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? 🤔
Mainer here. Its great, except that the governor’s race is specifically exempted from RCV. May have something to do with GOP former governor LePage, but can’t recall before my morning meds…
It occurs to me that the electoral system might be used in Pres elections to work (very slightly) in that direction. What if a number of associated candidates made a pact that their electors, if elected, would vote for whichever of the pact makers got the most popular votes overall? Like if Sanders and Biden and Harris were in a pact like that of Democrats (named chosen of unlikely future candidates). People could vote for whichever, avoiding split-the-vote tactics. If Sanders won a state, but Harris got more pop votes nationwide, his electors would instead vote for her. Complicated maybe, but it wouldn’t need any constitutional changes, and might make disasters like a Trump win less likely. Dumb idea?
it wouldn’t need any constitutional changes
You need a lot of states to change their laws. Some states ban faithless electors unless the candidate they pledged for dies. So unless we’re yeeting the candidates off a building in order to stop fascism, you can’t change your electorsl votes.
Also, if you’re method of avoiding fascism is by relying on the electors to keep their promise, you’re ending up with disaster.
In the 1800 US presidential election, the system at the time was that 2 votes are cast by the electoral college, the one with most votes is the president and the with the second-most votes becomes president (stupid system, right?). Electors of the Jefferson-Burr ticket was supposed to have one of their electors vote for Jefferson, but not Burr, so that Jefferson has just 1 vote more than Burr, making Jefferson President and Burr vice-president.
But NONE of the electors did that. They all voted for both, which resulted in a tie, resulting in a contingent election. (They later added an amendment to make Pres and VP two separate vote counts, which we have today)
I don’t have faith in Electors to make good plans. Although Electors are handpicked hardcore supporters of a candidate, sometimes their fanaticism can make irrational decisions, including even ignoring instructions from the candidate they supposedly support. (For example: Some Sanders supporters did not vote Biden in the General election, even when Sanders endorsed Biden)
There was a STRONG effort to ban (or at least end) RCV here in Alaska, and it failed, but barely. They even did the super misleading wording, too, in order to make it unclear if the measure banned RCV or supported it.
I was always so confused by the adamant support that was being shown by general people, though. Like, I get why both Dems and Republicans would be against it: they want to be the only two players in the game. But why any general people would want less choice is beyond me. And it’s funny, because the staunchest proponents (at least where I am) were conservatives, when (again, where I live) RCV basically drove out the Democrats. There were Progressives, there were “centrists,” there were Libertarians, and then there was Republican/MAGA. Dems didn’t even get enough support to be on the ballot. So their hated Libs were wiped off the board entirely for being so ill-liked, but they want to get rid of that system? I just don’t get it.
People are stupid. They think RCV is “too confusing”
I feel like it can kind of be confusing to understand how the process works for it.
But it is not even remotely confusing as to what you do. Choose, from most to least, who you want. It’s that simple. You want to get into how those votes are tallied, do a little dive, there’s plenty of videos very simply explaining it. If you don’t, and just want to be able to go vote? Just go vote. If even ranking them is too complicated because you have a worm in your brain, just choose one and ignore everything else.
It might be complicated to tally, but it is not complicated to do. It’s just people being duped by the Big 2 parties to not want choices.
Americans complain about the two party system and do absolutely nothing to change that. It’s like watching a soap opera but everyone’s fell of the horse and lost their memory.
It’s even worse than that - they don’t just “do absolutely nothing to change that”, they actively whip each other into line by loudly blaming third party voters for not giving them the votes that they somehow owe to their big money party.
This may shock you, but there’s a lot of us. It’s not the same people doing both.
In Colorado last year RCV was on the ballot as part of an initiative. It was shot down easily because both parties campaigned against it. Not sure what to do when the weight of all incumbents is thrown against something
In Colorado, one of my wife’s friends is what most people (I say this, knowing the Lemmy political scale is vastly different from most Americans) would consider super liberal. She’s also very outspoken and politically active, so she has no problems telling everyone she knows how to vote on every issue.
