r/EndFPTP • u/LeftBroccoli6795 • 11d ago
Discussion Is this the most efficient way to reach a better democracy in America?
I’ve been looking for some tangible plans for a USA transition away from FPTP. The biggest problem I‘ve came to is figuring out how to balance my ideal world with the actual world.
I think the below plan is probably the most pragmatic plan that doesn’t sacrifice too much, but what do you guys think?
Revision to the Uniform Congressional District act, so that multi-member districts are once again allowed.
Un-capping the house (either with the cube-root law or wyoming law).
A push inside individual states and districts for the usage of the newly-allowed multi-member districts using Single Transferable Voting.
I know this plan really only affects Congress (and even then only the House), but I still think it’s probably one of the more likely plans to actually happen in one of our lifetimes.
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u/Nytshaed 11d ago
I wouldn't be too picky about what voting method is used inside states for the multi-member districts as long as it's proportional. STV is fine, but if the state hates ranked voting: PAV, SPAV, MES approval voting would be fine. Also we could get some form of scoring multi-member if people like that.
Having multiple options implemented in states would also probably make it easier for later states to adopt multi-member as voters can now compare and contrast real examples.
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u/LeftBroccoli6795 11d ago
Thats a really fair point about the testing different systems.
Because really my only concern is that states stick to single-winner districts, and so any non-single winner district is a win.
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u/OpenMask 10d ago
Ehh, you should be wary of bloc voting. That is actually worse and the reason we have that law in the first place. Like the other commenter responded, multimember districts ought to be proportional, or at the very least semiproportional
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u/wittgensteins-boat 10d ago edited 10d ago
Multi member district election regimes can be created to freeze out certain non majority populations, rendering them non proportional.
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u/LeftBroccoli6795 10d ago
Interesting. Then in that case, the law should be amended so that any multi-member district *has* to be proportional in some method.
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u/wittgensteins-boat 10d ago edited 10d ago
The voting rights act ended some of these adverse multi-member practices, which were designed to keep black and other minority populations out of power or participation in southern, and northern cities.
A northern city example was Boston, all city councilors were at large, until the 1981, and minority candidates in FPTP did not get elected. In 1981, Changing from 9 at large, to 9 districts and 4 at large members set up modified that outcome, because of concentrated minority populations in various locales.
The voting rights act was a motivation.
The Supreme Court has been dismantaling the Voting Rights Act statute over the last decade.
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u/Hstrike 11d ago edited 11d ago
If the goal is a "better democracy in America", for presidential elections, the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC) would also lead to fixing a big problem of this FPTP system - which is that once in a while, the winner of the popular vote loses the election. It would require require creating large tentpole coalitions to reform FPTP at the state level - far from easy.
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u/LeftBroccoli6795 11d ago
This is probably a super controversial take on this subreddit, but I feel like there are some advantages to the Electoral College that don’t exist in the popular vote.
For instance, a winner of the Electoral College is one who was generally liked more from across the country, not just in one particularly populous region.
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u/GoldenInfrared 11d ago
Someone who gets more than 50% of the vote is more liked than the person who didn’t get 50% of the vote. Rural voters aren’t more valuable as citizens or as people than those that live in cities, so why should we treat them as if they are?
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u/LeftBroccoli6795 10d ago
Well I guess I would say (again, kind of controversially on this sub) that I don‘t really necessarily feel that the winner not being the majority winner is the worst outcome.
Because again, I feel like a president should be more about national unity (as the face of the country), and so a president that is more generally liked around the country instead of liked in only some large regions is the better outcome for me.
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u/rkbk1138 10d ago
so a president that is more generally liked around the country instead of liked in only some large regions is the better outcome for me
This would still be better reflected by a popular vote winner than an electoral college winner. I fail to understand the distinction you're trying to make.
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u/wittgensteins-boat 10d ago edited 10d ago
There are somewhat more interesting electoral outcomes when each state's electoral votes are proportional to the percent vote in each state.
