RCV trends: Four states ban RCV in 2025, bringing the number of states with bans to 15.
(Okay idk why it says 15 up here then later says 16, somebody on that site probably didn’t update the title text)
As of April 30, five states had banned RCV in 2025, which brought the total number of states that prohibit RCV to 16.
- Gov. Mark Gordon (Republican) signed HB 165 on March 18.
- West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey (Republican) signed SB 490 the March 19.
- Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly (Democrat) signed SB 6 into law on April 1.
- North Dakota Gov. Kelly Armstrong (Republican) signed HB 1297 on April 15.
- Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (Republican) signed HB 1706 which became law on April 17.
Six states banned RCV in 2024.
Why YSK: If you’re a US-American, its time to pay attention to State and Local politics instead of solely on the Federal. There is a trend in conservative jurisdictions to stop progress in making elecoral systems more fair. Use this opportunity as a rallying-cry to pass Ranked-Choice Voting in progressive jurisdictions, and hopefully everyone else takes notes. Sometimes, all you need is a few states adopting a law to become the catalyst for it to become the model for the entire country, for better or for worse. Don’t allow anti-RCV legislations to dominate, counter the propaganda with pro-RCV arguments. Time to turn the tide.
Edit: fixed formatting
Edit 2: Added in the map so you don’t have to click the link:
See the pattern? 🤔
Did y’all think the regime gonna just let you change the rules of the game that keep it in place…
Cute
“Obey! Resistance is futile 🤖” Thats how you sound my friend. I know it is not easy to see any ways out of the shit the U.S. is in but giving up beforehand is called doomerism and it is one of the biggest cancers alive.
For real, you better count on sunzu1/2/3 to come out and give up all hope while indirectly giving us his infinite wisdom.
I am not giving up. I am commenting on the current political conditions.
Also, my work speaks for itself and obey aint it ;)
People must exhaust this avenue among others before borne understands the conditions imposed on him/her
At least people are waking so team peasant got that going. It will take a generation or two.
Remember that by the time FDR stepped in plebs spent 2-3 generations shedding blood for the cause. But it still took a cripled nepo baby with sympathy for the common man, along with parasites botching the economy for the change to happen. And it only lasted like 40 years.
My bad. I guess i took the “Cute” the wrong way.
To add on to this: Maine did add RCV, as well as many blue cities in blue states, refer to the map I just added to the post (it’s a screenshot from the source).
If we keep growing interest locally, people will become more familiar with the alternatives. The more cities and counties that use alternative voting systems, the easier it gets to pass these alternative systems statewide.
While many state lawmakers are determined to push back against alternative voting systems, there is always the possibility of flipping the rules back down the line, especially if more states in general flip blue, progressive, or independent.
Did you read the same comment as me? I read that as “why would the powers that be wilfully give up the path to that power?”
They’re not saying “obey”. They’re saying this shouldn’t be a surprise.
No.
The comment is belittling a call to action as if it is futile because ‘the powers that be’ won’t let you act against them. Which is bullshit. Republicans biggest power comes from political inaction and resignation. They aswell have used the system to play us all and now want every opposition to believe it is too late. Talking about nefarious powers will do exactly nothing but invoke doomerism.
You are injecting heavy opinion here. That’s not what I meant and there others who didn’t read like you did… But sure fight you a wind mill boy
This is in fact what I meant to convey.
This is a fight worth fighting even if it is futile as it will expose how nasty the oppression really is. Most people assume everything is kosher because they never try to step out from the normie way of thinking where they accept everything as is.
deleted by creator
Meh. There are better voting systems such as range voting and STAR.
Got some videos here that explains various voting systems if yall are interested.
Electoral Reform Videos
First Past The Post voting (What most states use now)
Videos on alternative electoral systems
STAR voting
Your STAR voting video doesn’t exist on my end, America here if that matters for copyright/prohibition.
France here, the video is unavailable to me too.
You also have to account in human stupidity. If you make the ballot too complex, dumbasses are gonna mess it up and the ballots will be invalidated.
RCV isn’t monotonic, meaning that in the right circumstances you can harm your chosen candidate’s chances by ranking him higher. Doesn’t matter how rare it is; what a ridiculous quality for a voting system to have.
