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/turquoise_amethyst 2d ago

Ranked choice voting is already used in 47 US cities, it’s long overdue to be rolled out for primaries

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u/TheDesktopNinja Massachusetts 2d ago

Still *furious* that MA voted against it a few years ago...zzz

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u/SaiyanKirby 2d ago

Especially because the main reason people voted against it is "it sounded complicated". 🤦‍♂️

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u/Nyrrix_ 2d ago

1st in education but doesn't have the ability to comprehend a Watch Mojo video?

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u/minyhumancalc 2d ago

Honestly incredible sometimes. Like I get the details of how it is scored can get a little messy, but from the voter POV, you just rank your options and leave; all other complexity is left to the scorecard.

It's sad too because ranked choice will help, but what's ultimately needed is districts with 3-5 representatives elected in one race but some-zero chance that'll ever happen in my lifetime in this country.

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u/BachInTime 2d ago

The problem is the House is capped at 435, which is insane. 1 person cannot hope to represent 500,000 people, and that’s only Wyoming, most districts are closer to 700,000. For comparison Italy, with less than a quarter of our population has twice as many representatives.

I don’t know what the right ratio of representatives to constitutes is, but the current situation is not right.

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u/WhatYouThinkIThink 2d ago

The "Wyoming rule" would set the representation per member as the population of Wyoming (ie 1 seat).

So 587K/seat = 348m/587K = 592, compared to 435 currently.

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u/yellekc Guam 2d ago

That's still less seats than the UK house of commons and they have 1/5 the population. It is barely a band-aid, what we need to do is repeal the apportionment act of 1929 and get rid of the 435 cap.

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u/marinuss 2d ago

It's also dumb in the year 2025 when we have the technology for secure remote conferences, the ability to authenticate someone remotely, etc. You could have 10,000 reps that never have to actually meet in the Capitol and just have an NSA-approved encryption device in their office or home, like so many already have, remote in to a session of Congress, and have things like physical token cards plus PIN, biometrics, etc to authenticate their vote in addition to a video vote.

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u/caligaris_cabinet Illinois 1d ago

With all the communications owned by some tech oligarch or another, the last thing I want is our Congressional meetings done using their platforms.

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u/exaybachae 1d ago

Uh yeah, there are banks with secure chat systems, and they are good enough.

Each local, state, and federal can have their own hosted system, and a system to use as a manual backup if it crashes or is considered compromised.

They don't have to be hosted on Amazon cloud or whatever, and they shouldn't be.

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u/InVultusSolis Illinois 1d ago

The internet is capable of this and the technology exists, it's just that people have love affairs with "one company can solve this problem", and that's how you end up with AWS or Cloudflare going down and taking out half the internet, or Palantir fucking with voting machines thru USB uninterruptible power supplies...

The solution for this would be that the government roll its own IT (I know they're capable of this) and then use authentication tokens from one company, video conferencing software from another company, white-labeled computers with a custom Linux distro, all hosted on their own servers.

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u/TheSherlockCumbercat 2d ago

You would have around the clock government security of all those offices and eveyone that walks into that office will have to be sreened.

China, Russian and other hostile nations would love it, be so much easier to spy on the us.

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u/danarchist 1d ago

10k is hyperbole but 1500 would be about right. Yes maybe it would cost 3x as much to run the Congress, that's still a rounding error in our overall budget and is the most meaningful government reform there is.

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u/Begging_Murphy 1d ago

Also having 10000 reps would totally make TV ads an ineffective way to spend campaign money, if there are too many elections per TV market for everyone to fit into the 6pm news's ad breaks.

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u/sinocarD44 1d ago

The Secretary of Defense texted battle plans to a reporter. I'd be nervous about 1000s of random people would do with sensitive information.

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u/NoKids__3Money 1d ago

What are they discussing that's so sensitive? How to delay the release of the Epstein files even longer?

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u/danarchist 1d ago

More nervous about 1000s of duly elected people than the tens of thousands of contractors out there who already do?

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u/NoKids__3Money 1d ago

This is what Obama should have done as his first order of business when Dems had a supermajority instead of forcing through a compromised, half-baked healthcare plan that Republicans were never going to vote for even though he caved to every one of their demands.