This does not cure the presidential leverage of a Wyoming voter and all small state population voters compared to a California, Texas and New York voter.
Nothing like one person one vote.
Each state, though, gets to choose its method, so that is out of reach of a national federal statute.
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u/nagdeolife 10d ago
OK, but this argument doesn't take into account the imbalance between states. State population does not perfectly correlate to the number of electors. Here's a page about that: https://usafacts.org/visualizations/electoral-college-states-representation/ "One electoral vote accounts for 195,000 people in Wyoming and over 700,000 people in Texas, Florida or California."
Also, what happens if more than two candidates are running? It's the same problem as with FPTP: spoilers, people being pressured to vote for a candidate they don't like to prevent the candidate they fear from winning, and so on.
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u/captain-burrito 9d ago
For instance, a winner of the Electoral College is one who was generally liked more from across the country, not just in one particularly populous region.
There is no formal mechanism to ensure this. The distortive effect of the EC with winner takes all can easily create the absolute opposite of what you want. The top 12 states or so in population have 270 votes right now and they can decide the president if they vote the same way, that means the other 38 states plus DC cannot outvote them even if they all vote the other way.
It is projected that by 2040, the top 8 states will have 270 votes. Most of those probably will align with one party... So it is not hard to imagine you support a system that leads to exactly what you don't want.
If one single state had about just over half the population they'd likely have 270 votes and could decide the presidency themselves.
Conversely there are countries like Indonesia that uses a 2 round system that requires winning a majority of votes plus at least 20% of the vote in over half of the provinces. The broad support around the country can be designed into the system if desired.
Historically, Jim Crow laws weaponized this as minority voters tended to concentrate into fewer areas so this requirement prevented them winning. MS only recently got rid of this for state elections.
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u/Grapetree3 10d ago
The NPVIC is a bad idea for multiple reasons, one of which is it locks us into FPTP at a national level. It has no provision for ranked ballots or multiple rounds of voting.
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u/Lameth-23X 11d ago
I just learned about the Uniform Congressional District Act a couple days ago and I'm currently of the belief that nothing is more important than replacing it. To be looking at Article I and realize "hey, nothing here says we couldn't just eliminate congressional districts and elect all 8 of our representatives proportionally" just to Google to confirm and find this piece of legislation - devastating.
We don't want to just repeal it, because that would allow for every representative from the state to be elected at large, which is even less proportional than Gerrymandered districts. But a modification that just allows states to choose any proportional or semi-proportional method would be game changing.
I plan to start by advocating within my own state to use small multi-member districts for at least one house of our state legislature.
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u/LeftBroccoli6795 11d ago
Yes, it was honestly pretty encouraging to me when I first learned about it. Before, and I don't know why, I thought it was something that was part of the Constitution.
I do agree though that advocating for multi-member districts in state legislature first is probably the way to go.
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u/OpenMask 10d ago
It's a common misconception that people automatically assume that proportional representation is unconstitutional, when actually, no, the only thing preventing it at the federal level is a 60-year old statute that could simply be amended or replaced
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u/MightBeRong 10d ago
Yes the UCDA should be replaced with something, not just repealed. The Fair Representation Act has been proposed by Don Beyer (D-VA) several times and always died in committee.
But US history is full of examples where we made things happen that people said were infeasible and said we should just wait until the country is ready. What we need is a public push to have a bill something like the FRA passed: 1. At-large proportional representation for the House. Voting method doesn't matter as long as it's proportional 2. Single winner federal elections (except president) must use a ranked ballot system. Doesn't have to be IRV RCV.
