Ranked-choice voting has been gaining popularity lately, and that's sparked a MAGA backlash. But why? There's no obvious reason it would benefit either Democrats or Republicans. Nevertheless, conservative groups have launched a large number of very well funded and coordinated attacks on RCV. Alaska, for example, approved RCV in 2020 but opponents have now gathered enough signatures to put a repeal measure on the ballot in November. This was the result of an upset election in 2022 that denied Sarah Palin a seat in Congress.
The most surprising thing about all this is that apparently nobody knows for sure why MAGA opposes ranked-choice voting. Even election expert Rick Hasen is unsure:
“I would guess,” Hasen said, “that the reason for the fear of ranked-choice voting is that it could help elect more Republican moderates rather than more extreme Republicans.”
I guess this could be the reason, though it's hard to believe that RCV strategies aren't available that favor just about any kind of candidate. Another possibility is good old conservative paranoia:
Soros conspiracy theories are common among RCV critics. In fact, the title of Snead’s new book is The Case Against Ranked-Choice Voting: How George Soros and Other Billionaires Use a ‘Dark Money’ Empire to Transform America. His co-author is Trent England, the head of a group called Save Our States that was founded to defend the undemocratic electoral college, but is increasingly targeting ranked-choice voting.
Maybe RCV really does help elect more moderate candidates. For my money, though, the more likely reason for MAGA opposition is simpler: RCV tends to be favored by liberalish good government groups, and by definition this is the Deep State working to entrench its power. If they're for it, MAGA is against it.
Or it could be because RCV can be MANIPULATED by JEWISH SPACE LASERS and CHINESE THERMOSTATS!! Also something something 5G MIND CONTROL from the HOAX VIRUS JABS!!
That is, there isn't necessarily any sort of rationality or reason at work. It's MAGAtown.
Correct.
Plus, RCV requires math: summation, ordering, iteration, recalculation etc.
And anything math-y is an abomination.
In Alaska in particular, MAGA was outraged that RCV prevented them from primarying out Murkowski. They knew the only way to get rid of her was to keep her out of the general and when RCV and non-partisan primaries kept them from doing so they became enraged. Palin was more of a sideshow for them.
Yes, it's quite possible that they're against ranked choice simply because the first time it was tried, the election didn't turn out the way they wanted.
They also know that they only way they make it to the White House is with the Green Party's assistance.
Which happened because, as I recall, a huge number of Republicans refused to check any name on the ballot but the one single guy they wanted, essentially throwing out most of their own votes.
Ranked choice voting is about a non-black and white world which people who can see only black and white refuse to engage with or accept.
rank choice voting is being pushed explicitly because it works against extremists like the maggots and favors moderates like Murkowski and, most importantly, the the majority of the public.
Honeyboy's made the correct observation. Alaska has implemented 2 things
1) open primary with top 4 moving to the general election
2) ranked-choice voting in the general election
One could have either one without the other, and it is the open primary that pisses off the movers and shakers of both parties the most.
I don't think primary with top 4 going to the general without RCV would make sense to anyone, because it almost guarantee a winner with much less than half of the votes. So RCV is really essential.
If the primaries stay the same and you do RCV, you will get moderate third-party and independents in. Without RCV, it is very often a waste of vote to vote for independent/third-party, so voters don't do it. With RCV it is not a problem, so you will get much more of these moderates and they will start to win substanial number of races.
In the specific case of Alaska, I think both Murkowsky and Peltola would have won anyway (Murkowsky running as independent).
I'm not trying to say that I want to give up one or the other. I'm just trying to say that the field of candidates in the general election is better with an open primary whether you have RVC or not. With a closed primary the AK Magats would for sure have pushed Tchibaka over Murkowski. It's not clear whether the Rs would have gone for Palin or Begich, but only one or the other would have been in the general election.
Murkowski did win a write-in election against Miller when she lost the primary in 2010 but there's no telling if that strategy would work again. That election made me sick to my stomach because Scott McAdams was a perfectly good candidate for the Ds but lost a lot of votes because so many people saw Miller as a disaster in the making and wrote in Murkowski even though her voting record is 99.9% aligned with McConnell. RCV has eliminated that problem, so YAY!
