“while penalizing voters who support just the candidate they prefer and refuse to rank candidates they know they don’t want”
Well then presumably those voters would sit out a run-off election as well.
Ranked voting is a valid method for decision making, but it would not be suited for political elections.
A better solution, if one is needed, is to have a fun off between the top two places. Liberals over think everything.
I think the 2 MA ballot questions this year are both odd and unnecessarily confusing.
Q1 — would allow me to take my car anywhere I want to get it repaired. My problem with this is: I can already do that. Why would I vote Yes? I see no reason to change current situation.
Q2 — changes the way elections are handled and how winners are determined. Uhhhhhh, that’s a hard No on that one.
Democracy is fundamentally unfair, because it is a mechanism to impose the will of the majority upon the minority. Two wolves and a sheep voting for what’s for dinner. Therefore, any method of allocating votes in a democracy is also, necessarily, unfair. The question is what is the least unfair method.
A Republic seems like a good solution, putting some measures outside of the reach of the voters (e.g. eating sheep for dinner) - if you can keep it.
In 2018, the Republican Congressman from CD-2 had the most votes on election night. After rank choice went into effect, the left-wing Demorat, Golden was elected.
The biggest supporters of Rank-Choice voting in Maine were hard core leftists. Generally anything they support, I oppose.
Ranked choice voting disenfranchises voters because many cannot understand the confusing nuances of how it is supposed to work or how they are supposed to mark their ballot.
Well, it would have kept Clinton out of the White House.
Ranked Choice has got to be UNCONSTITUTIONAL. The Constitution allows for ONE VOTE PER PERSON. How can you have two choices???
There are issues with ANY electoral system. That’s not my opinion, it’s actually a mathematical theorem. It’s called Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem. It basically lays out a set of criteria that we would want any voting system to satisfy. Mostly these are fairly common sense things like “A candidate that is the preference of the majority of voters should be the winner”. Additionally there is a requirement that the voting system actually is guaranteed to name a winner (unless the vote is actually a tie vote). It goes on to prove that there is no voting system that satisfies all the criteria.
For example, the traditional most votes wins system fails a criterion called the Condorcet criterion. This says that any candidate that would win a head to head election against all the other candidates should win the election. It’s easy to see that this is not satisfied. If there is a third party candidate that draws off support from either major party candidate this could happen. Suppose, for instance there’s a close race where the Republican gets 48% of the vote, the Dem gets 49% and a far right wing independent gets 3%. Obviously, the R would beat the I head to head. The R would also beat the D head to head — presumably the 3% I voters would prefer the R. However the system gives the win to the D.
It’s more esoteric, but the preference method fails the Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives criterion. To see what this means a numerical example would help. Suppose the preference vote in a 5 candidate election turns out as follows: (For simplicity assume 100 voters)
Candidate A gets 46 first place votes, B gets 46, C gets 3, D gets 3 and E gets 2. Also, C voters have A as their second choice, while D and E voters list B as their second choice. If that were the vote, B would win. E is eliminated, giving B 48 votes, the D is eliminated giving B 51. Suppose though that just before Election Day E looks at the polls and realizes he has no chance and drops out. A candidate with essentially no support dropping out shouldn’t affect the winner but look what would start with happens in this example. Now B starts with 48 votes to A’s 46. However once we eliminate D and C, their second choice votes were for A, so A winds up winning with 52 votes.
Note, I didn’t intend this but this also gives an example where the voting system produces no clear winner. Instead of the numbers above, assume the first place votes are 46 for A, 48 for B and 3 each for C and D. In this case though the C voters prefer A as a second choice while D voters prefer B. That case produces no clear winner. The bottom two candidates are tied, so which one is eliminated? The choice is critical— it determines the ultimate winner, but the system gives no method for making the choice. Thus this system can fail to produce a clear winner.
I heard they are trying to get this crap in Maine for the POTUS electors too. I think it’s in court.
The Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) Act
https://www.fairvote.org/the_ranked_choice_voting_act
How Election 2016 Would Be Different With Ranked-Choice Voting
https://www.newsweek.com/2016/10/28/election-2016-voting-science-510662.html
RCV simulator:
Rank choice is a joke. It needs to be repealed here in Maine.