In ranked-choice voting, a candidate needs more than 50 percent of the vote to be declared the winner outright. If the front-runner doesn’t have that percentage of the vote, the candidate with the fewest votes that round drops off the ballot, and those who ranked that candidate first will have their votes go to their second choice. The process continues until a candidate has more than 50 percent of the vote.
The state’s special House race election will be the only race with ranked-choice voting on Tuesday, but it will provide a preview of how other candidates running in races such as the state’s Senate election will do in November.
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Ranked choice needs to be banned. When my state adopted it, thank you dems, I selected my first choice straight down the ticket. Folks that don’t select a second choice ends up not having their vote counted if ranked choice is applicable. It’s just another way for the corrupt to steal an election.
Ranked choice let's you vote for a third party candidate and still express a preference between the Republican and democratic candidate.
The issue is that a well funded backer can increase turnout for their side by running two similar candidates, and then having those candidates tell their supporters to vote for the other candidate as a second choice. How much would this help? Not sure. Look up Condorcet voting for some of the mathematical issues with this type of voting.
Excellent. Can you provide the link for Condorcet voting so that I may get familiar? It sounds interesting.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_method
Thanks, yea I saw this too. I thought maybe you had some 'rich' stuff.
Naw. This used to be debated ad nauseum on some boards I was on in the 00s. It would weaken both parties if widely adopted. Republicans have to be careful though because they are repeatedly caught flatfooted with this kind of stuff. Like when the Democrats changed California to allow for ballot harvesting, and the entire Republican Congressional delegation was voted out.
The original system was only 2 candidates, and the votes stayed with the second if the first didn't win.
It was the original method of breaking a two party system, and the first round worked and worked well.
The big problem, like everything else, a couple tweaks and it becomes ranked choice. A completely manipulative, corrupt system that is easily broken.
I agree. It is a nice idea in theory, but it has been manipulated and abused.
If you can figure out a way to do it with machines or people doing math, score voting (or range voting is another name for the same thing) is the ideal voting method.
With RCV you can get a lot of unintended consequences, whereas score voting gives absolute choice to voters without fear of fucking things up.
Imagine this scenario and we will play it out with both RCV and Score Voting:
3 Candidates, 3 Voters
Candidate 1, Candidate 2, Candidate 3
Voter A, Voter B, Voter C (which will have the same preferences for both RCV & Score voting examples below)
Ranked Choice Example:
Voter A: 1, 2, 3
Voter B: 1, 2, 3
Voter C: 3, 2, 1
Winner: Candidate 1
Score Voting Example (let's use 0-9 for simplicity)
Voter A: (Candidate 1: 9, Candidate 2: 8, Candidate 3: 0)
Voter B: (Candidate 1: 9, Candidate 2: 8, Candidate 3: 0)
Voter C: (Candidate 1: 0, Candidate 2: 8, Candidate 3: 9)
Winner: Candidate 2
So why does this happen? If there is a majority (more than 50%) of voters selecting a candidate on their first round then that person is the winner. Candidate 1 got a majority and wins with RCV.
Everyone REALLY likes candidate 2 so with score voting they all gave 2 a nearly perfect score. 2 wins with the best average.
Score voting gives voters more of an opportunity to express themselves and give an honest opinion on their vote. Hell, if a voter hated all the candidates and only kind of liked one... they wouldn't even have to give any candidates a perfect score.
And before anybody says STAR voting is good, it's not. STAR voting still artificially fucks with your vote.
If your first choice doesn't win, and there are only two real options, what difference would it make if it weren't ranked choice?
Its a way to force people to vote for someone they didnt want. It forces votes from lower candidates to the top. Imagine in the NFL if come playoff time they took the wins from the worst team and added those.to the tally for the top team.
Also to add. Dems can flood the field with their candidates. Add in 2-3 RINOS and now We the People have 25%chance of winning instead of 50%
I find that the explanation provided in the original post isn't detailed enough, or else I'd use it to address your concerns.
