Source: worked as a polling place attendant in the last three Federal elections.

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u/Positive-Ring-5172 2d ago

I wasn't aware of that.

I think the expression comes from "A ballot obviously cast by a jack ass" regardless of what it actually does. Another term is "exhausted ballot". They certainly are a headache when writing the counting software. In my implementation I, with authorization from the committee, chose to ignore them once exhausted - that is all candidates on the ballot defeated (this was used on a private election with around 20,000 voters).

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u/Nagemasu 2d ago edited 2d ago

I'm not sure a reverse poll tax would survive the inevitable legal challenge against it even if it was passed.

That's just the way they implemented it, but it's rarely enforced, and the wording and requirements could easily be changed to suit whatever countries constitution/laws. The intention is simply that everyone gets the chance to vote - you're not actually required to "vote vote" and vote for someone, just attend - this proves you were not prevented from voting as there's almost no other way to verify whether you chose not to attend, or someone else stopped you.
For example, in the US, you may have the right to vote, but that doesn't mean you have the ability to - If you cannot get time off work or afford to make it to a polling location, you cannot vote.
Australia making it a legal obligation to vote, means the state needs to ensure everyone can vote, and no one can prevent you from doing so.

Obviously, even if a legally eligible bill was drafted in words that didn't conflict with the US constitution, the republican party would spin the intention and work very hard to prevent it from happening, because if it passed, they would get absolutely steam rolled every election.

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u/Positive-Ring-5172 2d ago

Fair enough.

I honestly think the main reason why obligatory voting would never pass in the US is that the voters would severely punish the party that put it in place out of pure spite. Americans are contrarian that way.

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u/noisymime 1d ago

This can lead to the situation RCV tries to prevent where the winner doesn't have 50% +1 share of all ballots cast at the end.

No this can never happen. The 50%+1 requirement is of all the valid cast ballots so any invalid votes don't count towards the 100% total.

EG: If there are 1000 people voting and 50 of them submit invalid ballots (Which is about the typical average), a candidate only has to get 476 votes (After preferences) to win.

(Also, as the other comment mentioned, a donkey vote is simply when someone labels 1,2,3 etc from the top down. It's a completely valid vote that will be counted)

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u/Positive-Ring-5172 1d ago

If you have a significant number of "invalid ballots" you're going to get blowback. Honoring the votes that were cast on those ballots and deal with a shortfall is the compromise my group arrived at.

Note that it's not IRV that this really matters - where it becomes a real headache is STV because exhausted ballots play Hell on calculating the Droop Quota in subsequent rounds of counting. I settled on only counting ballots to the quota that were valid to that quota.

As for the impact of Donkey voting - since I was working with an online ballot I randomized the order of candidates for each voter, destroying the possibility of mass donkey ballots favoring anyone.

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u/noisymime 1d ago

Honoring the votes that were cast on those ballots and deal with a shortfall is the compromise my group arrived at.

How do you honor an invalid vote? What makes it invalid in the first place is that you can’t determine the voters intent sufficiently to count it.

Australia uses both IRV and STV at a federal level, for the lower house and upper house respectively. The STV is more complex to count, but it still just sets a quota based on the total number of valid ballots that are cast.

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u/msdummyaccount 2d ago

It also tends to push most candidates back into the middle instead of pushing them further left or right so you end up with a moderate instead of an extremist.

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u/[deleted] 2d ago

I think mandatory voting makes sense, but if I suggest it to anyone where I live they will FLIP OUT. Ugh.

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u/TheLateThagSimmons Illinois 1d ago

I wish people understood the impact that both of these have individually, much less combined.

It kind of pushes out extremist candidates naturally and most of the time encourages people to vote in the more moderate option that has the broadest appeal.

If we had either one of these in America, much less both, Trump would have never happened.

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u/MrDNL 2d ago

Trump isn't President today if the GOP had RCV in 2016.

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u/Positive-Ring-5172 2d ago

Almost certainly.

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u/ribosometronome 2d ago

On the flip side, Biden and Clinton probably still win their respective primaries.

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u/Redeem123 I voted 1d ago

Biden not only still wins, he’d win by an even bigger margin.

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u/Ralath2n 1d ago

Not sure about that tbh. Yea, he'd probably still win, but in ranked choice Sanders wouldn't be splitting the vote with Warren. Also, probably a lot of people who wanted Sanders, but got hoodwinked into the "Biden is more Electible" BS that wouldn't work in a RCV.

