[coldpie]

I don't think a form of RCV would have a terribly significant impact on name recognition and incumbent advantage, which I think the are the main drivers of why we keep reelecting people who are obviously no longer competent. Feinstein's walking corpse being constantly reelected despite California having jungle primaries with many viable alternatives is a good example of how an alternate voting method does not solve this problem. It also wouldn't fix appointed positions, especially judges or filling vacated seats.

There are other great reasons to change our voting system! I just think it doesn't solve this exact problem, while an upper age limit does.

[jgeada]

Maybe the problem is structural: there is an absurd amount of power to be gained by seniority in both houses. To a voter there is a significant advantage to choosing an incumbent as their power increase with seniority.

[mindslight]

I'd say that a large part of incumbent advantage is directly related to plurality. I don't know the specific details of the elections that have kept Feinstein propped up. But I'd think the primary would revolve around a bunch of challengers that are each really liked by some people, but really hated by others - so Feinstein ends up getting the defensive vote from people who don't want change towards the popular challengers. Then the general election has the same effect, plus all the people that already "made their choice" in the primary.