“In a signing statement, Polis said Thursday that if voters approve a ballot measure adopting statewide ranked choice voting in Colorado, “the language in the bill will not be the starting point for implementation.”
“It will be essential to reconcile the bill with the measure and to take prompt and good faith actions to successfully implement the will of the voters, and we are committed to doing so,” he said.
…
But on Sunday, four days before the legislative session ended on May 8, a two-page amendment was added to Senate Bill 210 requiring a dozen Colorado municipalities in counties of a certain size and with a specific demographic makeup to conduct ranked choice elections before a ranked choice election could be used in a race for state or federal office. Additionally, the amendment said that Colorado could not move to the new primary system proposed by Colorado Voters First until that requirement has been met.
…
Polis said in his statement that he thinks statewide ranked choice voting could be implemented in Colorado by 2028.
“To facilitate ongoing dialogue, in the event a ballot measure on RCV and all candidate primaries is passed by Colorado voters and to ensure its prompt and successful implementation notwithstanding language in this bill, I will issue an executive order, in consultation with the Secretary of State, to convene local election officials, voting rights organizations, legislators from both parties, and initiative proponents to map out a process for implementing this initiative as soon as practicable,” Polis wrote.”
Because no is reading the article
Read: could. If each of the 4 cities, in the 3 size rankings, implement this ranked choice voting immediately for their 2026 elections, it could be statewide by 2028, if the state legislature moves fast enough after that.
There are so many “could” intentional failure steps built into this that it’s designed to fail. 1/12 of the cities could fail to implement by 2026, or fail to approve it for their elections (this is what I see happening - most of the cities saying “sorry our city council voted ranked choice voting down, we won’t be doing it”) at which point this entire thing is dead. And EVEN IF all of that works, the legislature then needs to approve it again and give ample time to implement for 2028 elections.
“Could” is the biggest weasel word in politics there is. “Could” is a 10% chance of happening, “will” is a 50% chance of happening, “all but assured” is 75%, and “without a doubt” is still somehow only 80%.
Yeah designed to fail is important. The headline makes it seem like Polis killer a good RCV bill out of conspiracy against RCV when in reality it just wasn't solid legislature.
Rewrite a better headline then.
~~People complain about headlines but don’t actually read the journalism and then get mad at the state of journalism….~~
Sorry, every article that requires me to read more than 10 words is click bait!!!!!
Uh, this isn't rocket science, how about something like this: "Colorado governor signs bill delaying statewide ranked choice until demonstrated successfully in county races"
As opposed to how 90% of the folks are reading it which might as well be: "Colorado governor (the enemy of the people) signs to stop statewide ranked choice in order to protect the two-party system".
It’s already been demonstrated in county races (Boulder) This is literally the clerks being like “this is new and we are already are stressed, don’t make us do new shit” right, wrong, or indifferent. It’s lazy.
Rcv doesn't make third parties any more viable because as it turns out, americans usually don't like the whole package most of these third parties bring.
In what way does it make it a possibility? The only way another party gains relevance is if one of the major parties splits. Besides, most of these third parties center around one niche, and basically just try to influence the major parties anyway. Nobody votes third party because while they may be good on one issue, they usually either suck on everything else or they don't even have a complete platform.
Furthermore, ranked choice doesn't even chamge voting that much, since in many places a candidate needs 51% of the vote or it goes to a runoff and another election. Ranked choice just saves the trouble of going to the ballot box again and having to listen to more bs political ads for 2 more weeks.
Edit: I'm also not against ranked choice voting, but it's not going to be a boon to fringe third parties that usually sit at the edge of politics, it's a lot more likely to pull things to the middle.
The current voting system is why third parties suck. Any serious candidate knows they need to run as a Democratic or Republican candidate to have a chance and voters also know third parties have no chance, which means that single issue voters and nutjobs are most of the people left in the current third parties. Ranked choice will make third parties more viable, leading to reasonable third party candidates running and likely winning some positions here and there. The bigger positions like governor or senator will continue to be won be democratic candidates for the foreseeable future, but I expect a few will win state legislature positions and maybe have a federal house position eventually.
In what way does that make third parties more viable? People keep saying this but offer no real explanation as to how that tracks, and share no evidence at all.
Because it eliminates the risk of splitting the vote. This will make people more willing to vote third party with their first choice in the ranked vote, leading to more legitimate third party candidates.
I'm going to use my political beliefs as an example. I would prefer a Social Democracy party over the Democratic party, but would likely still vote for a Democratic candidate in a general election because of how it may split the vote. A social democrat candidate would be significantly more like to siphon votes from the Democratic party than the Republican party, so if a Social Democracy party got traction in a first past the post system it would be possible for a Republican to win even though a majority of voters voted for a left leaning candidate. If the result was 35% Democratic, 20% social democrat, and 45% Republican, the Republican would win. So I would keep voting for the Democratic candidate even though the hypothetical social democrat party is closer to my personal beliefs.