Last election, we were at her house and she mentioned that she was against ranked choice voting. When I asked her why, she pointed to her voting guide provided by the Colorado Democratic Party. She just blindly accepts that because the party says it’s bad, then it’s bad.
After seeing that, it wasn’t surprising to me when the proposition failed.
Fuck thai boils my blood
Lol go to r/conservative and you’ll see all those idiots having doublethink simultaneouly saying that they support term limits for congress and support for ranked-choice voting, yet continues to vote in conservatives that oppose the very policies they claim to support.
Its actually quite ridiculous. Republican legislators consistantly oppose raising the minimum wage or abortion, yet, the republican voters votes in favor of those policies, while simultaneously vote for the legislators that oppose them.
I’m just like… Why??? Why do y’all vote like this? 🤦♂️
I think we should just go the Swiss-route and do direct democracy; representatives don’t even represent their constituents anymore.
I’m just like… Why??? Why do y’all vote like this?
Looks awkwardly at the voting history of every (non-local) politician I have voted for…
Yeah. Those Republicans sure look silly rallying behind people who immediately betray them once in office.
Awkward cough.
I think we should just go the Swiss-route and do direct democracy;
That’s literally the Anarchy system. I.e Laws and no leaders.
As an Australian who has ranked choice (we call it preferential) it’s not the panecea folks here seem to think it is to bring about the enlightenment.
I’m 58, have voted in every election from when I was eligible through to this year. We don’t have ICE but we have Border Force and we routinely deport non citizens, we inspect digital devices at the border, we off shore legal refugees in internment camps, we have zero care for the enviorment and love penis shaped defence spending, we are a car dependent shit hole with few redeeming qualities… It’s ever been thus, Donad Horne oponed on this in the 1970s.
We don’t have feedom of the press or freedom of speech, so often these things are unable to even be reported on at all and our most egregious atrocities have widespread support amongst the broader population. In that respect its not as big a divisor as. n the US as we’re all arseholes :) We’re happy to allow religious scumbags to discriminate against LGBQT folks, happy to have our privacy removed, are quite fond of fucking over our indigenous peoples and the wider enviorment and near zero concern for exestential issues like climate change. We’re happy to shit over homeless people and have unaffordable housing and racism is broadly endemic.
We have never elected a government that i think is anything but objectively fucking horrible, we have our tongue firmly stuck up the US foreign policy asshole and follow them into every stupid dumb shit military action. We have had the occasionally decent poltican but then so does the US (Bernie etc) .
Like us, your people are broken and you’re not going to cure what ails ya’ with RCV.
It’s almost like those in power make the laws that are used to elect those in power 🤔
Golly what a surprise! Duopoly gonna duopoly!
Remember that you still have power in this system by not voting for a party if they do not fulfill your demands.
Reminder that even Democrats banned it and “commie hellhole” California had its governor veto it.
Statistically when you don’t vote, you are effectively voting Republican. When turn out is high Dems tend to win, and when it’s low the GOP wins.
Not voting is definitely not going to change anything
Or vote against the one party (starts with an R) that continues to make the duopoly happen by banning RCV, and for the party (starts with a D) that’s far more likely to implement RCV.
People don’t vote in primaries enough.
AOC did it. Beat the corporate PoS. We can all do it.
And if they try to rig it, we do a little French-style direct action 😏
We voted for it at the county level here in CA. That was back in 2020. San Diego county voted to use RCV, as did several other counties in CA. The county registrar of voters is refusing to change from FPTP, and is waiting to see how the lawsuits turn out.
Even if your state hasn’t banned it, they will fight you tooth and nail not to change it.
Did y’all think the regime gonna just let you change the rules of the game that keep it in place…
Cute
“Obey! Resistance is futile 🤖” Thats how you sound my friend. I know it is not easy to see any ways out of the shit the U.S. is in but giving up beforehand is called doomerism and it is one of the biggest cancers alive.
