Influencing voters

[z987k]

Thank you for sharing your view N8H! I am not a resident of Idaho, but have family here and have been hunting here for the last month, so while I am pretty familiar with the issue, I haven't heard from many people in support of it and am interested in that POV.

The open primaries is certainly the more appealing of the two. I think the benefit of open primaries is that it prevents the primary from becoming a race to the far ends of the respective party (which has caused a lot of bad candidate recruiting by both parties). It instead allows the most likely candidates to rise to the top and give voters better choices in the general election.

On the other hand, I think there are some issues with RCV (especially in how it is generally being used to take seats from Rs/the majority party, see Alaska), which is what makes prop 1 unlikely to pass in Idaho (just my guess). In my personal view, it just depends on if you care more about the open primaries, or helping the R party nationally and ensuring Rs (or whatever the majority party is) don't split votes while the minority party mass votes for one party.

RCV didn't take anything from the R's in Alaska. It's just that the R's decided to run a hilariously bad candidate that the majority of R's didn't even want, and so a bunch of R's voted D. They lost, as they should when you do that. It worked as designed. It's a good thing when parties are punished for bad candidates and bad policy, and things aren't just a us or them.
This time around, with a candidate that people actually like, they'll very likely win. The horror of having to run candidates people actually want to vote for instead of just pointing at the other said and saying look how bad they are.
If you think about RCV logically, what it tends to do is reward people in the middle at the expense of the extremes. While first past the post does the opposite.

One thing open primaries does is prevent defacto coups like we had with Kamala replacing Biden at the whim of the party. Because the party has no control of anything when it comes to the primary, who is running or the election. Political parties are anathema to democracy, so anything we can do to remove their power is a good thing.

 

[*zap*]

Good thing we do not live in a democracy.

 

[z987k]

Good thing we do not live in a democracy.

There are also non-republic forms of government all over our country.

How about this. Political parties are anathema to free people.

 

[Macintosh]

A yard sign has never influenced my vote. But lots of yard signs have made me aware of issues or candidates that I then went and researched. I also find some academic value in simply seeing the ratio of signs for X candidate versus Y candidate.

 

[bullnose]

I live in PA and it is CRAZY. I've never seen so many billboards. In a 40 mile section of highway there were about 20 billboards. Only two were for Trump. They weren't there two weeks ago. Then the commercials. Every commercial break has at least two sometimes four political ads. So far, I've learned that both Trump and Kamala are literally the devil and will destroy America and eat your children. I can't wait for it to be over.

Amen. The parties are all the same anymore - made up of the wealthy, bought by special interests, and completely disconnected from the average person.

The "haves" want the "have nots" to fight culture wars until we are so distracted that we don't pay attention to how much they are screwing us over.

 

[el_jefe_pescado]

No

 

[crimson702]

RCV didn't take anything from the R's in Alaska. It's just that the R's decided to run a hilariously bad candidate that the majority of R's didn't even want, and so a bunch of R's voted D. They lost, as they should when you do that. It worked as designed. It's a good thing when parties are punished for bad candidates and bad policy, and things aren't just a us or them.
This time around, with a candidate that people actually like, they'll very likely win. The horror of having to run candidates people actually want to vote for instead of just pointing at the other said and saying look how bad they are.
If you think about RCV logically, what it tends to do is reward people in the middle at the expense of the extremes. While first past the post does the opposite.

One thing open primaries does is prevent defacto coups like we had with Kamala replacing Biden at the whim of the party. Because the party has no control of anything when it comes to the primary, who is running or the election. Political parties are anathema to democracy, so anything we can do to remove their power is a good thing.

So I think we agree on the basics of how RCV works (as in, causing more moderate/minority party elected candidates). However, I think it is important to decide whether you want to "punish" bad candidates or political parties, or if you care more about which party controls the House (states are all different, so I generally don't have strong opinions on a specific state's politics, and in the Senate I do think individual politicians matter way more).

For me, I generally don't care too much on the margins which specific congressmen are elected, 1 out 435 (or even 5 or 10 out of 435) representatives generally can't do anything, this year being a glaring exception because of (in my opinion) the excess of power given to one wing of the party just to elect a speaker. With the razor-thin margins of federal politics currently, and the looming threat of a certain party willing to change the entire country by getting rid of the filibuster and passing whatever they want, even 5-10 bad politicians in one party (which is going to happen regardless) does not bother me as much as the larger picture.

In addition, there is a reason why no one-party state with serious national implications has instituted RCV: it hurts the majority party! While I do think Alaska and Maine are almost one party states, they are generally more moderate than others, and have such small federal delegations that the issue is less important. Instead, if you want more "moderate" candidates, I think top-choice primaries, RCV in the primary, or general election run-offs, or other options are much better, and they don't upset the general goal of federal politics, which is essentially a team sport (people can hate political parties and this fact all they want, but that is the current system and this election shows nothing is changing soon).

My hunch on why RCV is being proposed in Idaho (along with the less-nefarious top-4 primary) is two fold. One, dems want to win a seat or two from Rs, and two, moderate Rs care more about punishing a certain wing of the party without consideration of the bigger picture. In general, Rs are much more likely to rebel against the "team", and to hell with the consequences. It is really one of the only things keeping federal politics on the current razor thin margins in my opinion, since the Rs have the more "popular" policies generally.

 

[KenLee]

Speaking of, it should be mandatory that the candidate or organization be responsible for removing them immediately following the election.

If the signs remain on roadsides the Monday after election, they have been officially donated to me as target holders.

 

[ODB]

So I think we agree on the basics of how RCV works (as in, causing more moderate/minority party elected candidates). However, I think it is important to decide whether you want to "punish" bad candidates or political parties, or if you care more about which party controls the House (states are all different, so I generally don't have strong opinions on a specific state's politics, and in the Senate I do think individual politicians matter way more).

the problem with the idea of punishing bad candidates by voting for worse ones, is that it's the voter that suffers - it is literally cutting your nose off to spite your face. I have no desire to show a politician 'who's boss' by making my life worse by allowing his opponent to win....

 

[MNGrouser]

I've seen signs in yards of people I respect that cause me to discuss the "why" behind the support. THAT has changed how I intended to vote.