USA--Could the Feds "Force" the States to Adopt Uniform Election Rules?

Politics & Elections
1

IMO Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) would be a much better way for people to vote in the US. But how to make that happen? We could wait for all the states to decide, one-by-one, to adopt it. Not good.

Instead, could the federal government force all the states to adopt uniform voting standards (either RCV or something else) in the same way the Feds “force” all the states to adopt uniform over-21 drinking laws by threatening to withhold highway funds if they don’t?

I think there would be value in having uniform election laws in all 50 states. I think election policy decisions would be easier if all the states were the same. Because there are these weird situations sometimes where state vs. federal election laws get complicated because both state and federal government are involved in national elections I think consistent state laws would be good.

Maybe it would let me sleep better at night knowing that these elections would no longer be binary decisions.

ETA: Of course getting congress to agree on a nationwide standard would be hard enough, but nothing as bad as trying to herd 50 statehouses like cats.

2

I’ve been a poll worker for 15+ years. People barely understand voting as it is, ranked choice would make millions of heads explode and/or turn many off from voting altogether.

3

Presumably, with RCV you only have to vote for one candidate if you want. So after a switch to RCV you just publicize the above. Let everyone know they can simply vote for their one choice like they would have done with the old way.

4

Are you sure that’s a power you want to grant to this administration?

5

Which leads directly to the current thread on minarchism / minarchy.

Once you (the rhetorical you) assume, or worse yet conclude, that the Federal government cannot be trusted to be operated lawfully and righteously over the long term, the only sensible response becomes to dismantle as much of it as you can as quickly as you can. Before its statistically inevitable misuse becomes entrenched to your detriment.

My personal lifelong POV has been that the Feds, led by the more civilized educated economically forward-looking states, are a force for progress and social gain against the entrenched ignorance and backwardness of the rest. As such, Federalism and state’s rights is a 1700’s holdover idea that in the 20th and 21st centuries has become a dead hand slowing the national progress. That POV would line up fully in favor of the OP’s ideas.

But …

I find the last roughly decade’s events prior to earlier this week are calling all that into question. An ever more powerful and malevolent Federal government is a distinct possibility and one that leaves none of us with any refuge in any more enlightened state.

And I’m not so giddy as to assume the outcome of this week’s elections will stand up to much forceful political pushback, or even routine pendulum swinging, be that in January 2027, or in Nov 2028 or some time around 2040.

6

Certainly not. It would take time to get this sort of thing going so Donny would be long gone.

Thing is, I don’t really want the feds to exercise more power over the states in terms of elections because those should generally be handled by the states.

I just wish there were some way to get the states to have uniform election policy. Why? I’m not sure—mostly I’d like that only if the uniform policy decided upon was RCV and I don’t see that happening anytime soon.

No, the outcome of 2026 will likely last only a few congressional terms. Then our lovely American buddies will send the pendulum back the other way. It’s all American voters (as a whole) know how to do. We’ve been trained to see it as a big pendulum game because we only have binary choices in our elections.

It’s binary choices only until and unless we get a viable multi-party system

7

You will never have a multi-party system if you have legislative districts where one person must be the winner. And that includes Senate seats too.

Mathematical game theory ensures that a two-party system is the necessary outcome of that. A third party may exist briefly before being snuffed out again. But that’s it.

You need joint constituencies, party lists, legislative seats allocated to parties, not persons, and all the rest of the parliamentary paraphernalia to have a multi-party democracy. That’s not a matter of human nature or political fashion. It’s a matter of math.

RCV is tinkering at the edges. Replace Congress with a parliament and you’ll be started down the road. See e.g. Germany for a working model. Which isn’t exactly working so great right now while a hefty fraction of the public wants to vote the quasi-fascists into power.

8

Has anyone informed the UK about this?

9

You’ll note they’re a 2.1 or 2.2 party system. The pipsqueaks don’t form governments.

11

And that would need to change for there to be a viable third (or fourth, etc.) party system. However, ISTM that RCV could potential send a 3rd party candidate into office but it also seems to me that RCV would usually end up selecting a Dem or a GOP. I am not sure about either.

But yeah. I realize that the system would have to be changed for it to happen. It’s pipe dream but it is possible.

12

For congressional elections, it doesn’t need that kind of a back door. Congress has absolute authority over nearly every aspect of how congressional elections work and could mandate instant runoff voting in every election for the House and Senate. States only have any role in the process because Congress has elected not to use its power to do much more than minor tweaks.

But for other elections, I’m not sure there’s any constitutional leverage. Sometimes what happens is Congress mandates e.g. uniform voter registration forms for federal elections, and because states are lazy and cheap they let those rules apply to all elections. But that wouldn’t really work for a whole new election system.

13

Moderating:

This sidetrack on the need for a multi-party system for the USA is at risk of hijacking your own, otherwise narrowly defined topic. @I_Love_Me_Vol.I, you yourself admit that this is a big issue to you, so I strongly suggest you start another OP on the multi-party subject so you can do a deep dive.

This is just a guidance, not a warning.

14

This, this, so much this.

I’m in lay leadership at my church. Twenty years ago we had a vacancy for clergy, and part of the search process involved a survey. One item on the survey was a rank-'em exercise (nothing transferable, simple 1-2-3-4-5…) involving strengths a priest might have. Which is more important, being a good preacher, or being excellent at pastoral care, or being a terrific liturgist, or an able administrator, or, or, or. The directions were as clear as we could possibly make them: mark the most important skill 1, the second most important 2, and so on.

At least a quarter of the congregation couldn’t do it. Maybe more than a quarter, because I think some people ranked the least important skill as 1 rather than the most important skill. (Oops.) We had fields of check marks; we had 1,1,1,2,3,4, we had people crossing out ones they didn’t like and leaving the rest blank… Many of these folks have masters degrees, which I offer not to correlate having a masters with intelligence, but correlating it instead with a general ability to follow instructions and do well on tests. And a big chunk of them couldn’t do it.

Ten years later we had a new vacancy. Let’s not use rankings this time, I said. But I was overruled. And the same thing happened.

We’re in the same situation again. We are NOT going to use rankings, I said as firmly as I knew how (I may have used my night nurse voice, @BippityBoppityBoo will understand), they don’t give us the information we need, and this time the group listened. I’m not opposed to the idea of transferable ranked voting, but that presupposes that it’s simple enough that people understand what they are doing, and BBB is completely correct: they don’t.

(In answer to the original question, I don’;t know whether the feds could do anything of the sort but it seems evident to me that the feds would require no ranked choice voting anywhere before requiring it of every election. Could be wrong of course!)

15

And that’s why you don’t start this at the Federal level, or even State level. Promote it for local elections for a decade, so people get used to voting for Mayor like this. Then you expand it to higher offices.

16

I think the thing to keep in mind is that the Founding Fathers were coming out of exactly that sort of scenario - an essentially foreign government that was not responsive to their local neesd and within which, they (the colonies) were not directly represented. And which kept passing laws that were detrimental to their situation, despite their pleas to the contrary.

17

Elementary school kids can be taught RCV. Even Republicans.

18

Easily solved by introducing compulsory voting, something I’ve always been mildly in favor of.

19

She does and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

20

Not if they’re home schooled they can’t. Which is increasingly popular among the reactionary wacko brigade.