It’s not news to anyone reading this article that we have been at war these past few years with evil forces that want to take down the United States, or at least permanently change us from independent and strong to submissive and feeble.
I live in Maine and this ranked choice voting is THE WORST! I have signed a couple petitions along with many others and they never seem to go anywhere. Never let this happen where you live.
BAC made a mistake:"If no candidate achieves more than 50% of the first-place votes, then the candidate that receives the fewest first place votes is eliminated, and that candidate’s second place votes are allocated to the remaining candidates. So just to be clear, the votes of the other voters whose first choice candidate that was eliminated are re-allocated."
This what she should have said, If no candidate achieves more than 50% of the first-place votes, then the candidate that receives the fewest first place votes is eliminated, and THE VOTERS WHOSE 1st CHOICE WAS ELIMINATED GET THEIR SECOND CHOICES COUNTED INSTEAD.
And again, If no candidate achieves more than 50%, then there is another round of counting and the candidate that has received the FEWEST VOTES is eliminated, and THE VOTERS WHOSE CANDIDATE WAS ELIMINATED GET THEIR SECOND (or 3rd as the case may be) CHOICES COUNTED INSTEAD.
I don't know what BAC meant to say with "the votes of the other voters whose first choice candidate that was eliminated are re-allocated." I don't understand what you mean by "the other voters."
Dave Heller and I helped establish Ranked Choice NY. It is tiresome to have to meet with objections from those who are just confused about the process. It's really not that difficult to understand.
Ranked choice voting allows people to vote for the person they most want to win without concerns that they will have their vote thrown away, since if that person doesn't win, they still get to vote for someone else who has more of a chance. This is not deceitful. If you have trouble following it, because it's unfamiliar to you, become familiar. I don't want to vote for the lesser of two evils because my third party won't gather enough votes until Ranked Choice Voting is employed.
Hi Bobbie Anne, absolutely spot-on regarding the confusion and shenanigans inherent in ranked choice.
I think it tries to do the impossible: finding a perfect way to narrow down what a community really wants without people coming back to the polls for a “do-over” in a run-off.
I think plurality voting or “first past the post” is the least bad. We need to shoot for equality, simplicity and transparency. Fancy franchises like ranked choice (at least in the US context) just create frustration and ballots that get thrown out when people think they can do cumulative voting (like some corporations do for director elections).
Parties, as a group of people who band together to manifest to and convince wider society of one or another approach to government, have the right to say which candidate best represents that approach to government. This is why we have nomination processes to allow those groups to let people know who that person is.
To eliminate primaries or other nomination processes eliminates the ability of those groups to so speak.
It is important to note that write-in voting is an important “release valve” against a sclerotic and unresponsive party structure. I thus disagree with the Supreme Court’s holding in Burdick v Takushi that there is no right to write-in a vote. Given that we once orally let the returning officer know which person we want for a position, any system providing for the laudable ends of privacy and convenience offered by printed and electronic ballots must preserve that same range of choice afforded by oral outcry in order for people to have the same ability to vote.
State law determines what a candidate must do to appear on the state ballot. Since the political parties use tax payer money to hold their primaries, they should be governed by state law. And they could be abolished by state law. Political parties can hold conventions to decide whom they want to support. But the person they pick should then have to collect signatures to get on the ballot just like any independent candidate. Every candidate should have the same requirements in that state for getting on the ballot, which is fair and constitutional. Meanwhile, a political organization can certainly have all the free speech it wants promoting this or that candidate. But political organizations have no right to determine a state's procedure for getting on the state ballot. QED.
Counselor Cox, you are mistaken about the re-allocation of votes during tabulation. The lowest ranked candidate is purged, along with any votes for him. Tabulation then accounts the voters' ranking of the remaining candidates. The end result is a candidate who was most voters' first choice, but who also was a second- or third-choice for others, so that he represents a wider segment of the electorate, instead of a bare majority.
I’m guessing if we don’t accept rank choice voting, the Left will cry we are racist, homophobic, Jim Crow and what ever else they can use to berate us🥲
No, the DNC has done everything possible to keep RCV out of general elections. They only want it for primaries. RCV would help third party candidates get some traction. But if you're a duopoly supporter, you're not going to like RCV.
