A bill to require ranked choice voting for all congressional primary and general elections has been introduced in both houses of Congress. The U.S. Senate sponsor is Peter Welch (D-Vermont). The two chief sponsors in the House are Jaime Raskin (D-Maryland) and Don Beyer (D-Virginia).
It would require ranked choice voting in both primaries and general elections, so that the current top-two systems in California and Washington would need to be revised. Furthermore, it says that if a state uses systems without party nominees, at least three candidates must be allowed to advance to the general election.
The bill says that if a state defines a qualified party in terms of how many votes it received in the last election, that state must give the party credit for the round of voting which produced the highest number of votes.
Here is the text. The bill doesn’t have a bill number yet.
The fact it’s being sponsored by commies tells you exactly how evil RCV is.
Blanket federal proposals for voting reform that impose wholesale requirements or prohibitions are NOT the way to go. Our federal system should leave a lot up to each state to decide. Let states and parties experiment with different systems. Parties should be able to choose what sort of voting to use in their own primaries, which may or may not be what the state authorizes for the general election.
At a minimum, states should be allowed to form multi=member districts, which they are NOT currently allowed to do, provided that a voting method is used that encourages different constituencies to be represented in the district. And, parties should be granted some sort of control over who may use their party label in any primary or general election.
@Phil
On the contrary, the fact that commies are willing to sponsor such an anti-commie bill, tells you exactly how little chance it has of passing.
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@Walter Ziobro
“Blanket federal proposals for voting reform that impose wholesale requirements or prohibitions are NOT the way to go.”
Not the American way, at any rate.
“Our federal system should leave a lot up to each state to decide.”
Agreed.
“Let states and parties experiment with different systems.”
States certainly; parties… I don’t know about that.
“Parties should be able to choose what sort of voting to use in their own primaries, which may or may not be what the state authorizes for the general election.”
Still not quite sold on this. But I’m open to convincing.
“At a minimum, states should be allowed to form multi=member districts, which they are NOT currently allowed to do, provided that a voting method is used that encourages different constituencies to be represented in the district.”
Multi-member districts are a good idea in general. But which voting methods will encourage representation of constituencies, and to what extent, will be an endless point of contention.
“And, parties should be granted some sort of control over who may use their party label in any primary or general election.”
A party’s freedom of association trumps that of an individual candidate? No.
A much better solution would be to do away with parties and party labels altogether – if not in all election, then at least in federal elections.
Let candidates run on their own merits rather than being boosted by partisanship. And do away with ballot access via parties.
At most parties, could be allowed to endorse their favored candidate, but such endorsement would not appear on the ballot.
Better yet, would be to get rid of representation altogether and move to direct democracy; or best of all, drop the facade that is democracy and embrace anarchy.
Yea, I’m all in favor of alt-right, alt-White anarchism of the likes of Nuña the Nutter at the end.
And, he’s constitutionally wrong on other issues. Shock me.
NOOO PRIMARIES
PR – REPS
TOTAL VOTES/TOTAL MEMBERS IN STATE = EQUAL VOTES TO ELECT EACH REP
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APPV IN SENATE UNTIL PR IN SENATE ALSO
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NOT IN USE FOR 2026 ELECTION – LIKELY FATAL
Just to clarify, individual candidates should always have the right to bypass any party primary or convention, and have some reasonable method of getting on the general election ballot.
WZ
NOOOO PARTY EXTREMIST CAUCUSES / PRIMARIES/ CONVS.
EQUAL NOM PETS / FILING FEES