Dems eye new way to shake up 2028 primaries: ranked-choice voting
Democratic activists are looking to overhaul the party’s presidential primary process with ranked-choice voting.
Proponents of the idea have privately met with Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin and other leading party officials who want to see ranked-choice voting in action for 2028. Those behind the push include Representative Jamie Raskin, the nonprofit Fairvote Action, and Joe Biden pollster Celinda Lake.
Axios reports that ranked-choice supporters told a DNC breakfast meeting in D.C. that they believe it would unify and strengthen the party, prevent votes from being “wasted” after candidates withdraw, and encourage candidates to build coalitions. The publication quotes DNC members as being divided on the issue, with some being open and others thinking that it is best left to state parties.
https://newrepublic.com/post/203593/democrats-2028-primaries-ranked-choice-votingOpen linkView original on lemmy.world
Could we also make it so primaries don’t take six months? I’ve never voted in a presidential primary where my vote affected the outcome at all because every state I’ve lived in was late in the schedule.
Then what is the media going to talk about for 6 months?
Don’t get me started on the electoral-media complex that makes our elections too damn long.
If we’re making impossible demands on the system I’d also include 60 day election cycles. No political advertising or campaigning more than two months before the election.
But I’m a bad American who hates the GDP.
It all comes down to the political parties. Which is partly why our elections suck so much.
Actual policy ideas instead of horse race polling, maybe?
The real problem is with the people consuming the media. They would rather see the horse race polling than actual policies.
You'd think either party would want the chance to talk about their candidate for an extra few months. But maybe they're worried familiarity breeds contempt.
Same here, it's such bullshit. Then people scold me when I complain as if I didn't go to the primaries when typically it's the primary that doesn't come to me. How dare I not go vote for someone who already conceded, I must be what's wrong with democracy.
Oh but don't you want to know first which Democrat places like Louisiana, Mississippi and Arkansas would like? You know, those bastions of democracy.
/s, like it's needed lol.
Six months? I think you mean a year and a half.
They stagger primaries to manufacture the party choice for their chosen candidate
I kinda get why they drag it out, it allows canidates to respond to the electorate better.
My suggestion would be to make it take 3 months and divide the delegates evenly between all 3. Hell let Iowa be a week early. Plus with ranked choice if a canidate drops out those votes can be reallocated
I do just feel like there's something about these long races that allow us to get a much better idea of who a canidate is. Once they begin to feel the pressure they start to change.
Except candidates have been less responsive to the electorate than ever before
You still get to see how they handle under pressure. Which i think is important especially when picking a residential canidate.
"Seeing how they perform under pressure" has yet to allow me to actually voice my opinion before the current system prevented it from mattering.
Yet they love to tell me that "every vote counts" after my vote didn't count.
Man I didn't mean to call the party perfect or desirable in any way. I was just trying to express how I do think longer primaries can be beneficial but the current system should be reworked.
If you want to complain, and rightfully so, how bad the dems are there's at least 20 other threads where that is the exact topic of conversation. You don't have to force it in here
I wasn't forcing anything. This thread was the elongated primary season. I voiced a very real issue with the current length. That fits in perfectly with someone singing the praises of a system that has not gone to the end of primary in like two decades.
It doesn't matter how long they endure the pressure if the race never lasts long enough for the last states to get a real vote. Staggering those states doesn't add anything to the equation.
Right issues on promary length is fine. You quickly pivoted into "dems are bad and out of touch" as a point of policy. Not due to length of the primary. You were right with those thoughts just not at all what I was talking about.
Tbh, it's exhausting. If the dems even hint at doing something slightly better it quickly becomes an absolute dog pile of "since the dems are not becoming literally perfect overnight this is still bad". Like I'm starting to think people don't want any improvement in our political systems
I just want to point out that Ranked-Choice Voting was on the ballot in Colorado in 2024. It ultimately failed because it was opposed by both parties. I was surprised, because I talked through the issues with a friend who considered herself "very progressive" she mentioned she was against Ranked-Choice Voting because her Democratic Voting Guide recommended voting against it.