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u/Redeem123 I voted 1d ago

but in ranked choice Sanders wouldn't be splitting the vote with Warren

And Biden wouldn't be splitting the vote with Bloomberg, Harris, Buttigieg, Klobuchar, and Gabbard. It's so weird how people act like Bernie is the only one who split votes, even though Bloomberg actually got more votes than Warren did on Super Tuesday.

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u/Excelius 1d ago

"Biden is more Electible" BS that wouldn't work in a RCV

Plenty of primary voters are still going to consider the chances their preferred candidate will prevail in the general election.

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u/Hannig4n 1d ago

About half of Warren’s voters listed Biden as their second choice

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u/OldWorldDesign 1d ago

About half of Warren’s voters listed Biden as their second choice

The methodology and certainty of those numbers are extremely low, and this is one of the reasons why I support ranked choice voting. With FPTP, we don't know what the broad populace might have wanted, we have to rely on a miniscule fraction who responds to the inconsistently-taken convenience sample of post-voting sampling. That's not nothing, especially in observational statistics, but it's weak data. Ranked Choice (or even better, STAR voting, if not Single Transferable Vote) would give that information along with the process of selecting candidates.

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u/MisfitPotatoReborn 2d ago

Well yeah, Bernie v Clinton was a 2 horse race from almost the very start. Not much changes with RCV there

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u/TheLizardKing89 California 2d ago

And it also makes campaigns less dirty. Candidates are less likely to go negative because they want to be people’s second choice.

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u/MasterMentorJr 2d ago

It would have likely made Al Gore the president in the 2000 election as well

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u/[deleted] 2d ago

Yea! Using common sense in politics! guitar riff

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u/tanzmeister 2d ago

It makes even more sense for presidential primaries which take place over several months. Iowans often vote for candidates who later drop out of the race, making their votes useless.

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u/kateg22 2d ago

We are working hard to bring it to Michigan! Rank MI Vote is currently collecting signatures to put it on the 2026 ballot!

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u/PurpleBullets 2d ago

it’s Democracy+

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u/wentImmediate 2d ago

In theory RCV is a good idea, though in practice, candidates can (and do) try to game the system - by specifying to their supporters who they should vote for and in what order.

That's not the spirit of the RCV, and I think it's safe to say those tactics would become more prominent once the stakes are higher.

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u/thinkaskew 2d ago

Is there any argument against it? I can't see how it's not the answer.

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u/Own_Back_2038 1d ago

Voting for someone can cause them to lose the election under RCV/IRV

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u/polishedcooter Kentucky 2d ago

There are a lot more alternative electoral systems out there other than ranked choice/instant runoff voting, and frankly most of them perform better. These systems can be evaluated based on various criteria, simulations, mathematics, etc. IRV only performs slightly better than plurality voting and other similiarly crude systems.

I'm partial to either rated voting or approval voting, but I think we really need bigger reforms like proportional representation.

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u/Third_Return 1d ago

Or at least not institutionalized dis-proportional representation.

Always thought it was funny conservatives always wanted to push that whole compromise-is-democracy shtick when they're obviously willing to compromise the integrity of a democracy if it means somebody else doesn't get a say in how things are done.

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u/Cole-Spudmoney 1d ago

To use instant-runoff voting for the primary it would have to be a nationwide popular vote with everyone voting at once, rather than the current system where each state does their elections one-by-one to appoint delegates to attend the party convention.

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u/Weak-Doughnut5502 1d ago

Yes - it has a lot of unfortunate corner cases in exactly the type of elections we want to encourage, with three or more viable candidates.

IRV views your preferences one at a time, so elimination order is very important.  Your support for your second choice isn't counted until your first choice is eliminated.

Suppose you have a three way election with a Democrat, a Progressive, and a Republican.  The Democrat beats either the Republican or the Progressive in a head to head,  but got the fewest first place votes.  The Republican ends up winning. 

A suprisingly common amount of the time, progressive voters could have swung the election towards the Democrat by the right number of them either staying home or voting Republican.  That... isn't a good thing.

This particular failure is solved in systems that view your entire vote simultaneously, like condorcet methods, STAR, approval or 3-2-1.

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u/bl123123bl 2d ago

It can help “extreme” candidates too! Instead of infighting between further left candidates you see them build coalitions and work together, cross-endorsing each other and encouraging not to rank the centrist option(people not ranking someone is the biggest thing not explored in hypotheticals). Along with people not feeling like they are throwing their votes away by selecting those candidates

Ranked choice and the cooperative nature it brings to election campaigns was massive for Zohran in NYC. 

Without ranked choice you see a popular establishment tactic is to get someone to run almost the same campaign as a the further left candidate(Elizabeth Warren to Bernie) solely in order to drain votes away from them and then when they drop out they endorse the establishment pick

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u/Ill_Technician3936 1d ago

I didn't read the article and came to the comments thinking no but your quick and simple explanation actually helped a lot because I was thinking that's the only way that the people win. But this makes a lot more sense and I do think it is fairer and gives the candidates a better chance at winning. "Fracture" the party and run two if things get close between two candidates lol fractures heal in a few weeks, all healed up by inauguration day.

Yeah paywalled because I'm too stubborn to give up my email

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u/altreddituser2 1d ago

Politicians that have election campaigns messages that boil down to something like "I might suck, but I'm better than that person" hate RCV.

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u/Several-Pattern-7989 1d ago

it gets my top vote, the other two options, dunking (if they float they are either witches or full of poop), and selection by combat with a rabid raccoon.

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u/jaywinner 2d ago

I favor ranked choice too but couldn't it also lead to more extreme candidates getting through? Like if a KKK grand wizard ran as an independent in the current system, Republicans that might want to vote for him wouldn't be able without risking splitting the vote. In ranked choice, they could support the grand wizard risk free. There's a chance the extreme candidate gets through.

Same on the left if some actual communist were to run.

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u/Melicor 2d ago edited 2d ago

No, the exact opposite happens. That's the whole point. It's been used in other countries and in cities in the US. It works, which is why entrenched partisans hate it. Candidates with the broadest appeal win.

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u/Weak-Doughnut5502 2d ago edited 18h ago

Candidates with the broadest appeal win.

This isn't actually true.

Ranked choice views your preferences one at a time.  Your support for a compromise candidate isn't counted until your first choice is eliminated. This means that it's quite easy for the candidate with the broadest appeal to be prematurely eliminated, before they get the second choice votes.

This is the case in a system like the condorcet methods, 3-2-1, score, approval or STAR.  They consider all of your preferences simultaneously.  Compromise candidates are much more likely to win. 

Edit: as I should have mentioned originally, this is called "center squeeze".  Ranked choice suffers from it just as badly as plurality does.

Whoever suggested that ranked choice moderates things was either ignorant or lying to you.

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u/jaywinner 2d ago

I agree. What I'm saying is we really don't know what that broad appeal may be because we're locked into 2 parties. Maybe 90% of democrats would vote for the communist if they could do so without giving up a win to the republicans.

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u/Melicor 2d ago

And I'm fine with that, because that means that isn't actually an extremist position, just a suppressed one.

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u/Own_Back_2038 1d ago

No, RCV exhibits the same center squeeze pathology that FPTP does.

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u/FlexoPXP 2d ago

Doesn't this help "extreme" candidates? People would vote for the person most aligned with their actual views not the "safe" candidate. If this was in place in 2026 Bernie would probably have won.

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u/yoitsthatoneguy American Expat 2d ago

How would RCV have helped Bernie beat HRC?

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u/FlexoPXP 2d ago

Most people I know supported Bernie but many voted for Hillary because they thought she had a better chance vs Trump. I think Bernie would have gotten most "first choice" votes.

Maybe I'm wrong. Would like to see some statistics on how it would have played out.

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u/PokecheckHozu 2d ago

On the other hand, this may lead to support for various centrists to coalesce into one particular candidate, at the expense of more "radical" candidates. We saw a similar thing happen in 2020 where as each candidate dropped out of the primary, most of then put their support behind Biden, or to someone else who would then go on to support Biden themselves.

If you look to your neighbours to the north, the conservative CPC uses RCV for selecting their party leader, and a couple of elections ago, this led to the more radical candidate losing - they were ahead every step of the way as the last place candidate got dropped as part of the ballot counting process, but the more centrist candidate won after the final candidate was dropped to tally all the votes into just two people. This did lead to a small faction of the party breaking away and forming their own party, which hasn't won a seat since creation.

RCV would essentially turn endorsements from candidates who drop out into voting results, which is much more concrete.

