A solution looking for a problem…

how do you figure? it seems to me like making 3rd party options more viable gives way to more representation of the will of the people.

It seems to me like you vote for the candidate you prefer most. If no one gets a majority, you have a runoff and do the same thing again. It’s simple and it works.

If you want to encourage the “will of the people” remove party affiliation from all ballots.

As far as I understand it, the goal is to encourage people to vote without party-based momentum getting in the way of their actual preferences. But I agree, I don’t like party affiliations either.

People having to go to the polls multiple times for one election kills the democratic process. Most people already find it obnoxious finding the time once. Ranked choice is one and done. It’s much more cost effective.

Cost isn’t a factor in elections, if it was we would mass mail out ballots.

The democratic process is voting as a civic duty. If you can’t get an absentee ballot or make it to the polls it’s clearly not an important issue yo you🤷🏼‍♂️ and voters who aren’t informed or don’t care is what’s killing the democratic process.

This is literally instant runoff. That's all. It's simple and it works. Ask Maine.

It’s not actually, I described a traditional runoff.

Why would I ask Maine? I lived through Bob Kiss.

I see this as a small step we need to take. I'd like everyone to get a chance.

Vermonter, moved to Maine. Ranked choice voting is pretty sweet. I don’t feel bad about putting a third party if I like their position as my first choice and my “popular” choice that I like best as a second or third option. It virtually eliminates the need for run-off elections, which generally have lower participation, cost money, demand for volunteers to work polling booths again, etc. I don’t feel pressure to not “waste” my vote in voting for a third party that maybe more aligns with my opinions than one of the major parties. You always have the option to put one candidate’s name on the ballot and nobody else’s. In my experience, it admittedly can be more confusing the first time and for some of the elderly population.

I don’t think it will immediately result in more third parties in office, but over time third parties will have greater ability to fundraise and gain attention. I’m just so sick of the us vs them mentality that the two party system and our 24/7 breaking news media has helped create. It would be super cool if more states did this and the discussion started shifting more to ideas, strategies, and competence rather than buzzwords, name calling, wild hypothesis to fill time, and conspiracy theories.

I think there would be a lot of opposition to this from people who don’t understand it or have been maybe misinformed and people who enjoy and/or benefit from the two party system. Successful adoption would mean listening, engaging, and implementing the system in a way that is fair and transparent that all people can understand.

All my ballots in Vermont have been mail in, which was mailed to me first....

Kinda seems like saying, don’t improve anything because… it is what it is.

Excellent idea to get away from “first past the post” system. It’s the best way to break the 2 party system.

And not really any downsides.

Check out Irish election system, really awesome how they operate.

> It seems to me like you vote for the candidate you prefer most. If no one gets a majority, you have a runoff and do the same thing again. It’s simple and it works.

Lol, do you not understand that's exactly what "instant runoff voting" (and its ilk) literally is?

There is literally no debate to be had. Ranked choice is the only viable option to escape the two-party vote manipulation game.

> If you can’t get an absentee ballot or make it to the polls it’s clearly not an important issue yo you🤷🏼‍♂️ and voters who aren’t informed or don’t care is what’s killing the democratic process.

How dare you malign people who can't make it to the polls in the limited time available as "uninformed" or "lacking care" and who are "killing the democratic process".

It's you who are "killing the democratic process".

Asshole.

Excellent, there’s no issue getting and casting a ballot if you want own then

It’s kind of like say if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it. And it was tried before and then immediately soundly rejected 🤷🏼‍♂️. History is predictive

It would be nice to just get the one instead of wasting the fuel to deliver multiple ones in the event of a run off.

Literally explain to me what a traditional Runoff is and literally explain to me what instant runoff is. Let’s see if we can figure out the differences together.

I think you may have read my post too quickly, Try reading it again and see if you can find the word “or” in there. I’ll forgive the ad hominen attack and chalk it up to reading too quickly.

Well I am glad you are fine with the political situation in Vermont and America.

I think lots of reform is needed, this is a great step in the right direction.

This “article” is embarrassing. There is one source who gives a completely idiotic reason that it can’t be done yet, and they don’t bother to counter it whatsoever or seek other viewpoints. This isn’t journalism, it’s lazy propaganda.

Regardless, ranked choice voting is an incredibly simple concept and anyone arguing otherwise should be called on their obvious BS.

Post office drives by regardless of if they’re carry a ballot.

A lot of reform as in educating voters on their civic duty and the danger of party/identity politics… id agree with that. Having an instant runoff v traditional runoff… I think that’s making things worse.

Cost is a factor in elections my dude it’s just not discussed very often. Your willful ignorance throughout this thread is mind blowing.

Odd, it doesn’t seem to be a factor when we mail out ballots to everyone in the state and then some? No one has complained about cost?
I think IRV is a horrible idea. I did it once in Burlington already and it was a complete failure and soundly thrown to the curb afterwards. I’ve yet to hear a good reason why we should toss out a system that’s worked for two hundred years to go with one that’s been tried already and failed. If you’ve got one please share.

Edited for wording

So is there a reason you don't want this other than that there's a less efficient means that works just right for you, specifically?

There’s a way that’s worked for 200 years v one that’s already been tried and failed, that really serves no purpose. It’s like people think everyone in Burlington there for it the last time we’re just idiots.

Has it worked for 200 years? Are you sure?

This is what takes away from Vermont, changing nothing is not preserving anything that makes this state what it is.

It has. And IRV hasn’t, it’s been tried.

The only people debating are the shitty politicians that won't last if we have 3+ options. Voters should totally be on board with this. Republicans, you can vote for a Libertarian without wasting a vote. Democrats, you can vote for the green party without wasting a vote.