The point of RCV isn’t to ensure your chosen candidate wins; it’s to ensure that whoever does win has at least some amount of approval from the majority of voters.
It does still have flaws, but it’s still far superior to the current system the US uses.
Really, anything other than FPTP is fine. RCV only has the same outcome as FPTP, where the least liked candidate can win, in ~10% of outcomes which is fairly uncommon. Really we should be okay with promoting most of the alternatives since they can be modified down the line as well. I personally promote Ranked Robin, STAR, and Score more but RCV is always worth supporting if it’s on your local ballot vs FPTP. Most people are more familiar and accepting of RCV if they have heard of some of these alternatives.
I agree it’s a flaw, but the answer isn’t to move to an even worse and more gameable system, it’s to move to proportional systems like MMP.
Cardinal voting systems are terrible because strategic voting is as trivial as it is in FPTP. In IRV situations where strategic voting would be possible exist, but they’re rare and hard to predict. In cardinal systems it’s always best to give the maximum score or the minimum score, and never anything in between.
And when that happens it just defaults to approval, which is still non-monotonic and better than IRV, but it’s been proven anyway that that doesn’t happen and most people are honest (or would learn to be honest after few iterations). IRV is also not devoid of strategy, as it can be better to rank your true favourite lower
IRV is also not devoid of strategy, as it can be better to rank your true favourite lower
I think you missed the part where I said that it can happen, but that it’s rare and hard to predict.
Approval Voting is bad because of the simple fact that it doesn’t let you express any preference. There’s no ability to say “I’ll take this guy if I really have to, to avoid the worst outcome, but if possible I would much prefer this other guy”. In single-winner systems, having some mechanism to express that one candidate is better than another is absolutely crucial.
I think you missed the part where I said that it can happen, but that it’s rare and hard to predict.
Yea, sorry, my wording wasn’t the clearest. I meant to say that it is actually not that rare, and hoped that the linked source would help support that claim. From the same website:
We can [assume that] “all votes [are] equally likely except that the probabilities that A,B,C will be middle-ranked of the three in that vote are 30%, 30%, and 40% respectively” where C is the 3rd-party candidate. Then in IRV as #voters→∞, C’s probability of winning is probably exponentially tiny so that Joe Voter is justified in assuming C only a very tiny […] chance of winning. Indeed C only has a tiny chance of merely surviving the first round.
However, Joe reasons, if Joe and friends by honestly-ranking C top do manage to make C survive the first round, then that will almost certainly happen only at the cost of eliminating Joe’s second-favorite candidate A. If the A votes then transfer equally to C and B (which in “1-dimensional politics” with C A B arranged along a “line” in that order, seems likely) then C will almost certainly still lose, and will have deprived A of victory in the process.
The idea then would be that the behavior of mid-ranking the 3rd party candidate would be self-reinforcing in IRV: an assumption of a slight bias that way like we just made (40% versus 30% […]), then leads to it being strategically wise for Joe Voter to do it, leading to a larger bias that way, etc. – positive feedback, self-reinforcing 2-party domination.
Approval Voting is bad because of the simple fact that it doesn’t let you express any preference.
I agree and that’s why I support Score Voting over it! The mechanism to express that one candidate is better than another one is to just give them honest scores! And there’s studies proving that’s the reality is, the vast majority of people are at least somewhat honest when filling out a Score ballot
And there’s studies proving that’s the reality is, the vast majority of people are at least somewhat honest when filling out a Score ballot
- It’s never been used at the scale of an actual large country’s national election. The stakes are so fundamentally different than any small-scale study.
- Even if true, that’s not necessarily a good thing. It just makes the vote of those who do vote strategically all the more powerful.
Cardinal systems devolve into approval, and approval doesn’t allow expressing preference. And being unable to express preference lends itself to some of the worst strategic voting and reintroduces the spoiler effect in the place it’s most important to avoid the spoiler effect: serious 3-(or more-)way races. If I’m an A voter, B is centrist, and C is worst, then under approval it’s fine for me to approve of A and B if I know A can’t win. But the moment A is a serious contender, choosing to approve of B decreases the chance A might win. But not approving of B increases the chance C might win. I’m stuck with having to make a terrible decision.
