You are correct, Sir! In the RCV example the State passed out, they show how a voter who voted first preference for a candidate with less votes in the first round could eventually win. No candidate wins the first round if no candidate gets more than 50% + 1. (Each subsequent round the definition of "1st place" changes - kind of like liberal logic - daily redefinitions of the dictionary.)
Of course, anyone seeing that would think that it would be a great thing if they could still get their preferred candidate to win in a later round.
What the example doesn't explain, because their specific example puts the voter in the position of eventually "winning" their first preference, is that if things don't work exactly as the hypothetical situation that is shown in the pamphlet mailing, your first preferred choice may lose, even if it has the MOST votes in the first round.
Essentially, you are diluting your own choices with the subsequent ranked preference selections you make. It invites pandering and watered down positioning by the candidates, more so than usual. Nobody wants to risk being the outlier who gets eliminated in the last round because of some strong position they took, even though they had the most support initially.
So we're back to Ayn Rand - Your choice - food or poison. Poisoned food is not the way to go, but everyone's going to say "you go first". Most people will not fill out the ballot with only one choice. Kind of like the stock market - "diversify your portfolio". Well, in this example, you KNOW that 4 of the 5 stocks are going to go bankrupt.
If you know that in the stock market, wouldn't you want to put all your money on the best thing going?
Try to convince everyone of that when the State Division of Elections is using public money to put out biased examples. We've got to get to a point of more trust and less hidden bias, less pandering, so we know what we're getting. |