The Democrats and Republicans won’t let us have this because it will shake things up too much and they would be out on their asses.

no voting system is perfect but ranked choice solves a lot more problems than new ones it creates. It's a shame it won't ever happen nationally because it's a direct threat to those in power but I think if any state would be the kind to get on board, it would be Vermont

The best way to break the two party system would be to eliminate party affiliation on ballots.

So the population of Burlington that used IRV and then immediately tossed it and went back to traditional runoffs after the criminal incumbent mayor managed to win another term with less than 30% of the first round votes? Those damn Burlingtonians full of obvious BS?

Bob Kiss is the reason I get trepidatious every time this topic is brought up.

Well technically there’s other options for voting systems but like, ranked choice is the easiest to implement and most effective, so

Ranked choice is a mistake. The candidate that comes in last affects the outcome.

We have rcv here in Maine and it’s great.

You have yet to describe how it actually makes anything worse. So far you're just grumping about how it's different as though it's bad without specifying.

Well I did allude to the fact that the last time we tried it, we ended up with the criminal incumbent mayor that had less than 30% of the first round vote, and no one really wanted as Mayor, yet somehow that’s who we got. Within months IRV was gone (with near unanimous support) and we were back to the tried and true traditional runoff which works as elections should. The match up of candidates is clear and upfront. Voting shouldn’t take a statistics degree to figure out every possible match up and how their vote may play out. It also violates the one vote one person principle in some instances where someone doesn’t rank the entire field.

There are lots of issues with it, and it’s not necessary. The system we have works.

Nope, it is ranked choice

Care to explain how IRV would eliminate the two party system better than eliminating party designations? I would argue when people don’t know what parties the candidate are from, parties become irrelevant and as an added bonus people will vote for the actual candidate. Parties lose power. IRV if anything will encourage a two party system in the greater Burlington area. It just switched republicans with progressives. No where else in the state will it make a difference. I’d love to hear your analysis though.

Was no one here a resident of Burlington when Bob Kiss got a second term? People were furious because the electorate ABSOLUTELY did not want him to get a second term, he got in because of mass confusion about the way the system worked. This was extensively documented at the time.

People may not like this but they're right. This was an embarrassing failure in Burlington.

The downside is that people don't understand it and inadvertently vote for people they don't like. That's what happened in Burlington. I know that seems amazing because the concept is relatively simple, but a lot of people just don't get it and never will.

No the best way is they win with the most votes, and remove any need for 50 or 40% to win. If there are 12 prior running and the winner has 23% then they win.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo

here's a good video explaining why first past the post is bad. ranked voting really is just better. here's a video explaining ranked voting, and why it's better:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Y3jE3B8HsE

how do you figure

RCV is the only way that third party candidates will ever be able to compete with the 2 major parties as things are currently structured.

Wont change the fact that im NEVER voting Republican again, they lost me when they chose theocracy over democracy.

Its scary to me that there are people out there who have trouble understanding how rcv works. Also, sometimes I really wish there was a civics test you had to pass in order to vote. It upsets me that people who have next to no grasp of the basic principles of government have an equal say as people who have a thorough understanding. But I also want as high a turnout as possible and for everyone to have their voice heard. I guess i really just wish people were better educated regarding politics. Its so fkn important and half our citizens dont even bother voting. And of the half that do, a large portion of them are 3 french fries short of a happy meal, if you will

Even easier than ranked choice voting is approval voting, which is what we use in my city in the Midwest (for statewide elections, we’re still stuck with party primaries). But in my city, in the primary, all candidates are listed on the same ballot. You can vote for as many candidates as you like. If you like them all, you can vote for them all. If you like one, vote for one. Or any number of candidates in between. Then the top two candidates face off in the general election. In the first two election cycles since we implemented approval voting, we were able to break the stranglehold old-school Dems have had in the city since 1949. So, now we’ll see what the Progressives can do. (Republicans will never win in this city).

“It breaks the two party system” says voters in a state that elects more odd party candidates than any other and has elected an Independent socialist to national office for 30 years. Sounds like the current system works just fine here.

I’m aware of the so-called benefits (and I agree there are a few minimal benefits) I’m also aware of the pitfalls having already participated in IRV in VT and the resulting aftermath from that debacle... Back when Burlington voters almost immediately reverted to traditional runoffs (with broad support) after giving IRV a try resulting in the reelection of Bob Kiss. The benefits do not outweigh the downsides is what we learned from the last time. Sometimes it’s best to learn from past mistakes and not repeat them 🤷🏼‍♂️

Mass confusion should be blamed on a failure to educate your voters. That's not a failure of ranked choice voting.

How many times has normal "first past the post" voting failed now? Thousands. Look at Maine and their two-term governor Paul "Drunk asshole and fuck the poor" LePage, who billed himself as "Donald before he was Donald." Splitting the vote is the only reason he got in the first time, with something like 37% of the total vote. He was despised. He never won an actual plurality. When MORE than 50% of your voters hate someone, the system is broken. At least with RCV, you guarantee that 50% of the voters think the winner is at least tolerable.

Mass confusion is often what happens on voter referendums, too. They word them in such a way no one is sure what voting for or against them really means. Should we ban all voter referendums, too? Or maybe... you know... require they word them clearly?

You didn't describe any "traditional" runoff, you just said runoff. I just saved you SHIT loads of time and money with my instant runoff versus your "traditional" runoff. Boom, it's done at the same time, on the same ballot. At the polls or mail in, it doesn't matter, it saves time, money, and effort. VASTLY superior if you could think it through. But you're clinging to one event in your life which didn't go your way. Meanwhile, entire countries have used this system easily and successfully for decades.

The country lived through Trump, elected via the "traditional" way. And Maine lived through LePage, elected via the "traditional" way TWICE. And I could run through ENDLESS lists of terrible, horrible, disgusting people who got elected without winning a plurality of support because of your preferred method of voting "which has worked for 200 years," and hasn't worked at all during that time period. Instead, we keep voting for the "lesser of two evils" because to vote any other way is guaranteed to ensure the DEEPLY evil assholes win.