BAC is usually right but in this case is totally wrong. Our current electoral system is why such idiots are running things and we have a uni-party. It's called Duverger's Law. With single member districts you can only have 2 parties; tweedledee and tweedledum. The problem is plurality wins. That means with more than 2 candidates, the person who wins is the person most people voted against, and that is idiotic. If someone wins with less than 50% of the vote, that means the other candidates got more votes. No one should ever be elected with less than 50% and in most countries they're not. There are many examples but consider the Colorado Presidential electoral college election in 1992:
Bill Clinton got 40.13% of the vote, George HW Bush got 35.87% of the vote, and Ross Perot got 23.32% of the vote. Do the math: 35.87 (Bush) + 23.32 (Perot) = 59.19% of the people voted against Clinton and he still won all 8 electoral votes. How dumb is that? Most countries also have proportional representation, which we don't have.
Ranked choice voting is also called "instant runoff" because it allows the equivalent of a runoff election to ensure the winner has more than 50%, but without the expense of a second election. That is the purpose of ranked choice, to eliminate the candidates with the least votes and allow the top vote getters to have the equivalent of a runoff. It also eliminates the "spoiler" effect of small parties, and allows you to vote for minor candidates without "wasting" your vote, because if your candidate ranks low your vote is transferred to your second choice.
But BAC is right about one thing. Americans are too stupid to understand ranked choice voting. I have written numerous articles about electoral systems. FYI, I have a Master's degree in public policy and years working on electoral reform in California. Here are some articles if you want more info. Enjoy!
Ever since I first read about Ranked Choice / Instant Runoff, I've loved the idea conceptually. A standard plurality vote basically enforces a 2-party system, since any votes cast for a 3rd party are essentially protest votes that won't influence the real result, so it puts people in the position of "Do I vote for the guy I actually want, who doesn't stand a chance, meaning I'll waste my vote; or do I vote for the guy I think can win who I don't really like but at least we won't get a guy from the other side?" And that's why we constantly end up with such terrible "representatives," since we always get the ones who are "electable" instead of the ones who are "good."
In theory, instant runoff should prevent that by allowing people to vote for the candidates they _actually_ want and put the "guy I don't like but might actually win" further down the list; and who knows, the "unelectable" guy you like might be the same unelectable guy that enough people actually like that he wins!
I feel like you're making it far more confusing than it is. "Here's a list of candidates. Put a '1' next to the guy you want to win. Put a '2' next to your second favorite. Put a '3' next to your third favorite. Etc."
In your Main election example, you declare who "should" have won; but that's only if you apply plurality rules to the ranked choice votes. The whole point of ranked choice is letting you vote for the guy you really want and letting your vote fall back to the OK guy, so it makes perfect sense that 8.1% of people would vote for their unelectable favorites. Compare that to a plurality vote in which, on average, only 2% of voters vote third party, and I expect that in a plurality vote Golden would have won anyway (assume 6.1% of the votes would have gone to the two primary candidates; Golden needed 4.5%, or roughly 2/3rds of the 3rd party votes. It's entirely plausible that the Poliquin-like 3rd party candidate wasn't very popular, and that the Golden-like 3rd party candidate was more popular, so a 2/3 split isn't out of the question).
So, that's all theory, but I keep reading about how ranked choice is bad, and that makes me question things; and I keep reading about how Soros loves it, and that _really_ gives me pause.
So, help me out: what am I missing? What's the gap between the great concept and the imperfect reality?
And, since you don't like ranked choice, what voting system do you think works well _and_ avoids the two party trap?
RCV is complicated and can be confusing. For those reasons alone we should stick to FPP and do runoffs when there are multiple candidates and none get enough. RCV is a complicated way to avoid runoffs and is sometimes referred to as instant run off (IRV) when applied to single winner races.
Regarding exhausted votes in RCV as I understand it is the voter who causes their own choices to be exhausted by not choosing all possible choices they exhaust their own vote.
For instance in RCV if it goes to a third round then folks who have only chosen a 1st and 2nd choice are exhausted as both their 1st and 2nd choice were already used up in the first two rounds. At that stage their vote isn’t stolen or inhibited it just wasn’t made by the voter.
Complications like exhausted votes are one of the reasons folks don’t favor RCV.
