After last year’s string of losses on state ballot measures, some progressive activists claimed they would fare better with lawmakers than they had with voters. Yet legislatures are not enacting ranked-choice this year — instead, they are banning the convoluted scheme.
The idea behind ranked-choice voting is to get voters to express “preferences” about multiple candidates, rather than just voting for one. This raises questions about one-person, one-vote, but that’s only the beginning of the problem. The system makes elections more difficult from start to finish, slowing the process and introducing new possibilities for errors and irregularities.
It starts with the ballot. In a normal election, a voter can vote once for each office. If there are six offices up for election, that means voting for six candidates — one for each office. With a ranked-choice ballot, however, if there are five candidates running for each of those offices, then a voter is supposed to “vote” 30 times, ranking all five candidates for each of the six offices.
This requires a longer, more complicated ballot with more instructions, more pages and more ways to make mistakes. The process takes longer, which means more ballots are left incomplete. Many voters simply don’t have an opinion about who is their third, fourth or fifth choice in many elections. Yet leaving rankings blank creates the possibility of a ballot being excluded from the final results.
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Progressive groups and their donors spent more than $100 million last year pushing ranked-choice voting, massively outspending opponents yet losing nearly everywhere.
Read the whole article if your mind is not totally closed.
We have already explained that it does not raise any questions about one-person, one-vote, which is “one person’s voting power ought to be roughly equivalent to another person’s within the same state.” RCV changes absolutely nothing in this regard.
BS with no proof.
BS. The voter is still only voting once for each office. Yes, the vote is slightly more involved, but that is also optional – nobody is forced to select backup candidates. Their preferred candidate either wins the majority or doesn’t, and it’s up to the voter if they want to exercise their subsequent preferences.
That’s probably true.
Nah.
Does it mean that?
As mentioned above, the voters are not required to have an opinion about every candidate. Just rank the ones you want. And yes, your ballot will be excluded form the final results, because you chose to not vote for the people who ended up being the most popular.
My best guess is because the majority of voters prefer progressive candidates, they just can’t settle on one progressive candidate. For example, in a 3-way race between one Giraffe and two Zebras, the Giraffe could win the plurality by splitting the Zebra vote. RCV removes this possibility by ensuring that the winner is selected by a majority, not just a plurality. The votes of those who voted for the losing Zebra will be redistributed to their second choice, which is more likely to favor the other Zebra over the Giraffe.
My second guess is because it is actually a superior voting system, and is by definition more “progressive” (more fair) than the current inferior system. And progressives like things that are progressive.
It’s also the only way to give minor parties a real chance at breaking the duopoly. I think the country would be better off if we had more ideas represented in Congress, especially now that practically every single issue is so polarized – you either like it or you don’t, you’re either red or you’re blue, and there’s nothing in-between.
How else are you going to evaluate a voting system except by its results? I have given multiple cases where voters were so unhappy with the results of the ranked choice voting system that they recalled the candidates it selected. The best conclusion is that these were not the candidates that the majority wanted. What is your conclusion?
Instead of just making guesses how about presenting evidence? My guess is that the Left prefers ranked choice voting because they know it is a system they can game to elect their candidates whose ideas are so wrong headed they otherwise cannot win.
The one Biden that didn’t get a pardon has tax issues too.
“Ashley Biden’s failure to disclose to the IRS receiving $500,000 in grants in 2023 raises the question of what other contributions is she hiding,” Kamenar told the Washington Free Beacon.
Tax malfeasance is somewhat of an endemic problem among former president Joe Biden’s children. Ashley Biden’s brother, Hunter Biden, unlawfully claimed tens of thousands of dollars in payments to prostitutes and sex clubs as legitimate business expenses during the 2010s when he was addicted to crack cocaine. Hunter Biden in September faced up to 17 years in prison after pleading guilty to failing to pay at least $1.4 million in taxes between 2016 and 2019, but those charges were wiped clean from his record after his father granted him a blanket pardon for any crimes he may have committed since 2014.
18 to 21-year-old voters leaned 18 percentage points to the right of those only slightly older. And for the first time in generations, the youngest voters said they favored Republicans
Thank you for the link. Now that I actually had a chance to examine some text of the law, I suspect the problem is that it doesn’t simply punish predators or increase sentences for child sex crimes as those articles lead you to believe, it also punishes sex workers and potentially victims: “An individual who solicits, or who agrees to engage in, or who engages in, an act of prostitution”. They mention the intent to not criminalize victims of trafficking in Section 1, but all other sections still criminalize everything.
The public is not buying this baloney. The vote against the bill was publicized by the Republicans and all of a sudden the Democrats saw the light and changed their votes.
From May 7, 2025 article
Despite being introduced by a Democrat, progressives tried to tank the bill, claiming it could be used to abuse people of color and teens who are close in age.
“I’ve heard concern about, and this provision related to 16- and 17-year-olds in terms of how it’s applied and whether it’s applied equitably,” said Assemblyman Nick Schultz (D-Burbank). "We all know that in the past, law enforcement has discriminatorily applied certain provisions of California law against particular communities, so I think that concern is real.
However, Gov. Gavin Newsom and some fellow Democrats weighed in and slammed their members. They said there should be no question that soliciting teens for sex should be a felony. State Republicans said Democrats who opposed the bill are out of touch.
This is a no-brainer," said State Senator Tony Strickland (R-Huntington Beach). “It’s about protecting kids. I give credit to Gov. Newsom for weighing in on this.”
In the end, Democrats backed down, pushing the bill through the committee with an exception in a rare case where the suspect is within three years of the victim’s age.
What you call “baloney”, was that even presented to the public? It was just what I understood after reading the text of the bill. I haven’t read anything else about this and I see neither this concern nor “the public” mentioned in the article you quoted.
All of a sudden? It sounds like they changed the bill to address the “teens who are close in age” concern: