In most cases ranking vote gives no option to the voter. There is Dem, Rep. Green party or some other off the wall candidate.
This is not a choice it is a take it or leave it vote.
Has Donnie Jr. supplied the Russians with the operating manuals and system passwords yet?
Hop to it, boy!
Voters Rank Rank Candidates
I used this system of voting to make choices when I had a large staff and we had to decide all important issues like what kind of coffee to buy for the break room. It works great when people take it seriously and are voting on something they know about and have opinions on. In the tribal politics of today, I can imagine some bad outcomes, but I will withhold judgment until Maine has used it for a while. It is an interesting experiment.
Most Maine voters take their vote seriously. I have high hopes for this system to produce the best elected official possible in these trying times. No more LePage please.
Ranked choice seems like a perfectly natural way for a group to come to a consensus. In fact, I would say that kindergartners use it everyday when deciding what game to play (if a pre-schooler does not yet know how to come to a consensus on which group game to play using ranked choice then he should probably stay in pre-school!). Adult groups do the same thing when selecting a restaurant (“I’d prefer Indian food but if you guys don’t want Indian then I’ll fogo r Italian”).
Up until the age of computers ranked choice balloting has been an impossibility in large groups but now it should be an computational snap. But for some reason here in San Francisco it is not a computational snap and it takes days to get a result. I really don’t understand why.
Fingers crossed that they delays in Maine don’t undermine the concept.
How is this worse than the status quo?
Also, it will hopefully encourage more third party candidates and encourage voters to support them as well, without fear of the spoiler effect.
I used it to vote in the Democratic gubernatorial primary this spring and was happy to be able to do so. My first choice didn’t get through, but my second won the day and she may well win.
If we’d had ranked choice voting in the primary in 2010, I don’t think we’d have ended up with LePage because we would likely have had a stronger D candidate to run against him. Also either Cutler or Mitchell would have likely been consensus candidates ahead of LePage.
I wonder if there is research out there that shows how ranked-choice operates in a simulated, hyper-partisan scenario.
That seems like something a poli-sci student might do.
I am a huge fan of ranked choice voting. We elected our mayor this spring this way. In our case, the initial leader won but it was comforting to know you could vote your first choice and not inadvertently put the a-hole in.
Yes, I’ve been wondering this too. IRV is intuitively appealing, but it seems to be crying out for the application of some game theory. Is there a way to impact the outcome if some subset of voters rank candidates using a strategy other than “the policy positions most in line with my views”? Are there conditions under which “propose solutions to the issues of most concern to the greatest number of constituents” is not the winningest campaign strategy?
I can imagine a potential complication. Suppose that there are three or more candidates on the ballot and that none of them garners a majority of first-place votes. This would then require dropping the last-place candidate from consideration. But, what if the difference in first-place votes between the last-place candidate and the next-to-last-place candidate were negligible, or even zero? I could imagine the potential for a number of vote recounting demands.
It may be the only way to get the Reagan Republicans and Moderate Democrats to vote for the candidates that best reflect their own value set and core progressive views. Neither type of voter realizes just how liberal they really are.
It might work in a primary, not in a general if there are 3 people running I doubt that you would like 2 out of 3.
I want a choice if it takes two elections then that is what it takes. I could Care less about the costs.
This fucking system is dreamed up by the politicians for the politicians.
Say we have 2 politicians on the right, one on the left. Would you put one of the 2 on the right as your second choice? I sure as hell wouldn’t. That gives those on the right 2 choices, me nothing and those who could care less 2 choices, seems to me that the 2nd choice person wins. And my vote, again, is meaningless.
If you want to see how a long established IRV system works, take a look at Australia. It has had it for 100 years.
I belong to a professional oragnization that uses this. It’s sometimes used in other professional contexts, as well. Some people really dislike it, although frankly you can pick just one if you want and essentially treat it like a forced choice.
“Ranking vote gives no option to the voter. There are only three or four options!”
I don’t think you understand the point, which is to get a candidate who represents a majority of the district/state.
Moreover, how many times has there been a right-leaning independent who pulled votes from the Republican, resulting in the Democrat winning? And how many times has there been a left-leaning independent who pulled votes from the Democrat, resulting in the Republican winning? I can’t think of a single example of the former (unless you count Lisa Murkowski, who ran as a write-in after losing the Republican primary and rejoined the party after winning; arguably there’s Ross Perot in 1992, but he probably pulled equally from both), but quite a lot of the latter.
Come on if someone doesn’t get 50%, or better of the vote them there should be a run off between the 2 top vote winners. That is it. There should never be anyone getting less than 50% in office.
BS. If there is a slate of off the wall candidates then there is no one else to vote for. It is a terrible solution, one where someone other than the top 2 could and most pronably would win.