"New Ballot Initiative Proposes Bringing Ranked-Choice Voting And Open Primaries To D.C."

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:
There's a reason why the incumbent politicians loathe this proposal so much: it's a direct threat to them. DC has a long track record of fractured opposition to unpopular electeds. That would translate to incumbents losing with RCV. There's a very real chance the DC Council will look different if this passes. Which is why I look forward to voting for it.


Brianne Nadeau should be absolutely terrified of RCV.

If RCV can help us get rid of Brianne, I will happily sign up to canvas door to door in favor of switching to it.

All semi-unpopular incumbents (Bonds, Bowser, Mendelsohn, Nadeau) will be threatened by RCV because it will limit the extent to which they can split the opposition vote, but I think RCV will make the most difference in primaries without an incumbent. These are generally a complete farce in DC. See Ward 2 in 2020 and Ward 3 in 2022 for examples.

I support RCV. But why would you call Ward 3's primary in 2022 a "complete farce"? We had like a pretty close race between two candidates and there was like a dozen total in the field. Some made up bullshit right here.

I don’t know if you followed the race but the only reason it was a close race in the end was because two or three candidates - who had similar platforms - effectively dropped out a couple of weeks or so before the election. The loser later cried foul and accused those who dropped out of trying to manipulate democracy and what not. I would describe it as a farce, yes, although perhaps not as bad as the Ward 7 primary this year or most at-large races.

RCV would have made it so those candidates could have stayed in and still had the same result. But I don't know that candidates dropping out is bad for democracy. Only one of them can win. No point being a spoiler when you know it's down to someone you like and someone you don't like.

Right, but if they hadn't dropped out the result might have been different. A few years ago when Pinto one the Ward 2 primary it was a similar ridiculousness of each candidate being within a few 100 votes of each other and getting a small percentage of the voters in that ward.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
There's a reason why the incumbent politicians loathe this proposal so much: it's a direct threat to them. DC has a long track record of fractured opposition to unpopular electeds. That would translate to incumbents losing with RCV. There's a very real chance the DC Council will look different if this passes. Which is why I look forward to voting for it.


Brianne Nadeau should be absolutely terrified of RCV.

If RCV can help us get rid of Brianne, I will happily sign up to canvas door to door in favor of switching to it.

All semi-unpopular incumbents (Bonds, Bowser, Mendelsohn, Nadeau) will be threatened by RCV because it will limit the extent to which they can split the opposition vote, but I think RCV will make the most difference in primaries without an incumbent. These are generally a complete farce in DC. See Ward 2 in 2020 and Ward 3 in 2022 for examples.

I support RCV. But why would you call Ward 3's primary in 2022 a "complete farce"? We had like a pretty close race between two candidates and there was like a dozen total in the field. Some made up bullshit right here.

I don’t know if you followed the race but the only reason it was a close race in the end was because two or three candidates - who had similar platforms - effectively dropped out a couple of weeks or so before the election. The loser later cried foul and accused those who dropped out of trying to manipulate democracy and what not. I would describe it as a farce, yes, although perhaps not as bad as the Ward 7 primary this year or most at-large races.

RCV would have made it so those candidates could have stayed in and still had the same result. But I don't know that candidates dropping out is bad for democracy. Only one of them can win. No point being a spoiler when you know it's down to someone you like and someone you don't like.

Right, but if they hadn't dropped out the result might have been different. A few years ago when Pinto one the Ward 2 primary it was a similar ridiculousness of each candidate being within a few 100 votes of each other and getting a small percentage of the voters in that ward.

That’s why they dropped out, to avoid splitting the vote of the bloc of people they mostly agreed with. Under RCV, they basically stay in until the election and then drop out after the first round of ballots are counted.

[Anonymous]

Pretty sure this is actually being pushed by Republicans so they can have a chance to take over by confusing the lower information voters.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Pretty sure this is actually being pushed by Republicans so they can have a chance to take over by confusing the lower information voters.

What Republicans? There's like five of them in DC. Here's a list of cities that use ranked choice voting:

San Francisco
New York City
Portland, Oregon
Seattle
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Berkeley, California
Minneapolis
Portland, Maine
Takoma, Maryland
Arlington, Virginia
Burlington, Vermont

You'll notice that it's highly liberal areas that tend to adopt ranked choice voting...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Pretty sure this is actually being pushed by Republicans so they can have a chance to take over by confusing the lower information voters.

It's super unlikely that Republicans will do BETTER under this system. Most Democrats would easily just rank a Republican candidate last (or not rank them at all).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Pretty sure this is actually being pushed by Republicans so they can have a chance to take over by confusing the lower information voters.

Is that what the DC Democratic Party is telling you?

If anything, RCV will favor moderate, non-incumbent candidates and make the DC Council less of a punching bag for congressional Republicans.

RCV is not something that is going to help Republicans one iota.

Low information voters are free to vote in RCV. If they want to vote for a single candidate rather than ranking their preferences, then their vote for that one candidate will be counted.

That RCV may encourage some low information voters to learn a bit more about the candidates vying for their vote is unambiguously beneficial to democracy in DC.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
There's a reason why the incumbent politicians loathe this proposal so much: it's a direct threat to them. DC has a long track record of fractured opposition to unpopular electeds. That would translate to incumbents losing with RCV. There's a very real chance the DC Council will look different if this passes. Which is why I look forward to voting for it.


Brianne Nadeau should be absolutely terrified of RCV.