But sure, you cling to that one local election that didn't go the way you wanted as proof it doesn't work. It only tells me folks in Burlington did a shit job educating folks on the system and how it works.

The person with the most votes can lose.

Trump was never part of a runoff??

I’m not sure about Lepage, I don’t follow ME politics since they’re fairly irrelevant to Vt.

It saves like 5 minutes of time, minimal money (which if costs were a concern we wouldn’t do mass mail out ballots and would just have people request absentee ballots so that “benefit” comes off as a bit silly and a lot hypocritical)

You didn’t save me anything… you’ve waste more of my time spouting redundant talking points then it would take to request an absentee ballot, fill it out and send it back in.

That and it violates the one person one vote principle that really is the foundation of democracy for people who don’t rank every candidate.

It’s not just me who didn’t like it… it was a VAST MAJORITY. You seem to think everyone who voted using IRV previously were idiots and now a days everyone’s smarter, even though many of those same people will still be voting.

Finally if you are voting for the lesser of two evils and not the best candidate please stop worrying about IRV and try to focus on just plain voting. You’re doing it wrong.

Because eliminated official parties, will 1. Never happen, rank choice already is 2. Eliminated official parties will just regroup as an non-official and still run the same. Most importantly, rcv is much more bang for you buck.

Getting rid of the party designation on ballots would be a bit of a mess, mainly cuz people don't always know the names of the candidates they support, party indicators are a helpful shortcut for that. Ive also thought about how it might phase republicans out (rcv would prevent the left from splitting the vote,) but all it does is ensure the candidate actually has majority support. Having it state wide would be interesting, I'm sure a lot more republicans would lose but that only means they never really had the majority support of their constituents. (Sorry, i work advocating for this stuff, hope this helps)

Just vote who you want, not a multitude, and the highest vote count wins. You don't need a plan b, c, d, accept who wins with the vote total that's highest.

I’m not talking about eliminating parties all together, just eliminating them on the ballot. Which is doable.

I don’t agree IRV is more “bang for the buck”. The cost savings would be pretty minimal and IRL it saved Burlington tens of thousands of dollars and then cost them $17M. It’s also kind of silly to mass mail out ballots including 10% more than we even have voters, and then worry about the cost of holding a simple run off every few years. Besides the fact is a traditional runoff is transparent, straight forward, and ensures each person gets a chance to vote. IRV prevents people who don’t want to rank all choices from having equal voting representation compared to those that rank all choices. I thought we were supposed to trying to ensure everyone’s vote counts, IRV seems to do the opposite for those that don’t want to rank a candidate they don’t like, or don’t feel like they can make an informed choice about. Not to mention no one knows what that 3rd round match up is going to look like, it completely obscures the process.

Works great in Maine [from a Mainer]

If you don’t know the name of the candidate you support and are instead using their self described party affiliation then you aren’t really casting an informed vote or participating in democracy in a positive way. I don’t think we should be encouraging or advocating for that.

It IS OK to not cast a vote in every box if you aren’t informed, in fact it’s preferred.

The issue isnt whether we encourage people to make uninformed decisions when voting, its about understanding HOW people vote. If you take party affiliations off the ballot, a lot of people won't vote/won't know who to vote for. We want MORE people voting, which RCV encourages

I disagree. We want MORE INFORMED voters, not more uninformed voters. Uninformed voters are not a positive thing.

And IRV actually discounts the votes of people that don’t rank candidates they don’t know anything about, so it’s not benefitting that aspect either. At least with a traditional runoff it gives the voter some time to read up and learn about the two remaining candidates. And no one should ever be forced to vote for a particular candidate to have their vote count, which in some IRV scenarios is the case.

Personally I think that the "just don't get it" is a symptom which can be solved with education and time, especially education of children and young adults.

Wish we had it…

The problem is that no municipality is going to train people for a voting system that they plan to implement in 20 years when they're old enough to vote.

A series of runoffs with separate dates seems like a pain in the ass, but at least you can be 100% sure that every vote cast was intentional.

Well Bob Kiss won with 30% of the vote using IRV.

"At least with RCV, you guarantee that 50% of the voters think the winner is at least tolerable."No, you do not guarantee that. The night Kiss won, there was a elderly woman on the news saying that she thought she had to vote for every candidate in a preferred order. Her vote ended up going for Kiss, and that literally drove her to tears.

It seems like something that would be very easy to educate people on, but short of sending people out to everyone's homes and sitting with them until you're 100% sure they understand, that just isn't ever going to happen. If you'd been there, you'd know that Burlington really, really, REALLY tried to educate people, and it just didn't work.

You can require a majority and have a series of separate runoffs. Then you can be sure that every vote cast was intentional. With IRV etc. that will never be the case, which is why Burlington ditched it.

Removing from ballad doesn’t do anything. Everyone knows who’s who.

If that were true, the Franklin county sheriffs race would’ve turned out differently snd David zuckerman wouldn’t have been reelected.

Evidence? How the hell do you know that changed anything

Well, this thread alone showed that most people didn’t realize Zuckerman blatantly stole taxpayer funds. As for the sheriff, do you really think people would have voted for a guy that openly abused handcuffed people on camera if they actually knew about it. on top of that, a previous poster on this thread, who is an advocate, has stated that party affiliation is necessary, because people don’t know the candidates name. Do you have any evidence suggesting otherwise?

You're wrong. Whoever is in last doesn't effect the outcome. They are in last, and are eliminated as if they were never in the race in the first place. Whoever voted for that candidate instead now votes for their #2. This is a good thing: it's a feature, not a bug! The person with the most #1 votes can lose, sure, but that is a positive effect of switching systems.

