Initiatives related to ranked choice voting in political primaries and general elections were on the ballots in eight states and the District of Columbia. On the ballots were also an initiative that would repeal ranked choice voting (RCV) and restore plurality elections in Alaska, and to prohibit ranked choice voting in Missouri.

RCV lets voters rank candidates for political office by preference instead of choosing just one. If no candidate gets a majority of first-choice votes, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated. Voters who picked the eliminated candidate as their top choice have their votes transferred to their next preference. This process repeats, eliminating the lowest-ranked candidates and redistributing votes, until one candidate achieves a majority.

First-past-the-post plurality party primaries exacerbate political polarization because candidates are generally chosen by each party's base consisting of relatively few but highly ideological voters. This setup pushes candidates to adopt more extreme positions to gain favor with primary voters.

Proponents of RCV argue that it helps ensure the winner has broad support and allows voters to express multiple preferences, creating a more representative outcome in multicandidate races.

Cato Institute scholar Walter Olson argued in 2021 that RCV "should hold a lot of attraction, I believe, for those of us with libertarian views." Why? Because libertarians, he observes, "tend to be aware that the so-called political spectrum does a poor job of capturing important facts about candidates; the ones we recognize as best (or worst) on matters of liberty and the rule of law do not necessarily line up neatly along a party spectrum. For libertarians, as for other groups, RCV respects and incorporates the complexity of actual voter preferences."

Federal courts have consistently ruled that RCV does not violate federal constitutional and statutory requirements with respect to freedom of speech, freedom of association, and equal protection under the law. Specifically, courts have found that RCV in primaries and general elections does not violate political parties' free speech rights because it neither limits parties' ability to express their positions nor restricts their freedom to support chosen candidates. RCV simply changes the mechanics of how votes are counted without suppressing party messaging or candidate competition.

While not all the votes have yet been counted, ranked choice voting appears to have been strongly rejected by voters in nine states. Only voters in Washington, D.C., chose to adopt RCV.

Let's take a look at the results.

Arizona Propositions 133 and 140: The first would amend the constitution to require partisan primaries and the second would amend it to permit the adoption of ranked choice voting in elections: Both were rejected (by 59 percent to 41 percent and 58 percent to 42 percent, respectively). Basically maintaining the state's current semi-closed primary system.

Colorado Proposition 131. Top-four ranked choice voting in primary elections and RCV for both federal and state general elections: rejected by 55 percent to 45 percent.

Idaho Proposition 1. Top-four ranked choice voting in primary elections and RCV for both federal and state general elections: rejected by 69 percent to 31 percent.

Montana Constitutional Amendment 126. Top-four ranked choice voting in primary elections for both federal and state general elections: rejected by 52 percent to 48 percent.

Montana Constitutional Amendment 127. Requires a majority vote to win state and federal general elections: rejected by 61 percent to 39 percent.

Nevada Question 3. Top-five ranked choice voting in primaries and RCV for both federal and state general elections: rejected by 54 percent to 46 percent. Note that a ranked choice voting amendment to the state constitution passed with 53 percent of the vote in 2022. (Amendments must be passed in two successive state general elections.)

Oregon Measure 117. Ranked choice voting in primary and general elections for federal and state executive offices beginning in 2028: rejected by 60 percent to 40 percent.

South Dakota Constitutional Amendment H. Replace partisan primaries with top-two primaries for state and federal elections: rejected by 66 percent to 34 percent.

Washington, D.C. Initiative 83. Semi-open primaries and ranked choice voting for all elections, beginning in 2026: adopted by 73 percent to 27 percent.

What about the initiatives that would repeal and prohibit ranked choice voting?

Alaska Ballot Measure 2. Repeal top-four ranked choice voting in primaries and general elections: too close to call now but it's 51 percent to 49 percent for repeal. Note that RCV squeaked through in 2020 with 50.55 percent vote in favor.

Missouri Amendment 7. Prohibit ranked choice voting and require plurality primary elections: prohibit wins 69 percent to 32 percent.

For anyone obsessively watching election results in the US, Apple News will bring live updates to iPhone and iPad users’ lockscreens. And if you’ve got a recent iPhone, you can keep tabs on the electoral count right in the Dynamic Island while doing other things on your phone.

