Georgia is well-known for requiring candidates in general elections to receive a majority of the vote. If not, there is a December run-off. Georgia now has a group working for traditional Ranked Choice Voting. It is not a group that combines support for ranked choice voting with ending the ability of parties to have nominees.
The group is Better Ballot Georgia. If it were to succeed in persuading the Georgia legislature to use ranked choice voting instead of general election runoffs, that would probably make it easier to also persuade the legislature to ease the terribly strict ballot access laws for minor parties and independent candidates. UPDATE: here is a news story about attempts to persuade the legislature.
In other related news, David Ralston died on November 16, 2022. He had been a State Senator 1992-1998, and a member of the House starting in 2002. He had been re-elected earlier this month. He had served as Speaker of the House starting in 2010, although he had indicated he would resign as speaker due to health problems. He was a powerful opponent of ballot access reform.
1. Can’t see Southern state parties ever going for the type of RCV where parties don’t have nominees.
2. Southern blacks are historically very anti-runoff (in primaries) and therefore I presume anti-RCV due to saying it’s racist, allowing the eliminated white candidate’s supporters to back the other white candidate and the single black candidate that had a plurality now loses.
Due to #2, not sure this goes anywhere.
The post indicates that Better Ballot Georgia is focused solely on ranked choice and is not seeking to combine it with a blanket primary or top-x system that would eliminate party nominations.
RCV sucks. Hope this fails.
I’m with Jerry. RCV is straight up garbage.
Georgia should eliminate partisan primaries. This would save money and solve the ballot access problems.
I love RCV. It helps elect my fellow Libertarians.
When and where has it elected libertarians?
RCV has been useful to minor parties in general, even when it hasn’t caused them to be elected. For example, in Maine in 2020, the Green Party candidate for US Senate received the highest percentage of the vote for US Senate as any third party candidate for that office in Maine history. Also Howie Hawkins percentage of the vote in Maine in 2020 was easily his best in the nation.
Still waiting for any examples involving elected libertarians. I don’t care about better vote percentages, especially for our communist enemies.
RCV in Georgia would be especially useful for Presidential elections because, since federal law requires the election date for Presidential electors to be uniform throughout the country, no runoff elections are allowed.
Condorcet = RCV done right.
There’s no way to do RCV right except not to do it at all. Stick with traditional voting, whoever gets the most votes wins, no ifs ands or butts. Accept no substitutes.
@WZ,
The federal law specifically permits runoffs for presidential electors.
@JR:
Could you cite the statute, please?
@WZ,
3 USC 2
Once again I must agree with Paul from Revere, Mass. There is no such thing as RCV done right. Doing RCV is wrong, wrong, wrong.
Nevertheless, RCV would be better for Presidential elections than run-offs. Run-offs are costly, and less efficient than RCV, and drag out the election even longer.
Thank you Petey, I agree. There does not need to be any RCV OR RUNOFF in elections. Let’s keep it simple: he who gets the most votes wins, period, end of story. And if one side cheats and steals the election like the communist demon rats did with the help of the communist Chinamen in 2020, they need to forfeit the next one, or maybe several, as a penalty. So really to be fair since Trump actually won in 2020 he should be given a 4 year term without an election in 2024. Or maybe an 8 year term because the demon rats basically stole his first term with the Russia hoax and the two phony impeachment persecutions over the perfect phone call with the Ukrainian Nazis and his efforts on behalf of election integrity on his way out after the stolen election.
That’s good, but you need to think it through even further, IMO. I agree there should be no taxation without representation, and I would add no representation without taxation. Extending this logically, representation should be proportional to taxation. Run government elections like corporate elections: one share (based on voluntary contributions to the government, in place of universal taxes) one vote, rather than one person one vote. What do you think? And yes, I am being serious.
I would add that community service could take the place of financial contributions for those with more time than money. For those with neither, I would argue that their time should be better spent on getting themselves into a position where they have one or the other or both, rather than wasting it on elections and politics; so, yes, such people would lose their right to vote until and unless they have money or time to contribute to the government which they seek to elect representatives to.
@WZ,
In Alaska, it appears that significant numbers of voters did not bother to rank legislative races.
Rank smelling botched abortion voting is not traditional. There is nothing traditional about it. It is disgusting and must be terminated with extreme prejudice everywhere it pops up and starts stinking up the place. Straight to hell with the evil abhorrent RCV garbage!!!