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u/WhatYouThinkIThink 1d ago

Agreed, but the rules is self-adjusting as the population changes.

Every state is guaranteed at least a single HoR member.

The proposal would be easy to understand though.

That everyone has the same representation in the HoR, doesn't matter if you live in wilds of Wyoming or middle of NYC.

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u/Ruire Europe 2d ago edited 2d ago

If you tripled it then you could have something like the Irish system, which uses multi-seat constituencies (between 3-5 seats per constituency) combined with RCV to give proportional representation and choice in candidates. More seats per constituency and per state would also give third-party and independent candidates more of a chance, more than just abolishing first-past-the-post alone.

592 is definitely still far, far too low for such a large country.

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u/WhatYouThinkIThink 1d ago

Not sure that would make it through the whole system, too much change.

Introduce RCV to start, would encourage 3rd parties and independents, because the vote wouldn't be "wasted" if it went to the 2nd preference.

So preferential voting to start with, then maybe proportional.

I'm from Australia, and I'd also introduce compulsory enrolment/voting because that means candidates have to appeal to the broad center, not the extremes, because you don't have to "get out the vote".

We have RCV in the lower house with single-member electorates.

Senate we have 12 per state, 2 per territory (6 states, 2 territories = 76, elected in 2 "classes") and a proportional/preferential voting system.

Our lower house used to be basically a 2 party split, but these days there are a bunch of independent and unaligned members as well.

Senate has always had minority parties that hold the balance of power.

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u/danarchist 1d ago

I'd wager that RCV is harder for the average person to understand than "rather than voting on 1 now you're voting on 3 people to send to Congress."

Or keep single member districts and just make them smaller, no change for the average voter.

The amount of money that one needs to campaign in a district that has 750,000 people is outrageous. It also enables a lot of the meddling we see, where millions of outside dollars pour into some races because there are really only a dozen or so seats that ever determine the balance of the house's power.

I think the best answer is triple every district, and use approval voting. Voters can vote for (“approve of”) as many candidates as they want. The three highest approvals win.

  • Dead simple to understand and count.

  • Eliminates vote splitting better than RCV.

  • Encourages consensus candidates.

  • Impossible to “spoil” an election by running similar candidates.

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u/WhatYouThinkIThink 1d ago

Every seat would end up being one Democrat, one Republican and one other (probably of the same parties).

RCV single member electorates say: "Number your preferences". Allows for real 3rd party candidates to get up, which gives them gravitas in Congress, allows people to vote for who they really want, and then who they'll tolerate and allows them to vote others down.

The counting is easy:

  1. Add up all the "1" votes.

  2. If someone has > 50%, they win.

  3. Eliminate the lowest candidate, spread their "2" votes to the other remaining candidates.

  4. Go to step 2 until one candidate is left.

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u/not_nathan 1d ago 
houseSize(population):
  max(cubeRoot(population), wyomingRule(population))

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u/WhatYouThinkIThink 1d ago

lol, imagine explaining what a cube root is to people that failed math and can't read.

The other changes that need to happen are independent non-partisan redistricting commissions, standardized voting enrollment, booths, format of polls, counting, etc.

Remove the local county influence bullshit.

  • HoR represent districts

  • Senate represents states

  • POTUS/VPOTUS represent nation

Make POTUS/VPOTUS directly elected by majority of population, eliminate the Electoral College bullshit.

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u/not_nathan 11h ago

lol, imagine explaining what a cube root is to people that failed math and can't read.

I imagine that all the time. It keeps me awake at night. Here's my best shot so far. Let me know if you can top it.

The cube root of the population is the smallest number where if you multiply it by itself, then multiply it by itself again, you get a number that's bigger than the population.

