What do you think of the idea of ranked choice voting?

[Zarniwoop]

So a few cities (e.g. San Francisco) and even states (e.g. Maine) have moved towards ranked choice voting. The idea is that during an election rather than just selecting who you like best, you rank order as many of the candidates as you want. You can still just choose 1 or you can rank all of them.


So how are votes tallied? For the first round, everyone's first vote is tallied. If someone gets more than 50% of the first votes, they win and the election ends. If no one gets 50% of the vote, the candidate who came in last is dropped from the race and anyone who had that candidate at the top of their list will now have their #2 vote counted. If no one still has 50% of the vote, the process continues in this iterative fashion until someone gets 50% of the vote.

A common justification for this is that it will help smaller parties and incentivize people to vote for who they really want to win rather than just one of the main two party candidates. A common criticism is that people are too dumb to understand how to do it.

For simplification purposes, Let's assume there is a D an R and an Independent running. Maybe a bunch of people on the center of the D and R parties really like the Ind candidate. Under the traditional way of voting, lots of those centrists will not vote for the Ind cause they think they will be throwing their vote away and they will end up getting the candidate they like least. But under this new process, a democrat leaning centrist could put the Ind first and the D second. Doing this is no way helps the R win because the R needs 50% of the vote and regardless of how the centrist D votes, the vote goes against the R candidate.






So far it seems to just being used on local and state elections....I'm sure it could potentially run into legal issues if someone tried to use it on federal elections, but who knows?



So what do you think about this method of voting in theory? Yea? Nay?

[Mountaineer Buc]

Apply this concept to the 2016 presidential election.

All candidates, all parties, national voting.

How does it pan out?

[Zarniwoop]

For the General I don’t think it changes much. There weren’t really any big third party candidates. Johnson was the biggest and got what 3%? The states he did best in went to Trump anyway and I think more than 1/2 Libertarians would have had Trump listed higher than Clinton. The green broad was a complete whacKo and barely got 1%

For the Dem primary I also don’t think it makes much of a difference as it was basically a 2 horse race the whole time.

I do think it may have played a role in the R primary as most of those who didn’t vote for Trump would probably have him way down on the list






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If you are talking about a free for fall popular election without state delegates your guess is as good as mine

[The Outsider]

I think it can be a good system if impletmented properly. I also don't see how it can be that complicated to the point where people won't understand it. It's as simple as "List as many candidates as you want ordered by your preference."

[Buc2]

The idea is intriguing, but I'm not sure how I feel about it to be honest. I mean, different isn't always better. Like MB posited, I'd like to see some hard data on how this would have played out in past elections. Unfortunately, that's an impossibility since we can't go back and play "ranked choice voting" after the fact. Also, I don't think it's needed for most statewide & national elections since there is rarely anyone other than a D or R with a chance in Hell of winning. Maybe in primaries this would be viable.

I also think it would really slow things down at the polling places. However, one thing that would help with that issue would be to allow people to go to their state's official election website, print off a ballot, fill it out, then drop it at their normal polling place using an express lane of some sort.

[Stuart]

seems pretty complicated. it's hard enough to color just in the cirlce without messing up

how about a check box for yes and no?

[Deuce]

Like you said, it would only help the smaller parties. Thus, I doubt it will ever be implemented.

[deltbucs]

Like you said, it would only help the smaller parties. Thus, I doubt it will ever be implemented.

Pretty much my thoughts. I like the idea of it though. My first thought is that it sounds better.

[HamBone]

I think it can be a good system if impletmented properly. I also don't see how it can be that complicated to the point where people won't understand it. It's as simple as "List as many candidates as you want ordered by your preference."

Palm Beach 2000...

[The Outsider]

I think it can be a good system if impletmented properly. I also don't see how it can be that complicated to the point where people won't understand it. It's as simple as "List as many candidates as you want ordered by your preference."

Palm Beach 2000...

So we implement this after the Great Boomer Culling. I'm failing to see a problem here.