ST. LOUIS — Five states have banned ranked choice voting in the last two months, bringing the total number of Republican-leaning states now prohibiting the voting method to 10.

Missouri could soon join them.

If approved by voters, a GOP-backed measure set for the state ballot this fall would amend Missouri’s constitution to ban ranked choice voting.

  • oxjox@lemmy.mlEnglish
    6·
    6 months ago

    There is literally no good argument for writing a law banning this. It’s indefensible. I challenge one person to try.

    I’ve been in favor of RCV for a decade+ and believe our country would change practically overnight by adopting it; however, there are legitimate reasons it hasn’t been adopted. As stated and linked in the article,

    Brown and other critics of ranked choice voting contend the system is confusing, and he said there are numerous instances in which voters didn’t end up ranking their choices.

    Ballot exhaustion occurs when a ballot is no longer countable in a tally as all of the candidates marked on the ballot are no longer in the contest. This can occur as part of ranked-choice voting when a voter has ranked only candidates that have been eliminated even though other candidates remain in the contest, as voters are not required to rank all candidates in an election. In cases where a voter has ranked only candidates that did not make it to the final round of counting, the voter’s ballot is said to have been exhausted. An exhausted ballot is sometimes referred to as an inactive ballot.

    Whether this qualifies as “literally no good argument” I think is dependent on the number ballots where this was an issue. You could make an argument that people aren’t educated about the system or the system isn’t adaptable for all voters. Whether those are “good arguments” is perhaps subjective.

    • vividspecter@lemm.ee
      5·
      6 months ago

      It’s education for sure. We have very few issues with the system in Australia, which has been used for decades.

      The exhaustion issue could be prevented by using full preferential instead of optional preferential (although some don’t like that because they believe it “forces” them to rank a candidate they don’t like).

    • v_krishna@lemmy.mlEnglish
      5·
      6 months ago

      How is an exhausted ballot any different from voting 3rd party today? 100% guaranteed for sure when I’ve voted Green my vote did not count towards anybody with a chance of winning. Is that any different if I could vote green and socialist and whatever else (but still not rank any major party candidates)?

      • bolexforsoup@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        1·
        6 months ago

        He missed the point of my comment. I’m not saying there aren’t reasons to not adopt RCV, I am saying there is no reason to write laws that ban its adoption. They’re going to ban any system that could vaguely hurt them. This is a dangerous precedent when simply not adopting it is an available option. It also means if future constituencies want to switch over to it, they to repeal the law before they can even start to an enact a new one.

        • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
          21·
          6 months ago

          You’re right. I’m just pointing out that even the bullshit reasons are easily dismissed.

          But conservatives aren’t arguing in good faith. They don’t sincerely believe that alternative voting options are bad, they believe they are bad for conservatives.

    • bolexforsoup@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      2·
      6 months ago

      I’m not saying there is no good reason for not adopting it. I am saying there is no good reason for writing laws that ban its adoption.

      There is no good argument for passing a law that bans the adoption of RCV. It’s the GOP continuing to stack the deck in their favor, a flagrant attempt to stop a change they don’t like because they think it will hurt them.

    • intelisense@lemm.ee
      1·
      6 months ago

      It could simply mean they didn’t want any of the remaining candidates to get in. I suppose at a push, maybe it makes sense to choose the least worst of the remaining, but I can certainly imagine candidates I would consciously not rank at all.