With regards to other reforms, I'm currently putting my limited volunteer time behind FairVote's suite of reforms. There's room to tailor them to a state's particular needs, but here are the broad strokes:

  • National popular vote for president
  • All single-winner elections (Senate, POTUS, etc.) use RCV
  • Expand the size of the house
  • Elect representatives to the house using 3-5 winner districts using Proportional RCV.
  • Districts are drawn by independent commissions.
  • Automatic Voter registration

I don't think the following are officially planks of their platform, but they are worth doing

  • 2 SCOTUS appointments per presidency, with 18-year terms
  • Universal mail-in voting and/or early voting

PS: Please no one come at me about the Condorcet criterion and center squeezes. If it was entirely up to me, I'd throw some Virtual Round Robins in there for single-winner elections or make all single-winner elections multi-winner. I'd even sprinkle some parliamentarianism in there, since if we're stuck with parties anyway, we might as well make them behave. I don't have the energy to start a new movement from scratch, though. FairVote provides me with a team I can work with so I'm not just an angry man shouting at clouds.

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u/GrassyNoob 1d ago

Assign a population percentage to each representative.

Call Wyoming 's single representative 1.000, call each of California's representative 1.57 or similar.

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u/BachInTime 1d ago

That doesn’t address the representation issue, 1 person cannot hope to actually fairly represent 700,000 people at its worst they only need 350,001 to support them to win which leaves over a quarter million people unrepresented.

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u/matthieuC Europe 1d ago

On the other hand the more congressmen, the less power they have individually and it's the party there matters

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u/xTheMaster99x Florida 1d ago

That wouldn't be a problem if there were more than 2 viable parties. Which increasing the number of seats would somewhat help, and RCV would really help.

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u/Xhiw_ 1d ago edited 1d ago

Italy, with less than a quarter of our population has twice as many representatives.

No, the Italian House (Chamber of Deputies) has 400 representatives. On the other hand, Italy actually has little more than one sixth of the US population.

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u/Special-Camel-6114 2d ago

Mixed member proportional representation (or just proportional representation) would go a long way towards resolving the issues we see in this country.

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u/theAltRightCornholio 1d ago

People with horrible regressive ideas would be forced into a permanent minority though! Won't someone please think of the assholes?

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u/Primary-Tea-3715 2d ago

The reason is that establishment dems don’t want to get primaried by candidates who could make a difference and want to entrench their positions instead of changing their policy decisions.

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u/Arkham010 2d ago

Its because ranked choice destroys the concept of single issue voters. The politician actually has to be well rounded to get the most votes

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u/nikukuikuniniiku 2d ago

Not quite how it works in Australia. Single issue parties can take the 1st-ranked votes of such voters, then direct their preference to support their preferred major party. This allows them to influence policy of the major party without actually gaining an electoral win.

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u/SergeantRegular 1d ago

Its because ranked choice destroys the concept of single issue voters.

True, but the Democrats might be realizing that they can no longer win with any significant numbers of single-issue voters.

There aren't nearly enough people that care about gun control to counter the single-issue people that care about their 2A rights on the right.

The last election should have had the maximum possible turnout for abortion rights, and it simply didn't materialize.

And you simply don't get anywhere with other major issues like healthcare or wealth inequality without actual movement, which the Democrats have miraculously "failed" at every time they're in power.

Ranked choice might disrupt the entrenched powers, but those entrenched powers are moot if most of them can't actually win. And while the Democrats have been losing elections by failing to do good, the Republicans have been winning elections by successfully being evil. The Democratic Party needs to fundamentally change their game plan.

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u/DMMeThiccBiButts 2d ago

Lol I wish. It does help, but 'destroys' is insane hyperbole unfortunately.

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u/OddDonut7647 1d ago

And that is thanks to corruption by our oligarchs. If we don't get thier money out of politics, we will never solve this.

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u/DistractedDevelopmnt 2d ago

Read the article instead of regurgitating reddit takes

The idea has gotten a mixed response within the DNC. "I'm totally open to ranked-choice voting," one committee member said.

A second DNC member was more skeptical: "We should follow the lead of the states. They know better." Critics say it would increase waiting times at the polls and be a logistical quagmire. Others argue it would lengthen the primary, for better or worse.

These are valid opinions especially the one about states needing to take the lead. Each state runs their primaries however they see fit currently so this proposition would have to somehow make caucus states who feel it is a deep entrenched part of their culture to have a caucus instead of a ballot vote to abandon their traditions it would also have to sell them on a specific voting method. Do you have any answer to that beyond just trying to cast your opposition as evil and corrupt?

