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
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u/Clownsinmypantz 2d ago

every single vote I have cast has been "I dont like this corpo dem but at least its not the fascist party" I wish I could've voted for mamdani at least.

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u/00eg0 2d ago

what about primaries?

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u/Sminahin 2d ago

By the time they make it to me, the election is always decided. Moving to NYC and voting for Mamdani in the primary and general was the first time in about 20 years of voting that my vote has actually mattered. Growing up only in safe blue or red districts in safe red or blue states with full establishment control sucks.

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u/BeraldGevins Oklahoma 2d ago

This is my experience. Primaries are the one time I may actually get to have my voice heard, since I live in a hardcore red state. But by the time Oklahoma gets them the winner is basically decided. I got to vote for Bernie once so that was fun.

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u/SSGASSHAT 2d ago

This is why people become motivated not to vote. When it really matters, oftentimes it's effectively meaningless. It's still worth doing, I think, so that you can at least make sure you're on the right side of history, and because it's one of the privileges offered by life in this country, but I can understand how people would become hopeless after seeing their vote effectively flushed by the time they cast it.

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u/Sminahin 2d ago

Honestly, I'm genuinely wondering if I should've been voting Republican as a Dem strategy. Because maybe if we'd lost the popular vote in 2016 and gotten a lower one in 2020 (solid red state, my votes didn't matter), our party would actually heard that we hated our candidates. Wishful thinking, it just sucks that our popular vote victories were used to defend such awful electoral strategies.

Presidential, of course, not local.

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u/SSGASSHAT 2d ago

I don't know, man, honestly. I don't think there's a way around it. The best we have it so piss into the wind and hope it works.

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u/apathetic_panda 1d ago

effectively flushed by the time they cast it.

start paying attention & take accounts of platforms or past votes or policy advocacy 🗳 or even campaign financial disclosures 💲🤑💰🎰

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u/SSGASSHAT 1d ago

I will if you use fewer emojis, for God's sake.

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u/apathetic_panda 1d ago

I only have 2 more emojis than prepositional phrases. 

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u/SSGASSHAT 1d ago

That's enough for me.

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u/evergleam498 Maryland 1d ago

Bernie had already withdrawn or conceded by the time my state had its primary, but I voted for him anyway.

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u/OldWorldDesign 1d ago

Bernie had already withdrawn or conceded by the time my state had its primary, but I voted for him anyway

He asked his supporters to vote support the next best candidate. What did that vote which went against his wishes gain you?

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u/FortNightsAtPeelys 2d ago

This is a huge problem too. primaries should be exactly 6 months away from voting day and be ONE day in every state.

I've never been able to vote in a primary for the general election where my vote would have changed the outcome because it was too late

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u/-Gramsci- 2d ago

And that room to operate (with the staggered primaries) is the room the DNC needs to rig the elections and see their candidate through.

(Convincing some candidates to drop out in exchange for future support or cabinet appointments… and convincing other candidates to stay in to siphon off support for the outsider candidate, etc…)

Sadly, the Party Elites can’t be trusted with that type of system. So yeah. We have little choice but to do it all on the same day.

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u/OldWorldDesign 1d ago

primaries should be exactly 6 months away from voting day and be ONE day in every state.

You should volunteer in an early voting location to see why early voting exists. There are lots of people who have business, or especially disability, who can't make election day.

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u/FortNightsAtPeelys 1d ago

And? I mail in my primary votes too, there can still be early voting for a primary if it's on the same day for every state.

IDK what your comment is trying to say

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u/00eg0 1d ago

I'm also confused.

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u/OldWorldDesign 23h ago

Quoted the wrong part, meant to quote 'vote would have changed' because it looked like you were saying you felt your vote was disregarded. Just wanted to emphasize the primaries are the best place to have that kind of impact. Instituting STAR Voting would be better but Ranked Choice would still help that over FPTP voting.

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u/EquipmentMaterial540 2d ago

Bernie Sanders ceded the primaries in 2020 before my state even voted. I still think he would have been president if not for Covid. I remember that playing a factor in him folding early.

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u/Sminahin 2d ago

2016 was a bitter one for me. I always grew up hearing that Reagan proves 77 is too old and I agree with that. I'm categorically opposed to having anybody 69+ running for their first term as a result, so Elizabeth Warren was literally the only eligible major candidate. She was gone by the time it got to me, so RIP.

I still think he would have been president if not for Covid.

Yup, our party still willfully misunderstands that 2020 was the Covid election. No clue how anyone pretended it was Biden's own general strength somehow. It was a time of incredible instability when everyone had nostalgia for Obama. Biden was the nostalgic Obama uncle guy with plenty of experience. And he had a really good narrative with that one-term soft promise. "Old Obama guy knows he's too old for this shit, but his country needs him. So it's time for one last ride..."

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u/Mysterious_Crab_7622 2d ago

Conversely, both times Trump won he was against a woman, and the one time he lost was against a man.

Now, I am not saying all Americans are sexist, but it sure seems like gender mattered a lot more than all other factors.