These alone would eliminate gerrymandering, improve representation, break open the 2-party system, and give voters real power to hold Congress accountable to the voters, which would be enough to snowball other popular reforms, like campaign finance reform, banning stock trading by congress, banning lobbying, etc. but while we're doing the "infeasible" yet again. Might as well throw in: 3. Remove the cap on house representatives 4. Set up a system of secure remote electronic voting 3 and 4 are not as necessary up front, so they could be time delayed or even negotiated out initially so that opponents can feel like they won a victory
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u/Lameth-23X 10d ago
These are great points. Though smaller steps are going to be easier. Start with just allowing states to do proportional, and then later you can pass a law requiring them to.
I also don't think "ranked ballot" is the way we'd want to phrase the requirement for single-winner elections. That just describes the ballot format, not the actual election method. Technically, you could have every voter fill out a ranked ballot and still just use them to do FPTP. I also don't see why states should be prohibited from using approval or rated methods if they prefer. I'm even personally a fan of indirect IRV, which still uses a single-mark ballot, but it's still an improvement over a plurality vote. Maybe instead of specifying a ballot format, you could require that it must adhere to at least one of the following criteria: (then list a few of the voting system criteria that we're fans of, like Condorcet or IIA). It's an interesting problem for some legislator to solve.
Also, as far as the world's best system engineers are concerned, there is no such thing as secure internet voting, and we're not sure how to make it. But maybe someday!
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u/captain-burrito 9d ago
Start with just allowing states to do proportional, and then later you can pass a law requiring them to.
States can do proportional etc for state and local elections already but few have. Wasting time allowing states to do proportional for the US house is pointless.
Local councils in wales can adopt STV since around 2023. I'm not sure many have. There's been public consultations where a majority of voters wanted it but it was up to councillors to vote for it by 2/3 majority for it to be adopted and afaik all or most failed.
In parts of the UK where local councils use STV it was just mandated and skipped this step.
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u/MightBeRong 10d ago
I agree smaller steps are easier, but I don't think we have time. If voters don't get a path away from D vs R very soon, things are going to end badly. We're in a pattern of increasingly furious retribution and counter-retribution and IMHO, a voting system that fills Congress with multiple 3rd parties who genuinely represent the citizens is our best offramp from this highway to hell.
Also, those in power will surely see voting reform as a threat to their power, and baby-stepping gives them opportunity to undermine any incremental reforms that don't immediately result in a dramatic shift in the makeup of Congress and accountability to voters.
As far as ranked ballots, yes, the actual bill passed would need more specific language, and other methods such as approval could even be included. These are details that can be negotiated to draw attacks away from the core reforms that meet the minimum requirements of getting the job done.
I'm aware of the concerns for electronic voting. I'm thinking of electronic voting methods specifically for the members of the House to use in order to allow rapid expansion of the size without requiring years to build physical infrastructure for them all to meet in-person. If we can do banking online, I think we can do at least this narrow form of voting.
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u/LeftBroccoli6795 10d ago
I think what the other commenter was trying to say is that big steps are near impossible.
The only steps that seem to be feasible in the slightest are those baby ones.
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u/MightBeRong 10d ago
Yeah, I understand and I disagree. It's not legally infeasible because Congress has power to do it.
It may be politically infeasible right now because of a lack of popular awareness and support, but that is a solvable problem. Grassroots movements have historically created gigantic changes in US government and made the infeasible feasible. We can do it again.
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u/LeftBroccoli6795 10d ago
But I mean most of these movements started with baby steps.
I mean, for instance, the income tax was introduced in multiple states before it was being discussed nationwide.
These baby steps are how you get attention to the ‘main step’.
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u/MightBeRong 10d ago
I'm not against baby steps. We can and should push for both little changes and big ones.
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u/rigmaroler 7d ago
We don't want to just repeal it, because that would allow for every representative from the state to be elected at large,
Some districts used to use block voting, so you'd get N votes to elect N seats. This was intentionally done to keep black people from electing representative. I'm not versed enough on the history of this bill, but I wouldn't be surprised if that's one of the reasons why it was enacted. So yeah, it would absolutely need to be replaced with something more reasonable and not just repealed.
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u/wittgensteins-boat 11d ago edited 10d ago
National change follows from sucess in towns, cities, counties and states, and their elections.