Jared Golden (D ME-02) was elected the first time on second preferences.
This was before Alaska....
Not helping matters was the trial run was an emergency special election to fill a House seat that hadn't been without an incumbent for literally 50 years. Thus an entire page of candidates.
American conservative elites are terrified by ranked choice options because they would likely lead to more political participation rather than less, which is anathema to their project. MAGA is easily manipulated by elites whether established conservative or Trumpian "populist" (really "nativist"), so this seems straight-forward explainable to me.
First-past-the-post is why we're locked into two major parties, and a very significant number of Americans aren't fans of either party or the options we get from just effectively having two parties. Ranked voting remedies the concept of throwing away your vote, not that it's perfect in doing that either, just clearly better than how we do it now.
And anyone arguing for defending/strengthening the Electoral College is even more an elitist and/or federalist outlier, especially in a hyper-modern society where we are globally interconnected in ways our forefathers could hardly imagine, and face nuclear and other existential threats that must be dealt with at scale (old-school federalism a thing of the past, just tokenism now).
"Maybe, though it's hard to believe that RCV strategies aren't available that favor just about any kind of candidate."
That is an odd statement, RCV favors candidates who are close in their positions to other candidates (so have a chance of getting second-priority votes). That makes life more difficult to exteme candidates, and favors moderates.
yeah, this seems, prima facie, the most obvious and likely answer. ranked choice hurts extremists and maga candidates are all extremists.
I think a lot of people who voted for Trump in 2016 could have listed Bernie as their second choice, but probably not a high enough percentage to matter.
Paranoia and ignorance are the correct answers….just like being against vote by mail. It makes no sense.
Primaries in a 2-Party system often produce extreme candidates. Primary voters tend to be base voters, and nowadays base voters are more extreme, especially on the Republican side. Moderate independent candidates do poorly in the general election because they are often spoilers; they draw enough votes to hurt one of the extremists but not enough to win.
RCV removes the spoiler effect. It become safe to vote for the moderate independent without tossing the election to the crazy on the other side, so moderate candidacies are much more feasible in the general election.
In the end the winning candidate has to actually get a majority. It is like running runoffs until someone finally gets a majority. Only then do you have a winner.
Long story short, RCV is promoted as a way to fight extremism for good reason, it will. To win you have to be broadly acceptable.
Kevin supposes somehow this can be gamed, I dunno. It was designed by sophisticated people to resist gaming. I think if he wants to present RCV as neutral on extremism he needs to address the basic theory. RCV has been around a long time.
You should realize that without the open primary you very well may not have a moderate candidate to choose from when it's time for ranked-choice voting.
So long as a moderate can enter the general it still works. As I recall Murkowski lost the primary and ran in the general anyway.
Presumably you refer to the 2010 elections.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_United_States_Senate_election_in_Alaska
That elections is specially good example why RCV is good for the voters, even with the existing primaries. As it was, each Alaskan voter needed to consider whether voting for Murkowsky will be a waste of a vote and allow the "wrong" (as far as the voter is concerned) candidate to win. If they had RCV, they wouldn't have to worry about it.
Basically it would allow a moderate elected official with reasonbale popularity to show a finger to the extermists of their party.
RCV probably works against partisan outcomes and ballot structures.
For example, the current race for the open CA Senate seat. It is possible, based on CA rules, the top two candidates on the ballet will be Schiff and Porter, both Democrats. Thus, the Republican (Garvey) might not even make the final ballot. I suspect the GOP would want Garvey on the final ballot....
A good voting system does not need to reflect what GOP wants. It needs to reflect what the voters want. The voters in California want a Democrat, so they should get some Democrats to choose from.
Good point!
California is confusing. What they call the primary is really the general election. What they call the general is really a runoff between the top two candidates. I don’t like it. I’d rather have RCV.
magas are intellectually lazy
'x gets the most votes' is easy; rcv makes their tiny little brains explode
Trump would have found it much more difficult to take control of the Republican party without the threat of primarying out anybody that doesn't surrender. RCV reduces the threat significantly, so it is bad to Trump.