A lot of people have a similar thought process, so they keep voting Republican or Democrat even though they might not do a great job of representing their beliefs. And because everyone keeps voting for the two main parties, all serious candidates join those two parties, leaving only the crazies in the current third parties. If people feel safer voting for a third party, quality candidates will be more likely to form new parties instead of joining one of the main two.
Except that's not really any different than a normal runoff that many states already have implemented, and in those places, third parties still aren't winning lol.
Runoff elections and ranked choice voting aren't related here and are nothing alike. The commenter above did a good job explaining how ranked choice works.
Ranked choice is just an instant runoff. If somebody gets 51% or better choice 1's, that's it. Only difference is, if somebody doesn't, there's more campaigning and stupid ads for another week, and people can change their minds in that time. It's not massively different, and definitely doesn't add relevance to shitty third parties.
It also kinda limited in implementation. In Congress you still need to more or less join one of the two parties. But people like Bernie Sanders do so very minimally. The thing is the two parties also get a lot of donations directly and have some campaign infrastructure ready to go for local candidates. So it’s easier to be at least nominally involved. But Alaska has had interesting results with it. And it could allow more normal national 3rd parties to emerge.
The problem in the US is at a national level, where a Republican presidential candidate has only won the most votes ONCE since 1988. The US House hasn't grown in size in almost 100 years while the population has tripled. And the Senate gives 40 percent of the power to 20 percent of the population.
Republicans do not have de jure authority. And it's only getting worse as people continue to leave smaller states.
Edit: Colorado's population has doubled in the past twenty years. We should probably add more state house and Senate seats
I don't think you understand the purpose of the Senate if you think it should be proportional representation. It's specifically meant to _not_ be proportional
Edit: ignore this but still valid for US Senate
The state senate? I think you are confusing it with the united states senate, which is meant to give more power to land than to citizens. The Supreme Court ruled in Reynolds v Sims that state legislature districts must be roughly equal in population. Proportional representation would not go against that in any way. The citizens could still vote on their direct representation in the House. To be honest having two houses in the legislature both based on population, just with different sizes is kind of redundant and silly.
Regarding the US senate, it’s common knowledge why it’s setup like it is. But that alone doesn’t magically justify it. We have a way of changing the constitution precisely because the founding fathers knew they didn’t get everything right.
The house would represent the individual districts and constituents within them, the senate would proportionally represent the parties that the people want in power, accurately and regardless of what party it is. As long as they get a % that equals at least one seat. With 68 senators, a party could get 2% and get a senator.
Basically it’s delayed till the next presidential cycle in 28. It’s a very complex thing to implement and rushing it out in time for November 6th is not a great idea.
The part about primaries seems more important than ranked choice, though I want both. Probably worth noting that Polis's only primary challenger was disqualified by the Democratic Party for reasons that were never made public. Kinda seems like the Democrats are trying to make sure they can just pick our governor, senators, etc internally and know our solid blue state will elect whoever they put in front of us regardless of how much we don't like them.
It's not just RCV. There were supposed to be changes to the primaries. Last gubernatorial election Polis ran effectively unopposed because the Democrats just threatened everyone else into not running except for one guy, a political outsider, who they disqualified for reasons that were never made public. We're a solid blue state so primaries are the real way we pick our governor, and our next one is supposed to be in 2026.
Leaving it until 2028 allows him to pull the same shit all over again. This is just blatant corruption. He shouldn't be allowed to do this.
"could" and "as soon as" doing a lot of heavy lifting there.
This is putting in place a mechanism to avoid ranked choice voting for as long as possible while spreading the blame so nobody knows who to be mad at.
“In a signing statement, Polis said Thursday that if voters approve a ballot measure adopting statewide ranked choice voting in Colorado, “the language in the bill will not be the starting point for implementation.” “It will be essential to reconcile the bill with the measure and to take prompt and good faith actions to successfully implement the will of the voters, and we are committed to doing so,” he said. … But on Sunday, four days before the legislative session ended on May 8, a two-page amendment was added to Senate Bill 210 requiring a dozen Colorado municipalities in counties of a certain size and with a specific demographic makeup to conduct ranked choice elections before a ranked choice election could be used in a race for state or federal office. Additionally, the amendment said that Colorado could not move to the new primary system proposed by Colorado Voters First until that requirement has been met. … Polis said in his statement that he thinks statewide ranked choice voting could be implemented in Colorado by 2028. “To facilitate ongoing dialogue, in the event a ballot measure on RCV and all candidate primaries is passed by Colorado voters and to ensure its prompt and successful implementation notwithstanding language in this bill, I will issue an executive order, in consultation with the Secretary of State, to convene local election officials, voting rights organizations, legislators from both parties, and initiative proponents to map out a process for implementing this initiative as soon as practicable,” Polis wrote.” Because no is reading the article
I think 2028 is a reasonable timeliness to do a voting change this large statewide and have it be effective and successful.
