site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   5168 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 16, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

2
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Something I recently noticed - increased push to implement ranked choice voting everywhere. What is more strange, it always seems to be Dems promoting it and Republicans opposing it. My question is - why? First of all, why push it now, and second, why the partisan divide? I mean, if it, say, gave advantage to the minority party, then you'd expect minority Rs push it too somewhere. But it's not what I am seeing.

But adding on to that, ranked choice voting is something popular in Europe (which means +10 interest among Democrats and -10 interest among Republicans),

Not really, although I agree that is the vibe. "Ranked choice voting" isn't a technical term, but the specific system that people talking about RCV are actually talking about is usually the system called IRV (instant runoff voting) in the US and AV (alternative vote) in the rest of the world. This is a better way of counting a single-winner election like a President, Governor, directly-elected Mayor or legislator elected from a single-member district. Most of Europe is Parliamentary with the legislature elected by proportional representation, so they don't have single-winner elections that matter, and therefore don't need to think deeply about how to count single-winner elections.

The only country that uses IRV/AV in an election that matters (as opposed to non-executive figurehead Presidencies) is Australia.

The other system that Wikipedia gives as an example of RCV is STV (single transferrable vote) in multi-member districts. It is used for the lower houses of the Irish and Maltese Parliaments, and the Australian Senate. It is also very widely used to elect the governing committees of mass membership organisations like unions.

Continental Europe almost entirely uses party-list PR to elect its legislatures (some systems, including Germany, have constituency MPs but the top-up is designed so that the constituency results don't usually affect the party composition of the legislature). France uses actual runoffs in single-member constituencies, and Italy uses a hybrid of FPTP and party-list PR.

Okay, fair. I didn’t realize Europe was almost totally party list based, I’m familiar with the push for alternative voting in the UK and thought that was an attempt to align with the continent.

There is no push for single-member AV in the UK. Reform and the Liberal Democrats support moving to a proportional system (we prefer STV to lists, but the rhetoric is about the principle of proportionality, not the details of the system); Labour and the Conservatives want to retain FPTP. There was a referendum on moving to single-member AV in 2011 (which failed) because that was the best offer the Conservatives were willing to make to bring the Liberal Democrats into a coalition.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats