(Lightly edited from a Twitter thread.)
I keep saying the GOP needs to be destroyed, utterly. That's true. But how can that happen when there are still honest, non-corrupt conservatives in the country? (Which there are.) They're not going to suddenly become Democrats, & you don't want the Democrats pulled right like that.
We need an honest conservative party in the US, if only to balance out the off-the-wall parts of the left. One that still respects science and civil rights, but can disagree on implementation details.
But in our 2 party system, how can such a party come to pass?
One way is for an existing party to shift. That's happened many times in history. The Democrats shifted left c1900 with the Populist movement, then again in the 1930s under FDR, then again in the 1960s under LBJ. The GOP has been moving steadily right since Nixon.
That's very unlikely to happen. The GOP establishment is too far down the racist fascism rabbit hole to be redeemed, and throwing them all out at once would crush the party and leave little behind.
Another way is if the party system itself collapses, a new party can fill the void.
That's happened exactly once, when the Whigs imploded and the Dems fractured shortly before the Civil War, giving the Republicans an opening.
Let's not repeat the Civil War, OK?
So how can we allow a new conservative party (maybe Libertarians, maybe someone else) to displace the GOP without passing through an era of either absolute chaos (please no) or one-party Democrat rule (please no)?
The answer is right in front of us.
Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) is how we allow new parties to appear organically. It allows major parties to fracture without totally wiping out "their side" through vote splitting.
Ranked Choice Voting would give honest, non-racist conservatives an alternative to the lost-cause GOP other than voting Democrat, either directly or through vote splitting that lets the Democrat win with a plurality.
The GOP needs to fracture, so the rotten parts can be burned and conservatives who just can't bring themselves to vote for a Democrat have somewhere else to go. Ranked Choice Voting would give us that.
And yes, it would allow the same on the left; let the corporate-centrist and radical-activist parts of the party split, when the only thing holding them together now is not-Republicans. Maybe that's the Greens, or something else, doesn't matter.
That's not this year, of course. This year, we're stuck with "Democrats or corrupt racist fascists." I hate that choice too, but it's an easy choice. And if it's not an easy choice for you, you need to seriously question your ethical grounding.
But while you're doing that, let's work for a better system that would let us sideline and bury the corrupt racist fascists.
There are 7 RCV ballot measures around the country this year, including state-wide in Massachusetts and Alaska. If you're in Massachusetts or Alaska, Vote #YesOn2. (It's proposition 2 in both states, by coincidence.) If your city (see link) is considering it, vote yes for that as well.
If you're in Illinois, we're working on it. Join Fair Vote Illinois and let's make Illinois the next state to go state-wide RCV. It would help dislodge the Democratic machine here, too.
Ranked Choice Voting helps everyone along the political spectrum.
Or, better yet, the "For The People Act" to bring it nation-wide. But first we need a Democratic Senate and House, and President. And then we need to ride them hard to do the right thing and not shirk necessary reforms as soon as they're in office.
So for this year, there's only one choice: #VoteBlueToSaveAmerica.
But if you want a better set of options in the future, Ranked Choice Voting is the way to make it happen.
Do you really think a Biden presidency would make anything better in the US?
I think both parties need to be fractured. Both are corrupt to the core.
I do think a Biden presidency will be better than 4 more years of Trump would have been. That's not even a question.
I don't think both are corrupt to the core, but both could stand to fracture. The GOP needs it more than the Dems do, but the Dems could stand to break up as well. RCV will allow that to happen. Not overnight, but it would allow them to fracture and/or give existing 3rd parties a chance to really challenge them. Either way, the duopoly is severely weakened and the ossification we've seen is allowed to break up and evolve again.
If Republicans can cut out the cancer of Trumpism, “corporatist” Republicans from the northeast and midwest might be able to ally with “quasi-libertarian” Republicans from the west and save the GOP. But that's a big if.
Ranked choice voting is a good option, but it does tend to slow things down in terms of getting results. A few cities in Minnesota use it for local races, but I don’t think any of them are yet using it for the Presidential race.
I believe Maine just used it for presidential. (There was some back and forth in the courts on that; I forget where that landed.) They're the furthest ahead with it.
5 cities just passed RCV themselves last week. That brings the number of significant cities up to about 15, I think, including San Francisco, New York, Boulder, and Minneapolis, among others.
RCV takes a little bit longer to count, but... really, that's the least of our worries at this point. :-)
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