Why did California pick such a clearly terrible way of running primaries? It could have worked with ranked-choice voting but, the way it is now, you get hilarious features like the Republican frontrunner being incentivized to have people vote for the other Republican rather than for him (because if he’s #1 and a Democrat is #2, he definitely loses the general election, but if he’s #1 and the other Republican is #2, he has about 50% odds of winning).
Why did California pick such a clearly terrible way of running primaries?
I don’t know the answer, but I’ll bet it will turn out to be another dumb Democrat idea, to make things “Fair,” which ALWAYS means giving some unfair advantage to MAGAs.
It’s a poison pill to force strategic voting and push people towards candidates that are backed by money. Colorado turned down ranked choice voting, and a lot of it was due to a similar single-vote primary system being packaged with it to make it not work well for actually electing candidates the people want. Voting reform activists knew this and made sure enough people knew that ranked choice elections was a trojan horse for a bad single vote primary system.
Ranked choice voting has become my top policy issue
Long-term it’s the most important change we could make. It’s what can get us candidates people actually like, rather than constantly voting for the “electable” one with corporate backers
Why did California pick such a clearly terrible way of running primaries? It could have worked with ranked-choice voting but, the way it is now, you get hilarious features like the Republican frontrunner being incentivized to have people vote for the other Republican rather than for him (because if he’s #1 and a Democrat is #2, he definitely loses the general election, but if he’s #1 and the other Republican is #2, he has about 50% odds of winning).
I don’t know the answer, but I’ll bet it will turn out to be another dumb Democrat idea, to make things “Fair,” which ALWAYS means giving some unfair advantage to MAGAs.
It’s a poison pill to force strategic voting and push people towards candidates that are backed by money. Colorado turned down ranked choice voting, and a lot of it was due to a similar single-vote primary system being packaged with it to make it not work well for actually electing candidates the people want. Voting reform activists knew this and made sure enough people knew that ranked choice elections was a trojan horse for a bad single vote primary system.
Ranked choice voting has become my top policy issue
Long-term it’s the most important change we could make. It’s what can get us candidates people actually like, rather than constantly voting for the “electable” one with corporate backers
It’s times like these I wish California would utilize the Pretender System to elect a governor. It would solve so many problems.
I’m thankful for their fucked uo voting system because it got me candidate Gary Coleman and governor Schwarzenegger
That was before open primaries.
Before primary reform and Schwarzenegger was elected during a recall which is frankly a system that needs to be burned down and rebuilt.