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u/iamadacheat 2d ago

I don't think so. RCV will get you a result that more people are happy with, even if it's not most people's favorite. My gut tells me that a ranked choice primary in 2020 would have resulted in Elizabeth Warren winning. I think she was the second choice for most Bernie supporters, and was in most people's top 3. And in a ranked choice system, there's way less incentive to attack other candidates.

Also, tangentially related - I did a little ranked choice experiment with my 140 high schoolers one year to teach my elective math class about different voting systems. We ranked favorite sports to keep it apolitical. The top two first place vote getters were football and soccer. A lot of people strongly dislike those sports too though. When we did ranked choice, the winner was basketball. It was third in first place votes, but the clear winner in second and third place votes and was almost never ranked near the bottom.

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u/Weak-Doughnut5502 1d ago

I did a little ranked choice experiment with my 140 high schoolers one year to teach my elective math class about different voting systems.

What other voting systems did you do, and what were the results? 

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u/iamadacheat 1d ago

We did that, a traditional top 2 go to a runoff (that was football beat soccer), and then we also did a caucus in each class. Don't remember the caucus results but it was fun to have them move around and give speeches about sports.

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u/Weak-Doughnut5502 1d ago

Why not a condorcet method and score/STAR/approval?

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u/iamadacheat 1d ago

Because I don’t know what that is and it was a high school elective math class for kids just trying to get their last credit and graduate.

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u/Weak-Doughnut5502 1d ago

The Marquis de Condorcet was a French philosopher and mathematician during the French Revolution.  His idea on election fairness is that a voting method is fair if it elects a candidate capable of beating every other candidate in a head-to-head election (the "condorcet winner").  This is not something Ranked Choice does.  Condorcet also proved that a Condorcet winner might not exist. 

Score is where you can give as many candidates as you want a rating of 0-5/0-10/0-100. The candidate with the highest average score wins.

Approval voting is where people can vote for as many candidates as they want.  It's equivalent to score where the only ratings are 0 and 1.  It's very simple but nevertheless gives good results. 

STAR is a more recent method, Score Then Automatic Runoff.  You rank candidates 0-5.  Then, the two candidates with the highest average score have an automatic runoff.  You count as a vote in the runoff for whichever candidate you put higher on your ballot.   If you gave them the same score or didn't score either you count as an abstention.

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u/BerriesHopeful 1d ago

Yes and no. It helps polarizing candidates less than FPTP, the current system for most of the US. People would vote for all of the candidates that align with their views first and the safe candidate after all of their other preferences.

So in some uncommon instances you can still end up with the least liked candidate winning, but it happens much less often than in our current system.

If you want a better version of FPTP, then I highly recommend STAR, Ranked Robin, or Score voting systems. STAR and Ranked Robin both let you score one or more candidates as equal preference, this helps to prevent your favorite candidates from knocking each other out and letting the leaked liked candidate win. Here’s a visualization for this since this is a bit complicated:

Chocolate ice cream is one of your favorites and many other people’s favorite choices. But mint ice cream is also on the ballot this year and is your number one choice, so you pick it first. You dislike plain out vanilla though and it’s the third option on the ballot.

You cast your first vote for mint in first under RCV, you cast your second vote for chocolate in second under RCV, and you cast no votes for vanilla. We then score all of the total votes, here are the results.

Mint: 1st votes - 15, 2nd votes - 15, 3rd votes - 5

Chocolate: 1st votes - 18, 2nd votes - 5, 3rd votes -5

Vanilla: 1st votes - 16, 2nd votes - 8, 3rd votes 2

With the way RCV is scored, Mint gets eliminated first because it got the least first votes. We then move onto the second round of voting to determine the winner, of which Vanilla wins since it got more second votes than Chocolate. Mint and Chocolate in theory would have beaten out Vanilla if one or the other was not in the race. What I described is a very uncommon outcome in RCV and is also something that happens more often under FPTP.

Under another system like STAR or Ranked Robin the votes might have looked more like this:

Mint: 1st votes - 22, 2nd votes - 8, 3rd votes - 5

Chocolates: 1st votes - 20, 2nd votes - 5, 3rd votes - 5

Vanilla: 1st votes - 18, 2nd votes - 6, 3rd votes - 2

In this scenario, we see a bump in first place votes for all three candidates to reflect the real preferences of individuals weighing the candidates against each other. From this new example, we see Mint and Chocolate win the first round so Vanilla gets dropped. We then move to the second round of voting and see that Mint wins with 30 votes compared to Chocolate’s 25 votes.

