FlightlessDuck
Y kant Donald fly?
- Joined
- Jun 20, 2006
Ranked choice voted is only implemented country-wide in three places: Australia, Ireland, and Malta. In the United States it is used in city or statewide elections in San Francisco, Minneapolis, Maine, and a few other places.
The basic idea is that you rank your candidates first to last. Kind of like how you would rank Star Wars or Harry Potter movies. Your #1 candidate to your last candidate. In some implementations, you can only rank up to 3 candidates, in other implementations you rank all of them.
Vote counters do the first round of voting using everybody's first choice. If there is a clear winner (with over 50% of the vote), that candidate wins.
Otherwise, what happens is that the candidate with the lowest number of votes is eliminated from the voting. Everybody who voted for that person first will then have their 2nd choice count. Wash, rinse, repeat until somebody has 50%+1 of the vote.
One of the arguments in favor of this idea is that the candidates are more likely to lean more to the middle of their party. Instead of "riling up their base", they want to appeal to as many people as possible. This can also decrease the amount of negative political ads.
One of the arguments against this idea is that it's more complicated and requires the voters to understand the system and do more research. They also have to completely fill out their ballot.
Do you live somewhere that uses this voting system? If so, what is your opinion? If not, is it something you'd like to see implemented?
This video is an explanation, but using the "top three only" implementation:
The basic idea is that you rank your candidates first to last. Kind of like how you would rank Star Wars or Harry Potter movies. Your #1 candidate to your last candidate. In some implementations, you can only rank up to 3 candidates, in other implementations you rank all of them.
Vote counters do the first round of voting using everybody's first choice. If there is a clear winner (with over 50% of the vote), that candidate wins.
Otherwise, what happens is that the candidate with the lowest number of votes is eliminated from the voting. Everybody who voted for that person first will then have their 2nd choice count. Wash, rinse, repeat until somebody has 50%+1 of the vote.
One of the arguments in favor of this idea is that the candidates are more likely to lean more to the middle of their party. Instead of "riling up their base", they want to appeal to as many people as possible. This can also decrease the amount of negative political ads.
One of the arguments against this idea is that it's more complicated and requires the voters to understand the system and do more research. They also have to completely fill out their ballot.
Do you live somewhere that uses this voting system? If so, what is your opinion? If not, is it something you'd like to see implemented?
This video is an explanation, but using the "top three only" implementation: