I would imagine it would be easier to get people to agree that the current voting system in the US needs to be reformed than on specifics of that reform. Perhaps this is off, in which case please share your view,but IMO there seems a shared consensus that voting systems currently used in most of the US are in the range of suboptimal to quite crappy . There seems to be less clarity on which specific voting methodologies ( and perhaps logistics elements) might be better. For example how do constituemts feel about Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) versus Approval Voting (AV) versus an other voting modality ?
Would it be easier to initially unite people around the concept that ( status quo if voting system sucks, needs to be changed) than on any single alternative model? I wonder if greater cumulative public support could be garnered for the opportunity to vote on electoral reform, period, than for a specific alternative voting model. If so, might the likelihood of passing any reform model increase by leveraging the sentiment that an alternative model should be considered?
If so, perhaps The Center for Election Science could join forces with other organizations working for electoral reform (ex. RCV, AV orgs) in order to collectively petition for the public to have the opportunity to vote on voting reform itself.
If The Center for Election Science's name is already strongly associated with one alternative method (e.g. approval voting), is there an existing "model-agnostic" org dedicated to getting alternative voting models on the table, period? If not, would it make sense to found an org dedicated to ensuring that collectively, electoral reforms have the opportunity to be considered?
To be clear, I am not criticizing The Center for Election Science or suggesting that approval voting is a bad idea. I just fear that no alternative will have the opportunity to exist at bigger scale unless we can re-unite around what fundamentally inspired us to search for new models in the first place.
I think that change needs to happen fast in the US, the vector needs to be away from plurality voting, and that it's probable that more people would agree with that idea than with something more nuanced (like which alternative voting model to support).
Any chance for a glossary of the initialisms here? I, at least, haven't encountered any of them before. AR? RCV? CES?
Yikes, overuse of acronyms drives me nuts and now I'm complicit. Thanks for pointing this out. AV: Approval Voting. RCV: Ranked Choice Voting CES: The Center for Election Science.