Thank you, Remarkl, for letting me know (as have others) how they are reading this article. It seems I am not yet able to present the information as intended. I will have to improve my writing, so there is no option for misreading it anymore.
I am thinking about adding the following image to bring home the deeper point of the article:
With this image I can show you that your premise is indeed mostly correct but that my premise is different and correct, and points to something better. I have to fix my writing, so readers automatically understand that I am agitated by RCV being sold as an improvement, while the outcome remains the same good old red-and-blue, while containing some new flaws.
In your reasoning of RCV, you are indeed able to express your majority version of blue best. Nothing wrong about your reasoning, but there is still a mishap that can then happen with RCV. Yes, Trump and Sanders would likely not be in the position they’re in right now, but they could be.
Let’s take Ross Mirkarimi’s SF District 5 race and place it on the democratic primaries. In this scenario, all democratic candidates stayed in the race because of RCV. Because of RCV, they all feel there is a better chance they can still win. Okay, let’s keep that field at 20 candidates, and accept in this scenario that Sanders is the front runner as he is today and ends up getting 35% of the votes.
It is not that the majority of voters would go for a centrist candidate that matters here. Because so many candidates remained in the field, there will be a good number of voters that picked three candidates that all end up being removed in an RCV cycle. The 100% of voters will dwindle down to a lower number, say 70%.
As was the case with Ross Mirkarimi, 30% of the voters ended up with all their candidates removed, and therefore voiceless. If that were to happen with the democratic primaries, then Sanders would win with 35% of the votes. Recognize that there is a ‘sudden-death’ moment here. It does not matter that there is a combination remaining in which the larger plurality goes for a moderate, because RCV does not dwindle down to the last man standing, only to the first person getting 50% (of the remaining votes).
Naturally, this scenario is possible, but it is likelier that a moderate candidate (Bloomberg is my assumption) would end up on top (also by not getting 50% of all votes, but rather 50% of all remaining votes). However, the scenario did happen with Ross Mirkarimi. He won the seat with 35% of all votes because of RCV.
In my reasoning, RCV is nothing but makeup because the voters are still relegated to either becoming a winner or a loser, and the representatives are then still not really representatives in the true meaning of the word, but just red or blue representations (left image). Our democracy is then still an exclusive democracy and not an inclusive democracy.
We are the land of the free and home of the brave, so this should be a full color nation, right?
There are options to change the system in place. Some of them are quite easy actually; all we need to do is put our local representatives’ feet to the fire.
At the local level, we can all learn how an inclusive democracy works.
Thank you again, Remarkl. You could have let it be, but you care about our nation, you care about voting. With your reply, you showed me I really have to present this position better of being upset with RCV promising us something better, while in reality it is nothing but makeup.