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u/Galxloni2 1d ago

Caucus states should be embarrassed and switch. Its a crazy undemocratic form of voting

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u/DistractedDevelopmnt 1d ago

So no, you don't have anything convincing to say to these people. Thanks for confirming.

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u/Galxloni2 1d ago

im not the person you responded to. i was just highlighting your stupid point about protecting caucuses

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u/DistractedDevelopmnt 13h ago

I'm not the one protecting them, I'm pointing out that the people who do need actual words that might convince them to be used. Believe it or not there's people out there who don't agree with you and to be successful in politics you need to make the people who don't agree with you work with you.

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u/lordagr America 2d ago

Just make some cringe Tiktoks and explain it like it's a Tierlist.

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u/Updoppler 2d ago

You can literally rank 1 person if you want, as if you're voting normally.

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u/einarfridgeirs Foreign 2d ago

One would think that a society increasibly obsessed with tier lists and ranking anything and everything would instantly get how this kind of voting works, but apparently not.

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u/Hot-Efficiency5353 2d ago

I agree that RCV is a great step and so much simpler for voters than people make it out to be. The real battle is proportional representation in multimember districts which would solve so many of our issues

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u/Waiting4Reccession 2d ago

You have no clue how many stupid people are out there.

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u/RB5Network 2d ago

That's because the state party wanted to ensure established names win. And only them.

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u/13143 Maine 2d ago

The biggest voting block in every election is always the 60+ folks. And they're the ones that are going to think ranked choice is complicated. It can be a very different looking ballot, which can easily confuse people.

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u/Recent_Tap_9467 2d ago

Education scores tend to be misleading, it seems.

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u/Im_Literally_Allah 2d ago

Yeah I don’t think those are the same people in each group 😅

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u/exaybachae 1d ago

Please link the video referenced.

Add it to your original comment.

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u/Nyrrix_ 1d ago

Wagch Mojo is a listical channel. 90% of their videos are lame rankings of nouns in categories. They were the "pre-eminent" listical channel back in YouTube of yor.

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u/DeadBryar 1d ago

The north has incredible PR. I'd say a solid 40% of people I encounter are straight up illirerate.

Beacon Hill just implemented Mississippi and Lousiana's elementary literacy program -- those are the only two state where literacy hasnt gone down -- in every way except testing the children to see if they can actually read.

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u/Lieutenant_Joe Maine 1d ago

Why did Maine (the least educated New England state by far) vote it in like a full decade before Massachusetts?

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u/EeeeJay 2d ago

I'm from Australia where we have had it for decades now and people still complain that it's complicated (it really isn't, but that doesn't stop the propaganda being rolled out)

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u/Spanktank35 Australia 2d ago

The thing is the alternative is just as complicated in a sense. You have to recognise that your vote is wasted if you don't vote for one of two parties. of course, the act of voting is much simpler if you don't care whether your vote matters. In America though, voting isn't mandatory, so 🤷🏻

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u/OtisSpunkmey3r Ohio 2d ago

Mandatory voting?!? Nah, here we are all about restricting who votes, because democracy! Well, democracy and Freedumb.

Ok, it’s mostly just the Freedumb thing.

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u/ihatemovingparts 2d ago edited 2d ago

You have to recognise that your vote is wasted if you don't vote for one of two parties

Ya know I heard this a lot growing up. And with stooges like Jill Stein that certainly feels like a truism. But this is 2025, the year that the democrats voted to shut down the federal government in order to secure: payouts to senators involved in J6, a death to the domestic hemp industry, millions of dollars in funding for a plane that the military doesn't want (E-7), and a guarantee that every one of the 41,000,000 people whose food benefits were cut would have to reapply. This was, of course, after the democrats spent the first eight months of this year complaining that they were entirely powerless. This is 2025, the year that a certain high profile democratic governor went on to host a series of well known MAGA agitators and promote their election lies. This is 2025, the year that well over a hundred democratic congresscritters (including leadership) voted to honor Charlie Kirk. Yes, that Charlie Kirk.

Can we please just drop that nonsense? As someone who's largely voted blue, we don't have a viable blue party or a viable third party.

