In sharp contrast, ranked-choice voting is alone in being so actively and aggressively marketed. A corporation with a steadily growing annual budget of multiple millions of dollars serves no purpose other than promoting ranked-choice voting. That surely is what has made the difference.
I cannot rule out the possibility of gaining some new insight that would motivate me to write yet another article, but what BAV needs is not another article. What BAV needs is competent and aggressive marketing.
This article now seems likely to be the last in this series. Building an organization to promote BAV will require the efforts of someone much younger than an octogenarian like me. And no doubt different skills will be needed.
I can only hope someone will step up to this challenge. If someone does, I can suggest a project for attracting the more widespread attention that BAV deserves.
It seems clear that of all our elections, primary elections most strikingly deserve an improved voting system. However, neither of our two parties seems likely to initiate such a change. But perhaps providing a clear example would motivate such a change.
Primary elections very often must select from more than merely two candidates. Using plurality voting for such a task, as unfortunately is our tradition, is astoundingly foolish. Plurality voting clearly is not suited for dealing with such complexity. At a minimum, the voting system should accommodate more than two candidates without suffering from anomalies like the spoiler effect.
Also, "primary election" should stay singular, not plural. It should be (and could be) conducted nation-wide; there is no constitutional constraint on primaries. They do not have to be conducted separately state-by-state.
The state-by-state approach that we use for primary elections so often prevents voters from ever expressing an opinion about most candidates. This is because candidates drop out of competition in response to each state's primary. Even if every state adopted BAV for its primary, that state-by-state approach could not promise a democratic outcome that treats all voters as equally important.
What BAV needs is an organization for promoting it. Funding, probably from small donations, will be required. But raising money serves the goal of promoting BAV. Potential donors will insist on knowing how their donations will be used; they will be curious about BAV, and they will be motivated to learn about it.
The next task is to conduct an internet based, nation-wide mock election, allowing all candidates to compete using BAV. This provides an example for political parties, and people generally, to show how a single, nation-wide primary should be conducted.
And the mock election is another opportunity for promoting BAV. It could be repeated several times during the primary season, providing additional promotional opportunities.
Each of these mock elections would provide voters an opportunity to experience on-line voting using BAV. Voters would have this opportunity to learn how BAV offers a much less stressful way to vote. They would find that BAV largely eliminates guesswork about electability as it entirely avoids forcing voters to (figuratively) flip a coin to decide which candidate to choose.
Provided that these mock elections take care to track the location and party affiliation of voters, the data could be analyzed in a great variety of ways. The published results could provide quite detailed insight into voter preferences; coverage in the mass media would be likely and very welcome.
A follow-up poll of the population would likewise be very interesting. It would measure the percentage of the population that prefers the candidates selected by the mock primary compared and what percent prefer the actual party nominee.
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