New York City Voters Just Adopted Ranked-Choice Voting in Elections. Here's How It Works

TIME via Yahoo! News ^ | November 6, 2019 | by Anna Purna Kambhampaty

[Oldeconomybuyer]

New York City voted on Tuesday to change the way it determines election winners. With approval from more than 73% of voters, the Big Apple joins Maine and countries including Australia and New Zealand in adopting what’s known as ranked-choice voting.

This popular electoral system allows voters to rank candidates by preference, meaning they can submit ballots that list not only their first-choice candidate for a position, but also their second, third and so on.

Ranked-choice voting advocates, including Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang, who has championed it as a key policy initiative, say it could help prevent evermore polarized election campaigns, increase the number of women and minority candidates running for office, and reduce negative campaigning. Critics say that the new system could make elections much more complicated for voters and be abused by parties trying to game the system.

In addition to Maine, which has adopted the system statewide, several states are experimenting with ranked-choice voting. Alaska, Hawaii, Kansas, and Wyoming plan to use ranked-choice for voters in the 2020 Democratic primaries, and Nevada plans to use it for early voters in their 2020 Democratic caucuses, according to FairVote, a nonpartisan group that advocates for election reform.

“We are really settling on ranked-choice voting as the most promising reform to democratize and depolarize our politics,” says Larry Diamond, the former director of Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. “I think it’s not only here to stay but that it’s gaining support across the country.”

[Oldeconomybuyer]

>>> Demographics and 20+ years of propaganda disguised as education are catching up to us <<<

Amen.

[Kickass Conservative]

CA Senate Race, Kameltoe versus the dumb Latina who stole B1 Bob Dornan’s Seat way back when.

As soon as Obama endorsed Kameltoe the choice was easy.

[Svartalfiar]

One way to counter this is to vote for your top choice and then list the worst, unelectable candidates as 2, 3, 4, 5, etc.
This will dilute the pool of second-tier candidates.

That doesn't work like that. Basically, if no one breaks 50%, the candidate with the least votes is eliminated, and all their voters change to second/third/etc choice. Repeat until someone breaks 50%. So all your method does is essentially remove your vote, instead of allowing you to have a second 'ok' pick,if your top one is no good.