Andrew Jackson said he only had two regrets about his presidency, “I did not shoot Henry Clay, nor hang John C. Calhoun.” No wonder he’s 45’s fave predecessor.
We need Democrats to offer the New Whigs / Never-Trumpers a deal where we commit to go full-speed on adopting Proportional Representation* anywhere we can, in order to make it possible for the Never-Trumpers as an initially-small party to get a foothold when they're starting off with only 10% of the vote (because it's going to take a LONG time for the new party to break through with rank-and-file Republican voters who have been pickling in Fox News stories about how Democrats are demonic and Republicans are their only hope), and to offer substantive policy concessions in exchange for their loyalty in maintaining a majority coalition against the Trump-ified GOP, over the next decade or two. The only way to actually kill off the cult is to keep it out of power for that kind of extended period, and that means that sometimes you'll need to hold onto a legislature by having 45% Democrats and 10% Whigs, or whatever.
* Ideally Proportional Approval Voting as advocated by the Center for Election Science. STV-PR is _probably_ better than what we have, but the problem with that is that the single-winner version of that, Instant Runoff, is arguably worse than plurality, in terms of shutting out centrists, and specifically centrist Republicans in red states, because of its "center squeeze" effect: https://electionscience.org/library/the-center-squeeze-effect/
We saw a classic Center Squeeze election with the last Alaska House race, where the moderate Republican Mark Begich got the lowest number of _first choice_ votes, and was thus knocked out in the first round. As it happens, in that case, that led to Mary Peltola the Democrat winning. And that's great in the short term, but if in theory Begich would've won a head-to-head race against Peltola, it's kind of unfair, and in the longer run, it is generally bad if center-right candidates are consistently shut out in favor of only having a choice between Democrats and Trumpers. In red states, that means sometimes -- even _often_ -- the Trumpers are going to win.
Probably the most famous Center Squeeze case with a runoff is the David Duke election in '91, where the moderate-Republican Buddy Roemer got shut out from the first round, so Duke and the flamboyantly corrupt Edwin Edwards went to the general election. The logic of IRV would've exactly replicated that result, whereas it's very likely that a method using Approval or Range ballots would've elected Roemer.
Andrew Jackson said he only had two regrets about his presidency, “I did not shoot Henry Clay, nor hang John C. Calhoun.” No wonder he’s 45’s fave predecessor.
I thought the nevertrumpers were the Lincoln party.
We need Democrats to offer the New Whigs / Never-Trumpers a deal where we commit to go full-speed on adopting Proportional Representation* anywhere we can, in order to make it possible for the Never-Trumpers as an initially-small party to get a foothold when they're starting off with only 10% of the vote (because it's going to take a LONG time for the new party to break through with rank-and-file Republican voters who have been pickling in Fox News stories about how Democrats are demonic and Republicans are their only hope), and to offer substantive policy concessions in exchange for their loyalty in maintaining a majority coalition against the Trump-ified GOP, over the next decade or two. The only way to actually kill off the cult is to keep it out of power for that kind of extended period, and that means that sometimes you'll need to hold onto a legislature by having 45% Democrats and 10% Whigs, or whatever.
* Ideally Proportional Approval Voting as advocated by the Center for Election Science. STV-PR is _probably_ better than what we have, but the problem with that is that the single-winner version of that, Instant Runoff, is arguably worse than plurality, in terms of shutting out centrists, and specifically centrist Republicans in red states, because of its "center squeeze" effect: https://electionscience.org/library/the-center-squeeze-effect/
We saw a classic Center Squeeze election with the last Alaska House race, where the moderate Republican Mark Begich got the lowest number of _first choice_ votes, and was thus knocked out in the first round. As it happens, in that case, that led to Mary Peltola the Democrat winning. And that's great in the short term, but if in theory Begich would've won a head-to-head race against Peltola, it's kind of unfair, and in the longer run, it is generally bad if center-right candidates are consistently shut out in favor of only having a choice between Democrats and Trumpers. In red states, that means sometimes -- even _often_ -- the Trumpers are going to win.
Probably the most famous Center Squeeze case with a runoff is the David Duke election in '91, where the moderate-Republican Buddy Roemer got shut out from the first round, so Duke and the flamboyantly corrupt Edwin Edwards went to the general election. The logic of IRV would've exactly replicated that result, whereas it's very likely that a method using Approval or Range ballots would've elected Roemer.