If RCV can help us get rid of Brianne, I will happily sign up to canvas door to door in favor of switching to it.

All semi-unpopular incumbents (Bonds, Bowser, Mendelsohn, Nadeau) will be threatened by RCV because it will limit the extent to which they can split the opposition vote, but I think RCV will make the most difference in primaries without an incumbent. These are generally a complete farce in DC. See Ward 2 in 2020 and Ward 3 in 2022 for examples.

I support RCV. But why would you call Ward 3's primary in 2022 a "complete farce"? We had like a pretty close race between two candidates and there was like a dozen total in the field. Some made up bullshit right here.

I don’t know if you followed the race but the only reason it was a close race in the end was because two or three candidates - who had similar platforms - effectively dropped out a couple of weeks or so before the election. The loser later cried foul and accused those who dropped out of trying to manipulate democracy and what not. I would describe it as a farce, yes, although perhaps not as bad as the Ward 7 primary this year or most at-large races.

RCV would have made it so those candidates could have stayed in and still had the same result. But I don't know that candidates dropping out is bad for democracy. Only one of them can win. No point being a spoiler when you know it's down to someone you like and someone you don't like.

Right, but if they hadn't dropped out the result might have been different. A few years ago when Pinto one the Ward 2 primary it was a similar ridiculousness of each candidate being within a few 100 votes of each other and getting a small percentage of the voters in that ward.

That’s why they dropped out, to avoid splitting the vote of the bloc of people they mostly agreed with. Under RCV, they basically stay in until the election and then drop out after the first round of ballots are counted.

It's being pushed by moderates and educated voters sick of machine politics.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Pretty sure this is actually being pushed by Republicans so they can have a chance to take over by confusing the lower information voters.

It will have no impact whatsoever on Republicans since it will basically only come into play during the primaries. Talk about trying to confuse low information voters, jeez louise.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
There's a reason why the incumbent politicians loathe this proposal so much: it's a direct threat to them. DC has a long track record of fractured opposition to unpopular electeds. That would translate to incumbents losing with RCV. There's a very real chance the DC Council will look different if this passes. Which is why I look forward to voting for it.


Brianne Nadeau should be absolutely terrified of RCV.

If RCV can help us get rid of Brianne, I will happily sign up to canvas door to door in favor of switching to it.

All semi-unpopular incumbents (Bonds, Bowser, Mendelsohn, Nadeau) will be threatened by RCV because it will limit the extent to which they can split the opposition vote, but I think RCV will make the most difference in primaries without an incumbent. These are generally a complete farce in DC. See Ward 2 in 2020 and Ward 3 in 2022 for examples.

I support RCV. But why would you call Ward 3's primary in 2022 a "complete farce"? We had like a pretty close race between two candidates and there was like a dozen total in the field. Some made up bullshit right here.

I don’t know if you followed the race but the only reason it was a close race in the end was because two or three candidates - who had similar platforms - effectively dropped out a couple of weeks or so before the election. The loser later cried foul and accused those who dropped out of trying to manipulate democracy and what not. I would describe it as a farce, yes, although perhaps not as bad as the Ward 7 primary this year or most at-large races.

RCV would have made it so those candidates could have stayed in and still had the same result. But I don't know that candidates dropping out is bad for democracy. Only one of them can win. No point being a spoiler when you know it's down to someone you like and someone you don't like.

Right, but if they hadn't dropped out the result might have been different. A few years ago when Pinto one the Ward 2 primary it was a similar ridiculousness of each candidate being within a few 100 votes of each other and getting a small percentage of the voters in that ward.

That’s why they dropped out, to avoid splitting the vote of the bloc of people they mostly agreed with. Under RCV, they basically stay in until the election and then drop out after the first round of ballots are counted.

It's being pushed by moderates and educated voters sick of machine politics.

Yup. And those of us sick of progressive groupthink as well. To be fair, there are plenty of hard-right areas of the country that would benefit from RCV as well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Pretty sure this is actually being pushed by Republicans so they can have a chance to take over by confusing the lower information voters.

One of the people proposing it has been behind some very, very progressive proposals in the past, like legalizing gay marriage 25 years before it was something people would talk about openly.

The DC Democratic State Committee stated during its September meeting that several councilmembers are opposed privately and want the party to do all it can to stop RCV. The party then sent a mailer (discussed in another thread) using the names of supporters of the proposal saying they oppose the initiative. The Ward 1, 2, 4, and 6 Democrats have called out the city Dems on this misleading crap and it looks like the Ward 3 Dems will follow suit, judging from their chair regularly tweeting his support of I-83. Absolute self-own by the DC Dems again.

[Anonymous]

And that’s a firm yes. It’s the only way to separate the useless semi-criminal toads on the Council from the taxpayers teat

[Anonymous]

No kidding council members are opposed. They might gasp have to get another job in the future if 83 passes.

I’ve never heard a stronger confirmation that I voted correctly Yes on 83

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So I vote and I just want to let everyone know that the actual question for RCV is on the BACK of the ballot. So plesae be sure to turn over the ballot and vote on this question.
Personally as an independent I an disenfranchised by the current system and would welcome this new method of voting

Great point!

[Anonymous]

I'm voting YES.

[Anonymous]

Ranked choice YES! And then hope it gets all around the country too. It’s the only way the country will get less extreme and divisive. Most of us are closer in views than what it seems from the votes, due to the extreme options we get. Always just crazy or crazier!