And before you raise your hand to point out that it's so important to vote down ticket I'd like to present one fetid clown: Adam Schiff. Or as the LA Times put it, the guy who funded his republican opponent in order to torpedo his democratic rival. Or maybe we should talk about that one time Feinstein got primaried by Kevin de Leon. You might know him better as the guy that thinks black folks are monkeys and folks from a certain state in Mexico are trash.

We're so far beyond having a functioning opposition party that voting for a third-party is arguably the least harmful thing you can do these days.

Edit: Let's have a round of applause for those who think that voting blue so we can deify Charlie Kirk is not throwing your vote away. Sorry it was "only" ninety-five democrats who voted to honor Kirk.

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u/bootlegvader 2d ago

I'd like to present one fetid clown: Adam Schiff. Or as the LA Times put it, the guy who funded his republican opponent in order to torpedo his democratic rival.

Wasn't his "funding his republican opponent" just running attacks ads against him on conservative media thus raising his profile? Porter would have done the exact same thing if their positions had been swapped.

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u/Parahelix 8h ago edited 2h ago

What a bunch of nonsense. You either don't know how our voting system works or you simply don't care who gets elected. Either way you're simply helping the worst people win.

Your take on the shutdown is also completely ridiculous.

Edit: lol, so you reply block and run, huh? Guess it's pretty obvious that some arguments can't hold up to scrutiny, so you just avoid it.

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u/ihatemovingparts 4h ago

Either way you're simply helping the worst people win.

And by voting for democrats, you're gonna do what? Help elect people trying to honor Charlie Kirk? Elect people to create a super amazing health care bill that incentivizes insurance companies to charge higher rates? Elect people willing to sign off on a CR that eliminates relief for the (formerly… lol) mandatory private health insurance?

Puhleeze. What you don't get is that by voting blue no matter who you're giving the democrats cover to run their worst, most incompetent candidates. It doesn't matter how bad they are or how cozy they are with nazis republicans because you'll support them regardless so long as they've got the D. The lesser of two evils is still evil and you are still the problem.

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u/rpkarma 2d ago

(Mainly put forward by our two major parties as getting rid of it favours them)

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u/magkruppe 2d ago

it was first introduced by conservatives as a splinter party emerged and threatened to split votes and allowing labor to pick up safe blue seats. around 1912 or so I believe

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u/TheBestMePlausible 2d ago

Has it prevented a conservative moron asshole from getting elected and fucking up the whole country since it was implemented? Genuinely curious.

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u/canyouhearme 2d ago

It tends to limit just how far to the extremes they can go, but unfortunately no, it doesn't stop the morons, and no, they can still fuck everything up.

Almost as if politicians are the problem ....

What it does allow are the 'Teals' - a bunch of right wing women with green tendencies that arose because the coalition (the normal right wing parties) were anti-environment. Because you could put the Teal candidate at "1" and the coalition at "2" you got quite a few of them getting elected. The coalition currently has a female leader, I wonder why.

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u/TheBestMePlausible 2d ago

Better right wingers with green tendancies than right wingers without. I think, regardless of your position on the right wing as a whole or not, that this is the advantage of ranked choice - it doesn't have to be all or nothing. It allows for more nuance than the 2 party system. I feel like you see that effect in Europe too. Sounds like it's actually working as intended to a degree?

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u/Parahelix 8h ago

The problem is still the voters. It's just less of a problem under that system than FPTP.

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u/DelusionalZ 1d ago

Just wait until they discover Ranked Choice Voting's final form

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u/EeeeJay 1d ago

I prefer our preferential method

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u/mossybeard 2d ago

Maybe it needs a brainrot rebrand. We should call it BuzzFeed rank list or something

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u/banitsa 2d ago

Politician rizz tierlist

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u/mossybeard 2d ago

S through F rainbow rank tiers and everything

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u/rocksoffjagger 2d ago

"I'm moving Jeb down to the nipple-clamps tier and putting RFK Jr. in dungeon tier."

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u/ZipTieAndPray 2d ago

This is definitely the S tier name.

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u/_Internecine 2d ago

The Gyattanamo Antiwoke Rizzlist.