I'll address the flooding issue as I don't follow the NFL analogy. Even if there were a bunch of RINOs, the conservatives would still vote for your preferred Republican candidate before the Democrat, so sooner or later that R would edge out 51% of the vote before the D (assuming they should have won the race). For example if the D gets 40% of the vote, and six of the R candidates get 10%, eventually the R's would take it 60-40 (assuming the R voters voted all R down the ticket), the most popular of whom would take the seat.
I actually think ranked choice is better in this situation for you, because some people might be nervous about running the "we the people" candidate against the Democrat instead of a "safe" RINO. With this system you would see the true support behind each candidate at the first stage.
Here's a random youtube vid that explains it a bit better https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Z2fRPRkWvY
You should watch the recent Veritas expose of how the Murkowski schemed the rank voting system in Alaska. She knows as well as anyone in power that ranked voting favors the incumbent.
Yep! And the Judge her father appointed made sure she stayed in!
Thanks, watched it. It's a shame that the ranked choice system is only being introduced because it benefits the person bringing it forward, but it doesn't mean that it's not superior, and a step to move away from the two-party system in place.
If we put aside your feelings about specific candidates and look at it from a general point of view..
Three candidates: A, B, C
40% support A, 35% support B and 25% support C
Of the 25% that support C, 20% support B and 5% support A.
Who should win the race? A because they have the initial majority? Or B because they have broader general support?
I favor B.
Except the avg. American thinks of who they are voting for and against. It's all or nothing. So, that 25% you provided may end up actually being the flip-of-a-coin at 12 -13%. This favors the incumbent. Next, rank file voting means a lot more check boxes to fill out. And we know that every added link in a chain is another opportunity of something going wrong. There are going to be more questioned votes from not properly filled-in check boxes, especially if sharpies are used. The cheaters also happens to favor the incumbent. Lastly, the time factor is much longer. More time is opportunity for cheaters.
And what's wrong with that? Let's say a majority of the people don't want the democrat to win so they vote for every other candidate ahead of the D, and the D loses, isn't that a win in your books?
I don't follow. If it's a coin flip then A and B would get an equal share of the votes and A would win. Is there something wrong with that?
Is your concern that people will vote by name recognition and therefore choose the incumbent as a later choice? Considering that choosing secondary+ candidates is optional, I think its impact would be minimal and a small price to pay for the other benefits.
As for voting fraud, that's a different conversation.
DON'T GIVE A VOTE TO A CANDIDATE YOU DON'T SUPPORT! How f'n difficult is that to understand?
It's not? You're not required to put any more names on the ballot than the first one
Not true in my own personal observation. Where I live, the dems had two candidates, republicans had four, undeclared had 2, and third party each had 1 (Green party and I can't remember).
Vote scoring took 5 or 6 rounds to declare a winner - it came down to 1 of the dems (incumbent) vs. most notable republican on ballot (former mayor). Dem won by 34 votes in a town of around 70,000 registered voters. Republican candidate was leading each round until the last when one of the third party candidates got eliminated.
I can see things getting iffy when it needs to go that far to get to a winner. An extreme example would be if candidate A got 49% of the initial vote, but didn't get their name on any other ballots and the winner was B who only had, say, 10% of the first-choice votes.
Then again, in this scenario, candidate A would have been extremely unpopular with 51% of of the population.
One thing you can definitively say from your own observed result is that the former mayor didn't have support of more than 50% of the voters, whereas the incumbent did (even if the voters were less inclined to put their support behind him/her)
I still think ranked choice is a rigged game - one voter, one vote is the only honest election method - prove me wrong.
"One voter, one vote" is how we found ourselves in a two-party system. Having more than two options is a good thing.
You're wrong and you did it wrong.
If your argument is that it makes cheating easier, I don't follow your logic at all.
If they're already cheating now, what disadvantage is there to using a system which allows people to vote for the better candidates without the added disadvantage of, "throwing their vote away?"
Obfuscation, it makes it easier to hide riggings in a system no one understands.
A ranked system is incredibly easy to understand, and again, they're already rigging it and fully getting away with it, so what is the argued benefit?
Stick a couple of RINO vote splitters in and the D wins is how it works. Look at the Alaska House race for an example.
Exactly
Fuck all the state GOP’s that allow this to happen. We need to take over our local and state GOP’s.
That's exactly why it has been suggested. It is a way for corrupt officials to handpick the winner. This must be stopped along with the hackable machines and counting beyond election day.
Yea my first instinct is that this is overcomplicating something simple like voting for people, and introducing all sorts of vulnerabilities and loopholes.
We would need to test and study the Condorcet method in sociological experiments to see how the math and philosophy actually hit the road with the rubber, so to speak.
Could be extremely easy to take advantage of if you have the media. Even easier than it is now...
Nice this is what I came here to say.
ONE candidate, ONE vote, what's so fucking hard to understand??? Our voting system is so fucked up it will take a miracle to fix it.
Thanks you for stating this.
The problem is that system forces us into a two-party system, and also incentivizes voting against your non-preferred candidate. A true fair voting system is mathematically impossible though, it's been proven (arrow's impossibility theorem) .There will always be an imbalance somewhere.
I personally like Alaska's new structure as it will allow libertarians to gain power which is virtually impossible at the moment.
I think it's great.
It lets you show your support for a third party without feeling like you're throwing your vote away or helping the party you don't want to win, because your second choice who actually has a shot of winning can still receive your vote.
This seems to have been rushed through just for this primary to save Murkowsky. Shouldn’t the voters vote on this big change? How do you keep the corrupt families in power for years contrary to the wishes of constituents? If illegal voting doesn’t work, just change the voting laws.
I think we should select them with a hunger games type of situation.
Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho would win every time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ig446isvXlI
Haha kek! Well played. So are we past this stage? Does jessie ventura count?
The word RANK - should tell you all you need to know!
we have that awful, stupid crap in Maine as well. I always just mark a 1st rank selection and leave the rest of the them blank.
Also known as preferential voting.
I understand it favors the incumbent and it certainly adds a layer of ambiguity to cheating. Here's why: Ranking candidates means more filled in check boxes. Voters are asked to provide a #1 choice, #2 choice, and #3 choice of candidates. Most people only know who they are voting for and don't care about the other candidates. More check boxes means more votes are questioned. Think bleed through sharpies, partially filled in boxes, etc., etc. Ranked choice voting exasperates this problem.
Not only this, ranked file is biased against the challenger. The way this works is the 3rd place challenger is receiving some of the votes because the voter doesn't like the other challenger and the incumbent. The 3rd candidate ends up acting as a spoiler to the other challenger splitting the opposition votes. Since it's ranked voting, the 3rd place candidate is eliminated. Their votes either goes to the incumbent or the other challenger depending on which candidate was selected as a second choice. I understand this tends to give the incumbent a huge advantage. People tend to think "either or" instead of ranking candidates.
Posted a video and article link from GP about a week ago, Project Veritas confronted Murkowski about it.
Project Veritas Confronts Murkowski on Her Secret Support For Ranked Choice Voting
https://greatawakening.win/p/15JAXgTV0W/project-veritas-confronts-murkow/c/
We have ranked choice in my town in NM. People dont understand it and I believe that is by design. I talked to friends and relatives and they literally vote every candidate whether they support them or not. I try to explain to them, if your first, second, third,etc. does not make it then you are voting potentially for someone that you DON'T want to win. It's a total scam to keep incumbents in office. I only vote for my first choice then cross out the other candidates with a pen - not sure if that does any good but at least I feel like I tried. We had ten freaking people running for mayor and the ballot did not even show party affiliation.
Rigging elections is the only way they can win.
This can go both ways, imagine this in a blue state? Republicans get representation, so in Alaska democrats get representation. It's not perfect, but that's what they chose. The main thing is voter integrity and people casting ballots and getting counted. NOT adding 100,000 votes at 3am then declaring a winner right after!
