I still haven't seen the best counter-arguments made well & publicly. Sadly, when it was litigated in US Dist Ct in SF, then 9th Cir, pltfs pt forth lousy self-serving arguments on behalf of CANDIDATES, not voters.
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Meanwhile, proponents aren't completely honest about what they want & what the tradeoffs are. Eg, saving $ on run-offs (they don't care; democracy costs what it costs). It's camel's nose under tent for proportional voting. The biggest argument against RCV is subtle & complex.
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1. RCV forces the voter to choose between voting strategically or following the official instructions and marking one's true top 3 preferences. That's unfair to force voter into that choice. In a real runoff, same voter could express a true preference in primary,and STILL get to
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express a preference between the 2 finalists before 1 of them takes office. Having to win a majority in a real, concrete, non-imaginary election confers legitimacy. In RCV, if I want to express a preference between the two finalists, then (1) I bet be a good guesser re who they
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will be, AND (2) have chosen to reserve my 3d/final vote for that, in contradiction of the official instructions which say to rank my top 3 choices. Having to make sophisticated forecasts in order to express preference between final 2 (again, 1 of whom WILL take office) is undue
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burden to put on the voter. 2. What if I choose vote strategically (ie, save my 3rd/last vote not for my true 3d choice but to express pref btw who I THINK will be final 2)... then I forecast wrong? I threw away one of my votes because the system forced me into an unreasonable
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choice to make: vote my heart on all my choices, vote my heart on all but 1, or just rank my preferences among my GUESS of final 3. It's an election that takes place largely in the mind of the voter. Let's just be clear about that. Legitimacy in office comes, partly, from
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having won a majority of SOME election before taking office. The strongest form of that is that the general/final election be btw two actual, known, ID'd candidates. Then anyone who wishes to express pref btw then may do so. (Yes, runoffs often have lower turnout, but it's 100%
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