Ordinal systems don’t do this. Some ordinal systems might be better than IRV and avoid the biggest criticisms of that system, but ordinal systems beat cardinal systems nearly every time.
But the main thing about all of this is that every single-winner system is always worse than proportional multi-winner systems. Moving to any system other than FPTP should be the first priority, but if you’re going to spend time knocking down suggestions to improve to the most well-proven alternative, you might as well go all the way and advocate MMP or direct proportional, and on shoring up some of the weaknesses of that system (such as problems with party lists letting parties choose who gets in even if people don’t like the candidate of the party they like, or how minimum thresholds can lead to some people’s votes being effectively wasted).
I think most people would agree that it does matter how rare it is.
Even if imperfect, ranked choice voting would give voters considerably more voice than they have now. That could be used to, for example, vote in another method in the future.
Ok, I’m sold, let’s do this
The ballot is the same for all ranked voting methods. The method of determining winner from those ballots varies, and some are clearly worse.
For instance, if a candidate would beat all others 1-on-1 (Condorcet winner), then should a decent method always select that candidate as winner? RCV doesn’t do that.
Example
- A > B > C: 2
- C > B > A: 2
- B > C > A: 1
Who wins according to instant run-off? C. Who wins against every opponent 1-on-1? B.
This nice table compares voting methods by a wide range of properties. I don’t think it hurts to make a more informed decision before backing a method that will be difficult to change. The US got stuck with FPTP through inadequate research, and it’d be great not to repeat that mistake.
While rated voting methods fail the Condorcet winner criterion, by rating instead of ranking candidates they satisfy another set of criteria also worth considering.
Among ranked voting methods, ranked pairs seems most compelling to me. Among rated voting methods, approval seems pretty good (and extremely simple).
I retract this portion of the comment and put in this spoiler
Among ranked voting methods, ranked pairs seems most compelling to me.
I think that’d fail miserably in the real world.
Think about the average voter. They see this ballot:
A vs B?
A vs C?
A vs D?
B vs C?
B vs D?
C vs D?
Yea I think they’re gonna freak out upon seeing this ballot. Right now, the most important goal should be to get rid of the spoiler effect and FPTP, rather than finding the best system.
approval seems pretty good (and extremely simple).
I can see a bit of strategic voting happening.
Let me demonstrate:
For the sake of simplicity, let’s say we have 3 candidates, and no term limits:
Trump, Biden, Sanders
Biden and Sander voters dispise trump, their preference in RCV is (example):
Biden>Sanders>Trump: 30%
Sander>Biden>Trump: 25%
Trump>Sanders>Biden: 23%
Trump>Biden>Sanders: 22%Okay, so lets say they all approve their top 2:
Biden: 77%
Sanders: 78%
Trump: 45%Okay we have president Sanders! Congrats, right?
Well, now the trumpers who approved sanders are like: “Hey wait a minute, we made our daddy lose because we approved Sanders”
All the trumpers now have a meeting and decided that next election, they don’t approve Sanders or Biden as a strategic vote.
So now, Election 2 Results:
Biden: 55%
Sanders: 55%
Trump: 45%Oh great, it’s a tie. The law says that the election have to be re-done to solve the tie:
Now this next election, all people who preferred Sanders first go to a Sanders supporter meeting and started saying: “Lets disapprove Biden so Bernie can win!”
Simultaneously, Biden voters will be like: “Lets disapprove Sanders so Biden can win!”
Next election results:
Trump: 45%
Biden: 30%
Sanders 25%Congrats, we have a glorified FPTP and spoiler effect yet again!
Now, other election systems could also have strategic voting, but its less likely with, for example, RCV, since you can rank candidates.
Yea I think they’re gonna freak out upon seeing this ballot.
I think you missed the first sentence I wrote:
The ballot is the same for all ranked voting methods.
Maybe explaining what you think that means would clear up confusion?
I can see a bit of strategic voting happening.
Yes, approval voting is indeed susceptible to strategies including burial, which leads to a “chicken dilemma”.
Ah nvm, I thought the ballot was gonna lok like this:
A vs B?
A vs C?
A vs D?
B vs C?
B vs D?
C vs D?
I misunderstood, I get it now, its all tabulated in the background, same ballot as Ranked-Choice voting.