Murkowsky (mentioned already) is a good demonstration of this.
Hence, it is actually quite rational for MAGA to object to it.Their problem is that they don't dare to explicitly state the reason, so they have to use some bulshit instead (which for them is not actually a problem, because they always use bulshit).
I hear Soros is against hitting yourself in the head with a hammer. Don't let the MAGAts know.
I think you hit the nail on the head already, RCV leads itself to moderate candidates - also known as the Least Objectionable Option.
The fear of every extremist candidate.
Open primaries lead to moderate candidates.
RCV would make a Biden win in November almost inevitable since he'd be ranked second by third-party voters upset by his age or Gaza policy but who still prefer him to Trump. Also, Al Gore would have won in 2000 had there been RCV. Also, as pointed out, Murkowski.
RCV is good for governance but bad for minority movements that took control of a major party.
You mean instant runoffs until someone gets a majority is at cross purposes to minority rule?
Sounds right to me.
Al Gore would have won in 2000 had all the ballots in Florida been recounted. No other changes needed, except counting of valid ballots.
Al Gore would have won in 2000 if they had simply counted the vote correctly in Florida.
Here in Maine, the GOP has instructed voters to NOT rank candidates.
But you can view the ballot here; and it is obviously designed for ranking candidates. So I'm going to guess that most people will ignore the instruction.
It is much more amusing to order candidates than to simply tick off a single box.
Ballot from SOS Bellow's office is here: https://www.maine.gov/sos/cec/elec/upcoming/pdf/Mar24%20REP%20Sample%202R.pdf
They should make it clearer that the voter needs to start with the first choice, and does not need to bother about other choices:
1) The column for the first choice should be wider and separate from the rest of the columns.
2) The instructions should say:"
Fill your first choice in the first column.
If you have other candidates you want to vote for...
Also more space for the write-in.
Perhaps you would like to apply for the job as SOS of Maine?
It seems pretty obvious to me. RCV is small-d democratic, ergo the anti-democratic/pro-authoritarian movement is against it. Not hard to figure out.
I would add, they dislike it because it's less arbitrary, less black and white, and so the outcome is less abusive, more ameliorating and reasonable, the antithesis of the hysteria mongering demagogue. Of course MAGA isagainst it.
I agree with many of the posts here
But are we missing the obvious?
MAGA hates it because it's definitive. Its one and done there's no "oh we want a do over". It also provides for immediate vote re-counting until a winner gets over 50%.
There would be NO QUESTION of the vote
As many of you have noted the republicans seem to be more interested in kabuki theater, arguing for arguments sake, and just wanting to sew doubt into a "bad" result
Doesn't RCV take all of this away?
I have two things to add. One: I'm getting more than a little pissed. I've been a leftie - i.e. "doing the bidding of George Soros" - for as long as I've been aware of politics. And yet... I HAVE YET TO SEE ONE DAMN CHECK! Jeez... I mean, if he has billions to throw at dark money schemes, where's -my- piece of the pie?
And two: Seriously, my Republican friends - how much of the money in the political world comes out of George's pockets as compared to the likes of the Koch bros., Thiel, Harlan Crow, Adelson, Uihlein, etc.?
RCV is BAD (to MAGA) because, like Socrates, it makes the weaker candidate defeat the stronger...
Well, there's always the business of "its new, and anything new is automatically suspicious". This is genuinely conservative.
It doesn't explain the apparent money behind some of these efforts, though. They would not get far so loaded down with suspicion of new things.
Probably the money finds extreme candidates/electorate easier to manipulate and fundraise off of.
Let's not forget that even though there is apparently a lot of resistance to vote-by-mail among the MAGA ranks, vote-by-mail is also used widely by conservative voters in Arizona, etc.
RCV makes it cheaper for jurisdictions to run elections as there is no need to have a runoff.
Sell RCV to conservatives using this argument.
