Maine Becomes First US State to Use Ranked-Choice Voting. Here’s Why It Matters
12th June 2018
Read it. And there’s a video.
Ranked-choice voting means that voters rank the candidates based on preference rather than voting for one candidate. If one candidate is the first choice of a majority of voters, that candidate wins the primary. If not, the candidate who receives the least first-choice votes is eliminated. The votes of those who ranked the eliminated candidate first are given to their second choice candidate and the counting resumes until one candidate receives a majority.
This is the system pioneered by Australia. It works as an ‘automatic runoff’ that guarantees that the person eventually elected represents the preference of a majority of those voting. The Yale Political Union used this system when I was an undergraduate and it is very straightforward and easy to administer.
June 12th, 2018 at 13:26
An improvement I’d like to see is the automatic inclusion of a “None of the Above” choice.
If NOTA wins, a special election would be held for that seat and all of the current candidates are excluded from that election vote.
It wouldn’t come into play often, but when voters are faced with nothing but ugly choices, this would force a change.
June 12th, 2018 at 19:48
I like it. It has texture, and scope.
June 13th, 2018 at 00:36
Well as I understand it, according to Arrow’s impossibility theorem if there are three or more candidates in an election then there is no democratic system able to rank the candidates according to voter preference.
Run-off elections on the other hand can be susceptible to the Condorcet paradox; in which the order of elections can determine the final winner.
It seems to me that the “most democratic” system (whatever that might mean) is simply First-past-the-post.
June 13th, 2018 at 04:31
As I understand it, ranked-choice voting isn’t intended to effect some sort of perfect democratic process but rather to give a perception of being more democratic (however that is defined) that the first-past-the-post system, which is subject to the criticism of allowing a minority of voters to select the winner. Arrow, being an economist, didn’t deal with social expectations, but rather theoretical relationships.