Thanks Bobbie Anne. I could never figure this out from news reports … it had to be spelled out. I believe in “sanity” checks. When one looks for sanity, it may be MIA.
My thinking is where a seat is very important, Soros, who love rank voting, can employ X candidates whk wont win, but will make it impossible for the "chosen marxist" to lose.
As a side note, there is a story from multiple sources that said on election night Mayorkas aide walked in where he was working and let him know Trump won. Mayorkas reportedly looked up startled and said, "I was assured that was not possible."
Approval voting means that a Green Party voter would cast equal votes for Democrat and Green, meanwhile, all Democrats could "approve" only of the Democrat candidate and cancel out that Green party voters vote for Green. Approval voting is not used anywhere in the world and no one has heard of it. I know that the DNC has a concerted effort to promote some other dumb alternative to RCV in order to confuse voters away from RCV.
You made a mistake:"If no candidate achieves more than 50% of the first-place votes, then the candidate that receives the fewest first place votes is eliminated, and that candidate’s second place votes are allocated to the remaining candidates. So just to be clear, the votes of the other voters whose first choice candidate that was eliminated are re-allocated."
This what you should have said, If no candidate achieves more than 50% of the first-place votes, then the candidate that receives the fewest first place votes is eliminated, and THE VOTERS WHOSE 1st CHOICE WAS ELIMINATED GET THEIR SECOND CHOICES COUNTED INSTEAD.
And again, If no candidate achieves more than 50%, then there is another round of counting and the candidate that has received the FEWEST VOTES is eliminated, and THE VOTERS WHOSE CANDIDATE WAS ELIMINATED GET THEIR SECOND (or 3rd as the case may be) CHOICES COUNTED INSTEAD.
I don't know what you meant to say with "the votes of the other voters whose first choice candidate that was eliminated are re-allocated." I don't understand what you mean by "the other voters."
Dave Heller and I helped establish Ranked Choice NY. It is tiresome to have to meet with objections from those who are just confused about the process. It's really not that difficult to understand.
Hi. Victoria Alexander here. I helped establish a Ranked Choice Voting advocacy group in New York in 2018. Our group later helped with the NYC effort. I assure you I am not evil. Are you sure that you haven't been propagandized by the DNC to help keep RCV out of NY? RCV is the only way to end the two-party stranglehold on our elections. I am also an RFK Jr supporter and worked for the Kennedy Beacon. I don't know why anyone would have trouble understanding the concept of "ranking" one's choices. https://thekennedybeacon.substack.com/p/how-ranked-choice-voting-can-save
While I agree that RCV is better than the single-choice system it is still highly flawed, because it eliminates candidates based on the number of first-preference votes they have in any round of counting - and that is just a part of the picture, not taking into account how many voters consider them their second choice, etc.
Here's a simple example. Three candidates, a liberal, a centrist and a conservative, who are the first choice of 34%, 32%, and 34% of the voters, respectively. Because the centrist is the natural second choice of both the liberal and conservative voters he or she would defeat both other candidates in separate two-way races by margins of almost two-to-one, but gets eliminated in the first round of counting.
If that is the most democratic method of holding elections, we're in trouble.
In your example, which is not a real-world example because more likely the three will be a Democrat, a third party candidate, and a Republican, the third party candidate at 32% will be eliminated. It's not a "flaw" of RCV that it "eliminates" the candidate with the least number of votes. That happens in every election. But with RCV, these third party candidate voters get to have their second choice counted. But at least the third party candidate had a chance. Third party candidates usually get less than 10% of the vote because voters feel their vote will be wasted. If that third party candidate was Democrat leaning, after that first round of counting in which the the third party candidate is eliminated, the Democrat will probably win in the second round of vote counting. If that third party candidate was Republican leaning, the Republican will probably win in the second round of vote counting. So the winner is whomever appealed to the most people.
If this election did not have RCV, then the third party candidate would just have gotten that less than 10% of the vote and that will help the candidate those voters like least win. For example, everybody says, Ralph Nader helped Bush win; Ross Perot helped Clinton win. With RCV, instead the candidates that most people liked would have won. Maybe even Nader or Perot.
I totally disagree with your point of view. I don't favor RCV because it is highly flawed and there are at least two better systems but RCV is a step up from "single-choice" voting and from single-choice voting followed by a runoff. Of course the system will be confusing to voters if it isn't explained clearly, but if it is explained clearly and voters understand how it works then they will realize that they should rank at least every choice they think has any chance of winning, and then few votes will be "wasted" because some voters didn't rank all the choices they should have.
RCV has gotten as popular as it has in recent years mainly because, in my opinion, after Donald Trump moved the Republican Party to the right, there were many more small-party and independent candidates to the left of the Democratic Party taking votes away from the Democrats than there were small-party and independent candidates to the right of the Republican Party taking votes away from it. Thus many Democrats embraced RCV and it got implemented in numerous places, while Republicans tend to oppose it and are trying to reverse its implementation.
But if that situation changes in a few years so the situation is reversed, e.g., if Nikki Haley and Bernie Sanders lead the two parties in 2028, you can bet the situation will change, especially if there's a candidate to the right of Haley, taking votes away from her, while many Greens and other left-wing voters will find voting for Sanders acceptable. Then, in general, the Republicans will want RCV as they would get more of the second-choice votes then the Democrats, while the Democrats will change their position and oppose it.
The problem is the "two-party system," which is a direct consequence of using single-choice voting, and we need to figure out the truly best method of holding elections which solves the problem of "vote splitting" so that voters can have more choices to choose from, can express themselves more accurately, can be confident the candidate who best represents them will win, and can be confident that elections are not manipulable by well-funded entities which secretly sponsor or support candidates they do not really want to win in order to split the vote (which for all we know may be the rule rather than the exception in elections held worldwide).
Having RCV does not change the fact of preference in a state for Haley over Sanders or vice versa. If states had RCV, there will likely be a third candidate that is Democrat leaning if it is a Democrat leaning state and Republican leaning if it is a Republican leaning state. If it is a swing state, there will likely be four candidates that have enough support to appear on the ballot. You haven't identified a problem with RCV.
RCV isn't more popular because of Donald Trump. It's more popular because of the Uniparty. Coke or Pepsi isn't much of a choice. Pro-war and pro-corporate control or Pro-corporate control and Pro-war. The only choice is whether you want prefer your soldiers to be Christian or gay.
If you want to solve the problem caused by the corrupt party system, eliminate party control of the nomination process. Make every candidate do what independents have to do, collect signatures to get on the state ballots, but using volunteers only, no paid signature gatherers. There would be no primary. Instead, there could be a general election with RCV. Our Constitution does not mention parties or primaries or conventions.
I did identify THE HUGE problem with RCV in my response to your other comment. It would apply to Perot in 1992 (and maybe '96), it would probably apply to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. last year - see my article at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/railroading-us-democracy-2024-jon-schultz-qumrc - and I'm sure it has been a factor in many other elections in which RCV has been used. It's very easy to see but you are so committed to promoting RCV that you can't see it, imo. So-called Approval Voting would work better than RCV in many circumstances, including the example I gave in my other response to you, and the system which I came up with, which is something of a combination of the two, is, I strongly believe, the best possible system, the only one which fully solves the problem of vote splitting and would pull the carpet out from underneath all political parties, which are inherently undemocratic organizations, removing the basic reason they exist. See my pinned X post @AJonSchultz and I'm getting ready to post more soon.
Here in Australia that is the system we have, it is referred to as 'preferential voting'. Preferences are allocated just as you describe. It is one reason why the country is in a mess. In our recent Federal, nation wide election, the incumbent Party won with approximately 34% of the primary vote. It is a system that is designed to keep the major parties in power & make it very difficult if not impossible for independent candidates or minor parties to make inroads.
I live in Maine and this ranked choice voting is THE WORST! I have signed a couple petitions along with many others and they never seem to go anywhere. Never let this happen where you live.
Once the Matxists have captured the voting, only thing you can and must do is leave. I know, I am packing to leave Oregon right now.
BAC made a mistake:"If no candidate achieves more than 50% of the first-place votes, then the candidate that receives the fewest first place votes is eliminated, and that candidate’s second place votes are allocated to the remaining candidates. So just to be clear, the votes of the other voters whose first choice candidate that was eliminated are re-allocated."
