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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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.