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.
You're viewing a single comment thread. View all comments, or full comment thread.
Comments (90)
sorted by:
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.
The general public is not well informed on candidates as it is, especially non-incumbent candidates. One candidate gets all the focus. Even when I scoured the internet, I had a bitch of a time trying to find info on candidates. I go the extra mile to become informed, but unfortunately this is not the majority of the public. Voters either like the incumbent or is hated. This is the motivating driver for the voting public. People have just enough attention span to get behind the candidate that is best advertised. When half the women in the US vote for the candidate with the best hair, you know other candidates aren't going to be looked at for their political views let alone the one they're voting for. How do you think these Soros AGs got elected. Did the voters really know their political views? Absolutely not.
The 3rd place finisher in your scenario got 25% of the vote. I'm saying because of my explanation above the ratio is half (25% ÷ 2 = 12.5% ~ 12 or 13%). So, half the votes will go to the 1st place finisher of 40%. 40% + 13% = 53%. 2nd place finisher gets 35% +12% = 47% (± 1%).
We agree that voter fraud is a different conversation, but it is very plausible and turns out to be the elephant in the room.
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
That's exactly my point - a voter is not "required" to but...I know people that thought they needed to literally rank EVERY candidate on the ballot whether they supported them or not, thereby giving a vote to candidates they did not support because they thought they had to. Ranked choice is deliberately confusing so people cant understand the process and thereby question the results. One voter - one vote - how friggin hard is that to understand?