this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2023
748 points (95.9% liked)

politics

19089 readers
3952 users here now

Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!

Rules:

  1. Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.

Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.

Example:

  1. Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
  2. Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
  3. No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
  4. Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
  5. No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.

That's all the rules!

Civic Links

Register To Vote

Citizenship Resource Center

Congressional Awards Program

Federal Government Agencies

Library of Congress Legislative Resources

The White House

U.S. House of Representatives

U.S. Senate

Partnered Communities:

News

World News

Business News

Political Discussion

Ask Politics

Military News

Global Politics

Moderate Politics

Progressive Politics

UK Politics

Canadian Politics

Australian Politics

New Zealand Politics

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Businessinsider.com

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] ReallyActuallyFrankenstein@lemmynsfw.com 30 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I was fully ready to be skeptical about these comments, and to agree with you. But I read the article and nowhere does it make the situation any better than the headline.

The fact that certain districts (black and low income) undervote doesn't itself justify the suit to prevent ranked choice voting. In fact, nowhere in the article is there an explanation by anyone why ranked choice voting would be worse for these groups, just that it would be confusing.

Yes, changing things can be confusing. People will get over it and learn. It's definitely not exactly a good progressive look for democrats to be arguing, "oh, it's hard for people to learn a new way, so the old way is better." Kind of the opposite of what democratic voters are looking for.

[–] LittleLordLimerick@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

nowhere in the article is there an explanation by anyone why ranked choice voting would be worse for these groups, just that it would be confusing.

Uh, being confusing is what would make it worse.

I'm not saying that they're right or wrong. What I'm saying is that the reactions in this comment section of people saying "oh the racist Democrats think black people are too dumb to understand ranked choice" is a complete misrepresentation. The Democrats are saying that the evidence has shown that people in these low-income, predominantly black areas, under-voted when expected to choose two candidates on a ballot, and they're concerned that this will be an even worse problem on a ranked choice ballot where people may be expected to choose up to 5 candidates.

Disenfranchisement of poor and minority voters should be a concern.

[–] ReallyActuallyFrankenstein@lemmynsfw.com 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

No no, I get it. What I don't see - and what would be the most important thing to justify a lawsuit - is why preventing a permanent, better representation selection system isn't a greater impediment to voting rights than temporary confusion.

The justification for the lawsuit here is basically, "Evidence - real evidence! - shows certain people are confused when we fix the broken system, so let's ditch the fix and keep that system." You're focusing on the "evidence" part of that, when the logic itself is what's more seriously flawed.

There are so many less restrictive, less regressive options. Educate those communities. Clarify on the ballot in big large-type bold, simple language what they're supposed to do. Even before filing a lawsuit, they should have looked into publicly available information to see whether that confusion actually resulted in electoral result defects. Right now all we have is that those communities undervote. That's a very thin basis for such extreme action here.

[–] LittleLordLimerick@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago

So to be clear, I don't agree with them that this is a good enough reason to block ranked choice voting. All I'm saying here is that the reason for blocking isn't just "hur dur Democrats are racist too", which is the main takeaway of everyone in this comment section.

[–] SmoothIsFast@citizensgaming.com -2 points 1 year ago

It's racism point blank, no need to act like these assholes are anything more than that. Democrats are now also trying to pander to some of the racists as Trump has, we need ranked choice now more than ever.