For us not to qualify as a backwards ass country we’d also have to pretend that three mile island wasn’t one lucky accident away from doing just what Chernobyl did.

I would have loved to own one of these. By the time i saved up for one they were off the market.

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.

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.

If you cannot compare the previous voter engagement to the current voter engagement then why title your post in such a way? Why blame ranked choice voting for “cratering” voter engagement if you have no metric by which to judge that?

My point being that you cannot blame the lack of voting for city counsilors (by one out of five people) on the new system without comparing it to the old system. Frankly, four out of five voters voting for City council doesn’t sound atrocious, and may or may not be perfectly normal for the city of Portland. Heck, without the data we don’t know if only three out of five people voted for city council under the old voting system. For all we know this new system actually increased that number. Do you see my point?

How many out of 5 chose a city councilor during the last election when no ranked choice voting was available? If you can’t provide that data then shush up.

Because the other person didn’t do insane arithmetic between polls

The other person did no arithmetic at all. Nor did they provide any data at all. But you know what they did do? They claimed that the polling data supported the idea that third partiers support Harris over Trump. And they claimed that a couple very specific types of polling data supported this claim. You know which types? Yep, the exact ones i pulled polling data for. So, critisize the choice of those specific polls all you want, and go on about how i shouldn’t compare two polls of disparate groups of people (which was one of my own points before you latched onto it, you’re welcome), but in the end you’re only making my case for me that the commenter who said the polls support their claim is wrong.

Since then you have: A) misinterpretted my original comment in which i linked the polls, B) repeated your “1 = 3 = magical math” argument, and most recently, C) cast aspersions on all polling data.

We are past (A). I have addressed (B) multiple times and until you answer my question about the exact percentage range that you would accept as proof, i will consider your argument defeated. Now © i am in complete agreement on, but polling data being unreliable only helps my argument. I.e. if polls are unreliable then why was the other commenter stating that polling data would prove them right? If polling is unreliable then what basis does the article have for claiming that third partiers prefer Harris over Trump?

before backing down,

No, no, no. I have asked you a very specific question which you have refused to answer. This is not what me backing down looks like.

I don’t recall anyone saying they were Harris supporters

You’re joking right? I mean, at this point you must be joking. The entire premise of the article in this post was that third partiers are, to large extent, Harris over Trump supporters. This is the exact premise i am calling into question. Nothing else. Here’s my exact quote: “And why is everyone assuming that all of the third party voters would be Harris voters if they were forced to choose between the two main candidates? This is where the logic goes south. It assumes that the third party voters are some homogenous bloc of disenfranchised “not Trump” voters.”

I never claimed that anyone thinks that third partiers secretly prefer Harris over their own third party candidates. Where do come up with this?

No, the people you’re arguing with just said that they dislike Trump.

I’m sorry, but you’re mistaken. The article is specifically stating that third partiers prefer Harris over Trump. In all of my original comments i call this assumption into question. And all commenters after that follow (or should have followed) that train of thought. If they don’t, then i have no quarrel with them because i am here to argue one thing and one thing only: the assumption that third partiers largely prefer Harris over Trump is a baseless claim. That’s it.

Don’t switch your criticisms mid stream. Have i presented you with too much data or not? Am I actually guilty of gish gallop or was that just your excuse for ignoring 25% of the data i gave you?