But my point about the approval voting still stands.
There are, and my state would have banned those too it they’d heard about them when they were banning RCV. They weren’t making principled objections like monotonicity failures. They likely noticed that most of RCV’s loudest advocates were from the wrong party (and some of the were the wrong color too!), and figured that was a good enough reason to shut it down.
The fact that Americans banned it, means it good for the people.
Lol home of the free, what a shit hole
the gop specifically, they know thier VOter suppression and gerrymander all BS, and would be negated if that happened.
If it happened, both parties were responsible, they work in tandem, pretending to be different sides, so you get fucked no matter where you vote.
It’s not just the USA that’s in dire need of it. The UK should also adopt it. First Past The Post (FPTP) voting encourages polarized extremism. Because it functions on a Ricky Bobby-esque “if you’re not first, you’re last” philosophy that punishes moderates for being moderate.
Don’t worry. Voting altogether will be next.
deleted by creator
As a Texan, it’s a relief to finally not be included on one of these lists for once.
deleted by creator
Don’t worry, there’s always 2026!
Don’t be too relieved. There’s a bill banning RCV that passed the Texas Senate and is being considered by the House: https://www.billtrack50.com/billdetail/1751192
[yeehaws sadly]
Why did you add like a hundred spaces in front of the list of states? That makes it a code block that requires tons of horizontal scrolling to read. I didn’t even recognize it as such at first.
You know Lemmy has spoiler syntax, right? If that’s what you were going for?
For those non-USians reading this, the pattern is: states which tend to vote Republican and thus have majority Republican governance. So called “red states”.
You’d think it would be democrats worried about another Bernie Sanders coming along.
What is it the republicans are worried about with RCV?
The left wing vote is split, so the Republicans can win just by getting the largest number of votes with first-past-the-post.
deleted by creator
The magas only gained their stranglehold on the party, despite being a minority, due to the neocons splitting their primary ballots.
They gained their stranglehold from 20+ years of systematic takeover. The Tea Party became MAGA. It didn’t happen over night
I never said it did. First past the post is what allowed that to happen.
Does it also shock you that Iowa is on the short list to do the same?
deleted by creator
I’m curious what you got for I.O.W.A. I hate this place, so I love anything that bags on us.
I’ve always known it as “Idiots Out Wandering Around”
deleted by creator
Ranked choice should be the standard
There was a STRONG effort to ban (or at least end) RCV here in Alaska, and it failed, but barely. They even did the super misleading wording, too, in order to make it unclear if the measure banned RCV or supported it.
I was always so confused by the adamant support that was being shown by general people, though. Like, I get why both Dems and Republicans would be against it: they want to be the only two players in the game. But why any general people would want less choice is beyond me. And it’s funny, because the staunchest proponents (at least where I am) were conservatives, when (again, where I live) RCV basically drove out the Democrats. There were Progressives, there were “centrists,” there were Libertarians, and then there was Republican/MAGA. Dems didn’t even get enough support to be on the ballot. So their hated Libs were wiped off the board entirely for being so ill-liked, but they want to get rid of that system? I just don’t get it.
People are stupid. They think RCV is “too confusing”
I feel like it can kind of be confusing to understand how the process works for it.
But it is not even remotely confusing as to what you do. Choose, from most to least, who you want. It’s that simple. You want to get into how those votes are tallied, do a little dive, there’s plenty of videos very simply explaining it. If you don’t, and just want to be able to go vote? Just go vote. If even ranking them is too complicated because you have a worm in your brain, just choose one and ignore everything else.
It might be complicated to tally, but it is not complicated to do. It’s just people being duped by the Big 2 parties to not want choices.
In MO. Voted on it last year. The ballot was intentionally worded to be misleading.
It said each person can only cast one vote. Making it sound like it was to prevent people from voting twice even though that person as already not allowed.
So dumb.