Did you read the same comment as me? I read that as “why would the powers that be wilfully give up the path to that power?”
They’re not saying “obey”. They’re saying this shouldn’t be a surprise.
No.
The comment is belittling a call to action as if it is futile because ‘the powers that be’ won’t let you act against them. Which is bullshit. Republicans biggest power comes from political inaction and resignation. They aswell have used the system to play us all and now want every opposition to believe it is too late. Talking about nefarious powers will do exactly nothing but invoke doomerism.
You are injecting heavy opinion here. That’s not what I meant and there others who didn’t read like you did… But sure fight you a wind mill boy
This is in fact what I meant to convey.
This is a fight worth fighting even if it is futile as it will expose how nasty the oppression really is. Most people assume everything is kosher because they never try to step out from the normie way of thinking where they accept everything as is.
I am not giving up. I am commenting on the current political conditions.
Also, my work speaks for itself and obey aint it ;)
People must exhaust this avenue among others before borne understands the conditions imposed on him/her
At least people are waking so team peasant got that going. It will take a generation or two.
Remember that by the time FDR stepped in plebs spent 2-3 generations shedding blood for the cause. But it still took a cripled nepo baby with sympathy for the common man, along with parasites botching the economy for the change to happen. And it only lasted like 40 years.
My bad. I guess i took the “Cute” the wrong way.
Ohio is trying to ban it this year.
I get why Gen alpha use “Ohio” to describe something bad now
God damn Skibidi Ohio polititians with no rizz, no cap fr fr, voters with brainrot smh
(sorry for the use of Gen alpha brainrot language)
Yeah, obscenely gerrymandered Republican supermajority in the state legislature really sucks.
I know a number of Gen alpha kids. None of them use those phrases. They are Gen Z terms.
The oldest Gen Alpha kids are 11 and turning 12 this year
I’m gen z and never heard the words “skibidi” “rizz” irl
I did hear “no cap” and “Alpha”/“Beta” tho
How many 13 year old gen-Z do you know though? A fifteen year time band encompasses a lot of people (because these are just marketing tools in reality)
absolutely shocked that southern states with the worst education and track history of the most oppressive laws would do this to their constituents
they’ve been nothing but whored-out welfare states the whole fucking time
Anything but real democracy.
🇦🇺 heh, amateurs… But seriously this is ridiculous, and straight up anti-democtatic. Single member first past the post is the worst voting system out there.
Inb4 they make mulit-member electorates winner-take-all (all seats to the party who got the plurality of votes).
This is THE fight USA. In my opinion, your ridiculous voting systems is probably why it’s so easy to suppress you.
We have rcv here for local elections in nyc but not for any state or federal elections
because the state and fed levels are corrupt as hell. the local level seemed more amenable, although i suspect the nyc mayoral elections will be thoroughly fiddled.
Which reminds me. Governor of NY didn’t even fucking sack Crooked Adams. That just tells all you need to know. Crooks covering for crooks. Now the crook in cheif drops the charges on Adams.
What a shitshow.
Really bugs me how americans talk about “ranked choice voting” because you guys seem to mean STV, which is a form of proportional representation with multi-member districts.
But in Canada, “ranked ballots” meant IRV, which was basically FPTP with a ranked ballot, and ironically exacerbated the worst parts of FPTP like the trend to a two party system.
Stick with the real names of electoral systems!
Really bugs me how americans talk about “ranked choice voting” because you guys seem to mean STV, which is a form of proportional representation with multi-member districts.
But in Canada, “ranked ballots” meant IRV, which was basically FPTP with a ranked ballot, and ironically exacerbated the worst parts of FPTP like the trend to a two party system.
Stick with the real names of electoral systems!
This is in the context of US State Legislations, Ranked-Choice Voting is what most laws refer to them as.
In most contexts, we’re mostly talking about Single-Winner elections.
Sometimes, the same concept has different names to different people, there isn’t a name that’s more “real” than others.
