I hope that this diary remains clear of political preference wrangling and name-calling. I am torn between Warren and Sanders and quite sanguine about Voting Blue No Matter Who. Enough with the bullshit, let’s get real:
Buttigieg and Steyer both had followings in upcoming primary states, many of which had early voting ongoing at the time of their exits. The reasons for those two to drop out are probably complicated and rational.
If there were a Ranked Choice Voting system of some kind in place, the people who had already cast their ballots would still have a positive (rather than simply “not a vote for Candidate X”) impact on the upcoming primary results, as their second (or third) choice would automatically get those votes.
I do not think this is particularly abstract, overly complicated, or difficult to argue.
To me, regardless of which candidate I prefer, the ability for all voters to be assured that their vote had a positive impact on the outcome is the most important thing, even if it means that their second choice rather than their first choice benefited.
I don’t think this is particularly hard to do… if the hicks and weirdos that I grew up with in Maine can do it, then surely the savvy and suave, politically astute operators in CA, TX, and etc, and in the Democratic Party as a whole can figure it out.
****** Update ******
Thanks for all the rec’s and comments, and thanks for the lively discussion. I would like to address the main points of contention that I see in comments here, rather than on an individual basis, for reasons of time-crunch.
Objection 1) — RCV has the potential for “spoiler effect” by accident or by abuse.
- Generally speaking, the idea is that if there are 3 candidates, and two pluralities choose 1 and 3, and everybody chooses 2… then 2 wins even though nobody chose 2 as their first preference.
- This is what we call a “corner case” and requires an extremely specific set of occurrences to take place… and is relatively easily dealt with in most of the mature RCV structures.
- Fundamentally, the straightforward answer is that the clear majority or plurality winner is set by the first tally, regardless of the cumulative “power” of the 2nd or 3rd choice…. alternatively, thresholds can be set in the counting algorithm that prevent such gaming.
Objection 2) — disenfranchisement… ?
- Honestly, how?
- How is enabling voters to express their full array of choices in order of preference any form of disenfranchisement?
- How is RCV equated to “voting twice”???
- That only applies in cases described above, under specific and very difficult to engineer scenarios (which are also relatively easy to prevent beforehand with simple “rule sets” applied to the counting algorithm).
Objection 3) — The “participation trophy” argument, accompanied by “people should learn that they could wind up voting for the losing candidate and just deal with it. Not everyone gets to vote for a winner”…
- Yeah, except not.
- In a multi-candidate “free for all primary” there are obvious consequences in terms of voter enthusiasm, campaign “screech level,” and the degree of nasty competition designed to
- inflame the hyper-committed and
- discourage the opposition, and
- bully the uncommitted using “vote for the leader to get this over with”…
- some form of RCV bids fair to erase those disgusting dynamics entirely.
- Furthermore, voters with preferences who for reasons of convenience, health or responsibility, make their choice early are quite literally and directly disenfranchised if a candidate suddenly drops out for whatever reason.
- Case in point is Buttigieg and Steyer voters… The likelihood is strong that most of those voters have either Warren or Biden as their second choice.
- As it stands, those voters who have already cast their ballot for either Buttigieg or Steyer…
- their votes mean almost nothing at best, and actually hurt Biden/Warren at worst…
- if the difference between a Sanders blowout in CA and a closer three-way race between Sanders/Biden/Warren is a couple of percentage points here or there…
- and that difference can be explained in the percentages of Steyer/Buttigieg votes that might otherwise have boosted Biden/Warren over the viability threshold…
- that is just insane to support.
- It might literally mean the difference between Sanders winning the nomination outright and a contested convention where a “not Sanders” could potentially win out via brokering and negotiation. (Note, most of you know my leanings and my preferences, so I certainly hope you appreciate how serious I am about this … from a completely tactical, power-politics standpoint, the kind of foolishness shown by the “moderate” lane candidates this cycle is frankly astounding, and continues to benefit Sanders very directly and powerfully).
Objection 4) — Complication, difficulty of implementation.
- Not buying that, at all.
- Compare the potential ramifications of a complicated RCV system in which one complicated ballot is received from each voter, and subject to trackable counting and calculation via algorithms currently in circulation…
- To the current and abysmally embarrassing caucus systems, crazed delegate apportionment by district, by state, by floating, by whatever…
- If we can justify, defend and (supposedly) carry out the above-mentioned exercises in Dali-esque, mind-warping, LSD-inspired “crazy math”… then we can most certainly count, add, and report using an RCV system of one form or another.
Again, thanks for the responses and the excellent discussion.
**** edited title to include Klobuchar ****