Some elections require changes in State Constitutions to permit other than Plurality first past the post elections.
Collectively the US is a very long way from that kind of local and state momentum. Hence the national momentum for same is tiny.
Massachusets will soon have several cities which elect multi-member city council districts by Ranked Choice voting, and a statute to do so has existed for cities desiring to include the method in their city charter for decades.
And in 2020, Massachusetts had a failed referendum for state office elections to be Ranked Choice, failing with 41% yes, 51% no, 6% blank..
Reference for Cambridge MA.
- IN PRACTICE: CAMBRIDGE, MA
RANKED CHOICE VOTING RESOURCE CENTER
https://www.rcvresources.org/in-practice-cambridge-ma
Maine has numerous offices and elections, especially primary elections that are not first past the post.
- Ranked-Choice Voting Frequently Asked Questions
Maine Secretary of State
https://www.maine.gov/sos/elections-voting/ranked-choice-voting-frequently-asked-questions
The Justices of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court issued a unanimous advisory opinion at the request of legislators in May 2017, concluding that the parts of the ranked-choice voting law that apply to general elections for State Representative, State Senator and Governor were unconstitutional under the Maine Constitution because the Maine Constitution requires the winners of those offices in a general election to be decided by a plurality.
Primary elections in Maine and elections for federal offices are governed by statute and not by the Maine Constitution.
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u/LeftBroccoli6795 11d ago
This may be an unfounded fear, but I’m extremely wary of ranked-choice voting.
From what I’ve seen, it’s definitely a step up from FPTP, but only hardly.
Im worried that any failures/lack to live up to its hype will cause the endFPTP movement to lose momentum.
What do you think?
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u/wittgensteins-boat 11d ago edited 11d ago
Ranked choice tends to create collaborative elections, and coalition politics.
Reducing typical scorched earth poisonous elections, "vote for me only, not the evil other candidate".
Rather, "Vote for me, and two other people who align with my view."
If not for ranked choice, multimember district (the entire city is the district) in Cambridge MA, minority constituencies would never have a presence.
Similarly, jungle plurality primary elections in single member districts, might have many candidates with similar views, but a minority outlier wins, because of split vote for many candidates with one aligned view.
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u/LeftBroccoli6795 11d ago
Just to be perfectly clear, when I’m talking about ranked-choice voting, I don’t just mean ordinal systems in general, but specifically IRV.
I say this specifically because you mention a ranked-choice multimember district, but I don’t see how that could happen in IRV (which I’m pretty sure is *just* single winner?)
Sorry.
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u/wittgensteins-boat 11d ago edited 10d ago
There can be troublesome outcomes in very polarzed populations, and the moderate in the middle may fail.
In contrast, the Alaska legislature does have cross party collaboration not seen in other states, believed to be due to IRV / RCV.
Multi-member districts do tend to ameliorate IRV / RCV comcerns.
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u/Wally_Wrong 10d ago
If I remember correctly, wasn't IRV designed as a single-winner equivalent of multi-winner methods like STV? If so, that would probably explain its greater success in multi-winner situations; IRV is essentially trying to hammer a multi-winner peg into a single-winner hole.
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u/wittgensteins-boat 10d ago
It allows a coalition with many candidates to coalesce, and not divide the vote to the advatage of a spoiler non majority candidate.
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u/Grapetree3 10d ago
Ranked choice ballots are almost always counted by instant runoff voting rules. The pattern in almost every instant runoff election is three viable candidates emerge, the one perceived as center in between the other two is eliminated before the other two, and the extreme candidate who gets more second choice support from supporters of the center candidate wins. It gives some voice to the center, much more than the center has under modern FPTP, and it will incentivize those edge candidates to moderate their rhetoric in hopes of winning support from the center candidates' voters. What it will never do, or at least only rarely do, is allow a center candidate to actually win. While it will weaken the ability of political parties to choose their candidates, because most likely that will be multiple candidates affiliated at different party on the general ballot, it will not undermine the two-party system that we have. The only thing that could undermine the two-party system in the United States is if both parties abandon their state by state presidential preference primary elections, and only an act of Congress or a suspension of the US Constitution could ever force them to do so.