I think you have a misunderstanding of how ranked choice voting works - check out this short video, it's very helpful and will show why it's a good thing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Y3jE3B8HsE

Also, many posters on this thread, I’ve already stated that they vote a party ticket without learning the candidates. I could go back and find the post, but it doesn’t seem to be a very controversial position that some people vote for party without getting to know the candidate

you're not actually saying anything about why it is bad except "guy I dislike got elected using it so it's BAD"

its like arguing first past the post voting is bad because trump won using it. dumb

I guess you’d need to read a few more comments as I’ve addressed a several things including discounting people’s votes as well as clarity of candidate matchups and voters having a chance to become informed. If you’d like to address those points I’m happy to continue that dialogue in those existing threads.

I’ll also note, it wasn’t just me that didn’t like the guy, almost no one did and that’s why an overwhelming majority of residents decided IRV was not a good system. The VOTERS of Burlington decided it wasn’t a good system, not one single person.

> I’ll also note, it wasn’t just me that didn’t like the guy, almost no one did

they liked him more than the opponents apparently ! IRV didn't get this guy elected, the people did. you're still not actually making any point

I guess ONE point is it was tried and the majority of people didn’t like it… for more points you’ll have to do some reading of my other comments, assuming you actually want to understand WHY some don’t like it.

Final note, IF the voters actually wanted him to be mayor, they wouldn’t have tossed IRV directly after the election and there wouldn’t have been a push for a recall (which weren’t and still aren’t a thing in Vt). But those things did happen and it’s pretty clear IRV led to a Mayor the people didn’t want.

> I guess ONE point is it was tried and the majority of people didn’t like it...

i don't care the opinion of uneducated people who don't understand how a system works

> Final note, IF the voters actually wanted him to be mayor, they wouldn’t have tossed IRV directly after the election and there wouldn’t have been a push for a recall (which weren’t and still aren’t a thing in Vt). But those things did happen and it’s pretty clear IRV led to a Mayor the people didn’t want.

its pretty clear you're a person who believes stories over knowledge

So You think the majority of residents in Burlington are uneducated people…and you don’t care about them. I mean you do you boo, but that’s not a look I’d be posting on the inter web.

I’m a person who has first hand knowledge, which I’m guessing is more than you have in this instance, but possibly you’re from ME and I’m wrong…

Ranked choice weeds out the extremists since, as first choices, they'll never get enough. But more moderate second ranked choices will.

> So You think the majority of residents in Burlington are uneducated people…and you don’t care about them.

no, I think whatever small subset of people that disliked ranked voting were mostly just uneducated about the system, like you are.

> I’m a person who has first hand knowledge, which I’m guessing is more than you have in this instance

you have some bullshit made up story backed by nothing

> possibly you’re from ME and I’m wrong…

born, raised, still live in vermont. this is easily the stupidest thing people who live in vermont do: "nice argument but unfortunately you were born 50 miles east of here. ARGUMENT INVALID!"

you have not posted a single reason why ranked choice is bad except vague allusions to "bad mayor got elected using it. we all said it was bad so it's bad."

It wasn’t a small subset, it took a majority to repeal.

You don’t have to believe my first hand experience, but that’s on you. I assure you it’s not “made up” and my name is on a voter roll and checked off for that election. The point is I have first hand knowledge and since you didn’t live in ME you don’t.

I have posted several reasons and I’ve offerred to have a dialogue on those points if you cared to actually read through the threads. It appears you’d prefer to engage in ad hominem attacks and rant away here rather then do so, so I’ll just bid you good day.

If you don’t get it, do it the old fashioned way. Pick one. Then move on

Even in 2000 we weren’t sure if people voted for who they wanted

If you don’t get it, just vote for one. Works like an old fashioned vote. If you candidate isn’t a majority, they get eliminated

your reasons are "someone bad was elected and we repealed it". those are not actual talking points lmao neither actually addresses a positive or negative of ranked choice voting. they're just things that have happened. simply state a list of actual reasons you dislike it.

abortion protection was repealed. that doesn't mean abortion protection is bad, it means people can be stupid.

> The point is I have first hand knowledge and since you didn’t live in ME you don’t.

what does living in Maine have to do with this

It sounds like you are remembering the gripes of the 2009 mayoral election in Burlington specifically? I would ask that you consider the many, many more success stories. Ranked-choice elects candidates who more accurately represent the will of the populace they govern and to me that is very worth the change

It would probably be more productive to just read the other posts to see the other points I made rather than repeating that assertion over and over as if repeating makes it more true…

ME has IRV so if you had lived in ME you too may have had first hand knowledge… it doesn’t appear your maturity level is such that you participated when Burlington tried it.

Good day.

this method continues encouraging people to hedge their vote - voting against a candidate they dislike rather than for a candidate they really want. The beauty of ranked choice is that there is no need to hedge.

you are misunderstanding the original commenter's meaning. Bob Kiss actually had ~52% of the vote using IRV... this is why he won at the end of Round 3. His 29% total at the end of Round 1 is what you are likely remembering.

I'm not sure the details of why Burlington's education efforts failed... but there are many success stories we can look to and learn from now.

That's the problem, a lot of people didn't know that they could do that. I know it all seems very simple to you but ask anyone who was in Burlington at the time, it was a total nightmare.

Yes I understand, but what I'm saying is that a lot of the votes in that 52% were from people who were confused about the process and absolutely did not want Kiss to be the mayor.

I saw what happened when Burlington tried very hard to educate the electorate about IRV and failed. It was only more obvious in that case because we ended up with a second Bob Kiss term, when it was obvious to most people that he was an utter disaster as mayor; but I'm sure that every similar election has people inadvertently voting for someone they don't actually like.

Which is the same thing as removing a minimum percentage to win. Vote for the one person you want, not a list.

may be so - I was not following the story at the time. To me the major tell is that those same Burlingtonians who repealed ranked choice in 2010 voted to reinstate it in 2021.