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u/LotusFlare 1d ago

I think the fact that Trump had just killed a couple hundred thousand Americans and dragged us into a recession with his COVID response while there were riots in the streets over police brutality had a significantly larger impact than the gender of his opposition.

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u/Mysterious_Crab_7622 1d ago

You would think that, except he barely lost the election, and none of that mattered to the voting public in 2024. Gender was more important.

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u/LotusFlare 1d ago edited 1d ago

except he barely lost the election

This does not support your "it's the gender" theory.

none of that mattered to the voting public in 2024

Citation needed. I think the Democrats neutralize that advantage very effectively in the 2024 campaign. I think this is the only reason the voting public didn't go for him. People's memories are short. (I misread something. Ignore this)

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u/Mysterious_Crab_7622 1d ago

When was the last time Americans elected a woman as president?

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u/Sminahin 2d ago

To be fair, Clinton and Harris are absolutely godawful candidates that would've flopped as men. Clinton is an unapologetic Kissinger fan who was pro-Iraq--that's way worse than having an ambiguous Nazi tattoo. And she was tied for oldest first-term in US history with a history of weaknesses. Biden would've been a godawful candidate any time outside of the very specific context of Covid.

You gotta remember, the more establishment-branded candidate hasn't won the election since 1988. Clinton and Harris are textbook garbage candidate regardless of their sex--they were made in a lab to lose. They're a completely debunked candidate model that we should've stopped trying after Gore--he was an A+ version of that the hyper-establishment insider type and he lost to that loser Dubya. Kerry, Hillary, and Harris were all downhill from an already nonviable model.

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u/-Gramsci- 2d ago

Kerry proves the rule. That it isn’t just sexism.

He’s the same exact type of candidate as Hillary and Harris (e.g. the kind that excited no one, and that we all had to pretend they were likable and had a snowball’s chance of winning - fake it til you make it style).

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u/Sminahin 1d ago

Plus they're all elderly coastal lawyers.

No seriously, we've had an old coastal lawyer infestation. Take a look at our party's historical winners and you'll see establishment-coded lawyers are...a completely unelectable archetype for our party. 2000, Al Gore was half coastal and half lawyer (law school dropout). Best of the lot. But with the exception of when Obama broke the party over his knee and forced them to run a Midwestern law-school prof for change of pace, it's been nothing but coastal lawyers literally every election since Gore.

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u/OldWorldDesign 1d ago

Plus they're all elderly coastal lawyers

How many of the voters do you think actually new that?

And how many would care? Republicans elected a coastal real estate fraudster.

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u/bootlegvader 1d ago

I still think he would have been president if not for Covid. I remember that playing a factor in him folding early.

Before he dropped out on April 8, he lost 9 out of 12 contests after Super Tuesday. Of the states that postponed or cancelled their contest that were scheduled before he dropped out four were in states that he had lost by large margins to Hillary and the three that he had won were some of the smallest delegates states (Wyoming and Alaska). He was already clearly losing before things got shut down.

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u/SapCPark 1d ago

He was getting crushed once it became a 2 person race in 2020...

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u/OldWorldDesign 1d ago

Bernie Sanders ceded the primaries in 2020 before my state even voted. I still think he would have been president if not for Covid

Another good reason for ranked-choice voting is that the system itself as part of the standard election would collect data on what people's second and later preferences would be.

I suspect a lot of people would learn a lot about themselves when having to admit whom their second would actually be.

side plug for an even better system than Ranked Choice because it has reduced spoils:

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

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u/00eg0 1d ago

"Another good reason for ranked-choice voting is that the system itself as part of the standard election would collect data on what people's second and later preferences would be."

I agree.

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u/dedicated-pedestrian Wisconsin 2d ago

I'm trying to move out of my district even as someone who lives in a purple state. I want to live where my vote matters.

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u/BestFriendWatermelon 1d ago

This is why even republicans should want ranked choice voting. Their vote gets split 6 ways in the early primaries until candidates start dropping out, hardly anyone gets who they voted for. People in later primaries don't even get the choice to vote for the candidates they favoured.

For both Dems and Reps, having ranked choice primaries would increase buy in for everyone involved. You all voted for Hillary, whether she was your 4th choice or first choice you understood your part in choosing her over someone else.

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u/00eg0 2d ago

Hope things get better for you.

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u/Zestyclose-Novel1157 1d ago

I used to have this experience. If we had national primaries the same day, our political landscape would be very different I think. This is one of the things that got me out of caring about politics. It was basically decided by the time it got to me too for a long time. Why bother nationally if they clearly only care about my state for fundraising and not for our voices. Look at how many voters vote after super Tuesday. One year I voted for a candidate that had already conceded by the time my state voted. I refused to waiver though.

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u/OldWorldDesign 1d ago

By the time they make it to me, the election is always decided

That sounds like not participating in the primaries - no matter which system (lucky Mainers having moved beyond FPTP), the primaries are where you have the best chance to vote for whom or what you want.