In most contexts, we’re mostly talking about Single-Winner elections.
In the context of electoral systems, “Congress” and “Senate” are multi-seat legislatures. Hence the talk about proportional representation, IE how many Americans vote Democrat vs how many Democrats get elected. Without that discussion you’ll never get a 3rd party elected.
The senate is voted only within a state, one senator at a time. the house of representatives again is done by states, but has a different number for each state.
I don’t really care what the law calls it. One time an American law tried to call pi equal to 3.2. Had it passed both houses instead of only one, that still wouldn’t have changed what pi actually is.
Ranked-Choice describes a feature of a large number of voting systems. Namely, any system that involves ranking candidates in order of preference. Instant-Runoff Voting and Single Transferable Vote are the two most popular such systems, but there are many others, including the Borda method and Ranked Pairs. It’s better to just be clearer about what it is you actually mean, rather than use an ambiguous term that’s going to lead to more confusion.
and ironically exacerbated the worst parts of FPTP like the trend to a two party system
Umm. Hi, Australia here. We’ve used IRV for our House of Representatives since 1918. IRV is definitely flawed, and I’ve said in the past it’s the “worst acceptable system”*. But it’s better in every way than FPTP, and definitely doesn’t exacerbate a trend towards two parties. It doesn’t create a proportional result that truly helps break the two-party system like STV (most notably used by Australia’s Senate or Ireland’s Dáil) or MMP (notably used in New Zealand and Germany) would, but it doesn’t entrench it any more than FPTP. In fact, as of today, Australia’s crossbench consists of only 1 fewer person than its Opposition, because independents and third parties have been rising considerably over the past 15 years or so, particularly at the 2022 and 2025 elections.
You’re right that people should be clear about whether they mean IRV, STV, or another ordinal system, though.
* the intent being to highlight that FPTP is an entirely undemocratic and unacceptable system to ever use.
We studied it in Canada, including how it was used in Australia, and it was the only electoral systems out of all the ones listed that actually widened the gap between voter intention and seat distribution from FPTP.
https://www.ourcommons.ca/documentviewer/en/42-1/ERRE/report-3/page-174#49
Specifically here, where it is called “Alternative Vote”:
I’m mostly just frustrated about how it keeps getting renamed.
But it is entirely possible to invent an electoral system that is worse than what we have now, and it seems politicians might have done that with IRV.
Specifically here, where it is called “Alternative Vote”
Yeah that seems to be a very common alternative name. I’m especially not a fan of that name, since all it tells you is that it’s “not FPTP”. At least “Preferential voting” or “ranked choice voting” tells you something of the ballot.
At what point is a democracy not a democracy any more?
The US has never been a democracy, they’re just being more straightforward about it recently
People keep commenting this without context and it’s driving me mad. It’s factually wrong, so at least tell us what you mean in the figurative sense.
It is not factually wrong, even if you argue that a representative republic can be democratic it’s an easily verifiable historical fact that ours never was. At every point in US history there have been groups of people who were deliberately and methodically disenfranchised from any representation while still being subject to US rule. If being told that hurts your feelings it just means the propaganda worked, try being less gullible.
No, this is just the first time anyone actually invested more than the one sentence into an explanation. Can you give me a little more to look into? I genuinely have no idea what you’re referring to.
If I had to guess I’d say that nobody has bothered responding to you with more than a single sentence because you clearly have internet access and could easily read about the history of US voting rights and the current state of US voting suppression, and that you therefore have no excuse for weighing in on a topic about which you clearly don’t know much, but that’s just an educated guess.
Originally voting rights in the US were only extended to white male christian land-owners. Over the course of the next two centuries they gradually relaxed the property ownership requirements, then eventually got around to granting voting rights to non-white men and then women. In theory this would make the US currently a democracy, but in practice they suppress voting access in predominantly non-white districts through gerrymandering, and elected officials routinely act against the wishes of their constituents in favor of pleasing their billionaire donors. We transitioned from a fundamentally racist and classist republic to an oligarchy.