Seems like a rollout problem. When was it? Ithink that’s an important lesson not a reason not to. Republicans and probably Democrats would benefit from clearly saying “just us”. Third parties would benefit from taking the extra time to show people how they can vote for them first and then the major party.

Probably design ballot to clarify you “may vote for just one if preferred” that language benefits the main parties designing it anyway

2009. As I've said, they were over the top in their education efforts, especially the Progs because it benefited them the most. But it's always going to be confusing to the American electorate no matter what you do, that was very clear. "Go to x polling place on y date and vote for your favorite" is about as complicated as a lot of people are ever going to be able to handle.

I really doubt it was the same people. Enough time had passed that people either forgot, or weren't around the first time. Otherwise it wouldn't have taken 12 years (and they wouldn't have limited it to city councilors).

nope, they are different. You are talking about plurality voting, which has major flaws: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plurality_voting#Disadvantages

Ranked choice's most important feature, the reason people are willing to sign up for the added complexity, is that it actually gets people elected who represent the will of the people. It will have a centering effect on many elections.

actually, the city councilor vote was vetoed by Miro. Ranked choice was passed by the voters directly and with strong support. Personally, I trust that sort of a result

I don't know if I'd characterize 64% as "strongly" on a binary vote, especially when it's only a 16 point bump from the repeal vote 11 years earlier. And these threads are directly proving my point that a lot of proponents of the system weren't around in 2009.

Okay. I’ll watch it.

"waah ad hominem attacks". next comment:

> ME has IRV so if you had lived in ME you too may have had first hand knowledge… it doesn’t appear your maturity level is such that you participated when Burlington tried it.

lol ok dude.

I have gone through and read a shitton of your comments in good faith, but I honestly can't find much to go off except "but BURLINGTON! and someone bad was elected one time!". it's likely I've missed some of your comments due to the large nature of the thread. If you actually state your arguments clearly and concisely, I will actually comment back in good faith.

You asked what ME had to do with it and I explained the reasoning for bringing it up. Your displayed maturity level is a part of that explanation, ergo no ad hominem attack rather it provided the basis for determining your lack of first hand experience with IRV along with not having lived in ME.

But here goes…

1.) perhaps most importantly, IRV violates the one vote- one person principle that is the foundation of our democracy. I get a vote and you get a vote. With IRV however, if I don’t rank all candidates (and there are several valid reasons someone may choose not to) then depending on how the future rounds break down, I may not actually get a vote. If I only rank one person and they’re eliminated, my vote is effectively tossed out in the trash and that’s about as anti democratic as we can get. Especially at a time where voter participation is encouraged.

2.) it’s completely obscure and which candidate is running off against which other candidate isn’t clear prior to casting your vote. Who is matched up in the 3rd round is literally anyone’s guess and how an individuals ranking plays out is as well ( I strongly suspect this is what happened with the Kiss re-election but I have no evidence for that, there were two other candidates that had 65%+ of voter support, no one thought Kiss had a shot and would have been eliminated in an earlier round). Voting should be crystal clear which candidates are running and which candidates are available to vote for. This uncertainty disenfranchises voters, especially if they know their vote may not count. In a traditional runoff you’ve got 2 clear choices, there is no confusion and it’s a straightforward as it can be.

3.) traditional runoffs allow for additional time to vet the two candidates. If you’ve got 7 candidates in a field it’s hard to get to know them all well. Maybe one candidate seems like a stellar choice and you vote for them, but they don’t make it through the first round, now you’ve got a chance to become more informed of the remaining 2 choices. IRV would force you to lose your vote, or make uninformed choices about other candidates. You should never be coerced into voting for a candidate you’re not comfortable with just to have your vote count.

4.) Even IF the prior experience with IRV was due to voters not understanding the system instead of a weird anomaly, you would now have to educate the entire state, everyone from Brattleboro to Montpelier to the backwoods of the NEK… when it couldn’t be done in Burlington… a college town full of educated people. Many of those same people still vote and would have the same struggles they had last time. Make it easy for people to cast their vote, not harder.

5.) we have a system that works. Don’t fix something that isn’t broken. Work on fixing the broken things.

First: I appreciate this comment laying this out. I'm going to respond out of order, I've slightly edited quotes just to make what I'm responding to a bit more clearly - my intention is not to misrepresent one of your points by cutting out context, if I commit this error call me out. It would be due to incompetence and not malice.

> 3.) traditional runoffs allow for additional time to vet the two candidates. Maybe one candidate seems like a stellar choice and you vote for them, but they don’t make it through the first round, now you’ve got a chance to become more informed of the remaining 2 choices.

Shouldn't you already have researched all 7 of those candidates anyway? If you researched just 1 candidate and know "I like them" you should know why you like them over other candidates.

I see what you're getting at somewhat, though. Candidates you may have discarded because of not liking them as much as your #1 won't be researched as thoroughly. Fair enough.

> 2.) it’s completely obscure and which candidate is running off against which other candidate isn’t clear prior to casting your vote

I'm not certain you understand how ranked choice voting works, to be honest. They're all running against everyone.

> there were two other candidates that had 65%+ of voter support

130% of people voted?

> Voting should be crystal clear which candidates are running and which candidates are available to vote for. This uncertainty disenfranchises voters, especially if they know their vote may not count.

Your ranked-choice vote will, at minimum, count for the exact same amount that your FPTP vote would count. Just to be sure that I'm understanding you, could you lay out a situation where you're saying that a vote will not count?

> 4.) voter education

Absolutely. By far the biggest issue with ranked choice. But at worst, it's equivalent - ie, you could just vote #1 as the candidate you want, and that's equivalent to the old system. Education will happen, and I think in the last 10 years people have learned a lot more about voting systems. The world is in a better place to understand now than it was then.