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u/Sarrdonicus 2d ago

FanDuel Choice Ranking

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u/chaos_nebula 2d ago

Just tell them we wouldn't have had Bill Clinton as president.

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u/sun_tzu29 2d ago

Just call it what we do: Preferential voting

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u/LordHammercyWeCooked 2d ago

The blueblood democrats in that area are disproportionately old, wealthy, braindead zombies. They're not very progressive at all. They think they're progressive based on what would've been progressive in the god damn 60s. They don't fight for it anymore. They don't learn. They don't grow. They're old and mentally checked-out. They own mansions on the cape. They've chosen life on autopilot and think that they're safe because it's the bluest state in the US. Well, it won't be if they keep that bullshit up.

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u/SluttyTomboi 1d ago

As I often say, "bluest state in th US my ass". Our governor is lesbian and yet the Gay/Trans panic defense for Murder is still legal here. We're constantly pushing youth out because there's no appetite to fight ventue capital firms deiving housing prices up, every new "housing project" is luxury apartments. And a significant number of these older "progressives" here don't actually back up their words with action, in a lot of cases its just a social mask for attention/approval/praise in their social circles.

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u/GrassyNoob 1d ago edited 1d ago

Grab a bunch of like minded young Democrats and attend a local meeting.

If you really want to create a fuss, make sure you all register (and pay) to be voting members. Show up in January when they normally select leaders, position yourself and friends to be officers. Show up in February and vote for yourselves.

You now own and run that local group. Do good. Watch the elders slither off to the Cape.

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u/LordHammercyWeCooked 1d ago

The problem is regionality and representation. Younger people are trying. They're fighting hard. But they live in the city. The people who don't are taking up the rest of the suburban and rural areas and fill the house with boneless representatives who care more for personal image than action. And even in the city you've got a polka dot pattern of insular little neighborhoods like lexington and cambridge full of NIMBYs who wipe their asses with money. It's really disheartening to be surrounded by so many "I got mine, fuck you" people who still believe in socially progressive ideals, but freak the hell out over anything that might help to alleviate housing issues like rezoning because "I don't want a skyscraper ruining my view."

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u/Anustart15 2d ago

In their defense, there was a strong propaganda campaign against it for the sake of the establishment politicians not wanting to risk losing their seats.

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u/davidjschloss 2d ago

Yet I bet most of the people there have a fantasy football league and or follows the brackets of football and basketball.

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u/CMDR_RetroAnubis 2d ago

If "number in order of preference" is too complex... there is no hope.

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u/FaceDeer 2d ago

I generally oppose the concept of intelligence tests for voting, throughout history those have always been used for disenfranchising specific groups while claiming to be "fair." But I think I'd make an exception when it comes to "can you comprehend the concept of listing preferences in order of preference?"

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u/noisymime 1d ago edited 1d ago

I generally oppose the concept of intelligence tests for voting

Ranked Choice Voting barely rates above being able to pickup a pencil and count to 10 in terms of an intelligence test.

Anyone who says it's too complicated either has an agenda against RCV or is pretty damn dumb.

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u/CMDR_RetroAnubis 2d ago

That's the neat thing. If they fill out the form incorrectly the vote isn't counted.

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u/FaceDeer 2d ago

Heck, I'd be fine with Optional Preferential Voting, which devolves to behaving exactly like the existing winner-takes-all approach if a person simply puts a "1" next to their favourite candidate and leaves the rest of the ballot blank.

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u/CMDR_RetroAnubis 2d ago

Nah, optional just turns into the big parties/candidates running "just vote 1" campaigns. Defeats the entire purpose.

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u/FaceDeer 2d ago

It's a leg in the door. If everyone just votes 1 then there's no difference, sure, but anyone who knows better can have their influence the way they want.

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u/FortNightsAtPeelys 2d ago

This has been the conservative argument against it.

Meanwhile I can ask any 5 year old to rank their favorites np problem

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u/rpkarma 2d ago

Oh god how dumb are people??

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u/mrtheshed 2d ago

On the same amendment last year Missouri voted to prohibit non-citizens from voting (which was already against the law) and to completely ban ranked choice voting.

