[FRIAM] Ranked Choice Voting app

[uǝlƃ ☣]

Well, the usual caveats apply. I really have no idea what I'm talking about. But that's never stopped me before.

My intuition is given unlimited campaign funding (as free speech), really really long campaign seasons, and influence ops (ala Russia), 1st past the post 2 party systems foment false dichotomy and hyper-partisanship. I'm a big fan of dialectic (which I regard as installing false dichotomies -- or falsely disjoint sets for more than 2 positions -- for the sake of argument). But everything in moderation. When a (false) dichotomy is taken seriously, it loses its rhetorical power.

IRV and RCV seem to push people toward mediocrity. Of course, I'm no fan of popular music (or popular novels, or popular TV shows, etc.). But if every time I turned on the radio they were playing extreme noise, Yanni, or black metal, I'd be similarly Disturbed (ha! get it?).

So, I see IRV and RCV as a potential solution to finding compromise in our elections instead of electing people by hyper-partisan elections, then expecting them to do all the compromising after they're in the new position. My criticisms of it would obtain after a few political cycles when *all* we get are the Bidens/Clintons/Bushes and the AOCs/Yangs/Bernies have no chance. It disgusts me to think a reasonable political strategy is "play to the middle". But at this point, I think we need a little of it. How can we mitigate against it later, though? I have no idea.

Maybe there's some efficacy in slicing out types of elections (which I've already tried to do by saying "IRV and RCV", recognizing they're not quite synonymous). Maybe Congress needs IRV, whereas the Executive needs 1st past the post? Or maybe the House needs 1st-past but the Senate needs IRV and the Executive needs RCV (and the top 2 get P and VP)? I don't know. But sometimes, a little mediocrity helps us identify where our tastes really do and don't diverge.

On 5/4/20 9:00 AM, Steven A Smith wrote:
>> https://rankit.vote/
>>
> thanks for bringing the topic up again.   I know you have made (mildly?
> obliquely?) disparaging comments about ranked-choice voting before.  
> Rather than my trying to summarize (or impute) your real intention,
> maybe you could comment on how you think ranked choice voting fits into
> the bigger picture?


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