Daily Archives: 3 August 2020

Hong Kong’s Elections

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They were scheduled for 6 September. Now they’re delayed by the People’s Republic of China for a year; although it was Hong Kong’s Chief Executive Carrie Lam who delivered the news.

Officially, the delay is due to the Wuhan Virus. However, the virus situation has been known for some months, but just before the decision to delay,

12 pro-democracy candidates were disqualified from running in the poll, for reasons including perceived subversive intentions, opposition to the new security law, and campaigning to win a legislation-blocking majority.

There it is in all its naked glory: that new security law that lets the PRC government in Beijing determine what is subversive and so criminal. Included in the current definition is democracy: it’s a crime for Hong Kongers to try to elect city legislators that will represent them rather than Beijing.

The move has one additional outcome: in the absence of a City legislature, the government of the PRC will fill the legislative vacuum.

This is freedom PRC style.

Ranked Voting?

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There is a growing push from the Left to move our elections to ranked choice voting. RCV is a technique whereby voters rank all the candidates on a ballot by that voter’s preference, and in the event the first preference candidate doesn’t get a majority, bottom candidates get stricken from the ballot, those votes reallocated in some fashion—or dropped altogether—and the counting redone. The process is repeated until a winner is manufactured out of the æther of preferences.

We already do all the ranked voting we need, and it doesn’t precisely ape the foolishness and unnecessary complexity of RCV. They’re called run-off elections in the primaries. And when there’s no majority in the Electoral College, the House and Senate do ranked voting: more run-offs.

If jurisdictions are dissatisfied with pluralities winning rather than majorities, they can switch to run-offs.