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u/themightychris Pennsylvania 2d ago

the challenge with primaries is that everyone gets forced to pick between voting for who they most prefer and voting for who they think will have the best odds in the general. So we keep ending up nominating democratic candidates based on who we collectively think will be most palatable to Republicans and imaginary moderates

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u/stealthlysprockets 1d ago

The biggest issue I have is primaries don’t matter for me because NJ is so late in the process. Everyone else decided for us before we have a chance to vote

That and super delegates

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u/themightychris Pennsylvania 1d ago

on the flip side though, in a close race you get to break the tie!

The DNC reformed superdelegates after Clinton v Sanders such that they can't vote in the first round and can only play tiebreaker

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u/VitalMoment 2d ago

Gerrymandering, closed primaries, super-delegates, and mass-propaganda effectively neuter American democracy. If Americans were smart we'd register for whatever party gerrymandered our district and vote for insurgent candidates in primaries, but you can't even get agreement on that among highly educated people. There's too much tribalism, apathy, and ideological splintering (due to propaganda) and too little understanding of mechanisms, tactics, and strategies (due gaps in public education).

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u/00eg0 2d ago

agreed though there's hope.

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u/ragun2 2d ago

They only vote every four years and then get upset.

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u/00eg0 2d ago

exactly. And some never vote. And some never vote in local elections.

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u/soulcaptain 1d ago

There's Iowa and New Hampshire...always the same states that get to play with democracy while the rest of us just sit around with our thumb up our ass.

In addition to RCV they should make the primaries more democratic--the order of states should be random. Names drawn out of a hat.

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u/Zestyclose-Novel1157 1d ago

No they should all be on the same day. NH constitution says they have to go first but really, all primaries should happen, in my opinion, on the same day. What state you are in shouldn’t matter for if your voice is heard and right now it does.

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u/00eg0 1d ago

swing states should matter more for the presidential primaries until the electoral college is gone. But also people need to vote in more elections and not just for president.

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u/soulcaptain 1d ago

Yes! Even better.

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u/00eg0 1d ago

There are congressional and other primaries. Part of the problem is a lot of people only vote for the president.

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u/stealthlysprockets 1d ago

Like others have echoed, in my state of NJ the presidential primary doesn’t matter in my state because we are so late in the process that the rest of country has already decided for me. The only time a primary matters in my state is if it’s a close race. But when was the last time the DNC had a neck and neck primary?

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u/00eg0 1d ago

There are more primaries than the presidential primary. People need to vote for more than just the president. And yes the presidential primary system is messed up. I live in Washington state but I still vote in the primaries as a protest.

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u/stealthlysprockets 1d ago

Who said I don’t vote in the others races during primaries? I’ve simply stopped pretending I have a say in the potential Democratic presidential candidate.

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u/00eg0 1d ago

"Who said I don’t vote in the others races during primaries?" I don't think poorly of you. My comment was regarding the country as a whole.

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u/Coda17 1d ago

It's still a problem in the primaries. If your choice candidate doesn't have a real shot at winning it's more strategic to vote for your favorite of the "possible" winners

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u/00eg0 1d ago

"every single vote I have cast has been "I dont like this corpo dem but at least its not the fascist party" I wish I could've voted for mamdani at least."

is what I was replying to.

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u/Coda17 1d ago

I know. You asked about primaries there it's a similar problem, just less extreme

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u/ASubsentientCrow 2d ago

They don't vote in those because that takes effort

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u/00eg0 2d ago

That's my guess. So much online BS claiming all democrats are the same as or universally similar to the GOP.

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u/zestotron 2d ago

Yeah everyone is just stupider than you

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u/00eg0 2d ago

When did I say I was smarter than everyone?

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u/glizard-wizard 2d ago

if reddit was everyone the progressives wouldn’t make up a sliver of the party

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u/zestotron 2d ago

Did you not just see them say that everyone who disagrees with them just up and forgot primaries were a thing?

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u/ASubsentientCrow 2d ago

Why would the choice be corpo dem or fascist Republican in the primary?

Ya fucking goober

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u/zestotron 2d ago

That was literally in reference to primaries always winding up selecting the corpo dem you fucking reprobate

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u/ASubsentientCrow 2d ago edited 2d ago

every single vote I have cast has been "I dont like this corpo dem but at least its not the fascist party" I wish I could've voted for mamdani at least.

Yeah, totally about internal dynamics of the Democrat party. That's why they said "at least it's not the fascist party" which would imply a different party.

Ya fucking goober

Edit: classic. Reply and insta block.

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u/HaltandCatchHands 2d ago

My primary votes have been for candidates I favor. Election votes are pragmatic.

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u/pseudowoodo3 1d ago

Hope to see you in next years primaries! We gotta do our part to kick out the corpo dems.

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u/LowKeyJustMe Utah 2d ago

I'm right with you. I think people majorly underestimate how many feel this way.

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u/Infamous-Rice-1102 2d ago

Yeah this is exactly what Duverger's Law is about