To get the updates on your lockscreen, you’ll have to register first. Open up Apple News and tap on the “Follow the 2024 election live” banner. If you don’t see the option right away, look for “Election 2024” under the “Special Coverage” section of the menu. You should get a notification that the Live Activity has been enabled.

The widget will be available on iPhones, iPads, and Apple Watches starting tonight as votes in the US presidential and congressional elections are counted, AppleInsider reports. It’ll show the electoral count for Donald Trump and Kamala Harris as well as Senate and House election results.

Apple News similarly shared caucus results through Live Activities earlier this year. Apple didn’t immediately respond to an inquiry from The Verge requesting more information about today’s live election updates.

The Mozilla Foundation laid off 30 percent of its workforce and completely eliminated its advocacy and global programs divisions, TechCrunch reports. 

While Mozilla is best known for its Firefox web browser, the Mozilla Foundation — the parent of the Mozilla Corporation — describes itself as standing up “for the health of the internet.” With its advocacy and global programs divisions gone, its impact may be lessened going forward.

“Fighting for a free and open internet will always be core to our mission, and advocacy continues to be a critical tool in that work. We’re revisiting how we pursue that work, not stopping it,” Brandon Borrman, the Mozilla Foundation’s communications chief, said in an email to The Verge. Borrman declined to confirm exactly how many people were laid off, but said it was about “30% of the current team.”

This is Mozilla’s second round of layoffs this year. In February, the Mozilla Corporation laid off around 60 workers said it would be making a “strategic correction” that would involve involve cutting back its work on a Mastodon instance. Mozilla shut down its virtual 3D platform and refocused its efforts on Firefox and AI. The Mozilla Foundation had around 120 employees before this more recent round of layoffs, according to TechCrunch.

In an email sent to all employees on October 30th, Nabhia Syed, the foundation’s executive director, said that the advocacy and global programs divisions “are no longer part of our structure.”

“Navigating this topsy-turvy, distracting time requires laser focus — and sometimes saying goodbye to the excellent work that has gotten us this far because it won’t get us to the next peak,” wrote Syed, who previously worked as the chief executive of The Markup, an investigative news site. “Lofty goals demand hard choices.” 

As US states were busy counting votes to confirm who would be the next president Tuesday night, Nintendo's Japanese Twitter account was busy confirming a key backward compatibility feature for the upcoming "Nintendo Switch successor," which is still only pre-announced, officially.

"At today's Corporate Management Policy Briefing, we announced that Nintendo Switch software will also be playable on the successor to Nintendo Switch," Nintendo posted in a social media update attributed to company president Shintaro Furukawa. "Nintendo Switch Online will be available on the successor to Nintendo Switch as well."

This is Furukawa. At today's Corporate Management Policy Briefing, we announced that Nintendo Switch software will also be playable on the successor to Nintendo Switch. Nintendo Switch Online will be available on the successor to Nintendo Switch as well. Further information about…

— 任天堂株式会社（企業広報・IR） (@NintendoCoLtd) November 6, 2024

In the full policy briefing referenced in that post, Nintendo adds that it "believe[s] that it is important for Nintendo’s future to make use of Nintendo Account and carry over the good relationship that we have built with the over 100 million annual playing users on Nintendo Switch to its successor." The company also makes the (perhaps obvious) clarification that "in addition to being able to play Nintendo Switch software they currently own, consumers will be able to choose their next purchase from a broad selection of titles released for Nintendo Switch [on its successor]."

A crucial feature

Nintendo offered broad, vague hints on its next console's backward compatibility well over a year ago, saying at the time that "as for the transition from Nintendo Switch to the next-generation machine, we want to do as much as possible in order to smoothly transition our customers, while utilizing the Nintendo Account." In recent months, we've gotten multiple reports that this kind of backward compatibility was already in the works via supply chain and game development sources.

In retrospect, the most important incident along the road to this Election Day may not have been the Democratic Party's decision to shove aside President Joe Biden, or the unprecedented (and undemocratic) elevation of Vice President Kamala Harris to the top of the ticket. It wasn't the Republican Party's inability to break out of the thrall that Donald Trump holds over it, or the two assassination attempts aimed at him.