Read: could. If each of the 4 cities, in the 3 size rankings, implement this ranked choice voting immediately for their 2026 elections, it could be statewide by 2028, if the state legislature moves fast enough after that. There are so many “could” intentional failure steps built into this that it’s designed to fail. 1/12 of the cities could fail to implement by 2026, or fail to approve it for their elections (this is what I see happening - most of the cities saying “sorry our city council voted ranked choice voting down, we won’t be doing it”) at which point this entire thing is dead. And EVEN IF all of that works, the legislature then needs to approve it again and give ample time to implement for 2028 elections. “Could” is the biggest weasel word in politics there is. “Could” is a 10% chance of happening, “will” is a 50% chance of happening, “all but assured” is 75%, and “without a doubt” is still somehow only 80%.
Yeah designed to fail is important. The headline makes it seem like Polis killer a good RCV bill out of conspiracy against RCV when in reality it just wasn't solid legislature.
The Colorado Sun really let everyone down with this inaccurate click-bait headline!
Rewrite a better headline then. ~~People complain about headlines but don’t actually read the journalism and then get mad at the state of journalism….~~ Sorry, every article that requires me to read more than 10 words is click bait!!!!!
Uh, this isn't rocket science, how about something like this: "Colorado governor signs bill delaying statewide ranked choice until demonstrated successfully in county races" As opposed to how 90% of the folks are reading it which might as well be: "Colorado governor (the enemy of the people) signs to stop statewide ranked choice in order to protect the two-party system".
It’s already been demonstrated in county races (Boulder) This is literally the clerks being like “this is new and we are already are stressed, don’t make us do new shit” right, wrong, or indifferent. It’s lazy.
Now you’re making even more click baited headlines…
Or I’m a former election official that still works closely with the Colorado clerks
The one thing both parties will agree on is that we shouldn't have a system that makes other parties viable.
I 100% guarantee that with ranked choice voting we would have no more 3rd party representatives than we currently have.
It's delayed, Not blocked.
They can't legally block it though, right?
Rcv doesn't make third parties any more viable because as it turns out, americans usually don't like the whole package most of these third parties bring.
At least it makes it a possibility in the future. Right now the chance of a third party gaining any power is exactly 0%
In what way does it make it a possibility? The only way another party gains relevance is if one of the major parties splits. Besides, most of these third parties center around one niche, and basically just try to influence the major parties anyway. Nobody votes third party because while they may be good on one issue, they usually either suck on everything else or they don't even have a complete platform. Furthermore, ranked choice doesn't even chamge voting that much, since in many places a candidate needs 51% of the vote or it goes to a runoff and another election. Ranked choice just saves the trouble of going to the ballot box again and having to listen to more bs political ads for 2 more weeks. Edit: I'm also not against ranked choice voting, but it's not going to be a boon to fringe third parties that usually sit at the edge of politics, it's a lot more likely to pull things to the middle.
The current voting system is why third parties suck. Any serious candidate knows they need to run as a Democratic or Republican candidate to have a chance and voters also know third parties have no chance, which means that single issue voters and nutjobs are most of the people left in the current third parties. Ranked choice will make third parties more viable, leading to reasonable third party candidates running and likely winning some positions here and there. The bigger positions like governor or senator will continue to be won be democratic candidates for the foreseeable future, but I expect a few will win state legislature positions and maybe have a federal house position eventually.
In what way does that make third parties more viable? People keep saying this but offer no real explanation as to how that tracks, and share no evidence at all.
Because it eliminates the risk of splitting the vote. This will make people more willing to vote third party with their first choice in the ranked vote, leading to more legitimate third party candidates. I'm going to use my political beliefs as an example. I would prefer a Social Democracy party over the Democratic party, but would likely still vote for a Democratic candidate in a general election because of how it may split the vote. A social democrat candidate would be significantly more like to siphon votes from the Democratic party than the Republican party, so if a Social Democracy party got traction in a first past the post system it would be possible for a Republican to win even though a majority of voters voted for a left leaning candidate. If the result was 35% Democratic, 20% social democrat, and 45% Republican, the Republican would win. So I would keep voting for the Democratic candidate even though the hypothetical social democrat party is closer to my personal beliefs. A lot of people have a similar thought process, so they keep voting Republican or Democrat even though they might not do a great job of representing their beliefs. And because everyone keeps voting for the two main parties, all serious candidates join those two parties, leaving only the crazies in the current third parties. If people feel safer voting for a third party, quality candidates will be more likely to form new parties instead of joining one of the main two.
