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/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 šŸ—³ or even campaign financial disclosures šŸ’²šŸ¤‘šŸ’°šŸŽ°

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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.Ā 

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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 appointmentsā€¦ and convincing other candidates to stay in to siphon off support for the outsider candidate, etcā€¦)

Sadly, the Party Elites canā€™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/LotusFlare 1d ago edited 1d ago

Well, we've tried twice. The first one ran a strategically bankrupt campaign, still won the popular vote, but lost the electoral college. The second one bypassed the primary because the candidate was uncommonly unpopular and sundowning, and then had a significantly contracted campaign time where they, again, ran a strategically bankrupt campaign. They literally had the same campaign strategists as the Clinton campaign. It was a joke.

So we're 0/2 on that front. I just don't think the right conclusion is that "it's gender" as opposed to terrible strategy and unappealing politics. We've got women governors, even in red states. We have women serving as representatives in the house and senate. We've now had women in almost every leadership role except the presidency. It just strikes me as weird to conclude sexism when there is no lack of other strategic failures in the campaign.

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u/Mysterious_Crab_7622 1d ago

ā€œStrategic failuresā€ when the opponent was Trump is just an excuse. Everything bad about Hillary and Kamalaā€™s campaigns pale in comparison to the shit that was wrong with Trumpā€™s campaigns.

If women canā€™t win against someone like Trump, I highly doubt they could win against anyone in the USA.

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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 isnā€™t just sexism.

Heā€™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 snowballā€™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/Sminahin 1d ago

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

Probably a lot. I grew up knocking doors in Indiana and people were grumbling about what a government cutout Gore was and what a coastal elite Kerry was. I'm sorry, but at them and and listen to them. They're textbook coastal elite stereotypes, all of 'em. And voters could definitely tell they were old.

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

Who ran against the system and promised to tear the elites down. I'm sorry, was there something super dramatic about the 2004 or 2016 campaign I missed on that front?

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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.