Sure, most of the time was spent in battleground states, but Trump went to 8 states Hillary didn’t show up in at all. Trump didn’t show up in 10% of states, Hillary didn’t show up in nearly 30%. That’s a big difference. She instead spent her time at fund raisers, 350+ vs 50-60. Trump talked to the people, while Hillary talked to her donors.
And for the record, I don’t think we should be doing a FPTP system even if we moved away from the electoral college due to the numerous problems with FPTP. Either STAR or approval voting would be far better.
I agree. I think this would go along way to help reduce the divisiveness in politics. I had to look up STAR and Approval, I’ve mostly been looking at Ranked Choice. All of them pretty much look to accomplish the same goal and can move us away from the 2 party, winner-take-all system.
I don’t doubt any of this is true. But if anything, I think it just supports my point that under our current system, candidates do not pay attention to anything other than a select few cities. So the pro electoral college argument over candidates focusing on select few cities is a moot point.
All of them pretty much look to accomplish the same goal and can move us away from the 2 party, winner-take-all system.
They’re all better than FPTP, but ranked choice voting in a way suffers from the same sort of issues as FPTP. The spoiler effect of FPTP is still present, not nearly as bad, but still present. Because at the end of the day, ranked choice voting is basically FPTP over several rounds. If FPTP is bad, then repeating it several times isn’t good.
The other thing is that ranked choice isn’t as secure as STAR or approval, which are purely additive, whereas ranked choice is not. Pure addition makes it much easier to audit results, which is incredibly important. Additive results also allow us to see the results being collected in real time so to speak, which goes a long way towards trust in the system. Ranked choice just doesn’t have that ability.
The other problem with ranked choice is that it doesn’t really give somebody a quantitative say in how much they like/dislike candidates. I might prefer a candidate order of B, C, then E. But if I absolutely revile E, don’t care either way about C, and am in love with B, the vote won’t really show that. Approval has this problem as well, but it is a minor gripe to be honest.
Either way, all 3 of these will help deal with the 2 party situation. But if we have a choice, STAR is the best in my opinion.
Fair points. I’ve seen the most traction around ranked choice, so even if it isn’t ideal, it’s still a step in the right direction, and seemingly the one with the best chance of happening right now. I think I prefer ranked choice over Approval. I don’t want to just say, “these 3 wouldn’t be the end of the world,” I want to be able to give more weight to the candidate I actually want to win. STAR still does that.
I do see where the transparency around ranked choice could be harder to see and make voting a lot more confusing. In an era of people claim election fraud left and right, that’s not a good thing. I guess I’d go STAR > Ranked Choice > Approval > The current system.
This outlines what I’m talking about pretty well…
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/hillary-clinton-donald-trumps-campaigns-numbers/story?id=43356783
Sure, most of the time was spent in battleground states, but Trump went to 8 states Hillary didn’t show up in at all. Trump didn’t show up in 10% of states, Hillary didn’t show up in nearly 30%. That’s a big difference. She instead spent her time at fund raisers, 350+ vs 50-60. Trump talked to the people, while Hillary talked to her donors.
I agree. I think this would go along way to help reduce the divisiveness in politics. I had to look up STAR and Approval, I’ve mostly been looking at Ranked Choice. All of them pretty much look to accomplish the same goal and can move us away from the 2 party, winner-take-all system.
I don’t doubt any of this is true. But if anything, I think it just supports my point that under our current system, candidates do not pay attention to anything other than a select few cities. So the pro electoral college argument over candidates focusing on select few cities is a moot point.
They’re all better than FPTP, but ranked choice voting in a way suffers from the same sort of issues as FPTP. The spoiler effect of FPTP is still present, not nearly as bad, but still present. Because at the end of the day, ranked choice voting is basically FPTP over several rounds. If FPTP is bad, then repeating it several times isn’t good.
The other thing is that ranked choice isn’t as secure as STAR or approval, which are purely additive, whereas ranked choice is not. Pure addition makes it much easier to audit results, which is incredibly important. Additive results also allow us to see the results being collected in real time so to speak, which goes a long way towards trust in the system. Ranked choice just doesn’t have that ability.
The other problem with ranked choice is that it doesn’t really give somebody a quantitative say in how much they like/dislike candidates. I might prefer a candidate order of B, C, then E. But if I absolutely revile E, don’t care either way about C, and am in love with B, the vote won’t really show that. Approval has this problem as well, but it is a minor gripe to be honest.
Either way, all 3 of these will help deal with the 2 party situation. But if we have a choice, STAR is the best in my opinion.
Fair points. I’ve seen the most traction around ranked choice, so even if it isn’t ideal, it’s still a step in the right direction, and seemingly the one with the best chance of happening right now. I think I prefer ranked choice over Approval. I don’t want to just say, “these 3 wouldn’t be the end of the world,” I want to be able to give more weight to the candidate I actually want to win. STAR still does that.
I do see where the transparency around ranked choice could be harder to see and make voting a lot more confusing. In an era of people claim election fraud left and right, that’s not a good thing. I guess I’d go STAR > Ranked Choice > Approval > The current system.
Not far from where I’m at. The auditing of approval being easier means that I think it should be at #2, but that’s a minor gripe.
We can agree that the current system is the worst option, which is enough for me.