We dodged a bullet. I love that the Democrats are the freethinkers here, not the lock-step thoughtslaves on the right. But, the winner-take-two system in the California primaries nearly turned the enthusiasm of the progressive left against us, where having multiple exciting but lesser-known candidates could have resulted in two Republicans on top of the primary and advancing into the general.
Luckily, that didn’t happen:
Democrats seem poised to avoid getting shut out of key California House races
Next time around, though, it would be nice to have the ability to vote for the person who you really like, who seems best and most aligned to your values, without being afraid that voting with your heart will throw the race to the opposition. There is a solution for this: Instant Runoff. Cities around the country are using it successfully, as well congressional seats in Maine.
Its pretty simple: instead of just voting for your top choice, you rank the candidates in order of preference. Then to determine the winner, the system throws out the bottom candidate, re-allocates the top votes for that candidate to the second choice, and repeats until one candidate has a majority.
Systemic change gives us leverage. I think its worth learning about this, and seeing if it can be implemented at local and state levels wherever we can.
Instant Runoff Voting
Its also called Ranked Choice Voting — I think I ran into these guys at the Unrig summit, they are doing a good job trying to help provide the tech to localities around the country:
FairVote.org
Would love to hear from anyone trying to implement this at the local level!
Also going to bring this up on civ.works, to see if we can find some model law to share.