Missouri Amendment 7, Require Citizenship to Vote and Prohibit Ranked-Choice Voting Amendmen
They just pulled that in the Ohio House this week. They have been calling it “One Person, One Vote” and are going to withhold state funds to any municipality that uses ranked choice voting. It passed our house 22-5 iirc
Nothing will meaningfully improve until the rich fear for their lives
seeing so many upvotes on this comment made my morning.
remember, we can plan anonymously online by posting plans in the form of if/then scenarios. example: if i were trying to put the richest american oligarchs in check, i would first need a list of who they are widely disseminated to the masses.
i’m not advocating that, i’m just saying IF that’s what i were trying to do, that’s how i would do it.
i’m not advocating that
You don’t have to. Forbes already publishes a real-time up-to-date list of the richest people in the world.
https://www.forbes.com/real-time-billionaires/#5b60b1453d78
It can be sorted by net worth, country of residence, industry the person made their fortune in, or age.
that’s great. i would think the next step for a bunch of class warriors would be to determine which ones are the most harmful, or maybe make people aware of their presence by proximity.
Sarah huckabee did something awful??? Shocked I say
Love how it’s the cousin fucking states and the flyover Midwest.
🇦🇺 heh, amateurs… But seriously this is ridiculous, and straight up anti-democtatic. Single member first past the post is the worst voting system out there.
Inb4 they make mulit-member electorates winner-take-all (all seats to the party who got the plurality of votes).
This is THE fight USA. In my opinion, your ridiculous voting systems is probably why it’s so easy to suppress you.
We voted for it at the county level here in CA. That was back in 2020. San Diego county voted to use RCV, as did several other counties in CA. The county registrar of voters is refusing to change from FPTP, and is waiting to see how the lawsuits turn out.
Even if your state hasn’t banned it, they will fight you tooth and nail not to change it.
This is democrats and Republicans not wanting people to vote for their candidate of choice because they have to constantly play the game of the lesser of two evils. They wanna keep power
And this is why you have the 2A
Don’t blame me; I voted for Kodos
Not even one state that has banned it is run by Democrats.
Gov. Mark Gordon (Republican) signed HB 165 on March 18.
West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey (Republican) signed SB 490 the March 19.
Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly (Democrat) signed SB 6 into law on April 1.
North Dakota Gov. Kelly Armstrong (Republican) signed HB 1297 on April 15.
Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (Republican) signed HB 1706 which became law on April 17.
5/6 are Republican shitheads however.
While Kansas has a Democratic governor, I wouldn’t call it a blue state. State Congress is likely all red. This was likely a ballot measure and the people voted on it. The governor just put into law what the people voted on. Nothing more.
While Kansas has a Democratic governor, I wouldn’t call it a blue state.
Ah so the one time it happened it doesn’t count.
By that logic, California is a red state because Schwarzenegger was Governor at one point.
Yes it was. California had a Republican in charge the people liked and kept around. Only really because he was an actor.
If Schwarzenegger was a random nobody, he wouldn’t have won the recall.
So California is a red state? Got it.
So I looked into this being from Kansas it kind of pissed me off. Turns out she won with like 49% where the Rs got only 47 and two different third parties took about 4%. So Rs were pushing for it thinking those that cast third party would put them next over the Dem, while calling them wasted and spoiled votes. So this was proposed by the Wichita mayor under the guise that RCV was too complicated for people to understand, and likely kelly signed the ban because of fear she might lose her minor majority. Total fucking bullshit politics as usual.
So this was proposed by the Wichita mayor under the guise that RCV was too complicated for people to understand, and likely kelly signed the ban because of fear she might lose her minor majority. Total fucking bullshit politics as usual.
Sounds like them. Capitulating to Republicans because of fear.
This is the reality of the ‘both sides…’ arguments, yes both sides are guilty of doing despicable things but the scales are very heavily tipped in one direction.
Unfortunately with how far americans have legislated and tightened the stranglehold on control of the ‘democratic’ process, i dont see this ever being undone… ‘willingly’…Kansas has Republican supermajorities in both legislative houses. She didn’t have a choice but to sign.
Did she veto it?
Do you not know what a supermajority is?
Yes, I’m just saying making Republicans do extra work is good.
Your right about that, it is a fair thing to point out. However, I will mention that the democratic party has a hostile past to 3rd parties where they would do things like suing them to get them off ballots.
Here is one example for reference: https://apnews.com/article/2022-midterm-elections-lawsuits-voting-north-carolina-raleigh-48f1e61c1988c7083edcdc7bb1eace4a