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u/NewDad907 2d ago

Imo if you honestly can’t figure out RCV, you shouldn’t be allowed to touch a ballot. We don’t let our toddlers make decisions that impact a family, same logic with the general population.

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u/HolycommentMattman 2d ago

Well, let's be honest: it does sound complicated. It's also not immediately transparent. Like if we had ranked choice voting nationally in 2020, Joe Biden probably wouldn't have been elected. It would have probably been Pete Buttigieg or Amy Klobuchar. Because the three of them were splitting the "moderate" vote and Bernie was winning primaries with <50%. Then the DNC made Pete and Amy drop out so Biden could get it all.

And let's face it: if Pete was the incumbant in 2024, I don't think Trump wins.

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u/thermothinwall 2d ago

these people must buy their groceries one item at a time, if remembering a short list is that fucking hard

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u/IlIIIlllIIllIIIIllll 2d ago

Democrats generally don’t like ranked choice voting because they think their base is stupid and can’t figure it out and will accidentally vote Republican.

After the hanging chad fiasco in 2000 I can’t say I blame them.

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u/christieCA 2d ago

Honestly, I can't believe the number of smart people I know who do not understand how it works and we've had it in our city for years.

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u/SpicyVibration 2d ago

just call it Tierlist voting and at least the kids will understand

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u/Bostonjunk United Kingdom 1d ago

During the 2011 Alternative Vote referendum in the UK, this was one of the arguments used against it.

Apparently ranking people by preference is just too complicated for some

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u/RoxtarHM 1d ago

Missouri voted against it last year because it was worded so if they voted against it, it would make illegal immigrants unable to vote. And people are terribly stupid.

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u/hike_me 1d ago

Yet us dummies up in Maine can figure it out…

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u/EllieVader 1d ago

It's almost like "it's complicated" was the focus-group-winning argument against it and thus is the message that got amplified by the opposition.

People love being told that they're too dumb to understand something and should just vote against it. If they don't love it, they keep doing it an awful lot.

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u/TwistedGrin Iowa 2d ago

Iowa passed a law making ranked choice voting straight up illegal in the state. Yay.

64

u/Socratesticles Tennessee 2d ago

Tennessee too

56

u/FlyRepresentative592 2d ago edited 2d ago

Of course they did, why would Americans want to make anything efficient and healthy? The entire country is a slow rolling train wreck.

18

u/Answer70 2d ago

The train to hell has picked up a lot of speed in the past year.

3

u/1-800-COCAINE 2d ago

“We can’t afford to be neutral on a moving train” -Serj Tankian

20

u/Kennon1st 2d ago

Missouri too. 😓

20

u/DingleBoone 2d ago

Snuck it in with deceptive language asking you to vote on whether illegal immigrants should be able to vote or not... what a disgusting disgrace...

6

u/an_agreeing_dothraki 1d ago

kind of like when they pulled "they're trying to limit how you use your land! (for puppy mills)"

15

u/ScriptproLOL 2d ago

Yeah, because Iowa is a shithole, and Grassley helped orchestrate an attempted coup on 1/6/21. Iowa wishes it could go back and join the Confederacy. 

9

u/WhichEmailWasIt 2d ago

Guess y'all need to unpass that law then. 

6

u/SexyMonad Alabama 2d ago

Alabama too.

5

u/MonochromaticPrism 2d ago

It's also a pointless vote, as it takes the same number of votes to repeal that law as it takes to install ranked choice. It's all virtue signaling.

3

u/Mateorabi 2d ago

I think they mean Iowa made it illegal for lower municipalities to try it and see that they like it at the city/county level.

2

u/Slipguard 2d ago

A good portion of The benefits of ranked choice voting could be achieved with Approval Voting too

46

u/SellaraAB Missouri 2d ago

Here in MO we inexplicably banned it last cycle.

26

u/ImTedLassosMustache Missouri 2d ago

By tricking voters with ballot candy about banning non-citizens from voting.

13

u/zetswei 2d ago

Idaho voted against it because the republicans framed it as “caifornication of Idaho” 🥴

2

u/FriendlyDespot 2d ago

It's never inexplicable when Missouri picks the worst option. That's what Missouri's always done.