From https://tsscolorado.com/colorado-voters-easily-reject-ranked-choice-voting/
Ohio passed a law this year banning state funds to any municipality that implemented ranked choise voting. Only one or two representatives voted against it. The only bi-partisan bill they passed thos year
Yeah, politicians are scared of anything that will disrupt their power structure.
If you blindly follow a Democratic Voting Guide, you're not "very progressive." Probably not even "kind of progressive."
This shouldn’t be that surprising, RCV will completely topple the establishment politics apple cart. When people are no longer forced to choose between the lesser of two evils, they can instead choose someone who’s a halfway decent human being who will represent them instead of corpo pac donors. It would be absolutely transformative to roll this out nationally.
The problem with the two party system, is the only thing they'll always agree on is that it should remain a two party system.
We had the same issue in the UK. We had the choice of something else and it was dismissed as "too complicated" and "too expensive".
So instead most of us have their votes thrown out locally, and then most of the rest have them thrown out nationally.
You mean one party system.
Following a democratic voting guide has got to be the least progressive you can be as a Democrat
It has already passed in Alexandria VA for the 2024 elections and the DNC sued to prevent it from being implemented. They kept rcv option off the ballot in DC.
Even if it were implemented across the country no capitalist politician would be ranked on my ballot
If there iwas anything that pissed me off more than the Democrats abandoning support for workers it was union leadership doing so.
It was combined with a top 4 jungle primary that was not ranked choice, which was why a lot of people who might have voted for it otherwise voted against it. It looked like a way to implement ranked choice while creating a system where less moderate candidates would be eliminated in the primary.
Happened in Massachusetts in 2020 too. Absolutely insane that people don't realize how much better RCV is
It really does show that 1) People in general aren't very smart. Most people won't do some basic research to see what they're voting for. And 2) Most people are just going to vote how their party tells them.
Missouri tricked people into banning it by making it sound like they were banning non-citizens from casting multiple votes and the dumb dumbs who don’t read anything just voted for it.
https://www.kcur.org/politics-elections-and-government/2024-11-05/missouri-amendment-7-ranked-choice-voting-noncitizen
MO GOP had a long history of getting illiterate voters to vote against themselves with shade language. Voters approved an anti-gerrymandering amendment but GOP put confusing language on the ballot, a year later, that tricked voters into cancelling that out.
A judge had to step in on the abortion ballot proposal because they tried to do it again. Thankfully, the judge made them out clear language on it. Unfortunately, they are trying it again with abortion next year.
https://www.kmbc.com/article/missouri-abortions-judge-approves-ballot-language/68915245
I didn’t vote for it because I can read
Lol I made a showerthoughts post about how its such a wonderful thing that global literacy rates are rising... then these shit happens...
🤦♂️
In all honesty Missouri is suffering pretty severely from braindrain, in some ways it's worse than the Deep South. It's probably in a worse state long-term even compared to the most rural and fucked over parts of Appalachia.
Thats because republicans have absolutely no morals or shame.
It'll be an uphill battle since Ranked Choice Voting would weaken the power of both Democrats & Republicans and party leadership knows it but I also support it strongly for just that reason.
This is just for the Democratic primary, not the general election - but the same idea applies there, as it weakens the ability of the party leadership to choose who wins
Party Leadership dont get to be our scapegoat, the US People chose Hillary and Biden over Bernie by massive numbers.
If it gave party leaders more in depth knowledge of which candidates had broad appeal (which is likely - knowing how popular each first + second choice combination is gives power to data analytics), they could more accurately spend resources to win more general elections. Actually giving the party more power.
Eventually. They would have to completely rebuild many of the established campaign strategy tools. I think sunk cost fallacy (we invested in these tools, we can't switch to a system where our expensive software and stuff isn't used!) is a more powerful block here than power hunger.
Jesus fuck finally.
This is how we get rid of the one party system.
It boils down to this: If you support the direct will of the people in choosing a candidate, you probably like RCV. If you want the party to have significant influence in choosing a candidate, you probably don't like RCV.