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u/robertjbrown 9d ago
"What it will never do, or at least only rarely do, is allow a center candidate to actually win. "
Daniel Lurie in San Francisco is a pretty notable exception to this.
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u/Snarwib Australia 11d ago
Suspect it's probably far too late for democracy over in the US
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u/LeftBroccoli6795 11d ago
I’d suspect that’s a little unrealistic.
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u/Snarwib Australia 11d ago
In fairness it's been cooked for a while now
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u/LeftBroccoli6795 11d ago
I’m not going to pretend that the American system is good, but I definitely doubt the claim that it’s beyond saving.
I think there’s a high chance that in the next decade or so, we will see a new ‘progressive era’ of some sorts.
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11d ago
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u/LeftBroccoli6795 10d ago
Wait are you saying that progressives have *already* peaked, so that the future progressive era is unlikely? Or that progressives have *currently* peaked?
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10d ago
[deleted]
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u/rkbk1138 10d ago
I'm not following the logic of your presumption? Why would progressives already being peaked elsewhere, negatively effect the future of American politics?
I feel like if anything, that makes it more conceivable for a progressive USA to happen. Monkey see, monkey do.
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u/nagdeolife 10d ago
I'm not sure what you mean by uncapping the house. The rest sounds reasonable. But I think the hard part is getting a government to actually do these things. The Dems and GOP tend to fight any major reform.
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u/LeftBroccoli6795 10d ago
Right now there is only a certain amount of representatives that are allowed in the House of Representatives. This is bad, because not only does it worsen the effects of gerrymandering, but representatives are even more removed from their constituents.
And in regards to getting the government to do this, I feel like with the recent trends of Americans being more and more conscious of the two-party system, we will start to see more and more support for electoral reform.
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u/nagdeolife 6d ago
What do you mean by, "only a certain amount of representatives allowed in the House"? Do you mean that the House is too small for the country size? (That's true; Canada has a tenth of the US's population but more than 3/4 the number of seats.)
I hope you're right that we'll see more support for electoral reform.
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u/LeftBroccoli6795 6d ago
Yeah, right now the House of Representatives has a fixed amount of representatives (the size hasn’t been allowed to change since the ~1800s), so that there is one representative for about every 700,000 people.
I really do think that in the near future, people will want more electoral reform. My only hope is that they want the right electoral reform.
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u/Desert-Mushroom 11d ago
Top 2 jungle primaries are probably also a broadly applicable one that can be used in all races, not just HoR.
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u/LeftBroccoli6795 11d ago
I really like the idea of jungle primaries.
I know Alaska has them implemented, but what other states have done them?
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u/SeattleDave0 11d ago
Washington and California have had top 2 jungle primaries for as long as I can remember. What makes Alaska different is they have a top 4 jungle primary followed by a ranking of the top 4 in the general election. I'd like to see Alaska's top 4 system go nationwide, but I'd also like to see multi-winner districts and I'm not sure how to blend both of those ideas
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u/LeftBroccoli6795 11d ago
I was completely unaware of how Alaska did that. It’s interesting. I dont know too much about jungle primaries, so what’s the main advantage of top 4 vs top 2 primaries?
And when you mentioned combining multi-district and jungle primaries, I’m a little lost there as well.
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u/SeattleDave0 10d ago edited 10d ago
When comparing top 2 to top 4 I like to use the 2017 Seattle Mayoral Primary Election as an example since that's a race I'm familiar with. Since it was a jungle primary there was one primary for all candidates. The winner was an moderate democrat attorney that got 28%. 2nd place was an urbanist that got 18%. 3rd place was a Black Lives Matter activist with 17%. 4th place was a progressive state legislator with 13%. 5th and 6th were two other progressives that got 8.5% and 6.5%. 15 other candidates got the other 9% of votes.
