Joe Biden is officially the 21st candidate to enter the Democratic primary depending on the count (Gravel and Williamson are often excluded but sometimes included).
I like Joe for his blue collar appeal, but I also agree with Bernie and Warren on more of the issues. As a millennial I like Mayor Pete, but I also think Harris and Booker have potential. Or maybe I want to send a message about climate by picking Inslee? Or foreign policy by picking Gabbard? Or #MeToo by picking Gillibrand? Wouldn’t it be better to rank my priorities rather than arbitrarily settle for one?
Under ranked choice voting I don’t have to. I can vote for all of these candidates and rank them in order of preference. This means they all have an incentive to not only attract my vote but also attract one another’s voters. It makes it far less likely our primary is decided by trivial gaffes (Biden’s handsy! Warren is not a real Cherokee! As a prosecutor, Harris prosecuted people! Bernie wants convicts to vote!) and more likely actual substance plays the decisive role. It makes candidates focused on the climate vote, on the woke vote, or on the skateboarder vote can use their narrower appeals to get concessions from the wider party and the eventual nominee. It means we all end up with someone we live with without having to bang the nominee up like Hillary.
Another 2020 choice is whether Massachusetts should switch to this method. I think we should. I think it makes for more democratic and more civil primaries making it harder for people to say the process is ‘rigged’ and easier for the nominee to say she or he has the full support of the party. Let’s choose choice for 2020!
I’m generally supportive of ranked choice voting, but I’d have to think a little more about the logistics in a context whereby we are not picking a winner so much as apportioning our national convention delegates. It is already the case that any candidate with at least 15% of the vote share per CD can get delegates.
Ideally, I think an IRV winner take all in every primary would be the best of both worlds. The IRV part gives you proportionality while the WTA part allows for a quicker winnowing. It also makes sure that the overall delegate winner is always the popular vote winner and the candidate a true majority of the party (in a given state) selects.
I’m not sure I share your implied premise that a quicker winnowing is a good thing, plus I thought WTA was the biggest problem with how most states allocate electoral votes and seems less democratic.
Christopher, there are no logistical problems in using ranked voting to select multiple candidates. This is not a new voting method.
But, there are some actual decisions to be made about how to deploy it. Cambridge elects its 9-member city council proportionately this way, but there is also a straight-majority method, or you could split the difference by dividing the delegates into tranches.
Are those the logistical issues to which you refer?
Since the point is not to pick a winner, but to select delegates I’m struggling with why this would be necessary, and I have yet to figure out Cambridge’s system.
“Necessary?” RV might be a good thing because it is fairer, makes every vote count, avoids strategic voting dilemmas etc.–all the usual arguments.
I get that you see a difficulty because its electing a group , but (1) it doesn’t present to the voter that way and (2) RV can handle groups just fine.
As for 2, you rank your selections and run them through the sorting algorithm. If you are doing PR (as in Cambridge), the designated pluralities rule, otherwise majorities.
Well, that is how Ireland elects its Dail (legislature). Ranked choice voting for multiple spots in defined areas. If each CD has, say, 6 delegates, ranked choice would work rather well.
In case anyone is interested, here are all the campaign websites:
Joe Biden for President: http://www.joebiden.com
Cory Booker for President: http://www.corybooker.com
Pete Buttigieg for President: http://www.peteforamerica.com
Julian Castro for President: http://www.julianforthefuture.com/
John Delaney for President: http://www.johnkdelaney.com/
Tulsi Gabbard for President: http://www.tulsi2020.com
Kirsten Gillibrand for President: 2020.kirstengillibrand.com/
Mike Gravel for President: http://www.mikegravel.org
Kamala Harris for President: https://kamalaharris.org/
John Hickenlooper for President: http://www.hickenlooper.com
Jay Inslee for President: http://www.jayinslee.com
Amy Klobuchar for President: http://www.amyklobuchar.com
Wayne Messam for President: https://waynemessam.com
Seth Moulton for President: http://www.sethmoulton.com
Beto O’Rourke for President: https://betoorourke.com
Tim Ryan for President: https://timryanforamerica.com
Bernie Sanders for President: http://www.berniesanders.com
Eric Swalwell for President: http://www.ericswalwell.com
Elizabeth Warren for President: http://www.elizabethwarren.com
Marianne Williamson for President: https://www.marianne2020.com
Andrew Yang for President: http://www.yang2020.com
As an engineer, my starting point is “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”.
I see no evidence that the Democratic presidential primary process is broken in Massachusetts. I know I’m perhaps ducking the question, but the last paragraph narrows this to a question about 2020.
When I enumerate the several broken and squeaking parts of the machinery in the Massachusetts Democratic Party, I don’t see the relevance of changing the way we vote. Maybe someday, but right now I think our more immediate needs are to:
– Give the party and its platform some teeth
– Make the party more relevant to Massachusetts Democrats
– Remove Bob DeLeo as Speaker of the House
If we are going to grease a squeaking part, I think all of these should come first.
So far as I can remember, I’ve been happy with the winner of all the recent Massachusetts Democratic primary elections. I preferred Jimmy Carter over the other candidates in 1976 and 1980. I’ve never felt there was anything broken about either of those elections — especially by current standards. I never felt that Ted Kennedy was qualified to be President and I resented his decision to run against Jimmy Carter in 1980.
I would prefer to see alternative voting systems exercised in less important offices and in other states. I’m not ready to support it for elections for national office here in Massachusetts.
I’ll take half a loaf. My big issue is that we tend to vote later than everyone else and this is the widest open and most crowded field in a generation. I worry about a brokered convention or a nominee winning with less than 20% of voters selecting them as their first choice. We’re obviously stuck with the system we have for this upcoming primary and we will see how it works.
As someone genuinely torn between 5 or 6 candidates it would feel better to rank them than having to choose just one.
MA is voting relatively early this year as part of Super Tuesday, and if I had my way the latest states would have just as much choice as the earliest. Also, as a political junkie I would love for just once in my life see a real convention, but so far I’ve had to settle for Season 6 of The West Wing:(
Massachusetts is actually voting relatively early NEXT year. The actual primary season doesn’t begin until the Iowa caucuses on February 3, 2020.
This is a great time for any political junkie who lives north of Boston to start volunteering in the run-up to the February 11, 2020 New Hampshire primary. Manchester and Portsmouth are easy to get to from northern MA, and it’s a great way to make an easy and meaningful contribution of time rather than money.
Yes, of course, this cycle not this year. I guess partly it feels like 2020 with all the active campaigns already and partly I wish it were 2020 to get the current presidency over with sooner:)
I suggest that being torn between 5 or 6 primary candidates more than 18 months from the general election strikes me as a sign of system health and strength rather than weakness.
The Massachusetts primary is almost a full year away (Mar 3, 2020). That is an absolute eternity in the current political environment.
I completely agree with JC, except for the part about how ranked voting makes it harder to say the process is rigged.
You vastly underestimate some people!
Frankly, I find myself wondering this in the context of member-driven organizations that do endorsements. In the wake of the (bafflingly quick) firefighters’ endorsement of Biden, I wonder how democratic organizations such as activist groups should approach this. I know some groups have a floor – I think the AFL-CIO required a 60% vote in favor to endorse a candidate – which would make a meaningful endorsement difficult. At the same time, how much does the “endorsement” of a candidate mean if they earned 26% of the vote? Not much.
I hope progressive groups start building in a system like this to decide who to back, not just at primaries.
There are now 22 as CO Senator Michael Bennet joined the race today.