One myth is that RCV disenfranchises voters because it is a more complex system that lower education voters may not understand. Technically, it is true that RCV is more complex than our current system. However, the vast majority of Americans are fully capable of listing elements in order of their favorite to least favorite — and those that aren’t capable of such a simple feat are unlikely to ever find their way into a polling booth. The argument that RCV disenfranchises low education voters is simply false. In fact, Maine recently adopted RCV statewide, and they experienced unexpectedly high turnout (source), indicating that RCV may actually increase voter enthusiasm.
With this myth dispelled, I will argue why RCV is a reform that progressives should actively support.
Despite your claim, you didn’t dispel anything here.
You neglected to mention that there were only three state-wide and one state House seat races in Maine run by RCV. The remainder of people’s ballots were run using the common plurality method.
And those races were party primaries so any given voter only actually had one or two races to vote in using RCV.
On the Democrat side one race was between 7 people, the other race was between 3.
On the Republican side there was one race between 4 people and the other was between 3 people. Both winners won with majorities on the 1st ballot so RCV ended up being irrelevant to both races.
That’s hardly a compelling test of whether or not voters could remember their desired rankings for an entire ballot.
RCV is most likely to encourage more candidates to run in races in the future. What happens when those future voters are faced with 30 races that each feature 5–10 candidates? Was that Mary Jones in the U.S. Senate race that I wanted to put in 3rd place or was it Marsha Jones in the State Senate race that was supposed to be 3rd?
You’re fooling yourself if you think any voters are going to keep 150+ candidates straight in their heads. And you’ll be complaining in a few years when it turns out that those “low education voters” turn out to disproportionately be minority voters. Will you still claim that RCV is progressive then?
And while it is possible that RCV was the cause for higher than expected voter turn out, there isn’t anything proving that was the case. It could also have been that it was a nice day and that both parties were running primaries for the highest elected office in the State. While voter turnout was up compared to “expected” turnout, it was lower than it has been in prior years with similar circumstances.