All that to say it is a democracy after all, just even more condescendingly. Wonderful.
Okay, then, is Nazi Germany a democracy? It has votes, after all. How about fascist Italy? Is that a democracy?
When you refuse to listen to reason, yes you deserve it.
No, that’s not what I said at all you fucking moron. The US is not and has never been a democracy, go read a book.
African Americans were supposed to be given the right to vote after abolition.
There was a brief period of time during Reconstruction where that happened. However, many states came up with complicated contrivances to make it impossible to vote - poll taxes, “literacy tests,” etc. Effectively, it was a right solely on paper until LBJ in the 60s. Conservatives throwing a massive fit about this is why we have the insane fascistic Right we do right now - they were pro public education until Black kids got to go to the same kids as white kids.
Women weren’t guaranteed the right to vote until 1920. Conservatives today are trying to revoke the 19th amendment and undo that.
Yes, there’s tons of things that make the process unfair, but does that make the system not be a democracy? It’s a flawed one, one that basically only allows white dudes to vote, but the system is still a democracy.
- Blocked the right to vote for one sex
- Blocked the right to vote for non-whites
- Polls taxes blocked the right to vote for non-whites and the poor
- Excluded Natives from voting
- The first vote for the president had less than 1% of Americans vote, Washington running unopposed for his terms
- Voter ID laws are a tax on the poor
- Gerrymandering where the politicians choose the voters.
- Electoral college
- No time off for voting, meaning the working poor aren’t likely to vote
- Voting by mail blocked by most states, the ones that the EC weighs unequally
- Parties have sued to keep people and other parties off ballots
- Parties have argued before court to not legally require fair primaries, as there’s no legal basis for it
Yeah, democracy.
What if only people who make over $500k annually can vote? Is that still a democracy?
A better question would be “when was there ever been a true democracy?”
For me, there hasn’t been. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try. It means that we need to truly internalise that wealth and power will, if left unchecked, succeed in perverting it entirely. We need to be ever augmenting it, with that in mind, with a view to playing whack a mole with the interests of the 1% and keeping it working for the 99%.
I mean that won’t work either. The rich and powerful will never allow us to simply vote away their ill beggoten wealth and power. However, at least people could say that they tried.
I don’t think we’ll ever have a “true” democracy.
Its like the concept of “utopia”, you can get closer and closer, but never actually reach it
Like an asymptote in mathematics.
The USA is too big to be a democracy. It would need to be several smaller regions/countries that had equal rights when dealing with each other. But its much easier to just force people to do what you want rather than make a mutually beneficial deal.
So, like, … maybe 50 or so smaller regions? And a few other mostly even smaller territories that don’t get those rights, just for funsies?
I joke, of course. But in seriousness: Are you suggesting the US just defederate and become more like, say, the EU? What are you anticipating that would solve? Moreover, what is it that makes it too big to be a democracy? Can large governments exist only in authoritarian forms? Why would that be?
- For patriots, politicians and NPCs: As long as there is democracy in the name (Democratic Republic of Korea)
- For decent people: As soon as the laws/choices the government produces are no longer what the average person would choose.
Sadly, some states, people voted against ranked-choice-voting in referendum. Seems lile people just hear a complex idea and want to shut it down because it challenged their simplistic worldview.
For the U.S., the decisive blow came with the Citizens United ruling, although it’s not unreasonable to suggest the refusal to punish Nixon during watergate signaled that the rule of law was merely a suggestion. That kicked off a whole cascade of political and legal maneuvering to get both the legislative and societal landscape into such a contortion that it would willingly hand away the entire nation to vulture-capitalists.
Not sure. Ancient societies also used FPTP and they are still considered by some Scholars/Historians as “democracy” 🤷♂️
Personally, I think government systems are actually a type of technology. Unfortunately, they aren’t the kind of research where you can easily experiment and iterate upon, since people tend to die in massive numbers if the experiment fails.
The whole entry is enlightening.