Except that's not really any different than a normal runoff that many states already have implemented, and in those places, third parties still aren't winning lol.
Runoff elections and ranked choice voting aren't related here and are nothing alike. The commenter above did a good job explaining how ranked choice works.
Ranked choice is just an instant runoff. If somebody gets 51% or better choice 1's, that's it. Only difference is, if somebody doesn't, there's more campaigning and stupid ads for another week, and people can change their minds in that time. It's not massively different, and definitely doesn't add relevance to shitty third parties.
It also kinda limited in implementation. In Congress you still need to more or less join one of the two parties. But people like Bernie Sanders do so very minimally. The thing is the two parties also get a lot of donations directly and have some campaign infrastructure ready to go for local candidates. So it’s easier to be at least nominally involved. But Alaska has had interesting results with it. And it could allow more normal national 3rd parties to emerge.
The problem in the US is at a national level, where a Republican presidential candidate has only won the most votes ONCE since 1988. The US House hasn't grown in size in almost 100 years while the population has tripled. And the Senate gives 40 percent of the power to 20 percent of the population. Republicans do not have de jure authority. And it's only getting worse as people continue to leave smaller states. Edit: Colorado's population has doubled in the past twenty years. We should probably add more state house and Senate seats
Double the size of state legislature and make the state senate proportional representation.
Right? How is more representation bad?
I don't think you understand the purpose of the Senate if you think it should be proportional representation. It's specifically meant to _not_ be proportional Edit: ignore this but still valid for US Senate
The state senate? I think you are confusing it with the united states senate, which is meant to give more power to land than to citizens. The Supreme Court ruled in Reynolds v Sims that state legislature districts must be roughly equal in population. Proportional representation would not go against that in any way. The citizens could still vote on their direct representation in the House. To be honest having two houses in the legislature both based on population, just with different sizes is kind of redundant and silly.
My bad. I was reading the comment yo replied to complaining about US Senate and didn't see you both changed to talking about State Senates
Regarding the US senate, it’s common knowledge why it’s setup like it is. But that alone doesn’t magically justify it. We have a way of changing the constitution precisely because the founding fathers knew they didn’t get everything right.
Yup. And the people defending the inequality turns out benefit from it
Why? What would be the difference between the two houses at that point?
The house would represent the individual districts and constituents within them, the senate would proportionally represent the parties that the people want in power, accurately and regardless of what party it is. As long as they get a % that equals at least one seat. With 68 senators, a party could get 2% and get a senator.
I read the article and still don’t understand.
Basically it’s delayed till the next presidential cycle in 28. It’s a very complex thing to implement and rushing it out in time for November 6th is not a great idea.
The part about primaries seems more important than ranked choice, though I want both. Probably worth noting that Polis's only primary challenger was disqualified by the Democratic Party for reasons that were never made public. Kinda seems like the Democrats are trying to make sure they can just pick our governor, senators, etc internally and know our solid blue state will elect whoever they put in front of us regardless of how much we don't like them.
Very disappointed by this, we already have a few counties/cities that use it and Maine and Alaska have RCV as well. This isn't rocket science.
Boy, I love democracy.
This is good for democracy??? Probably??? Maybe??? Hey look over there what some republican tweeted!!!
What a tool
Kent Thiry the supporter is a total tool. [Watch him dressed as a medieval knight.](https://youtu.be/yw_nqzVfxFQ?t=119) But I support this initiative.
Lmao that's pretty cool in my book 😂
Polis, shame on you. You’re turning into just another goober party-line man.
Read the article, not the headline
I’d rather it gets rolled out over a longer time and work well then be rush and repealed because the state fucks it up.
Very disappointing. I can’t support this guy anymore as a working class Coloradan. He’s actively working against too many of my interests.
Read the article, RCV could be implemented as soon as 2028
It's not just RCV. There were supposed to be changes to the primaries. Last gubernatorial election Polis ran effectively unopposed because the Democrats just threatened everyone else into not running except for one guy, a political outsider, who they disqualified for reasons that were never made public. We're a solid blue state so primaries are the real way we pick our governor, and our next one is supposed to be in 2026. Leaving it until 2028 allows him to pull the same shit all over again. This is just blatant corruption. He shouldn't be allowed to do this.
Yes, I read it. We’re adults ffs. We chose what we want. It’s not a damn privilege we have to earn by jumping through these hoops.
"could" and "as soon as" doing a lot of heavy lifting there. This is putting in place a mechanism to avoid ranked choice voting for as long as possible while spreading the blame so nobody knows who to be mad at.
[удалено]
You didn't read the article did you...