ME-02: Poliquin in denial

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

SCOTUS can't strike it down without also striking down Georgia and Louisiana's runoffs. So they won't.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Poliquin's arguments aren't just wrong, they're HILARIOUSLY bad. Like on the level of the arguments used by sovereign citizens.

Worst of all is his argument he won with a plurality of first preferences. Even if RCV is illegal, that doesn't mean you can state the election was won under the "correct" rules. The whole election would be nullified.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Roberts' dissent was only based on redistricting.

The "one person one vote" argument is not just hilariously flawed, there's a ton of state legislatures, city councils and school boards that use multi member districts and allow for more than one vote. I cast two votes for Minneapolis school board last week. Poliquin's argument there is fundamentally absurd.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

RCV violates the one man one vote rule. It gives some people 2 or 3 votes. And before any one brings up the electoral college, all states are a fptp system. The US is basically a federation of 50 semi-independent nations. Not a unitary centralized country, National pv violates the notion that individual states matter

No it doesn't. Your vote is counted for only one person in the final count. It's no different than the runoff in Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi.

And as noted there are already elections where you can vote for more than one person. I voted for two people for Minneapolis School Board this year. There were two seats and everyone got two votes. Many,state legislatures elect more than one person per district and allow each voter the number of votes as there are people being elected.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Ranked Choice is a fouking abomination. It needs to go

What's wrong with it? It gives power to third parties and allows people to state their preferences better.

I'm happy that Golden won, but RCV does not actually give power to third parties. It just appeases people who insist on voting for unelectable third parties. If, say, a left-wing third party actually managed to get more votes than the Democrat, it could result in Republicans winning.

The the scenario you describe, the most likely result would be the left-wing third party winning (unless the party was so extreme that most Democrats preferred the Republican, in which case it seems unlikely the third-party would beat the Democrat in the first place).  Which just proves that RCV does empower third parties.

I think his point is this. Lets say there was an election with these first round results:

Democrat 400
Republican 300
Left Wing Third Party 420
Scattered 20

Under FPTP the left wing third party would win. But after the scattered votes and the Republican are eliminated, you could end up with a result like this:

Democrat 650
Left Wing Third Party 450

With the rest being exhausted.

Something like that kind of happened in a Minneapolis city council election last year. A Socialist Alternative candidate led on first prefs against two Democrats (Republicans aren't a serious party in Minneapolis politics), a progressive one and a more moderate "establishment" one. The moderate came in third and was eliminated, but most of his votes flowed to the other Democrat, thus allowing them to win.

Granted this assumes that most of the Republicans back the Democrat on lower prefs instead of backing the third party out of spite or just letting their votes exhaust. Its a different situation than that City Council election where the other candidates were both Democrats.