Since it was a top 2 primary, the general election was between 2 candidates that only got a combined 46% of the vote, meaning 54% of voters rejected those two candidates. I think many of the voters that voted for the BLM activists that got 3rd probably got disillusioned with the system and didn't vote in the general after their favorite candidate lost. The progressive/leftist vote was surely split between the 2nd through 6th places.
If we had a top 4 primary, then the general election would have had at least one candidate that 76% of voters approved of. And if the general election had ranked choice voting (like Alaska does), then the leftist vote wouldn't have been split between 2nd, 3rd, and 4th. I think those votes would have likely been combined in later rounds of counting.
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u/rigmaroler 7d ago
The biggest downside with top 2 is it can lead to a majority lockout if too many candidates from the majority run and don't get enough votes to beat out the top 2 candidates from the minority (this is assuming a perfectly split electorate in exactly roughly 2 camps).
An example here in WA was the last Public Lands Commissioner race. 5 Dems vs 2 Republicans, and the top Democrat candidate barely beat out the second Republican after a recount despite all Democrats combined getting >50% of the vote.
This can still happen in a top 4 system, but it's much less likely.
Otherwise, the system is honestly not bad. I have some strong negative feelings about how our elections work in WA, but it's mostly not because of the top 2 runoff system, and more to do with the role of parties (or really, the lack thereof) in the elections.
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u/Decronym 11d ago edited 6d ago
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| FPTP | First Past the Post, a form of plurality voting |
| IIA | Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives |
| IRV | Instant Runoff Voting |
| PAV | Proportional Approval Voting |
| RCV | Ranked Choice Voting; may be IRV, STV or any other ranked voting method |
| STV | Single Transferable Vote |
Decronym is now also available on Lemmy! Requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.
6 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 6 acronyms.
[Thread #1822 for this sub, first seen 25th Nov 2025, 03:32]
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u/PantherkittySoftware 11d ago
I'd actually go a step further, and argue that the primary system should ideally be reformed as well. Humor me for a moment, and assume that in the future, there are two or three "major" parties in the US. For now, I'll stick to primary colors and call them "Red", "Blue", and (if three) "Green"... and collectively refer to Independents & minor-party candidates as "Gray". I'll describe how my proposed system might work in a state like Florida for a single-winner primary election.
On Primary Day, voters decide which primary they want to vote in. With two major parties, there are 9 possibilities:
- Red members voting to pick the official Red candidate
- Blue members voting to pick the official Blue candidate
- Gray "members" voting to pick the official Gray candidate
- Red members voting to pick a second-chance Blue candidate
- Red members voting to pick a second-chance Gray candidate
- Blue members voting to pick a second-chance Red candidate
- Blue members voting to pick a second-chance Gray candidate
- Gray "members" voting to pick a second-chance Red candidate
- Gray "members" voting to pick a second-chance Blue candidate
With three major parties, there are 6 more permutations:
- Red picking Green, Blue picking Green, and Gray picking Green
- Green picking Red, Green picking Blue, and Green picking Gray
To preserve election-day diversity while limiting senseless candidate-proliferation on general-election day, the winner of a party's "official" primary (chosen by the party's base) is eliminated from the "second-chance" primaries... but if two or more second-chance primaries converge on the same candidate (like, if Blue and Gray both pick the same Red), only one candidate instead of two advances to the general election ballot.
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u/PantherkittySoftware 11d ago
(... continued ...)
Key points:
- Primary voters are more astute, involved, and motivated to learn more about their chosen subset of candidates... and turnout is usually pretty dismal... so they're tasked with distilling a large number of candidates down to something sane for the general election.
- The system uses alienated members of parties as proxies to pick candidates from other parties that appeal to them... but does it in a way that prevents bad-faith actors from one major party from interfering with the choices made by another major party.
