this post was submitted on 16 May 2026
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[–] backalleycoyote@lemmy.today 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Fight for ranked choice voting. Both sides have gerrymandered our districts to hell in a back and forth effort to give their team an advantage with no real concern about the people within those districts, they only care about how they can use their knowledge of likely outcomes to secure a win for the party’s choice of candidate.

With ranked choice having to pick between one of two candidates, the R & D the party decided to offer is eliminated because you might end up with 3 Rs and 3 Ds, all of which represent left and right ideals to a different level. Voters will be forced to pay closer attention if they really want to have their goals/values represented and can’t just default to my team/their team. It would also make it more difficult for parties to demand candidates stick to party doctrine. It would also be a foot in the door for third party candidates who don’t want to be associated with either of the juggernauts to start making gains, probably at local and state level first.

Even if candidates decide to align with the established parties, what’s up for vote will represent a wider array of options of opinions on how the party should move forward, the people pick rather than the party masters telling us “it’s our guy or their guy, and we know you’ll vote for whoever we offer”. It is a first step in diluting the power of the two parties to control their teams because while I don’t doubt they’d still throw money behind their top pick, they wouldn’t be able to assure the final outcome is just an A or B, party Dem vs party GOP showdown. It’d also make it a lot harder for them to constantly redraw the maps every election to predict the best possible outcome.

[–] WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 2 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

I'm not too familiar with american politics, but how would you achieve moving to ranked choice voting? neither of the parties would want that.

[–] backalleycoyote@lemmy.today 2 points 16 hours ago

That’s our struggle currently, they both put a lot of effort and money into demonizing it from the perspective that to do so would weaken whichever “team” you’re on and only benefits the other guys. Preventing it is probably the only thing that has bipartisan support.

We have methods of getting citizen led initiatives on the ballot, typically through collecting signatures of registered voters in favor of the initiative being added to the ballot; reach a certain number, they’re validated, the initiative is put up for a vote that bypasses the legislature. The government is constantly making this process more difficult and often finds any excuse to invalidate or undercut the result. Should it make it onto the ballot and win, in theory implementing the policy should move forward. But for policies the bureaucrats and party members are staunchly opposed it becomes a fight through red tape, feet dragging, court battles, appeals, and sometimes they pretty much say “fuck you, we’re not doing it”. With our courts as corrupt as they are and the legislature having unlimited tax dollars to drag out the battle they can bleed their opponents dry until they make it to the Supreme Court who nowadays mostly rules however the regime sees fit.

In my state, one of the strictest and most severe in the nation about weed, the grassroots initiative to override them and legalize it continues to gain traction and quite possibly will pass in another election or two, so the the legislature has been busy trying to make such measures impossible and have debated rewriting our state constitution before it happens so that even if the majority overwhelmingly votes for it, it’s automatically rejected.

The fact both parties are equally concerned about the prospect give me some clue that it’s a step in breaking the stranglehold the parties have over left or right, conservative or liberal, our guy or their guy, and the the democrat’s default “you’ll vote for our pick because it’s the lesser of two evils”. Progressives are running and winning under the democrat “brand” even as their own party refuses to endorse them, so at least on that side we can see party leadership is losing control of it’s power to maintain the status quo of making sure dogma loyal Dems win primaries and seats.

I think ranked choice would destroy the old school, pro-Israel, Cuck Schumer brand democrat party with more candidates like Mamdani, AOC, and Bernie getting elected. Trumpism is not as popular as his propaganda machine makes it, he’s lost some of his most vocal supporters, and his picks are bootlicking and incompetent. Not that I support a return to Regan/Bush style republicanism, but if the choice wasn’t MAGA or Democrat, I suspect there’s no shortage of conservatives that would use ranked choice to begin to distance themselves from MAGA even if they’ll never admit they fucked up and do it for selfish reasons. Quite possibly all this speculation is too late because I don’t think this regime is going anywhere even if it got a mandate from the masses to leave.