YSK that in 16 States in the USA has banned Ranked-Choice voting, including 5 that has just banned it in 2025, and 6 of those bans happened in 2024.
YSK that in 16 States in the USA has banned Ranked-Choice voting, including 5 that has just banned it in 2025, and 6 of those bans happened in 2024.
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? 🤔
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Approval and STAR are better anyway. Not that they wouldn't find a piss poor excuse to ban those as well.
STAR? Sure.
Approval? Nah
Gonna copy paste my comment again:
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.
STAR voting is also acceptable, but its also less heard of, and as far as I know, it hasn't ever been done in a real-life election. I doubt that'll get popular any time soon, might as well find another easier to implement Non-FPTP system to rally behind.
Voters get together and decide who to vote for
Okay, I'm going to stop you right there. What about the voting populace makes you think we're capable of that?
Congrats, we have a glorified FPTP and spoiler effect yet again!
Not quite. As you've just observed, this kind of strategic voting is risky, and self destructive. Which means that many would recognize this, and not use this voting strategy. Its a game of chicken, and lots of people prefer not to play such a game and instead support the safe bet, which means supporting those you genuinely support.
And as !ammonium@lemmy.world pointed out, it isn't possible to have a perfect voting system.
Then there is the fact that there is more to this than just voting strategies. There are the other effects to keep in mind. For example approval is far simpler to explain than RCV, especially when you explain how the counting works.
Another example is that approval is purely an additive process for counting, RCV is not. That means auditing results is significantly easier and quicker under approval than RCV. That leads to higher voter confidence in results than RCV audits.
Now, other election systems could also have strategic voting, but its less likely with, for example, RCV, since you can rank candidates.
RCV still can experience the spoiler effect just as FPTP, because it is in effect FPTP taking place over some number of instant rounds.
It's mathematically proven that no voting system is perfect, so you'll have to choose what you value most in a voting system. There is no clear best system.
I think the arguments for approval voting are strong. It's simple and easy to understand, no need for complex multiple rounds of counting. Since you can't rank candidates it doesn't suffer from the spoiler effect.
In your hypothetical scenario you're forgetting the Trump voters who will vote for Sanders again after they see Biden nearly beating him. RCV has a bigger problem which is called the spoiler effect where, without strategical voting a loser can influence the election results. And am I missing something or should the numbers in your RCV list add up to 100%?
https://electionscience.org/education/approval-voting-vs-rcv
The bigger problem in my opinion is more about the fact that all elections that select a single winner will always end up in stupid degenerate systems like this where flaws and imperfections exist.
The best thing to do (again, my opinion) is to abolish all single winner races and have multiple winners with proportional representation. Get rid of directly elected presidents and have a prime minister selected by a proportionally representative parliament instead. All presidential systems suck, and the larger the number of people voting, the harder and harder it sucks. It's not just a USA problem - you also see it in France and Turkey, where they also have an all-powerful president that is elected nationally and the election is a complete shit-show every time without fail. On the other hand, having a prime minister selected as the head of state from a proportionally elected parliament is a much fairer and more stable system in my opinion. It has downsides too of course, but nowhere near as bad as nationally elected presidential systems.
In any case, the example you pointed out is a potential flaw in approval voting, but I don't think it's very likely to happen. First of all, it would require all those voters in the second round to conspire a particular way, which isn't very likely. Secondly, there's the fact that the numbers would have to line up in a very particular way which has a very low probability of happening - tweak a few numbers here and there, and the spoiler effect vanishes. Sure, the scenario you point out is a hypothetical flaw in approval voting, but I think it's a much smaller effect and probability of actually influencing anything - definitely nowhere near as much of a strategic voting effect as in plurality voting systems.