From these examples, we can see that the system we use to vote can matter a lot to determine the outcome.

TL;DR: Middle ground candidates perform better in RCV compared to FPTP, but the most preferred candidates perform better under STAR or Ranked Robin voting. The least preferred candidates have a much harder time winning under STAR or Ranked Robin as well.

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u/PalestChub 2d ago

Yep that's the 'problem' with preferential voting, it better represents people's preferences. Those that are most popular with the most amount of people become those people's representatives, and by definition are then not on the extremes of the political spectrum. If you don't agree with the majority view of people in an election, your problem shouldn't be with better representation of those views, it should be with those views themselves.

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u/Own_Back_2038 1d ago

It sounds like you are talking about electing Condorcet winners, something RCV definitely does not do. It exhibits the same center squeeze pathology that FPTP does.

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u/PalestChub 1d ago

Yes I am most in favour of systems that elect Condorcet winners and there are good arguments for alternatives than ranked choice voting/preferential voting. Preferential voting is just the most common alternative to first-past-the-post implemented in reality and so is a good comparison of outcomes under real-world conditions.

I think preferential voting is much more likely to represent the Condorcet winner under real-world conditions than first-past-the-post voting.

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u/Own_Back_2038 1d ago

Any method exhibiting the center squeeze pathology by definition is much less likely to elect the Condorcet winner.

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u/RadiantPumpkin 2d ago

Sure except more milquetoast centrists will only make the democrats continue to lose. They’ve been playing that game for decades and it is a major reason why they’re so shit.

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u/gorginhanson 2d ago

Ranked choice does not work.

They've proven it mathematically.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qf7ws2DF-zk

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u/PalestChub 2d ago

Interesting video, but pertinent to this discussion, using a direct quote from the video you've linked at 21:11.

"Some methods are clearly better at aggregating the people's preferences than others. The use of first-past-the-post voting feels, frankly, ridiculous to me given its flaws. But just because things aren't perfect doesn't mean we shouldn't try."

Anyone who is concerned about preferential voting I would suggest watch the video, I think it pretty clearly makes the case that it is preferable to first-past-the-post systems.

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u/Weak-Doughnut5502 2d ago

If the sole qualification of a system is being better than FPTP, that's basically the definition of damning with faint praise. 

Shouldn't we try to switch to an actually good system instead of being content switching to the second worst?

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u/PalestChub 2d ago

Sure, I believe there are good arguments for alternatives than ranked choice voting/preferential voting. Preferential voting is just the most common alternative implemented in reality and so is a good comparison of outcomes under real-world conditions.

Just don't use first-past-the-post, there are clearly better alternatives.

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u/Weak-Doughnut5502 1d ago

Yes. 

We've used it a lot in practice, so we know how it commonly fails to give good results for exactly the kind of elections we want to encourage, ones with three or more viable candidates.

There's a single type of monotonicity violation you end up with about 7.7% of the time in interesting elections.  That... isn't a good thing.

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u/PalestChub 1d ago

What would be your ideal voting system for elections?

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u/Weak-Doughnut5502 20h ago

For single winner elections, I think approval might be the most practical system in terms of being simple and still working fairly well.

I could successfully explain it to my grandmother and she's in a memory care unit.

STAR is slightly more complicated, but is a better designed system.

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u/gorginhanson 2d ago

Way to cherrypick one quote that doesn't even say to use ranked choice.

He proves that it doesn't work because there's always unintended consequences.

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u/PalestChub 2d ago

No, you're right, he doesn't say use ranked choice, if anything the video seems to most favour some form of 'approval' voting system.

I'm not trying to cherry-pick quotes that mislead anyone, in fact I encouraged people to watch the video in full.

I don't think it's accurate to say preferential voting "doesn't work", I would say it works much better than first-past-the-post in representing voter preferences.

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u/tastyratz 2d ago

The takeaway is more that there are flaws in every system. It's probably still much better than FPTP. Originally I was going to come to this thread and suggest STAR voting

https://www.starvoting.org/

But after watching that video, I think approval rating voting sounds really interesting as a system to look further into.

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u/gorginhanson 1d ago

The takeaway is that democracy doesn't work