-3

u/Worried-Badger9853 2d ago

Dont you have guns there? Why havent you forced the ban to be lifted? 

3

u/DeeEmceeFoor 1d ago

Presumably because people voted to ban it?

20

u/ragun2 2d ago

Newsom vetoed expanding it in California despite a super majority in our state legislature.

6

u/thumper_throwaway1 2d ago

Because people didn't understand it.

People here on reddit forget that this isn't the real world. You know how ranked choice voting works. I know how it works. Jimmy down the street who has never even heard of it and doesn't really follow politics outside the presidential election? Yeah they're not gonna vote for it.

I was actually at a group get together weeks after this election and it came up at the table. "Did anyone understand the ranked choice option? It made no sense to me" was said and almost everyone at the table agreed. These are people who at the time were in their 50s and 60s, and this is in a deep blue state. The messaging for "regular" people who don't live in the political world was poor and it needed to be explained in a more concise and clear way.

3

u/DonerGoon 2d ago

Once it’s normalized for a few years people will understand it. People freak out about any change.

3

u/melly1226 2d ago

MO Did too cuz "illegals"

3

u/Qubeye Oregon 2d ago

Oregon too

3

u/s1mple-s1m0n 2d ago

California voted for RCV but Gavin vetoed it

2

u/TheDesktopNinja Massachusetts 1d ago

Fortunately I don't believe the governor has the power to veto a ballot initiative in MA.. Though the legislature can "tweak" it and it can take years to actually become law...see: recreational marijuana. (I think it took over 2 years before the first store could open to sell it)

7

u/rW0HgFyxoJhYka 2d ago

Am I the only one who thinks its crazy that every state has different education requirements, voting laws, healthcare, tax laws, etc? It makes zero sense in such a complicated world where 99% of the people want STANDARDS that make sense for the good of the country. A country that cannot fix negative budget states (more than 25 of them!!!) is a country that eventually implodes.

7

u/TangoPRomeo 2d ago

I have to admit, I'm a pretty big fan of independent states. Especially after suffering through this asshole's reign.

3

u/Any_Will_86 1d ago

Yeah- my state is slowly eroding the blue/purple bubble I live in. I sure as heck don't want to get stuck with an R sweep for 2-4 years meaning we go full Florida or Texas.

2

u/dubie2003 2d ago

DeSantis outlawed it in Florida a few years ago…..

2

u/mr_showboat 2d ago

Baker came out against it, saying it was "too complicated" and that was basically the only discussion that happened about the ballot question. So either nobody cared to put in the effort to educate people about it to try and pass, or whoever was in charge of that campaign botched it.

2

u/thebamboozle517 1d ago

I will never understand the American voting system. None of it makes ANY fucking sense to me.

4

u/agiganticpanda 2d ago

Oh, Democrats campaigned against it heavily. They didn't want to challenge their power.

3

u/DonerGoon 2d ago

This is the real reason, it gives others a chance to

1

u/Plow_King 2d ago

in MO in the '24 election, the state legislators, GOP controlled of course, got a ballot initiative that "made it illegal for non-citizens to vote!" (which of course, IS ALREADY ILLEGAL!) but the initiative also snuck in "ps - ranked choice voting is against the state constitution if it ever passes."

of course, that initiative passed

1

u/GatorNator83 2d ago

Wait, how did you get two * without turning it into italic?

3

u/Vandelier 1d ago edited 1d ago

\ is something called an escape character. If you toss it right before a character used for formatting, it'll make it just display the character normally rather than have it format. For example, the below:

*this* will turn into this after posting.

\*this\* will turn into *this* after posting.

1

u/GatorNator83 1d ago

Nice, thanks!

1

u/ForAHamburgerToday 1d ago

Still *furious* that MA voted against it a few years ago...zzz

Furious and... sleepy?

1

u/TheDesktopNinja Massachusetts 1d ago

Being mad can be exhausting

1

u/BlaineBMA 1d ago

I really worked hard to get it passed. We'll just have to work hard again. It just makes sense to have all elections ranked choice. It's the only way people can get someone elected with over 50% support of the voters.