> 1. IRV violates the one vote- one person principle that is the foundation of our democracy

That's not a foundation of our democracy. 3/5s rule, anyone?

> With IRV however, if I don’t rank all candidates (and there are several valid reasons someone may choose not to) then depending on how the future rounds break down, I may not actually get a vote.

This is literally equivalent to saying "if I don't vote for a [govt position], I don't get a vote!". Yeah, you're right: if you don't vote, you don't vote.

> If I only rank one person and they’re eliminated, my vote is effectively tossed out in the trash

I mean, sure? But you could say the same about voting for anything other than the party that's going to win right now - ie, if your candidate isn't super strong, voting for them is throwing away your vote anyway. This is an issue with the current system just as much as ranked choice.

In general, let's avoid "if I do something wrong, bad things happen" type arguments. I've already said that education will be a big challenge, but for the sake of conversation now, let's pretend everyone is educated about how it works and votes properly. Eventually, everyone will understand it if it is implemented, so let's just assume for now.

I’ll apologize upfront for not being well versed in quoting in Reddit.

To you response to my #3, in an ideal world you would have researched all 7 candidates. But that’s not where we live and and in fairness, if you’ve found someone that represents you well, why keep looking. I’m glad you at least recognize it as a fair point.

To Your response to my point 2, it maybe poor communications due to typing everything out and trying to be concise. What I was getting at is they’re all running against each other in round 1, but then the lowest vote getter is dropped and those votes redistributed. If there’s still not majority, the next lowest tally gets dropped and those rankings redistributed, at this point when you’re casting your ballot you have no idea who those three left maybe. Because you don’t know who is actually in the “runoff” part how do you know how you want to vote. That’s how Burlington’s worked. I apologize if there’s a different scheme to it now.

That 65% was for both candidates, thus the necessity for a runoff… Montroll was heavily favored, Wright had strong support for a Republican, no one like Kiss and the other two were fringe candidates. I believe Kiss had like mid 20% of the first round tabulation, but seemingly picked up all of the fringe voters and well… we got Kiss who stole roughly $35M of unauthorized funds to build Burlington Telecom (which isn’t a point on the merits of BTC, just criminal malfeasance by the mayor).

To your response to my point 1. I understand the logic that’s it’s akin to not voting, but at the same time it’s not the same. If I chose to only rank 3 candidates because I think the other two are crooks, and all my candidates get knocked out and my vote can no longer be distributed than I have voted, but my vote has effectively been tossed out. I didn’t CHOOSE not to vote, I went to the polls, took time out of my day, etc to go cast a ballot. I have the right for that ballot to be counted. In order for my ballot to be counted I would have to vote for one of the remaining candidates and that’s coercion. I realize that’s very principled argument, and that may not be important to everyone. But in a traditional runoff I have a choice to vote again or not, in IRV that choice is made for me based on how everything works out.

For the sake of argument I’ll pretend everyone can be educated, but point out that in the meantime we are discounting a lot of peoples votes and I’m still not sure what the benefit is 🤷🏼‍♂️

no worries, reddit formatting is kinda weird. for quoting, all you need to do is put a > and a space before the paragraph. so this:

> quote

turns into this:

> quote

> Because you don’t know who is actually in the “runoff” part how do you know how you want to vote

But it doesn't matter who's in the runoff. For example, if there's candidates A B C D E. You like A B C in that order (A the most, B 2nd, C 3rd), D and E suck. Let's say two candidates are run off. It doesn't matter which two are out, you still prefer A B C and hate D E. The remaining candidates don't effect how you feel about the other candidates. If A and B are run off, you still choose C. If A and C are run off, you still choose B. If D and E are run off, you still vote A. You already know who you want to vote for, you get to do it all at the beginning, that's the point of ranking your choices.

> To your response to my point 1. I understand the logic that’s it’s akin to not voting, but at the same time it’s not the same.

It is literally the exact same, and I will give a scenario to show you how it is the same.

> If I chose to only rank 3 candidates because I think the other two are crooks, and all my candidates get knocked out and my vote can no longer be distributed than I have voted, but my vote has effectively been tossed out. I didn’t CHOOSE not to vote, I went to the polls, took time out of my day, etc to go cast a ballot. I have the right for that ballot to be counted.

Your ballot WAS counted. What? Imagine if there were just runoffs every time until 50% was reached. You go to the polls, candidate A is out. You go again, candidate B is out. You go AGAIN, C is out. Now just D and E are left. Do you still go to the polls, or do you stay home? If you stay home, that's the same as leaving those two blank with ranked choice. If you go out to the poll, that's the same as actually ranking them, even though you despise them. Your ballot WAS counted. It was always counted, and your candidate lost. That doesn't mean it's thrown away. You still voted for them: they just didn't win, and you decided not to participate in the runoff vote of the last two candidates.

> But in a traditional runoff I have a choice to vote again or not, in IRV that choice is made for me based on how everything works out.

No, that's not correct. In IRV, you make the choice to vote again or not immediately. You make that decision once, at the polls, one time. It's literally the exact same result as having many runoff votes.

> we are discounting a lot of peoples votes

There are no votes being discounted. You can recite how it works, but you don't understand how it works. No votes are thrown away in your scenario.

I appreciate the lesson in quoting on Reddit, thank you.

I think your extrapolating a bit to make your point (and I do think it’s a fair point), If we held runoffs by holding them again and again until we got to 50%, but that’s not actually how it’s done. There are only ever two rounds, the election and then a runoff between the top two candidates. I’ll try again to articulate my point better, but it maybe we just disagree.

