ST. LOUIS — Five states have banned ranked choice voting in the last two months, bringing the total number of Republican-leaning states now prohibiting the voting method to 10.
Missouri could soon join them.
If approved by voters, a GOP-backed measure set for the state ballot this fall would amend Missouri’s constitution to ban ranked choice voting.
There is literally no good argument for writing a law banning this. It’s indefensible. I challenge one person to try.
You can bet I’m going to start parading this around to conservative family members. This is such flagrant bullshit.
Edit: no good argument for writing a law banning this is the operative phrase here folks. RCV has pros and cons like anything. Banning it from even being proposed is indefensible.
Conservatives lose when more options are presented. If you’re a conservative that’s a great argument for banning ranked choice voting.
Conservatives lose pretty much all the time when voting is fair. That’s why they work as hard as possible make voting harder and create districts where they are guaranteed to win.
-David Frum
Missouri has previously done things like pass state laws that ban local areas - especially St. Louis - from raising the minimum wage. Which if you think about it, really works to the advantage of the rural people the most, to have a
slavelow-wage-earning population forced to live inside the city, so that whenever the rural people deign to grace them with their presence, their fast-food burgers are at maximum cheapiness.After all, it’s their “fault” for choosing to live in the city - when any (cough not-black) “person” (or rather, 3/5ths of one?) could “choose” to “live” out in the country, for a cheaper price. Actual facts to the contrary be damned - see e.g. Ferguson, yes Missouri is where THAT infamous place is.
They actively take away people’s freedoms to live in the manner that seems best to them, and this is unfortunately entirely on-brand for them. Look up Scott Hawley - he has so very many things going on it’s hard to pick just one, but one that springs readily to mind is being the only congressman to vote against a child sex-trafficking bill. Who da fuq hears “child sex-trafficking” and says “yes please, sign me up for MORE of that!” (you know… outside of Missouri anyway)?
There’s plenty of people earning slave wages in rural areas.
They can do as they please, subject to federal laws - the difference is when you cross the line to tell others what to do.
Take mask wearing: they don’t want to wear masks? Maximized freedom demands that they not be forced to… except that’s not good enough, they keep trying to force others to also not wear masks, b/c they don’t want to see those face diapers on other people.
Or take women’s medical care: they don’t want something like an abortion? Maximized freedom demands that they not be forced into having an abortion… except that’s not good enough, and the woman’s life has to be sacrificed (extremely ironically, in the name of being Pro-“Life”!).
So if they want to allow employers to pay slave-labor wages out there in rural areas - where tbf housing is legit cheaper, so that minimum wage really would go farther - then maximized freedom demands that they be allowed to live how they please (I am not arguing for maximized freedom btw, but they use that as their justification hence I am focusing on it here)… except that’s not good enough, and they literally pass state-level laws, preventing local areas from raising the minimum wage above the federal minimum.
So it’s a hypocrisy thing, where they demand one set of laws for themselves (freedom) while a whole other set of laws for others (the opposite of freedom so… slavery?). Also, they demand authoritarianism for themselves (employers being allowed to pay slave-labor wages, or prevent women from doing medical care procedures, or round up LGBTQ+ and shoot them on sight), but then when they deal with others, suddenly the “authority” no longer matters, and now they whine for the “freedom” that they themselves deny to others. What word would work best for this besides “childish” - its not even “selfishness” b/c a smart implementation of the latter would do a cost-to-benefit tradeoff analysis as to what actions would yield the greatest net result; nor is it quite “immaturity”, though that comes a lot closer. This is behavior that (I thought) most people grow out of early in life, yet here we are.
I just wanted to counter the notion that people in rural areas (a) are all wealthy landowners and (b) want to go into a city at all. Some of the poorest people in America live in rural areas, and there’s not many of them that regularly travel multiple hours to get to a city.
If you had said it was suburban people I’d definitely agree. They’re the ones who are going into cities a lot more than rural folks, and they’re generally better off as it’s all single-family homes there. If the rural people are behind preventing a minimum wage increase it’s because they want to stem the depopulation from people moving to the city for better paying jobs.
Please take some time to think in more depth about what you said. Not only are you wanting to “counter” a bunch of stuff that I never said (tbf we are using the word “city” differently - I included tiny ones of 100-1000 people whereas you seem to mean full-on urban cores of major metropolitan areas), but your ultimate answer would only explain why the rural people could give two shits about people that live within the cities - heaping those heavy burdens upon them without either offering a finger to help or even just simply taking the finger off the scale to allow them to govern themselves without that interference - but it would not justify why being so extraordinarily selfish is anywhere close to being “okay”?