The thing that most shaped this election happened long before all that. It was a decision made in the early days of the Biden administration. With the last election barely in the rearview window, Biden pushed a major stimulus bill through Congress—a bill that spent $1.9 trillion, nearly all of it borrowed—despite warning signs that the already recovering economy might not be able to handle the full-throttle infusion of more dollars.

"Now is the time for big, bold action to change the course of the pandemic and begin economic recovery," Biden promised. Bloomberg termed it a "big bet on run-it-hot economics," and noted that the White House had "shrugged off warnings that the economy may overheat as a result."

It was a wager that didn't pay off the way the White House had hoped.

A year later, inflation had surged to over 9 percent, its highest level in 40 years. As I've written before, that fact undersells the historical context: Before 2021, the last full year in which America experienced an average inflation rate of more than 4 percent was 1991. There was only a single year (2008) from then through 2020 when the annual inflation rate exceeded 3 percent. In other words, peak inflation in the first half of 2022 was two to three times worse than the worst bout of inflation that most Americans could easily recall.

For those of us who follow political and economic news for a living—or even as a serious hobby—all of this probably feels like, well, old news. Prices have been rising at a much more normal pace for the past year or more. In September, the annualized inflation rate was 2.4 percent. Higher than the prepandemic norm, but nothing that should cause an electoral freak-out.

But the average voter isn't a political or economics junkie, and much of America sees 2024 as the inflation election: a referendum on the federal policies that caused that brief and horrific surge in prices. (That causation is well established by now: A study by the St. Louis Federal Reserve found that "domestic stimulus" played a "sizable role" in driving inflation to 40-year highs.)

An Ipsos poll in August found that 50 percent of voters said inflation was their top concern heading into the election. In October, Gallup found that 90 percent of voters rated "the economy" as being "extremely important" or "very important" to their vote—the highest it has scored since the 2008 election in the depths of the mortgage crisis. Polling guru Nate Silver crunched the numbers further and found a stunning correlation: "Each additional $100 of inflation in a state since January 2021 predicts a further 1.6 swing against Harris in our polling average vs. the Biden-Trump margin in 2020," he posted on X last week.

It's been impossible for the Biden-and-then-Harris ticket to escape the inflation issue for two reasons. First, Harris has been unwilling or unable to distance herself from the Biden administration. And, second, because the Biden White House made economic policy so central to its message for three years—even coming up with the counterproductive "Bidenomics" slogan.

"Bidenomics was, at heart, a philosophy of throwing money at programs, people, political allies, and favored constituencies. That spending contributed directly and significantly to the rapid rise in inflation that helped fuel voter dissatisfaction with the state of affairs," Reason's Peter Suderman summarized in a March 2024 cover story. "Thanks to misallocation, poor implementation, and self-contradictory regulatory requirements, the substantive public payoffs to that spending have been weak at best and counterproductive at worst."

Of course, there are logical counterpoints to the feelings voters have about inflation ahead of Election Day. For example, wages have gone up faster than prices. Moody's estimates that the average American household is now spending $1,120 more per month to buy the same goods and services as in January 2021, but is also earning $1,192 more per month. Some products have even defied inflation: Plane tickets are cheaper now than they were before the pandemic, as liberal commentator Matt Yglesias pointed out this week.

It's also true that former President Donald Trump's economic agenda seems likely to cause prices to rise. Mass deportations and huge new tariffs will cause all sorts of economic disruptions and will make Americans poorer. It seems bizarre that voters seeking a stable economy after the past four years would put their trust in an erratic populist, but if this election season has proven anything, it's that humans get pretty irrational about inflation. In part, that's because our brains attribute economic gains to our own accomplishments but look for someone (or something) else to blame when things go the other way. In other words, your paycheck got fatter because you worked harder, but your groceries got more expensive because Biden (or the big corporations) are out to get you.

Of course, that's not true—both things happened for the same reason—but inflation breaks our brains and Election Day is not a time for deep thinking about political science or psychology. Elections are decided by how people feel, and lots of Americans still feel pretty grumpy about how much it costs to go to the grocery store these days. It's really that simple.