Are you for or against ranked choice voting? Why?

@Abstraction Interesting. Thanks for that insight. Would you say that's the general attitude or are perspectives on preferential voting mixed?

@Graylight
Preferential: 'General' I don't know about other countries. But in Australia we appear to like our voting system based on all interactions and discussions I've encountered during my life but I have not seen formal surveys. I've never heard any movement to abolish it. [u]Without [/u]preferential voting it's possible for a candidate that is despised by a majority of the population to win their seat because the vote of those against this candidate is split by multiple other candidates. Is that person therefore legitimate? This can't happen with preferential voting.
Compulsory voting: Neither have there been moves to abolish compulsory voting. People who aren't interested either donkey vote or just post and empty ballot. However, the levels of correct votes are very high (much higher than voter turnout in other countries), showing that compulsory voting results in higher participation in democracy and therefore greater legitimacy of the election winners.

@bijouxbroussard I don't agree. It's a superb system. Not sure what system you have, but for us:
Rank 1,2,3,4,5... Count the 1 votes. Person in last place, distribute their second preferences. Keep going until you have two candidates. That's the reason since the last election we now are back to instituting climate change policies instead of fossil fuel policies, increasing unemployment benefits for the first time in 15 years... Independent thinkers elected and big parties forced to negotiate.

My vote has never gone to someone I don't like as they are all down near the bottom of the list.

@Abstraction We’ve had it for awhile, and I [b]don’t[/b] like it. I haven’t seen any positive changes as a result.

@bijouxbroussard Interesting. Imagine three candidates:
1. Pro-Trump candidate: 40% of vote.
2. Democrat candidate: 35% of vote.
3. Greens (or whatever) candidate: 25% of vote.
So 60% [i]definitely don't want[/i] the pro Trump candidate. In your preferred system (if I understand it which I'm not sure) the Trump person would win even though most people don't want this person because the Dems & Greens have split the vote. So in first past the post you can't afford to have two good people splitting the vote.

@ChipmunkErnie I would not say it gives a wider representation of options. Both Republicans and democrats in the US, for example, are bought out by corporate interests. The only real difference is which corporations put more support to which party.

@ViciDraco Judging but what I've seen -- though admittedly very little -- ranked voting still had party candidates, often running against each other as in the primaries.

@badminton Having ranked choice implemented has stopped a lot of people from bothering to vote here, a situation we don’t need. 😞

@Slade I must disagree. In Ranked choice voting your ballot will give you two or three choices of candidates. If your first choice doesn't win then your vote goes to your 2nd choice, and so on. It seems to me more democratic

@badminton I understand what it’s supposed to do. But I’ve seen what can actually happen. Not a fan.

@TheOneyouwerewarnedabout that seems like it keeps votes within a party system though. I think voters should choose who their vote goes to if their primary drops out, not the person they voted for.

@ViciDraco Biden is terrible. You chose wrong.

@HoraceGreenley again, we're going to disagree about who is worse. But the point was I had no strong candidate to vote for.

@ViciDraco I disagree. Trump was a great candidate. Booming economy, low inflation, low crime, border control...what's not to like?

@ViciDraco It’s not about politics?

@MrBrownstone it is not about Trump, the same way it is not about france's position on the ukranian war. It's about ranked choice voting.

@MrBrownstone Of course he's extreme. Have you seen the people at his rallies?
And it has nothing to do with libs. You can't blame them for trump's extremism.

@ViciDraco It hasn’t worked well locally. If you only like one of the candidates, you’re still obliged to choose two others that you dislike least. It’s been a mess. And as I said, some people have stopped voting because of it, which screws us.

@somedude15 Again, I’m so sorry. There are a couple of cities in the Bay Area that use it, so it’s not used for gubernatorial elections, But it has proven contentious in our mayoral elections, with nobody being particularly happy with the results.

@bijouxbroussard I guess I do not understand why in a three way race, reassigning your vote to the lesser of two remaining evils is a bad thing. Without the ranked choice, your favored candidate would still probably lose, wouldn't they?

I am not saying you are wrong. I haven't ever lived there. Just trying to understand what the benefit of the forced binary actually offers over ranked choice. My largest problem with electoral politics in the US today is that I have only Republicans and Democrats to reasonably vote for. I want to vote for Greens, but more important to me is making sure Republicans do not win. So I'm kind of forced to cast my vote Democrat. Which hides how popular Green policies might be. Ranked choice, they'd at least see how popular policies are and other parties might actually lean more on that direction.

But maybe when it comes to mayors it really doesn't work?

@bijouxbroussard exactly why ranked choice is a good thing, IMHO.

@Harmonium1923 Is it in place where you are ?

@Harmonium1923 That’s why it sucks, imo. I don’t want to have to rank the other candidate unless I’m having a surfeit of choices. That hasn’t been the case lately.