cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/21917446
Ballot in question:
Mayor:
District 1:
Because the title of the post a) comes from the original source and b) also has nothing to do with previous elections.
1 in 5 voters, in this election, failed to vote on the ranked choice options when presented.
So A) i will have to assume that the original article is a bit of journalistic malarky. It’s locked behind a login so i don’t know if the article provides some reasonable backdrop to this 1 out 5 = cratering engagement BS, but i doubt it. More likely is that this is just more anti-alternate voting scheme propoganda.
B) it has everything to with previous elections. You can’t claim that a voting process has had a negative effect on some metric or another without inherently referencing previous elections. Something getting worse (voter engagement) requires that it was previously better. So yeah, the entire claim that this headline makes requires that it was better under the previous system.
1 in 5 voters, in this election, failed to vote on the ranked choice options when presented.
Sure, and if the headline stopped there it’d factual and i’d have no issue. Instead it specifically says voter engagement has worsened and then doesn’t back that up.
So i say again, show us the data on voter engagement from the previous system or stop spreading this status quo, two-party-maintaining hogwash.
The headline doesn’t need to mention previous elections because, in this election, 20% of voters skipped those lines while voting on other lines.
That’s where the “20% drop” is coming from. Compared to other lines on the SAME ballot, not previous elections.
So, they voted for President, Congress, etc, but skipped the ranked choice lines resulting in a 20% undervote compared to the rest of the ballot.
Which still means absolutely nothing unless we have the context to judge it by. What if 25% of voters skipped over the city council part during the last election when ranked choice was not used? In that context is it still fair to blame ranked choice for the “disengagement”? Maybe people just naturally vote for congress and presidents a heck of a lot more than they do for city council. Maybe ranked choice actually increased the percentage of voters placing votes for city councilors. If that happens to be true, how could this headline be anything but intentionally misleading? And without last election’s city cousel percentages this scenario i describe might as well be true.