If people in rural areas want to make life better in rural areas, then please do so - people in the cities even have and continue to offer substantial help in that regard!!! - but it is not okay to simply make life shittier everywhere else as a means to control the choices of other human beings. It is anti-democratic, anti-freedom, anti-friendly, anti-competitive, and a bunch of other stuff as well (anti-Christian, anti-sensical, the list goes on and on).
Also, black people DO NOT FEEL SAFE in rural areas. B/c they are NOT safe. Hence why they don’t live in rural areas, and for the past hundred years or so, never really have (in Missouri at least). So your reason isn’t even true - why are black urban people not allowed to vote to best take care of their own areas, without interference from the rural people who as you claim really have little stake in the affair to begin with, not even wanting to so much as visit. Except somehow they also want to move & live there permanently? And one of the big things stopping that is somehow… lower wages in a place that is “multiple hours” away? Even if true, how is 100-1000 kids wanting to move from a rural to an urban area able to outweigh the literally MILLIONS of people inside the cities who want to vote to improve their own conditions? (even if you count “those people” as a mere 1/10ths of a person, that still seems like a heck of a lot more than the absolute number of kids that might want to even consider moving into an urban area?)
There are huge gaping holes in your reasoning there. And it is literally destroying America, if that rift ends up causing a Civil War perhaps bloodily so, but even without that the obstructionism is already making it happen slowly:-(.
Well, thank you for answering at least. It is nice that we can at least try to discuss things here - on Reddit I gave up entirely b/c it was nearly always so hostile. I hope I haven’t come on too strong here - it is your position I am arguing against, not you personally:-).
I’ve been in favor of RCV for a decade+ and believe our country would change practically overnight by adopting it; however, there are legitimate reasons it hasn’t been adopted. As stated and linked in the article,
Whether this qualifies as “literally no good argument” I think is dependent on the number ballots where this was an issue. You could make an argument that people aren’t educated about the system or the system isn’t adaptable for all voters. Whether those are “good arguments” is perhaps subjective.
It’s education for sure. We have very few issues with the system in Australia, which has been used for decades.
The exhaustion issue could be prevented by using full preferential instead of optional preferential (although some don’t like that because they believe it “forces” them to rank a candidate they don’t like).
How is an exhausted ballot any different from voting 3rd party today? 100% guaranteed for sure when I’ve voted Green my vote did not count towards anybody with a chance of winning. Is that any different if I could vote green and socialist and whatever else (but still not rank any major party candidates)?
All of those criticisms are fixed with STAR voting.
He missed the point of my comment. I’m not saying there aren’t reasons to not adopt RCV, I am saying there is no reason to write laws that ban its adoption. They’re going to ban any system that could vaguely hurt them. This is a dangerous precedent when simply not adopting it is an available option. It also means if future constituencies want to switch over to it, they to repeal the law before they can even start to an enact a new one.
You’re right. I’m just pointing out that even the bullshit reasons are easily dismissed.
But conservatives aren’t arguing in good faith. They don’t sincerely believe that alternative voting options are bad, they believe they are bad for conservatives.
I’m not saying there is no good reason for not adopting it. I am saying there is no good reason for writing laws that ban its adoption.
There is no good argument for passing a law that bans the adoption of RCV. It’s the GOP continuing to stack the deck in their favor, a flagrant attempt to stop a change they don’t like because they think it will hurt them.
It could simply mean they didn’t want any of the remaining candidates to get in. I suppose at a push, maybe it makes sense to choose the least worst of the remaining, but I can certainly imagine candidates I would consciously not rank at all.
Oh no! Don’t you dare threaten the internet with parading it around in front of family members!
You mock but I have successfully changed the course of conversation when I bring up extreme or otherwise flagrantly undemocrstic actions like this. I have uncle who is completely rethinking his stance because he has been watching what governors in the south have been up to. Never seen him question the GOP/MAGA until recently, because he’s seeing the consequences play out for real now. Louisiana ending concealed carry permits scared the shit out of him.
A lot of people really do have a line and you need to keep showing them the stuff Fox and breitbart won’t show them. If we don’t try then we may as well just roll over and die and skip the stress of effort.