DO NOT FALL FOR THE TRAP OF RCV
If good-government types implement RCV in blue states, you get more moderate (and less liberal) winners. But red states aren't going to have RCV so they send to the House, harder right candidates (because they have larger pluralities and win in first-past-the-post). Net result: More conservative House.
This is so, so much like the folly in liberal California, where redistricting was taken from the legislature in 2010 and given to an independent body. Hooray, for good government, right? NO. Other states, especially red ones, kept Gerrymandering. The result is that today, we have a House controlled by the GOP. If California was able to counter-Gerrymander, the House would be run by the Democrats. Think about that.
RCV is okay for strictly local races but should not be implemented for Congressional seats unless all the states do so at the same time.
That makes no sense. RCV allows one to consistently vote for the Green Party without having to worry about splitting the vote for the democrat. We already have moderate winners, so we couldn't possibly end up with fewer liberal winners.
I suspect it's simple reactive fear of change, and a reaction to any effort to effectively improve anything from the current state they are exploiting.
Any form of proportional representation will scare exploiters of the follies of other systems.
I don't support ranked choice voting because I don't think people can accurately rank their choices. If one candidate drops out they might say this is their next preference but I don't think we can know for sure unless we do the election without the person. A lot of factors go into someone's vote.
"I don't support ranked choice voting because I don't think people can accurately rank their choices."
They don't need to rank anything.
They need to vote for their preferred candidate first, and then decide if they want to vote for another.
This kind of objection is the reason for my earlier comment about the design of the Maine's ballot.
"They need to vote for their preferred candidate first, and then decide if they want to vote for another."
So the winning candidate can win with a pretty limited number of votes if people drop out. That doesn't seem good either.
"A lot of factors go into someone's vote." Bullshit. Almost no one puts in that much time. It's pretty easy to rank choice:
1) Green Party
2) Some Democrat
3) Some Democrat
4) Anyone who's brand isn't Fuck America.
If the US Green party is your first choice you should not be allowed to vote.
" There's no obvious reason it would benefit either Democrats or Republicans." What a stupid question in the headline. While RCV doesn't favor republicans or democrats, per se. It indisputably favors moderates. Which is why maggots hate it. And since the extremists presently control the republican party, and moderates the democrat party, it presently favors democrats.
"It indisputably favors moderates. "
Kevin seems t doubt that it favors moderates, so you need to argue with that.
I put the argument in an earlier message.
Why does MAGA hate ranked-choice voting?
They're doing pretty well out of the current system. Why would they want to change it?
RCV will assure that the most DISLIKED candidate will lose (even if a plurality of the electorate chooses them). MAGA is a minority movement. They can't survive RCV.
Democrats just won two runoff elections in a purple state for Senate, and this is essentially instant runoff, so I'm a little surprised Kevin doesn't get it. But the Palin example is probably more telling.
Let's assume there are five parties running candidates. The normal party, the special interest party, a couple other special interest parties, and the giant asshole party. Most people will vote for the normal party or the giant asshole party, and in a first past the pole election, the special interest parties may split the vote enough such that the giant asshole party can win with 40% of the vote. But the one thing that the special interest parties have in common is that they all HATE the giant asshole party.
When Palin ran for congress, there were other candidates that split the vote such that she may have had the most votes through round 1. But ranked choice voting allowed people to essentially vote for "not the Democrat, but ABSOLUTELY not Palin". Now, yes, a party could develop a strategy to exploit this, but not a party full of giant assholes. Given that the Republicans are giant assholes, and they don't plan to stop being giant assholes anytime soon, this is a problem for them.
I think it's pretty obvious: MAGA Trumpublicans' political model is that they have rabid support from 30% or 40% of voters, so the way they win elections is either (a) moderate their positions to pick up another 10-20% of the vote; or (b) split the opposition so that their 30-40% is a plurality.
And who wants to moderate their political positions? Certainly not MAGA!
There is pretty consistently a majority that doesn't care for MAGA. RCV means they pretty consistently lose elections.
If MAGA is against it, it must be one fucking great idea!