Let’s pretend we’ve got Sanders, Warren, Gabbard, Clinton, Biden. I really don’t want to vote for Sanders because he’s my neighbor and I don’t like him, and Clinton and Biden are old and outdated. So I rank Gabbard and Warren, both of whom get knocked out. If we have IRV I’m done, my vote “effectively” has been negated, my vote doesn’t get redistributed as others have that ranked everyone, even those candidates they don’t even know or don’t like.

In a traditional runoff maybe Sanders and Biden are the top two vote getters. I can see clearly the race and although I think Biden’s old and his time has gone by, I dislike sanders because he blows his grass all over my driveway and complains about my pickup. I’ve got the opportunity to vote “against” him. I think that’s a crappy way to vote, but realistically it happens all time. But the point is I have a choice to vote again or not. With IRV I have no choice. I HAVE to rank everyone, even the people I don’t like or I risk having my vote not count because there’s no way to know what the future matchups may turn out to be. I think clarity and choice are two critical aspects to voting and IRV does NOT make the runoff clear at all and I my only Choice is to vote for candidates that May it may not be running. I realize that a small and nuanced point, or maybe I still haven’t made it well.

This also encourages people to vote for candidates they don’t know, again because people are essentially forced to rank everyone. Not something I personally want to encourage.

And again, outside of a token amount of money saved I don’t see a benefit or reason to change the current system that is straightforward and simple. And there’s still the educational challenges that exist. If there’s no real meaningful benefit, what’s the point?

All that said, I really do appreciate this dialogue regardless of the difference of opinions. Thank you for a respectful conversation on the topic. Cheers.

> If we held runoffs by holding them again and again until we got to 50%, but that’s not actually how it’s done. There are only ever two rounds, the election and then a runoff between the top two candidates.

But that's a terrible system! It encourages two-party rule, and enforces the spoiler effect. There will NEVER be a competitive 3rd party with this rule, because if you vote for a candidate that's unlikely to win, you're effectively giving a vote to the side you dislike, pulling a vote away from the side you DO like.

> Let’s pretend we’ve got Sanders, Warren, Gabbard, Clinton, Biden. I really don’t want to vote for Sanders because he’s my neighbor and I don’t like him, and Clinton and Biden are old and outdated. So I rank Gabbard and Warren, both of whom get knocked out. If we have IRV I’m done, my vote “effectively” has been negated, my vote doesn’t get redistributed as others have that ranked everyone, even those candidates they don’t even know or don’t like.

You can't choose to not vote between two candidates, then complain you didn't get to vote between two candidates. A runoff between any two candidates could happen. If you want to participate in that runoff, rank them. If you hate them both and don't see one as slightly less bad, don't vote for either. If you CHOOSE to not vote for them, yes, of course you won't get a vote.

> In a traditional runoff maybe Sanders and Biden are the top two vote getters. I can see clearly the race and although I think Biden’s old and his time has gone by, I dislike sanders because he blows his grass all over my driveway and complains about my pickup. I’ve got the opportunity to vote “against” him.

You already had that opportunity with IRV! You chose to not rank them. There's no difference between the two, at all. You are simply choosing "I will vote for the runoff between these two people I dislike" at the polling station, rather than waiting for a second runoff and having to take more time off work and more time out of your day to do it (or to decide not to do it). It's the exact same except one doesn't require a 2nd trip to the polling stations (which is hard on many working class Vermonters!)

> IRV does NOT make the runoff clear at all and I my only Choice is to vote for candidates that May it may not be running

This doesn't make sense. it's not "I have to vote for candidates who may or may not be running", it's that you get the BENEFIT of BEING ABLE to vote for candidates who might not win, without killing your primary party's chances. So I can vote for Bernie without killing Hillary's odds. You are never "voting for candidates who are not running". You literally CANNOT get your vote thrown away unless you choose not to vote at all at some point in the runoffs, at which point you've DECIDED not to vote - not had that vote take naway from you.

> And again, outside of a token amount of money saved I don’t see a benefit or reason to change the current system that is straightforward and simple.

A huge benefit of removing the spoiler effect (3rd party votes taking away from your primary party votes, thus helping the other side) and reducing (but not eliminating) two-party rule. Pretty gigantic benefits. On top of money saved on runoffs, which is a minor benefit. It would also dramatically increase voter turnout, because it means a vote for a 3rd party isn't a wasted vote, so people have more choice and will feel better represented.

I don’t see two party rule as any more of a problem than 3 party rule. All parties suck as far as I’m concerned, and as long as we allow political parties to run out elections whether it’s 2,3 or 5 doesn’t really matter. Get rid of all party affiliation on election material and maybe we can rid ourselves of this ridiculous party system all together.

Time isn’t an issue. We mass mail out ballots now.

> I don’t see two party rule as any more of a problem than 3 party rule.

You think that having fewer viable options is the same as having more viable options? I'm not sure how to respond to that. That's pretty ridiculous. If you don't like the mainline dem/rep candidate now, you're fucked. If there were 5 options, you could have someone your beliefs more closely aligned to to vote with.

It's not "5 party rule" at that point. That's just having five different candidate options. Maybe some are the same party, maybe they aren't.

As long as there are parties involved, I don’t believe there will ever be more than two viable candidates. The current system allows for more than two parties but human nature is to align with others, that share similar beliefs to maximize power, which is always going to lead to 2 groups only. If everyone was an independent and not beholden to a party platform, that would give people more options to choose somebody that is most closely aligned with your personal beliefs.

> As long as there are parties involved, I don’t believe there will ever be more than two viable candidates. The current system allows for more than two parties but human nature is to align with others, that share similar beliefs to maximize power, which is always going to lead to 2 groups only.

Actually, no. The two party system is 100% due to our current voting system and how it works, not just simple human nature. This is a fact.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-past-the-post_voting

Under "Effects on political parties and societies", it mentions Duverger's law. Essentially, the two-party system only exists because of this style of voting. Ranked hcoice won't totally eliminate it, but it'll remove a few of the contributing factors such as the spoiler effect (see: ralph nader taking some of Al Gore's votes, making Bush win even though Nader voters would have preferred Al Gore).

