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Reblogged:Election Law Changes on the Ballot

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This fall, quite a few states will have electoral reforms on the ballot, mostly one or more of ranked-choice voting (RCV), open primaries, and explicitly making it illegal for non-citizens to vote.

The third strikes me as so commonsensical that I'm wondering Isn't that already against the law?

The first two are more interesting, and attempt to address a blatant problem caused by the way the two-party system operates, namely that closed primaries make certain party factions disproportionately strong, leading to elections in which one or both parties fields a candidate with very narrow appeal to the general electorate.

While the overall current state of our politics is a direct result of our cultural deterioration, I am inclined to believe that the entrenched two-party system worsens the problem by putting each party under the thumb of its worst elements, by making it too easy to ignore centrist or pro-liberty voters.

But inclined is the key here: As I have said of ranked-choice voting in the past, I can see these measures being band-aids, too:
polling_station.jpg
Image by Elliott Stallion, via Unsplash, license.
[M]ost voters are not just ignorant, but have been dulled by decades of welfare statism and pressure group warfare to the point that they basically sell their votes at election time.

The end result might be that, yes, the Matt Gaetzes and Rashida Tlaibs get eliminated from Congress, but eventually get replaced by smoother operators who can nonconfrontationally pass very bad legislation that "everybody" likes.

Consider this thought experiment: Imagine George Washington winning a modern election -- or Glenn Youngkin winning one during revolutionary times -- even with RCV. I can't, because the electorate has changed so much.
My apprehension about the "smooth operator" stems in part from how similar the two parties look to me today. Neither challenges the welfare state. Neither has a coherent (let alone pro-America) foreign policy. Neither speaks of individual rights. They look different only on exactly how they'll violate our rights. Sooner or later, someone will find a way to do so in a way that is popular across the board.

No election protocol can be well-designed enough to protect a diseased body politic from itself.

Another concern shows up courtesy of Alaska, which already has RCV and open primaries -- and will consider returning to the old system. That state elected a Democrat as representative due to pathological behavior in its particular RCV system when Nick Begich III, whom a majority preferred to his two opponents, lost anyway.

I don't know enough about RCV to know whether such results can be avoided in the future, but if they can, they need to be, given that the whole point would seem to be that the majority can elect its preferred candidate.

-- CAV

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As for “common sense” and non-citizen voting, declarations of what is “common sense” need to be tempered by reference to reality. Some facts of reality are that (1) federal law now prohibits non-citizen voting in federal elections only (18 USC 611) and (2) no state explicitly allows non-citizen voting. Moreover, there do exist non-citizen voting jurisdictions (DC and numerous municipalities in Maryland and Vermont). Only 7 states at present explicitly forbid citizen voting.

So, not only is it not already against the law, it is a significant political tool that can and I expect will be used by a ruling party that would benefit from increases in votes from non-citizens. They take the form of constitutional amendments, which means that they are more resilient, and cannot be easily swept away in case a state “turns (marginally) Democrat”. Even in a deeply blue state like Washington, it is a stated statutory requirement that one must be a citizen in order to register to vote. Not every state has that requirement, it may be a local option.

One disadvantage of open primaries is that it enables sour-grapes voting, where one votes for the weaker of two big party candidates who you don’t want in the first place. If you want to thwart a particular Democrat candidate for governor by voting for the weaker competing Democrat, in an open primary you can still vote for the Republican candidate for attorney general that you still want. That option is foreclosed in a partisan primary system. Another difference contributed by open primaries is that it precludes minor party candidates, because party membership is irrelevant. There will be no Libertarian party candidates on the state general election ballot in Washington, save for POTUS for which there is a special law. Open primaries can actually reduce cross-party competition. My legislative district is so heavily Democrat that we don’t have a Republican candidate, it’s always a “second primary” to select between leading Democrats.

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