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Floridians for Solar Choice reports
[November 8,] Florida voters rejected Amendment 1--the utility-backed proposal that sought to limit the growth of customer-owned solar power in the Sunshine State.
In a true David and Goliath battle, a diverse grassroots coalition of more than 200 organizations, solar companies, elected officials, and thousands of concerned citizens worked to defeat the deceptive utility-backed amendment. Amendment 1 opponents feel that a significant percentage of the "yes" voters felt they were tricked once they understood the true nature of the ballot measure. Constitutional amendments in Florida require 60 percent support to pass.
The millions of dollars in slick ad buys and glossy mailers did not win the day as opponents of Amendment 1 successfully harnessed social and earned media to educate Floridians about the true intent of this deceptive proposal while tapping a vast network of organizations, solar businesses and supporters who remain committed to growing--not restricting--Florida's solar industry.
[...] "In all my years of public service, I had never seen such a thinly-veiled attempt to intentionally mislead Florida voters" [...] said Mike Fasano (R), a former state Senator and current tax collector of Pasco County Tax.
Previously, PhilSalkie pointed out how easy it was to be confused by the competing proposals and other Soylentils weighed in on the disgusting state of electric infrastructure in Florida.
Florida Voters [Overwhelmingly] Approve Solar Energy Tax Break Constitutional Amendment
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday November 18 2016, @06:21PM
Maine established statewide ranked-choice voting. That should be fun.
So sounds like if you really, really want your vote to count, move to Maine? IIRC they and Nebraska are the only ones who do proportional Electoral College distribution, too.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 19 2016, @05:30AM
No. If you want your vote to really count, you should agitate for range or approval voting, whether in your own state or another. (If you're looking to move, I'd recommend New Hampshire -- I suspect the Free State Project folks are likely to be receptive to these voting systems.) I'm glad the people of Maine see a problem with the FPP/plurality system that is dominant in the US, and are trying to do better, but they've actually made a poor choice here.
"Ranked Choice Voting" is a somewhat misleading term for Instant-Runoff Voting (IRV). (There are many forms of voting that use a ballot with ranked choices; this is pointlessly obscured by terming one of them "Ranked Choice Voting".)
IRV is a very bad system. About the only good thing you can say for it is that the plurality system is even worse (at choosing the right winners -- plurality is actually better in some ways, especially logistically). IRV is easily the worst of all commonly-proposed voting systems that use ranked ballots. It is ridiculously complex, has poor stability, ensures two-party dominance, can't be counted in precincts (that is, all votes must be tabulated in one place), and more.
In fact IRV is so bad, I'm sorely tempted to disregard Hanlon's Razor and conclude its popularity can only be due to the entrenched political interests, who hope to poison the well of voting system reform by introducing a horrible system that (A) does not risk damage to the two-party system and (B) will frustrate voters so much they're happy to return to plurality.
Sorely tempted, I said -- but of course, I acknowledge that, while IRV certainly does benefit entrenched political interests, it's not the product of some conspiracy. It always is easier and requires less knowledge to see that something's wrong than to choose the best solution; thus a lot of people who are understandably (and correctly!) pushing for some other voting system remain too ignorant to realize IRV is a horrible choice, and perhaps don't even know there are more choices -- thus they support the one choice they have heard about. And that's why I write comments like this, and this one [soylentnews.org], which goes into substantially more depth, to help alleviate that ignorance.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday November 19 2016, @06:53PM
Approval voting would probably be better, but what is wrong with instant runoff, other than educating voters on how to use it?
Example anti-Trump vote: You rank Jill Stein 1st, Hillary Clinton 2nd. Or the 2000 equivalent: Ralph Nader 1st, Al Gore 2nd.
Your third party candidate gets a chance of winning, without your vote acting as a "spoiler".
In polls, which could ask "who is your first choice?", people can legitimately answer their preferred candidate rather than the "less evil" 2-party pick. If third party candidates can do better in the polls, they will get more attention (even in the corporate media).
I can't see it as anything other than an improvement for third party candidates. At worst, it is less effective than approval voting due to voter confusion, but it is still too much of a risk to entrenched political interests to push it. Which is why Maine adopted the system via a ballot measure and not a vote of the legislature.
I looked at some of the "evidence" you linked in an earlier comment, but it doesn't seem to reflect the nuances of reality. The supposed whitening effect [rangevoting.org] of IRV could be explained by cultural/voter differences. Perhaps Aussie whites are more distrustful of other races than their UK counterparts, due to various factors that will never be explained by a simple hit piece on IRV.
If you want to get conspiratorial about Maine, I would start here [ballotpedia.org].
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