Given the current state of voters, ranked choice seems like the best way to break the logjam by creating situations where palatable-to-all get elected over loved-by-most-hated-by-many.

That’s exactly how Chesa Boudin got elected to DA in SF - ranked choice.

It can be a bad option, but still the best of the alternatives.

You can look up who lost. Basically an “old timer” Democrat and a “hard(er) on crime upstart”.

Not sure we got the least worst.

I meant ranked choice can be the least worst way of conducting democratic elections.

Individual results will still rightly depend on voters. You can blunt the attraction of extremism, but hearts and minds need shifting before voters will take a fundamentally different approach.

The alternatives might have been even worse.

Boudin got the most votes in the first round. He would have won in first past the post too.

Ranked Choice Condorcet. Instant Runoff is a band aid for the most glaring failing of the plurality system, but it doesn't actually support moving away from the two party system. If anything it might just increase polarization as each major party would gain more strawman to bash.

The downside of high-plurality systems is the lack of voter knowledge, especially without the historical press function.

I'd support that if it were coupled with multiple-choice position forms that were required to be filled out by each candidate, covering core issues and options. That is, no free response, not-an-answer answers.

Given the type of candidates that tend to occupy the low plurality spots, I'd say that problem is there regardless.

But yes, I totally agree with your proposal. I can even see it helping with cutting through all the boilerplate verbiage candidates are having to use to pay respects to various things, and return some focus on actual policies.

Vote Smart tried to do something similar... but the effective end result was that few candidates wanted to go on the record. https://votesmart.org/for-candidates/

Which is a shame, because "knowing what you're voting for" seems like a critical component of democracy, and campaign ads are useless (and expensive).

It makes sense, I think in this case a "middle ground" position is actually a legitimate opposition to both sides.

The rightward view of american policing is basically they're functioning as intended but are not powerful enough to achieve their desired effect and must be reinforced to succeed.

The leftward view is that they're functioning as intended, the violence and fear they cause is success, and so the entire thing must be dismantled.

The "centrist" view is I think something like the goal of policing is good & correct but the system is malfunctioning and must be adjusted. Neither side will agree with that: the right doesn't agree that it's malfunctioning (except so far is that it's held back from achieving its goal) and the left doesn't agree that its goal is just.

I think “right” and “left” are doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Are you talking about people in power, or are you talking about people on Twitter and a perception advanced by sensationalist news sources? I ask because at a national level this description doesn’t seem to match the policies being enacted (and a lot of people on Twitter are pretty vocally unhappy about it.) Everything else seems to vary greatly on a city-by-city level.

More individual self-identification yes. There are effectively no leftists in power in the US, the democrats mostly have what I've described as the centrist position. There is a lot of space to their left in terms of possible policy, but no one in a position to affect it seriously proposing it, afaik.

The problem is they get treated as if they're a member of the opposite side, not a third viewpoint. I can't count the number of times I've been called a Nazi and a communist in the same day.

FWIW, coming from the far left here, I don't really consider either of these positions "opposite" me but they are both clear opponents to my vision of meaningful change.

There's no neutrality or inherent virtue in a centrist position: it's a side like any other and you don't get credit just for inhabiting it. That doesn't make anyone calling you a nazi or communist justified in doing so or correct in their assessment. But it does indicate that neither considers your stance a compromise or allied position in relation to their own.

It's not a centrist position, it's just one that doesn't adhere to the doctrine of either the Right or the Left.

There's also no value in being an extremist either, you're not a significant member of any party that would lead to change in this country, nor will any of your goals come to fruition, you are outnumbered heavily and it looks like thankfully that will be the case for the remainder of my lifetime.

I find that I must act in alignment with my moral values to the best of my understanding and ability. It's not up to me to discover or calculate the "value" of those results, and that's not any part of my motivation.

I don't know what it would be like to select political goals based on their likelihood in the face of such incredible violence and injustice as we create. I'm grateful I can't lathe my soul in such a way. Seems chill though.

Not too long ago, advocating for gay marriage was considered an extremist position, but that eventually passed. On the other side, advocating for the illegality of abortion even for a child rape victim would be considered an extreme position in most of the US even though it is the current law in several states.

The Overton window can move surprisingly quickly, and policies which you consider extremist now won't be in a decade.

What fraction of people have to agree with something before it isn't extreme? Support for marriage equality among Americans was as high as 25% even back in 1990, if XKCD is to be believed.

Centrism is a meta-heuristic concerned only with who said what. It’s no surprise that many people find centrist beliefs superficial & uninformed.

that's ridiculous, most humans are natural centrists with very few people making up the extremes.

Posts such as this are sociologically amusing, "meta-heuristic" and the like. Using prepackaged terms to disparage people and dismiss them, without actually having to think objectively and consider opposing viewpoints. Also interesting how the choice of language completely outs people, as the extreme right/left adhere 100% to their respective terminologies, to signal membership and loyalty to their group. This post is a good example.