It is possible the Democrats are realizing that their establishment selected candidates are not competitive against modern Republicans.
It's also possible they are considering somebody more radical but want plausible deniability about how that person came to be elected.
Or it's possible they are just out of ideas. Or maybe all three...
Crazy idea. What if the Democratic primary was actually a democracy? Let the candidate who wins the most states with an electoral weight be the candidate.
Make them open. Make then count. Make them accountable.
Good news!
The voting members of the DNC agreed with you 8 months ago when they elected a chair with a decade long track record of fair primaries and then putting the full weight of the party behind every candidate in the general.
We're also very unlikely to see a push to consolidate behind a "winner" after only a handful of states vote.
I don't think the current DNC chair has ever weighed in on any primary. Even for Mamdani he waited till the day after the primary. And Martin loves Mamdani almost as much as trump does.
So we can expect neutrality till the very last state reports their primary result.
So they plan to kill super delegates?
Super delegates only vote in the second round. That's been on the books since 2020. Sure, it doesn't remove them entirely, but you just need to have the majority of pledged delegates for it to not matter.
There was a rule vote in 2024, the same time Martin got elected, that changed some stuff. So I'm assuming Martin didn't want to immediately override them when it won't matter for years.
But ideally I'd want to see the removal of all delegates, supes and normies.
Straight popular vote in the primary, 1:1 representation, and the candidate is just the person the most Dems want to vote for.
Straight popular vote for a candidate is a great way to almost guarantee losses for the electoral college.
Huh?
I thought you wanted representation...
But you don't want actual 1:1 representation?
I'll never guess it, you're going to have to share what "moderate" level of representation you believe is ideal. And obviously people are going to question why you believe more representation than that would be a negative
You need a way to ensure the presidental candidate is popular across many states, because that's part of the election. Straight popular vote can easily skew to a candidate that wins a few states by a large margin, but ultimately loses the election.
What hypothetical candidate would win all of a large state like Cali by a huge margin but lose to a Republican in enough smaller states that they lose the general?
Like, you know the EC is relatively proportional like the House, it's not set up like the Senate...
Let all the states vote before declaring a winner. I've never voted in a primary with more than one active candidate.
Makes sense, having all the votes over about a month would be convenient.
The first step to get the voting fixed shouldn't be ranked voting. It should be getting rid of winner takes it all. If a party gets 40% of the votes, and there are 10 representatives, it should get 4 of them, not 0.
What would happens is Dem states will do proportional allocation, republican states would stick with winner take all, and you end up with a permanent republican presidency.
States run elections, states also get to decide how to allocate their electors.
Anything short of a constitutional amendment will not work.
This is talking about the Democratic Primary. What you're saying is definitely true if we were changing the allocation of Electoral College votes for the general election -- for that, we need Congress to pass an Amendment (or maybe a regular law would suffice?)
Amendment. Or as the other comment alluded to, interstate compact: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact
That probably requires congrsssional approval. And even then, that last until the supreme court strikes it down. Or even if it doesn't gwt struck down, its unclear if the next congress have the ability to revoke the previous session of congress's approval of the interstate compact.
So many shenanigans.
the electoral college experiment should be abandoned. It clearly didn't serve the function it was intended to serve when it was implemented 200 years ago.
It actually largely has. It both reduced the numbers of people who needed to ride horses around to figure out the winner, and it helped keep power consolidated with the powerful.
A good chunk of our early democratic institutions were designed with a lot of influence by people who didn't entirely trust their constituency and wanted to keep things from being too democratic. So you have several options for elected officials to disregard voters in most matters, and the president has the power to say "nah" to legislation.
Okay, but the entire idea was to allow the electors to basically go against the will of the people, if the people are a bunch of idiots and elect a despot wannabe. And when a despot wannabe actually got elected, the electors didn't go against the idiot electorate.