But honestly, when it comes to senate elections, it should be state legislators who ultimately chose. That means recalling a senator and replacing him or her immediately, not having elections every 6 years while they do whatever they want. The 17th amendment was fraudulently passed anyway just like the 16th, state legislators in a 3/4ths majority NEVER voted to remove their rights. It was 100% fraud to give power to the elite away from the working class people.
They have Dominion in that state. Doubtful the rino loses
Sounds like common core math.
Who makes this s*** up?
Doesn't this seem more like a justification for weighted voting capabilities in the machines thereby allowing fractional voting and ability to manipulate the totals?
Challenge: What is the name of our current system of counting votes called? Bet you don’t even know. And don’t say ‘electoral college’ thats not general enough. I’m talking about the method used to count votes and decide the winner.
This should be illegal.
This is a horrible idea, and its how the Canadian Conservative party lost its right leaning patriot libertarian (Ron Paul ish) front runner and natural successor to a series of bumbling milktoast soyboys who handed Trudeau 2 elections.
How to rig the system 101
Remember that anything that comes out of any government, state or federal, that might sound ok or good, will end up being corrupted.
Did the Alaska Legislature decide to implement this? If not, then it's illegal.
FFS! Election Day is ONE day. Paper ballots only. ID is ABSOLUTELY required. The candidate you vote for gets your vote, no second choice. This is as black and white as the ballots! No early voting, no mail in voting, no EXCUSES.
Show up to your polling location, show a photo ID to prove you are a legal, voting citizen, get a paper ballot (bring your own pen), vote and go home. They should be able to call the race that evening. There is no "stop counting" in elections. We all saw it happen live on tv. The biggest fraud ever.
One person =1 vote period!!!!!! Why would you ever in a million freaking years give your vote in ANY system that casts a weighted vote as Domino's vote to order and delivery did. Voluntarily no less. Have you learned nothing since Nov 2016?
In my opinion, ranked choice voting should be unconstitutional. Pick your choice and be done with it. And while you're at it, close the primaries so one party can't rig them by crossing over to vote.
This makes it easier than stuffing boxes in an open primary? Every cabal voter votes a diff R#1, if A1stR polls strong the Ds vote for their R choice/Split the other three spots to one of their worahippers? But it is WHO counts the votes that evidently counts. Pun intended
Dude this isn't a good thing! You need to gather people ASAP and start protests, petitions getting thing deal shut down before it even has a chance to get off the floor!
All this is going to do is help the democrats...
Corrupt Governor Spencer Cox is trying to make the same thing happen in Utah. His office is actively trying to block release of forensic images of the voting machines used in 2020, and he has sent journalists after the women who run @two_red_pills on Telegram. What is corrupt Spencer Cox hiding, other than his undying love for boys posing as girls in high schools?
Utah has been run by rinos for decades. Wake up utah
I live in Alaska. Voted last night . I read if you vote only for one candidate your vote was not counted . Some article, somewhere. On the site link below it states this: What happens if I only vote for one candidate? Your vote is counted in round one and your vote stays with your candidate throughout tabulation. So that’s how I voted. Odd thing, I read (somewhere) felt tip pens should be prohibited. When I voted they said I must use the felt tip pens/black provided “must be used” The voting in Alaska is corrupt. In my opinion. That’s from living here for 45 years. This voting system is. Corrupt!
https://www.elections.alaska.gov/RCV.php
https://alaskansforbetterelections.com/2022-statewide-elections-information/
Despite this, an important MAGA candidate won his republican primary. He's not Trump endorsed because it is such a small election, he didn't have the war chest to get to the endorsement. However, given the finances he WOULD have been.
He was also only 47 votes behind the incumbent scum demoncrat, and blew away the leech traitor republican trying to split the vote. We are winning folks.
The reason I dislike RCV is because it forces the vote to be centralized. There's no way to accumulate precinct level totals. And we all know centralization paves the way for cheating. It's also really hard to do a hand count. The only solution for our election problems that I see is decentralization and avoidance of reliance on electronics.
BTW, with the current totals, without rank choice she would have won! She is probably kicking herself. Hopefully the rank choice votes all go to her opponent and she learns a lesson
Ranked Choice wasn't used in her race.