> If everyone was an independent and not beholden to a party platform

then people would start grouping those independent people as "gun supporters", "socially liberal", etc etc, until you've got a list of labels that describe a general group of people. you've not got parties again. having political parties grouped around general beliefs is unavoidable: having only two of those parties dominate, however, IS avoidable.

At least if voters started grouping people it would mean they actually learned about the candidates and didn’t just look for the letter next to their name, that would be an improvement, but I doubt that would actually happen realistically.

We don’t have FPTP voting, so I’m not sure the relevance of that. You can’t win with a plurality (see Shumlin v Milne 2014) or any traditional runoff really.

In VT IRV would actually likely lead to 1 party rule. The GOP would stop being a viable party. Progressives would pick up some of the democrats, but democrats would pick up almost all of the independents/centrists AND conservative voters who no longer have a viable candidate. One party rule is even worse than 2.

It really doesn’t save enough money to warrant a change, mail out balloting negates the “saves time” benefit, and it won’t disrupt the 2 party system (which isn’t really the problem, rather the party system as whole is).

I’ll finish here with my original comment, IRV is a solution looking for a problem.

I appreciate the conversation though and I’m glad we continued it through. I’ve given IRV more thought that I otherwise would have and that’s a positive. I’ll look forward to more dialogues in the future. Thanks.

Quick question, when you quote do you have to retype the entire damn text? I can’t copy and paste, it’s just collapses your comment? Or am I missing something???

Are you on a computer? Not sure.

You can also just type in whatever after the > and it'll show up as a comment

(ps, if you want > or any other markdown symbol to appear, you need to put a backslash before it, so you'd type this \> to get this > to appear)

Thanks. I’m using Reddit on my phone so that’s probably the issue.

> In VT IRV would actually likely lead to 1 party rule. The GOP would stop being a viable party. Progressives would pick up some of the democrats, but democrats would pick up almost all of the independents/centrists AND conservative voters who no longer have a viable candidate. One party rule is even worse than 2.

No? What? This is just wrong. Why would democrats pick up people voting independent? It's the other way around: People who voted democrat, even though they supported, say, a progressive candidate instead, would now put that progressive candidate as #1 and the democrat (who they previously would have voted for) as #2. Same with any popular party: Lesser parties will, in general, get more votes now.

This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how and why ranked-choice voting works.

> We don’t have FPTP voting, so I’m not sure the relevance of that. You can’t win with a plurality (see Shumlin v Milne 2014) or any traditional runoff really.

We have FPTP voting. Plurality vs majority doesn't matter, it's still FPTP. And more importantly, I'm not aware of any cases where a plurality was reached and the person who was runner-up didn't cede the election - so we effectively have a plurality anyway. This is a distinction without a difference - it doesn't matter if it's majority or plurality on paper because it has always been plurality in practice.

> mail out balloting negates the “saves time” benefit

no it doesn't. mailing out ballots still takes a ton of labor. it's less than in-person, sure, but it's still there. you can say "mitigate" maybe, but definitely not negate.

> and it won’t disrupt the 2 party system

It won't fully disrupt it, it will help break it up and placate the spoiler effect. It will do better than what we have now.

Independents are generally to the right of democrats from progressives. The majority of those votes will go the democrats, and in far greater numbers than democrats switching to progressive. We will end up with 75% Democratic representation in Montpelier. It will be 1 party rule.

Realistically I don’t see it passing, but maybe we will get to see how it all works out 🤷🏼‍♂️

no. less popular parties will get MORE votes. this is literally the basis of how it helps (but does not prevent or totally dissuade from) two party rule

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting

this is discussed under "resistance to tactical voting"

and fun fact, this is under "voter confusion":

> Research shows that voters in general can understand and use IRV. Various surveys in the U.S. found 80%–90% of voters reported understanding the ballot very well, and 90% reported it was easy to use. Voter comprehension increased with repeated use, eliminating demographic disparities over time. Older voters were more likely to say they found the system confusing, but in practice correctly completed IRV ballots at the same rate.[20]

so education isn't really a big deal either

Less popular parties will get more total votes, that doesn’t mean they will get more candidates elected. The flaw in your view, is that you are assuming the VTGOP remains a viable party. It won’t, it barely is now. AND, by definition an independent voter sometimes votes right, sometimes votes left… they aren’t beholden to either party. So they are fairly centered. They aren’t all of a sudden going to leap frog the more moderate party to support the more extreme party? If you have Trump, Biden, and Sanders as candidates, and you remove Trump because the Republican Party is no longer relevant, who do you think those right leaning independents and conservatives are going to vote for? Sanders or Biden? The left leaning independents were mostly already voting for Biden anyways. It has nothing to do with popularity, it has to do with where on the political spectrum the party is compared with where the voters are.

You can rank away all you want, but the shift in votes has to come from somewhere and we are already almost at 1 party rule as is. This will exacerbate it. Republicans already can’t even override a veto?

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Has our society collapsed? Do people not trust the election system? Do we have widespread fraud? Is anyone confused on how to vote?

I mean I guess to determine if it has worked depends on your goal. Mine are clear, fair, simple and straightforward elections where people’s vote counts. In that regard it has worked. You may have a different goal that it doesn’t meet 🤷🏼‍♂️ but that’s what I’m basing it off. How does IRV fit better with you expectations of what constitutes success in an election?

Also nothing changing is the status quo in VT. FFS we still depend on people wanting to look at cows wandering around a field as our main source of revenue. The legislatures favorite past time is kicking the can? We use a funding mechanism for education that was devised in the early 1800’s. Hunters still wear red and black plaid wool clothes… Not changing shit IS Vermont.

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