Idaho Citizens for
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Idaho Citizens for
Good Government
Ranked Choice Voting is a clever scheme to remove the will of the individual people from the ballot counting process. It works by “throwing out” votes for candidates that didn’t get a majority of the votes cast and “swapping” the loser votes with voter’s 2nd or lower choices until a majority is reached.
An example of how the majority vote could be eliminated by this process follows:
Note how 1615 votes were eliminated to get to the ultimate winner.
This method gives you the “least disliked” candidate instead of the “most liked” one and thus favors moderates generally.
This is similar to how the voir dire system in our courts creates juries that are more moderate as well, eliminating the outliers that either side might not want. This creates medeocre jurors so courts don’t have to deal with informed jurors that attempt to judge both the law and the facts, as is historically within their power but usually denied by judges (even if it is in the Juror’s oath of office!).
Thus the Ranked Choice Voting method will create medeocre politicians just like voir dire creates medeocre juries.
Is this what we want?
How can a write-in fare in such a method? – well there is no way for someone not on the ballot to possibly win or even be counted with this kind of method.
Note that we already have many counties that will not count a write-in vote if it is not on a pre-approved list of names. We are losing the ability of the informed individual to thwart the uninformed opinions of the majority.
Again, the trend is away from the expression of the individual and towards the “consesus” of the crowd.
Note that the founding fathers were a minority, the torres were the majority, but their activities and wisdom caused and allowed us to win the revolution and get free of King Georges overbearing laws – the majority not-with-standing.
For more information see this article on the pitfalls and historical failings of RCV (Ranked Choice Voting).
The borchure is meant to be printed on an 8.5 x 11″ sheet on both sides so that it can be cut in half and create two half-sheets of a two-sided brochure. Feel free to print and distribute. Note that Open Primaries will also be on the same inituitive so we put each subject on a side.
There is a possibility that Raul Labrador will win a case agaist this inituitive as it violates several laws and constitutional requirements as it is.