Well, they didn't specifically feel concern for them electing a despot. They were concerned simply that they might pick wrong from the viewpoint of those with political power at the time. They weren't specifically afraid of a despot or demagogue, but someone who would either threaten the political elites wellbeing, or loosing support from the "less populous" slave states. A system that gives disproportionate weight to smaller states to buy their support while also giving themselves more influence over a check on the legislature and one of the branches of power is what they went with.
They weren't afraid of Trump, they were concerned about Lincoln.
Now all electors are party loyalists chosen by their party, nobody aint doing any faithless defection.
You can solve that with state compacts which go into force when you hit a threshold where that's not a risk
Interesting given that in the recent past the Democratic Party opposed implementing RCV 👀.
I'm still betting they oppose it. They're just not in power right now. The second they have a majority again all RCV initiative stops. Maybe a state or two flips over to RCV in the mean time if we're lucky.
Yeah, they know the progressives will beat them if they allow rcv
Democrats will ratfuck progressives under any ruleset.
I'll believe it when I see it.
I mean, Ken was for it when he ran Minnesota...
I don't know why he wouldn't be for it now.
Just gotta make the dumbasses in the Pedo Party to think Ranked Choice is somehow good for them, or that they came up with the idea.
Send mayor Mamdani to the White House again. He did well in that cesspool last time.
It is good for the voters.
Just not the establishment politicians clothing to their power and wealth
They had it in Alaska until it helped a dem win
To be fair, that Dem is not the Condorcet winner.
STAR voting is simpler and
https://www.starvoting.org/
Star is way worse at preventing gaming the system because if your favorite candidate is one of the less likely to win, mathematically you shouldn't rank anyone else even 1 star or your vote may be the reason your most favorite candidate loses by ensuring someone less favorable to you wins. If you made me vote on STAR id literally never rank an establishment candidate ever, my ballot wouldn't change at all from how it looks now and neither would any of the people who want smaller candidates to win and know how math works.
I used to run then elections in the organization I was a part of. Just use Scottish RCV it's better and with plenty real world tests and results.
I am having trouble understanding the math you are describing. How has the system been gamed if you voted this way? It sounds like you only play yourself, if you would discard your second-choice in the hopes that your first wins. The system is still going to favor consensus.
It bothers me that whenever alternative voting methods are talked about RVC is the one chosen despite having some bad flaws compared to other alternative voting methods.
I just wish that whenever this topic came up a commitee is formed by the organization looking to change voting methods to make a better informed choice. Just picking RVC is lazy because it's the most well known (but neccesarily best) alternative voting method.
STAR voting properties
Not sure about this: lack of Condorcet & later-no-harm criteria seem significant. I'd think Smith-efficient voting methods are better.
Table comparing voting methods by criteria.
This doesn’t fix the electoral college or the state electors corruption. It just changes how they’re gonna ignore peoples vote for the popular vote anyway.
I expect government corruption will continue, but this could have a positive effect in various areas. It's not like there's any perfect solution to eliminating corruption. So all you can do is try things that make it better in some ways.
I agree. I am for RCV, but pretending that it is a solution to the broader problem is delusional.
The issue surrounding voting are well known: everything from IDs and voter registration, local polling stations, gerrymandering districts, voting during the week, purging voter roles, vote by mail, digital voting machine security, lack of paper trail etc. Not to mention campaign finance laws and citizens united and corruption.
None of that is addressed by switching to RCV.
It would only work if they converted to a national vote, instead of state by state elections with individual ranked choice votes.
Both. We need to outloaw fptp. Usually these things happen by States first, then its forced on the holdouts by the feds
That's how we got woman the right to vote.
Does Israel approve? Doubt it because then they’d have to buy more politicians from new political parties with our tax dollars
My state is currently in the process of banning RCV statewide :(
Neat. You caught up to... alaska.
Yesssssss!!!
IF they manage to get this through, they better use a big chunk of their compromise money to educate people about the new way of voting. Like carpet bomb the information.
Spend 10s of millions on TV ads on which consultants get a 15% fee, got it /s
I have a suspicion that a candidate chosen in a RCV primary would have a mathematical advantage in a general election against one from another party not chosen by RCV, but I'd need someone with better math and electoral analysis skills than me to address the question.
The idea of ranked voting itself, you mean, or that people actually believe that the Democrats would actually do this?
Because the latter? Yeah, no, they'll hold it up as a shiny thing and drop it the second they get into power. This IS the USA, we don't improve, we stick to all our shitty systems that have failed us for decades, or centuries even.
The metric system is evil too, y'know! It's the devil!
Rather late than never.
Dems are the only party that's supported it, they've been working on getting it statewide in places that can, now they're bringing it to a national scope. And the only thing they have to gain is possibly being usurped by a third party for real. Sooo this is one of the perfect examples of the Democrats not being evil at all, actually being progressive at their core, albeit limp-wristed for the past few decades. They are not your enemy, they should be part of your tent if you want to grow it.
FTFY. Dems and repubs have historically teamed up to oppose RCV when third parties would benefit. Dems support it when it benefits them over republicans. Republicans can't benefit from it over dems.
Neat, help us out ween out loser dems too.
People think ranked choice, or any other alternative, will help do that. I hold out a sliver of hope that it would, but I don't trust the fucking idiot voters to actually inform themselves before casting their votes.
The threat of wasting votes is what forces people to the mainstream centrist candidates and away from radical positions. So it will not happen.
Not new at all.
Yah, I bet the DNC apparatchiks are fully behind this. This should totally not interfere with their complicity agenda.
Oh good, let’s focus on voting and not things like gerrymandering and Citizens United. Or even the Electoral College. The candidate with the most money usually wins, so even if you change how voting works odds are it’s still gonna be a republican or democrat frontrunner.
This is for the primary. This means that people can vote for a more progressive candidate as their first choice and have their second choice be for the "safe" candidate.
The winner of the Democratic presidential primary is almost certainly always going to be a Democrat. There's almost nothing you can do to change that.
Beyond that, they can do multiple things so doing w good thing doesn't mean they didn't do something else.
How do you propose they fix gerrymandering, a state level issue affecting the election of representatives, or citizens United, a supreme Court ruling, via the procedural rules of the party presidential primary? It's like saying there's no point brushing your teeth if you have credit card debt.
I hear ya! It's true, ranked-choice voting is just one piece of the puzzle when it comes to fixing our broken electoral system. But hey, every little bit helps!
Ranked choice voting is actually one of the fundamental reforms that could lead to Citizens United, and campaign finance reform even, anti-offshoring laws, all sorts of things that are currently off limits to think about even. Once a third party starts being viable in larger and larger areas, it'll change the landscape completely.
Ranked choice voting tends to boost moderate candidates. While this is valuable in a general election, during a party primary it protects the status quo.
It's hard for me to look at this as anything other than Schumer and Jefferies putting obstacles in the way of Progressives.
What?
The opposite of this is true. Assuming you're not describing a different thing by the same name - an American speciality - ranked choice allows you to vote for the most extreme option as first choice and if/when they are eliminated, your vote is not wasted but assigned to the next most extreme option. How exactly would it boost moderates except in that once the extremes are eliminated, your vote goes to the moderate that you want rather than it failing to oppose the people you don't want.
I think you've pretty much got it. Extreme candidates tend to get eliminated because they tend to be the least popular with other parties voters. RCV punishes this unpopularity. Also candidates with similar goals can work together, this advantage is obviously is going to be unavailable for people running from the fringe.
Just imagine a New York primary where two weak moderates were running against a progressive. The two moderates are almost working together because it's likely that whoever looses will gift their votes to the other. Ranked choice candidates have often "teamed up", with ads asking their supporters to rank the other candidate 2nd.
I think lots of Democrats have been thinking about how the primary in New York could have been different and this is the answer to that question.
I mean, what would you suggest instead? Some system where a simple plurality can elect your fringe candidate? We could give the seat to whatever candidate Passes the Post First?