This what she should have said, If no candidate achieves more than 50% of the first-place votes, then the candidate that receives the fewest first place votes is eliminated, and THE VOTERS WHOSE 1st CHOICE WAS ELIMINATED GET THEIR SECOND CHOICES COUNTED INSTEAD.
And again, If no candidate achieves more than 50%, then there is another round of counting and the candidate that has received the FEWEST VOTES is eliminated, and THE VOTERS WHOSE CANDIDATE WAS ELIMINATED GET THEIR SECOND (or 3rd as the case may be) CHOICES COUNTED INSTEAD.
I don't know what BAC meant to say with "the votes of the other voters whose first choice candidate that was eliminated are re-allocated." I don't understand what you mean by "the other voters."
Dave Heller and I helped establish Ranked Choice NY. It is tiresome to have to meet with objections from those who are just confused about the process. It's really not that difficult to understand.
Bobbie Anne, I live in NC (was living here in 2013). I had never heard of this. Thank you, as always, for your hard work educating the "citizens".
Ranked choice voting allows people to vote for the person they most want to win without concerns that they will have their vote thrown away, since if that person doesn't win, they still get to vote for someone else who has more of a chance. This is not deceitful. If you have trouble following it, because it's unfamiliar to you, become familiar. I don't want to vote for the lesser of two evils because my third party won't gather enough votes until Ranked Choice Voting is employed.
Stay in your little communist state then.
Huh?
Nothing like a little ad hominem to try to win an argument 😂
Hi Bobbie Anne, absolutely spot-on regarding the confusion and shenanigans inherent in ranked choice.
I think it tries to do the impossible: finding a perfect way to narrow down what a community really wants without people coming back to the polls for a “do-over” in a run-off.
I think plurality voting or “first past the post” is the least bad. We need to shoot for equality, simplicity and transparency. Fancy franchises like ranked choice (at least in the US context) just create frustration and ballots that get thrown out when people think they can do cumulative voting (like some corporations do for director elections).
Just to finish the thought: there is no “perfect” election system, so aim for the least bad practical system than for the imaginary perfect system.
We could eliminate primaries if we had RCV in general elections! That would save a lot of tax dollars and it's the primary process that is most corrupt. The two parties control the nomination process. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=8Z2fRPRkWvY&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fthekennedybeacon.substack.com%2F
Parties, as a group of people who band together to manifest to and convince wider society of one or another approach to government, have the right to say which candidate best represents that approach to government. This is why we have nomination processes to allow those groups to let people know who that person is.
To eliminate primaries or other nomination processes eliminates the ability of those groups to so speak.
It is important to note that write-in voting is an important “release valve” against a sclerotic and unresponsive party structure. I thus disagree with the Supreme Court’s holding in Burdick v Takushi that there is no right to write-in a vote. Given that we once orally let the returning officer know which person we want for a position, any system providing for the laudable ends of privacy and convenience offered by printed and electronic ballots must preserve that same range of choice afforded by oral outcry in order for people to have the same ability to vote.
State law determines what a candidate must do to appear on the state ballot. Since the political parties use tax payer money to hold their primaries, they should be governed by state law. And they could be abolished by state law. Political parties can hold conventions to decide whom they want to support. But the person they pick should then have to collect signatures to get on the ballot just like any independent candidate. Every candidate should have the same requirements in that state for getting on the ballot, which is fair and constitutional. Meanwhile, a political organization can certainly have all the free speech it wants promoting this or that candidate. But political organizations have no right to determine a state's procedure for getting on the state ballot. QED.
Counselor Cox, you are mistaken about the re-allocation of votes during tabulation. The lowest ranked candidate is purged, along with any votes for him. Tabulation then accounts the voters' ranking of the remaining candidates. The end result is a candidate who was most voters' first choice, but who also was a second- or third-choice for others, so that he represents a wider segment of the electorate, instead of a bare majority.
I’m guessing if we don’t accept rank choice voting, the Left will cry we are racist, homophobic, Jim Crow and what ever else they can use to berate us🥲
No, the DNC has done everything possible to keep RCV out of general elections. They only want it for primaries. RCV would help third party candidates get some traction. But if you're a duopoly supporter, you're not going to like RCV.
BAC is usually right but in this case is totally wrong. Our current electoral system is why such idiots are running things and we have a uni-party. It's called Duverger's Law. With single member districts you can only have 2 parties; tweedledee and tweedledum. The problem is plurality wins. That means with more than 2 candidates, the person who wins is the person most people voted against, and that is idiotic. If someone wins with less than 50% of the vote, that means the other candidates got more votes. No one should ever be elected with less than 50% and in most countries they're not. There are many examples but consider the Colorado Presidential electoral college election in 1992:
Bill Clinton got 40.13% of the vote, George HW Bush got 35.87% of the vote, and Ross Perot got 23.32% of the vote. Do the math: 35.87 (Bush) + 23.32 (Perot) = 59.19% of the people voted against Clinton and he still won all 8 electoral votes. How dumb is that? Most countries also have proportional representation, which we don't have.
Ranked choice voting is also called "instant runoff" because it allows the equivalent of a runoff election to ensure the winner has more than 50%, but without the expense of a second election. That is the purpose of ranked choice, to eliminate the candidates with the least votes and allow the top vote getters to have the equivalent of a runoff. It also eliminates the "spoiler" effect of small parties, and allows you to vote for minor candidates without "wasting" your vote, because if your candidate ranks low your vote is transferred to your second choice.
But BAC is right about one thing. Americans are too stupid to understand ranked choice voting. I have written numerous articles about electoral systems. FYI, I have a Master's degree in public policy and years working on electoral reform in California. Here are some articles if you want more info. Enjoy!
https://garyflomenhoft.substack.com/p/why-you-are-stuck-with-trump-vs-biden
https://www.opednews.com/populum/page.php?f=Electoral-or-Popular-Vote-by-Gary-Flomenhoft-Electoral-Change_Electoral-College_Electoral-College_Electoral-Mismanagement-190316-338.html
https://www.opednews.com/populum/page.php?f=A-Tale-of-Two-Parties-and-by-Gary-Flomenhoft-Delegates_Democratic_Democrats_Duopoly-190324-983.html
Ever since I first read about Ranked Choice / Instant Runoff, I've loved the idea conceptually. A standard plurality vote basically enforces a 2-party system, since any votes cast for a 3rd party are essentially protest votes that won't influence the real result, so it puts people in the position of "Do I vote for the guy I actually want, who doesn't stand a chance, meaning I'll waste my vote; or do I vote for the guy I think can win who I don't really like but at least we won't get a guy from the other side?" And that's why we constantly end up with such terrible "representatives," since we always get the ones who are "electable" instead of the ones who are "good."
In theory, instant runoff should prevent that by allowing people to vote for the candidates they _actually_ want and put the "guy I don't like but might actually win" further down the list; and who knows, the "unelectable" guy you like might be the same unelectable guy that enough people actually like that he wins!
I feel like you're making it far more confusing than it is. "Here's a list of candidates. Put a '1' next to the guy you want to win. Put a '2' next to your second favorite. Put a '3' next to your third favorite. Etc."
In your Main election example, you declare who "should" have won; but that's only if you apply plurality rules to the ranked choice votes. The whole point of ranked choice is letting you vote for the guy you really want and letting your vote fall back to the OK guy, so it makes perfect sense that 8.1% of people would vote for their unelectable favorites. Compare that to a plurality vote in which, on average, only 2% of voters vote third party, and I expect that in a plurality vote Golden would have won anyway (assume 6.1% of the votes would have gone to the two primary candidates; Golden needed 4.5%, or roughly 2/3rds of the 3rd party votes. It's entirely plausible that the Poliquin-like 3rd party candidate wasn't very popular, and that the Golden-like 3rd party candidate was more popular, so a 2/3 split isn't out of the question).
So, that's all theory, but I keep reading about how ranked choice is bad, and that makes me question things; and I keep reading about how Soros loves it, and that _really_ gives me pause.
So, help me out: what am I missing? What's the gap between the great concept and the imperfect reality?
And, since you don't like ranked choice, what voting system do you think works well _and_ avoids the two party trap?
Believe me. Soros never gave RCV in NY any support. The non-profit we set up folded for lack of support and attacks from the DNC.
RCV is complicated and can be confusing. For those reasons alone we should stick to FPP and do runoffs when there are multiple candidates and none get enough. RCV is a complicated way to avoid runoffs and is sometimes referred to as instant run off (IRV) when applied to single winner races.
