Caucus Voting

[kevin_standlee]

As I've mentioned, because I'm a designated Temporary Precinct Chair, I've been asked to vote in advance of the caucus so that I don't betray my own personal preferences during the administrative business of our precinct's caucus this weekend. By voting early using a preferential ballot, my vote will count even though I personally won't be standing

Comments

[kevin_standlee]

If we must retain the Electoral College (which seems inevitable short of a Constitutional Convention and the creation of the Third American Republic) and winner-take-all allocation of EC votes (not inevitable, but hard to change), then I'm very much in favor of using RCV/IRV voting. As I've said many times, that system does not elect the most popular candidate (the one with the most initial support), but the least disliked candidate (the one able to attract the most subsequent preferences. Consequently, we are more likely to get less-polarizing winners. That is, winners are people for whom the largest number of people can say, "Well, they may not be my first choice, but they are acceptable to me."

The current system returns someone who can poll more votes than anyone else, even if a majority oppose that candidate, and the overweighted-to-smaller-states distribution of votes in the EC amplifies this. While Republicans keep saying, "Get over it!" I rather doubt that they would "get over it" if Clinton had won the EC but Trump had won the popular vote. Indeed, I suspect the Republicans would have been calling for an armed revolution on the day after the election if Their Man Lost because the Will of the People was Trump Trump Trump.

So in summary, I think the following reforms would lead to a less divisive result in our presidential elections:

1. Increase the size of the House of Representatives to about 650 and then follow the cube-root rule thereafter.
2. Either allocate electoral votes proportionately to people's first choices, or use IRV voting for winner-take-all elections.