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.
politics
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:

- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
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.
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 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/
...it angered both Democratic and Republican party leaders and drew opposition from prominent Democratic backers, including a plethora of unions, progressive groups and some environmental organizations.
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
including a plethora of unions
If there iwas anything that pissed me off more than the Democrats abandoning support for workers it was union leadership doing so.
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.
Shall the Missouri Constitution be amended to:
- Make the Constitution consistent with state law by only allowing citizens of the United States to vote;
- Prohibit the ranking of candidates by limiting voters to a single vote per candidate or issue; and
- Require the plurality winner of a political party primary to be the single candidate at a general election?
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
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
ABOUT FUCKING TIME
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.
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
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.
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.
STAR voting is simpler and
peer-reviewed, topping the charts in all studies of accuracy and representativeness.
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.
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.
Does Israel approve? Doubt it because then they’d have to buy more politicians from new political parties with our tax dollars
It would only work if they converted to a national vote, instead of state by state elections with individual ranked choice votes.