Regarding exhausted votes in RCV as I understand it is the voter who causes their own choices to be exhausted by not choosing all possible choices they exhaust their own vote.
For instance in RCV if it goes to a third round then folks who have only chosen a 1st and 2nd choice are exhausted as both their 1st and 2nd choice were already used up in the first two rounds. At that stage their vote isn’t stolen or inhibited it just wasn’t made by the voter.
Complications like exhausted votes are one of the reasons folks don’t favor RCV.
Thanks Bobbie Anne. I could never figure this out from news reports … it had to be spelled out. I believe in “sanity” checks. When one looks for sanity, it may be MIA.
My thinking is where a seat is very important, Soros, who love rank voting, can employ X candidates whk wont win, but will make it impossible for the "chosen marxist" to lose.
As a side note, there is a story from multiple sources that said on election night Mayorkas aide walked in where he was working and let him know Trump won. Mayorkas reportedly looked up startled and said, "I was assured that was not possible."
Approval voting means that a Green Party voter would cast equal votes for Democrat and Green, meanwhile, all Democrats could "approve" only of the Democrat candidate and cancel out that Green party voters vote for Green. Approval voting is not used anywhere in the world and no one has heard of it. I know that the DNC has a concerted effort to promote some other dumb alternative to RCV in order to confuse voters away from RCV.
You made a mistake:"If no candidate achieves more than 50% of the first-place votes, then the candidate that receives the fewest first place votes is eliminated, and that candidate’s second place votes are allocated to the remaining candidates. So just to be clear, the votes of the other voters whose first choice candidate that was eliminated are re-allocated."
This what you should have said, If no candidate achieves more than 50% of the first-place votes, then the candidate that receives the fewest first place votes is eliminated, and THE VOTERS WHOSE 1st CHOICE WAS ELIMINATED GET THEIR SECOND CHOICES COUNTED INSTEAD.
And again, If no candidate achieves more than 50%, then there is another round of counting and the candidate that has received the FEWEST VOTES is eliminated, and THE VOTERS WHOSE CANDIDATE WAS ELIMINATED GET THEIR SECOND (or 3rd as the case may be) CHOICES COUNTED INSTEAD.
I don't know what you meant to say with "the votes of the other voters whose first choice candidate that was eliminated are re-allocated." I don't understand what you mean by "the other voters."
Dave Heller and I helped establish Ranked Choice NY. It is tiresome to have to meet with objections from those who are just confused about the process. It's really not that difficult to understand.
Hi. Victoria Alexander here. I helped establish a Ranked Choice Voting advocacy group in New York in 2018. Our group later helped with the NYC effort. I assure you I am not evil. Are you sure that you haven't been propagandized by the DNC to help keep RCV out of NY? RCV is the only way to end the two-party stranglehold on our elections. I am also an RFK Jr supporter and worked for the Kennedy Beacon. I don't know why anyone would have trouble understanding the concept of "ranking" one's choices. https://thekennedybeacon.substack.com/p/how-ranked-choice-voting-can-save
While I agree that RCV is better than the single-choice system it is still highly flawed, because it eliminates candidates based on the number of first-preference votes they have in any round of counting - and that is just a part of the picture, not taking into account how many voters consider them their second choice, etc.
Here's a simple example. Three candidates, a liberal, a centrist and a conservative, who are the first choice of 34%, 32%, and 34% of the voters, respectively. Because the centrist is the natural second choice of both the liberal and conservative voters he or she would defeat both other candidates in separate two-way races by margins of almost two-to-one, but gets eliminated in the first round of counting.
If that is the most democratic method of holding elections, we're in trouble.
In your example, which is not a real-world example because more likely the three will be a Democrat, a third party candidate, and a Republican, the third party candidate at 32% will be eliminated. It's not a "flaw" of RCV that it "eliminates" the candidate with the least number of votes. That happens in every election. But with RCV, these third party candidate voters get to have their second choice counted. But at least the third party candidate had a chance. Third party candidates usually get less than 10% of the vote because voters feel their vote will be wasted. If that third party candidate was Democrat leaning, after that first round of counting in which the the third party candidate is eliminated, the Democrat will probably win in the second round of vote counting. If that third party candidate was Republican leaning, the Republican will probably win in the second round of vote counting. So the winner is whomever appealed to the most people.
If this election did not have RCV, then the third party candidate would just have gotten that less than 10% of the vote and that will help the candidate those voters like least win. For example, everybody says, Ralph Nader helped Bush win; Ross Perot helped Clinton win. With RCV, instead the candidates that most people liked would have won. Maybe even Nader or Perot.
I totally disagree with your point of view. I don't favor RCV because it is highly flawed and there are at least two better systems but RCV is a step up from "single-choice" voting and from single-choice voting followed by a runoff. Of course the system will be confusing to voters if it isn't explained clearly, but if it is explained clearly and voters understand how it works then they will realize that they should rank at least every choice they think has any chance of winning, and then few votes will be "wasted" because some voters didn't rank all the choices they should have.
RCV has gotten as popular as it has in recent years mainly because, in my opinion, after Donald Trump moved the Republican Party to the right, there were many more small-party and independent candidates to the left of the Democratic Party taking votes away from the Democrats than there were small-party and independent candidates to the right of the Republican Party taking votes away from it. Thus many Democrats embraced RCV and it got implemented in numerous places, while Republicans tend to oppose it and are trying to reverse its implementation.
But if that situation changes in a few years so the situation is reversed, e.g., if Nikki Haley and Bernie Sanders lead the two parties in 2028, you can bet the situation will change, especially if there's a candidate to the right of Haley, taking votes away from her, while many Greens and other left-wing voters will find voting for Sanders acceptable. Then, in general, the Republicans will want RCV as they would get more of the second-choice votes then the Democrats, while the Democrats will change their position and oppose it.
The problem is the "two-party system," which is a direct consequence of using single-choice voting, and we need to figure out the truly best method of holding elections which solves the problem of "vote splitting" so that voters can have more choices to choose from, can express themselves more accurately, can be confident the candidate who best represents them will win, and can be confident that elections are not manipulable by well-funded entities which secretly sponsor or support candidates they do not really want to win in order to split the vote (which for all we know may be the rule rather than the exception in elections held worldwide).
Let me know if I haven't been clear.
Having RCV does not change the fact of preference in a state for Haley over Sanders or vice versa. If states had RCV, there will likely be a third candidate that is Democrat leaning if it is a Democrat leaning state and Republican leaning if it is a Republican leaning state. If it is a swing state, there will likely be four candidates that have enough support to appear on the ballot. You haven't identified a problem with RCV.
RCV isn't more popular because of Donald Trump. It's more popular because of the Uniparty. Coke or Pepsi isn't much of a choice. Pro-war and pro-corporate control or Pro-corporate control and Pro-war. The only choice is whether you want prefer your soldiers to be Christian or gay.
If you want to solve the problem caused by the corrupt party system, eliminate party control of the nomination process. Make every candidate do what independents have to do, collect signatures to get on the state ballots, but using volunteers only, no paid signature gatherers. There would be no primary. Instead, there could be a general election with RCV. Our Constitution does not mention parties or primaries or conventions.
I did identify THE HUGE problem with RCV in my response to your other comment. It would apply to Perot in 1992 (and maybe '96), it would probably apply to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. last year - see my article at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/railroading-us-democracy-2024-jon-schultz-qumrc - and I'm sure it has been a factor in many other elections in which RCV has been used. It's very easy to see but you are so committed to promoting RCV that you can't see it, imo. So-called Approval Voting would work better than RCV in many circumstances, including the example I gave in my other response to you, and the system which I came up with, which is something of a combination of the two, is, I strongly believe, the best possible system, the only one which fully solves the problem of vote splitting and would pull the carpet out from underneath all political parties, which are inherently undemocratic organizations, removing the basic reason they exist. See my pinned X post @AJonSchultz and I'm getting ready to post more soon.
Here in Australia that is the system we have, it is referred to as 'preferential voting'. Preferences are allocated just as you describe. It is one reason why the country is in a mess. In our recent Federal, nation wide election, the incumbent Party won with approximately 34% of the primary vote. It is a system that is designed to keep the major parties in power & make it very difficult if not impossible for independent candidates or minor parties to make inroads.