This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1324123
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1324123
She looks mildly concerned.
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“Already tough” sounds good to me.
“Hopeless” would be better, though…
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Well there’s always her brother’s lobstah boat.
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It’s time for her to go. It’s time for her to go. It’s time for her to go. Repeat after me!!
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Will there be any debates involving Collins and her challengers? Those could be entertaining, watching her defend her votes and their results.
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The ranked choice option can obviously become very complicated but if I was voting in Maine, I would put Gideon at the top, Collins at the bottom and rank the others based on how severely they went after Collins. The Lincoln Project ads could well be the determining factor in this race.
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One can only hope that Trump’s endorsement is a kiss of political death for Trump’s Stooge and Kavbeernaugh supporter!
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Brett Kavanaugh is the judicial equivalent of Ted Cruz. So thanks, Susan.
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The article points directly to the anti-democratic nature of the ranking system: those voters who prefer one candidate only, for whatever reason, are disenfranchised if one candidate doesn’t win a majority.
Good article explaining the ins and outs of Maine’s system. I didn’t know exactly how it worked and now I do.
Just this year the Maine Republican party and the Trump campaign engaged in an effort to stop ranked choice from being used in the presidential race; this is still undergoing litigation.
What hasn’t tRump sued over? And another thing…anything the Republican party and tRump are against I’m all for.
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Apparently you don’t have to rank everyone. So you can just leave out the ones you don’t like, and they get no vote from you under and scenario.
What this does is effectively change from a positive to a negative first-past-the-post system. If a majority want someone gone (or not elected in the first place) then they’re done.
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… To keep her seat, Collins would need to get a majority of the vote, and determining if that has happened could take a week or more.
That’s because since 2018 Maine has been using ranked choice voting in congressional races. …
…
But if no candidate gets an outright majority, a ranked choice tally begins. First the candidate with the least votes is excluded. Then election officials look at any second place rankings from voters who put that candidate first. Then those votes are moved to the remaining candidates and added to their tallies for the second round of voting. When voters for an excluded candidate don’t rank another candidate, their votes drop out of the runoff. This process goes on until one candidate receives a majority.
I still don’t see why this would take a week or more - are they doing the ranking by hand?
Once you know the tallies finding the candidate with a plurality would be effectively instantaneous assuming one is using the 'puters.
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Collins wants 16 (one held in each county): I believe Gideon favors 5.
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16 would be one every few days during the campaign. I guess she’s given up on pretending to do her job as a senator. (Or it’s just a fake position to try and make it look as if her opponents are against debates.)
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A full visual explanation of how ranked voting works.
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Umm, how?
If their preferred candidate fails to secure enough votes to avoid elimination, then they are rightfully dropped. If their supporters chose not to identify an alternate, that was their choice. If that’s disenfranchisement, it’s self-administered.
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It forces candidates to be more representative and less dogmatic, and voters to be better informed.
It is game changing.
Partisan politicians despise it.
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No, they are not.
They get to vote—that is exercising the franchise.
They are not promised that their candidate will win.
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