What is your opinion on ranked choice voting?

Do you like/do you want Ranked Choice Voting?

  • Yes (and it's not an option in my area)

    Votes: 11 52.4%
  • Yes (and we currently use it)

    Votes: 2 9.5%
  • No (and it's not an option in my area)

    Votes: 5 23.8%
  • No (and we currently use it)

    Votes: 1 4.8%
  • Other/Maybe/Not Sure

    Votes: 2 9.5%

  • Total voters
    21

FlightlessDuck

Y kant Donald fly?
Joined
Jun 20, 2006
Ranked choice voted is only implemented country-wide in three places: Australia, Ireland, and Malta. In the United States it is used in city or statewide elections in San Francisco, Minneapolis, Maine, and a few other places.

The basic idea is that you rank your candidates first to last. Kind of like how you would rank Star Wars or Harry Potter movies. Your #1 candidate to your last candidate. In some implementations, you can only rank up to 3 candidates, in other implementations you rank all of them.

Vote counters do the first round of voting using everybody's first choice. If there is a clear winner (with over 50% of the vote), that candidate wins.

Otherwise, what happens is that the candidate with the lowest number of votes is eliminated from the voting. Everybody who voted for that person first will then have their 2nd choice count. Wash, rinse, repeat until somebody has 50%+1 of the vote.

One of the arguments in favor of this idea is that the candidates are more likely to lean more to the middle of their party. Instead of "riling up their base", they want to appeal to as many people as possible. This can also decrease the amount of negative political ads.

One of the arguments against this idea is that it's more complicated and requires the voters to understand the system and do more research. They also have to completely fill out their ballot.

Do you live somewhere that uses this voting system? If so, what is your opinion? If not, is it something you'd like to see implemented?

This video is an explanation, but using the "top three only" implementation:
 
Personally, I love the idea. It also helps third party candidates by giving those parties a real chance at winning. It also avoids the "spoiler" mentality (see: Nader, Perot, Johnson, Sanders) by letting everybody vote their conscious.
 
I'd like to see it, but I wonder if the average voter would get it. I think it's a great way to measure the depth of a candidate's support. It's not just getting 40% of the vote in a crowded field and being declared a "winner" (some don't have runoffs in that scenario), when the other 60% hate your guts and don't support you at all. That 40% candidate probably wouldn't "win" with a ranked choice vote. And, I agree with you that it forces all candidates more toward the middle....and that's the problem with our current system. To get a party's nomination, you are forced to the very, very extreme of either party, when the reality is that most voters are in the great middle. And, since most seats (regardless of party) are "safe" for the incumbent party, Congress gets pushed to the extremes on each side. Having a Congress run by extremes from both parties does not work. Period.
 


I haven't used it for an election, but this is also the method used for voting for the Hugo Awards. (With some modifications for a 'No Award' vote.) I have voted in those.

I like it. It's not perfect, and there are ways to game it, but that's true of every system, and it seems to generate a result most people are pleased with more often than others.
 
It's just weird. Oakland, California used it for the first time in 2010. Regardless of individual politics, they ended up with an extremely ineffective mayor. That election went through 10 rounds, and in the end the candidate who was in 2nd for every single earlier round finally got 50%.

https://www.acgov.org/rov/rcv/results2010-11-02/rcvresults_2984.htm

The first time I'd ever seen anything like it was when I voted for academic senate at UC Berkeley. I didn't quite understand how it all worked, but it was a system where everyone voted 1-15 or something like that. However, everyone really only got one vote. If a student's #1 was eliminated, then the #2 vote would be counted - so on and so forth. I still don't quite understand how it was supposed to work. The end result was something like a dozen members elected.
 
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I said yes, but bcia's story could change that. Seems like it might be good in primaries.
 


I said yes, but bcia's story could change that. Seems like it might be good in primaries.

Well - we've got a top-two primary system here in California. That's similar to a run-off general election.

The Mayor of Oakland from 2011 to 2015 was highly unpopular. She started with less than 25% of the first place votes. It was really a 3-person race where two candidates seemed to have a large single bloc that voted both 1st or 2nd together. By the time it was down to three candidates, she only had 31%. Once the third place candidate was eliminated, the new mayor barely went over 50%.

That was also a top 3 vote, so there were some ballots that were completely eliminated because all the candidates voted on were eliminated.
 
We use it and it can be exhausting because I always vote below the line. I’m sure last election there was something like 98 lol. It felt like I was in the booths forever.
 
I never heard of it but first thought that hit me, is know one with any strong convictions will ever be in office, just a bunch of wishy washy people
 
I’m Australian and I do like it because it means that you can still make a statement and vote for a candidate who is unlikely to win without throwing away your vote. You also have candidates modify their policies to try and get the preference votes, so the issues that might be significant to a small number of voters will get more attention than they might otherwise.

The problem here is in the Senate. While the ballot paper for the House of Representatives will have maybe 7 names on it, a Senate ballot paper looks more like this:
7573A1AF-4D5F-4AD7-A676-9A3996676E32.jpeg
We have the option of either voting ‘above the line’ and just putting a 1 in the box for the party we prefer and then letting them decide how they want the preferences to go or voting ‘below the line’ and filling out all the preferences ourselves. If you do that you’ll be there for awhile! As each state has multiple senators, it has resulted in some pretty odd candidates being elected on a very tiny number of first preferences.
 
We use that in our Leadership Conventions (where parties elect their leader - we don't do Primaries). However, there it is live and has multiple votes. Everyone (who is at the convention) votes for one person. If no one candidate has more than 50%, the bottom candidate is dropped and everyone votes again. Often the "dropped" candidate will say that he/she is now supporting candidate X (and literally move across the floor to stand with candidate X). So, the dropped candidate's supporters often follow suit (but, of course, the ballot is confidential).

The most recent PC Leadership Convention was interesting. It went all the way to a two-person ballot (and started with eight or nine - it took forever (they often televise the end, so I watched the last couple of votes)) and the final was something like 49% to 51%. And, the person who lost had won every ballot up until then.
 

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