What you're describing has nothing to do with the voting system. If your candidate is so far to the fringe that they can't overcome the gravity of the primary center then they should probably be in their own party. If the voting public wouldn't rank them above all other weak moderates in the general then that's a problem with your electorate and election funding rules.
Sorry, you don't get how it works or how voters behave at all. This isn't some hypothetical. This works in dozens of other countries, thousands of other elections. You're hand-wringing about who people choose to vote for. Letting people vote for their preference is literally the point. Completely eliminating the biggest thing stopping Americans from voting for the person they actually want to vote for.
America's biggest problem is that votes don't transfer. All this rhetoric that everyone has to weigh in behind the "viable" centrist candidate - consistently drifting right - or "it's a vote for the Republicans". And the establishment expects you to vote for that person who can win, their policies don't matter, so long as they have the best chance of beating the other guy. Republicans are doing this too. Potential third party voters are doing this too.
Ah yes, the Mamdani nominated under RCV "supports status quo" 🙄
You got that math wrong, buddy.
How about voting by phone? Fuck, the Republicans can detect people to deport by phone. Why can't we vote by phone?
I don't mean once every year November 16th century voting. I mean new, 20th century, revolutionary type voting!
Imagine, vote for president:
Cheeto.
3 pebbles.
Car tire.
President Car Tire wins 2028!!!! But then 3 days later we learn its flat car tire! What do we do? Just go back to the poll and vote 3 pebbles! Too hard? Well then the parties would need to provide us with other options.
I don't need an electoral college formed by a bunch of white people to vote for me!
Phone would be incredible insecure. And impossible to audit.
You don't need phone voting to get rid of the idiotic EC, either.
This is one application where a block chain would kick ass.
No. You can't trust what you're seeing is what's being counted. You can't trust who's actually voting. With paper there's a record. With bits, they can be flipped at any point during the process and you can't really track that.
No one who programs thinks software is the solution to voting
Bury that idea. Wear gloves.
I vote by mail.
Its easier to hack millions of electronic votes than to intercept, open, tamper with ballot, then reseal the envelope. And you'd need a lot of tampering to even swing an election. Electronic hack is just a push of a button. Too easy to manipulate.
Also, how do you create the equivalent of a "ballot secrecy envelope" for the electronic based remote voting?
Show me please.
If this was the case there would be a ton of people stealing bit coin. I hear people loosing bit coin wallets to hackers who use phishing. But I've never heard of one bit coin wallet getting hacked by brute force, and less having hundreds or thousands of hacks. Yet thousands would still be less than .3% of the population. So I'm sorry but I trust a mathematical system more than I trust voting for 50 fuckers to got "vote for me" on my behalf. Cucks do that...come do my wife, on my behalf! WTF. If you don't trust a rando to do your girlfriend right, you shouldn't trust them to vote like you would like. You know what I trust? The addition sign +.... 53votes +my vote=54 votes. That's literary all this voting system must do internally and the rest is to keep that vote secure.
Unless you want all votes to become public, physical ballots is still the most secure way to do elections.
Your name doesn't have to be on the vote.
Okay so, in simple terms, explain how you intend to do electronic remote voting, while preventing a link between voters and who they voted for, and also preserving security?
https://www.sinardaily.my/article/718243/focus/national/blockchain-voting-virtually-impossible-to-manipulate-says-expert
https://www.ccn.com/news/crypto/indian-state-bihar-first-e-voting-pilot-polygon/
https://www.govtech.com/biz/west-virginia-becomes-first-state-to-test-mobile-voting-by-blockchain-in-a-federal-election.html
https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/thailand-uses-blockchain-supported-electronic-voting-system-in-primaries-2018-11-13
https://quantumzeitgeist.com/3-3-percent-quantum-blockchain-validation-secure-voting-framework-false-acceptance-rate-integrates-biometric/
https://www.ledgerinsights.com/korea-to-trial-blockchain-in-large-scale-online-voting/
https://www.ledgerinsights.com/japans-tsukuba-city-to-use-blockchain-based-electronic-voting/
I'm not gonna try to convince people riding donkeys about getting an automatic transmission. LOL.