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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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.