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Hey Democrats - Let's Try Democracy. [1]

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Date: 2022-11-29

One person, One vote, Same day

Are we the party of democracy or not? It is time to end the antiquated delegate process and choose our presidential candidates in one national primary election, on one day (plus early voting), using ranked choice voting. We just count up all the votes and whoever gets over 50% is our candidate. Every Democratic voter’s ballot is worth exactly the same whether they live in Iowa, Vermont, California or Mississippi. Using RCV will assure that we get a consensus candidate that most Democrats are OK with and not some fringe candidate who represents 23% of the party. This candidate would also probably be likelier to be elected in November.

One of the arguments against this is that only candidates with a lot of money who can afford a national campaign would be viable. Perhaps at one time this was true, but today there is diminishing returns of paid advertising and candidates with solid grass roots organization and strong social media can become elevated above the weaker rich candidates.

Enough with debates about which states go first and “super delegates”. The whole process is just a legacy of “reforms” of backroom deal making and the time has come to scrap the whole stupid process and do it right. How can we be the party that wants to end the Electoral College, gerrymandering and have a more representative Senate when we can’t even have a democratic process on the one election we actually control?

Sure there are details to work out. What is the best campaign strategy and how long do campaigns last? How do we figure out who gets into the debates and how many do we have? How do we pick our VP candidate? Would we still have a convention to hear speeches and write a platform? Who would be invited to such a “convention?” Will candidates make deals to be each other’s endorsed second or third choice in RCV? However, after a few election cycles these will all be sorted and we will all wonder why we didn’t always do it this way.

Let the Republicans do whatever they want to do. If they want to keep having straw polls in Iowa and eat corn dogs at county fairs, that is their choice. Instead, we’ll just use a simple system based on “One person, One vote, Same election period”. What a concept.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/11/29/2109562/-Hey-Democrats-Let-s-Try-Democracy

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