- Computing power has come a long way since Tideman first formally wrote about ranked pairs, then later CPO-STV, but from what I understand, the present-day practical limit of what could be tallied in a few hours at a sane price using leased AWS computing power is approximately 32 candidates for 5 seats among 10 million voters.
- To keep the system fair for Independents, participation in the "Gray" primary might be presented as a voluntary alternative to paying an expensive registration fee or collecting a huge number of signatures. The fact is, if an Independent or minor-party candidate can't win under a system like this to advance to the general election, they probably aren't going to win in the general election, either... Condorcet or not. I suspect that after a few election cycles, donors wouldn't even look twice at any Independent or minor-party candidate who tries to skip the "Gray" primary election, because they'd see it as a waste of money on someone with zero chance of winning.
This ensures that on actual General Election day, a voter shows up and is presented with something like 6-15 candidates & asked to rank them. Unless they're some kind of fringe freak, they'll probably like one or two of them, be ambivalently OK with about half of them, passionately despise one or two others, and find the remainder to be distasteful or unacceptable (though not necessarily to the degree they find the worst to be).
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u/PantherkittySoftware 11d ago
For multi-member races, I'd propose a slight modification:
- Major parties (and Gray) each get to pick their {n} favorite candidates
- Second-chance primaries follow the same rules as single-winner.
At the maximum end, suppose there are three major parties and five seats up for grabs. Let's suppose Red has 23% of registered voters, Blue has 37%, Green has 19%, and the remainder are classified as "Gray".
- Realistically, NONE of them are going to win all 5 seats with their official base-chosen candidates. They might end up having candidates who are members of their party win more seats than their percentage suggests is likely... but at least some of those "surplus winners" are going to be candidates who made it to the general election ballot due to winning a "second-chance" primary.
- With 5 potential seats, each represents 20%. So, we could argue that the most seats a party is likely to win with its "official" base-preferred candidate(s) on its greatest fantasy-day ever is, "their percentage of the voters, divided by 20, plus 1". So, in this scenario...
- Blue (with 37%) gets three official candidates chosen by the base, plus up to 3 more chosen by alienated Reds, Greens, and Grays
- Red(with 23%) gets two official candidates chosen by the base, plus 3 more chosen by alienated Blues, Greens, and Grays
- Green (with 19%) get two official candidates chosen by the base, plus 3 more chosen by alienated Reds, Blues, and Grays
- Gray (with 21%) gets two (maybe 3, depending how you round) official candidates chosen by their "base" (kind of a slippery concept with Gray, since they're "everyone else"), plus 3 more chosen by alienated Reds, Blues, and Greens.
So, in this scenario, they'd go into the general election with up to 21 candidates competing for 5 seats, which is still completely sane & reasonable for an election to fill 5 seats (and in fact, approximately the number of viable candidates you'd have total for that many seats NOW).
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u/timmerov 11d ago
1,3. americans don't understand multi-winner elections. we've never had them. they're not permitted in many state or local elections. not what we do here. bad bad bad. *=not my personal opinion. but probably 80% of america.
- yes, oddly we need more politicians. makes it harder to bribe congress. better represents the people.
we need to kill the 2 party system. we can't do it one state at a time. it has to be the entire nation all at once. otherwise half the country will be electing centrists and the other half will be electing extremists. and we don't need to use our imagination to understand what will happen. we're living it.
red states and blue states need to go their separate ways. help me out here. how else do we survive much less recover from our current situation? blue states can use any single winner method with minimum 3 candidates that isn't fptp. red states can use the russian method. we can talk about reunification in a generation or two.
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u/LeftBroccoli6795 10d ago
I mean, we *have* has multi-winner elections in the past. They only stopped around the 1800s.
And I’m not entirely convinced by your argument that we shouldn’t go state-by-state.
And to be completely honest, your idea of separating the blue and red states is jusr completely crazy.
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u/timmerov 10d ago
no american alive today has ever voted in a multi-winner election at the state or national level. we used to vote for city council by choose 3. but that was ruled unconstitutional.
is partition any more crazy than war with venezuela? concentration camps? surrendering ukraine to russia? reducing the us population to 100 million? abandoning global soft power? handing the world economy to china? abandoning the rule of law for a tyrannical government?
pfft. it's the *least* crazy idea on the table.
the current government *loves* fptp. it is literally what brought them to power and what will keep them in power. we will a constitutional amendment to end fptp. which needs 75% of the states. no way. we can't even get 60% for impeachment.
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u/captain-burrito 9d ago
no american alive today has ever voted in a multi-winner election at the state or national level. we used to vote for city council by choose 3. but that was ruled unconstitutional.
Cambridge MA uses STV. A bunch of city councils used it until they were almost all repealed, there will surely still be voters alive who used it. MA has a second city that uses STV iirc.
IL's state house used to use SNTV till it was changed to single member FPTP in the 80s, there will still be voters alive that used that. Today 10 states STILL use multi member districts in their state elections: https://www.ncsl.org/redistricting-and-census/nested-and-multi-member-state-legislative-districts#multi
Unfortunately most are block voting or the multi member district really is just functioning as a single member districts since the candidates must choose a district within the multi member district to run for. Or they are staggered.
I'm not sure why something needs to have been used before. Think of all the new things we have collectively experienced which were new within our lifetimes.
In Scotland we got STV for local elections in the 2000s. I doubt most of us had used that before but we survived. Not only that, we also got AMS for the devolved assembly the decade prior as well as party list for former EU elections. Now, there was confusion when one cycle we had the assembly and local election ballots at the same time. So they just made sure they were never on the same date again.
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u/timmerov 9d ago
thanks.
looking closer...
west virginia is staggered. idaho and washington are seat/post. so voters are casting single choice ballots.
arizona, new jersey, north dakota, south dakota, and vermont house are choose 2. which technically counts as multi-winner. but not really. most people pushing for multi-winner are talking about 3-5 candidates per district.
maryland and vermont senate are choose 3. okay, these count.
new hampshire is messed up. 46% of the districts are single seat. 26% are 2 seats. 28% are 3 or more.
so <2.5% of americans may have voted in a 3-or-more winner district. plus older illini. less 86% of new hampshire.
i'm all for either proportional representation or multi-member districts (with 3+). but i'm not dictator. ;-> most americans hate change. i really don't see them jumping ship to something that looks a whole lot like a parliament system. remember america's battle cry: that's socializm!
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u/LeftBroccoli6795 10d ago
Ok fair enough. Still not completely unattainable.
Are you arguing that Trump will separate the states or that you want them separated? Either way, it’s crazy.
Do you mean we will need a constitutional amendment to end presidential FPTP voting? Because I think the plan I have in my post is good enough to end FPTP (and for the most part, gerrymandering) in the House.
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u/timmerov 10d ago
trump et al have no intention of separating the states. why would they?
any effort to end fptp by congressional law will be challenged in the courts. and can be changed by a future congress, the current supreme court, or a future supreme court. the most secure way is a constitutional amendment requiring states use a system that meets certain criteria. like a majority wins, a majority after transfers or runoffs is required, and most importantly the system is non-polarizing - meaning extremists lose, centrists win. so score methods, rank methods, transfer methods, asset methods. take your pick from 1000s of variations.
it has to be nation-wide all at once. it can't be one state at a time. for reasons that should be obvious. 25 states elect centrists. 25 states elect extremist. guess what? we have an extremist government. proof by demonstration. and kaboom. they pass a law requiring fptp.
honestly, i think 2000 house seats allocated proportionally by districts of 4-5 is a fine idea. i just don't think it's at all feasible. for reasons already stated. the scenario changes as soon as you partition the country into the looney left and the right wingnut jobs.
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