Ranked Choice Voting

Ranked Choice Voting is based on ranking a list of candidates in order of preference. There are variations of this option, some which are more simple than others.

The primary advantages: 1. allows for "instant runoff" meaning a second follow up election is not required, 2. Votes are not "wasted" like in a winner take all system because weighted preferences do effect the eventual outcome.

The secondary advantages: 1. Encourages more voter participation because the focus is on One election not on a primary and then a general. 2. Encourages more voter participation because votes are not wasted. 3. Encourages third party candidates because there is no primary. 4. Discourages negative campaigning because it doesn't lock voters into a "lesser of two evils" choice. A candidate must work for the second, third preferences of voters. 5. Discourages money from buying an election for much the same reason as it discourages negative campaigning. Money is most often used to attack candidates, it is difficult to attack many different candidates without making yourself look bad.

News about Ranked Choice Voting

FairVote.org SF Mayoral Article

Scientific American Article on RCV 2004

Maine ranked-choice voting as a case of electoral-system change

Journal of Representative Democracy 7/25/2018

Ranked-choice voting (RCV) manufactures an electoral majority in a fragmented candidate field. For RCV to pass at referendum, part of a reform coalition must be willing to lose election to the other part of that coalition, typically an out-of-power major party. A common enemy enables this sort of coalition by assuring (a) the out-of-power party of sufficient transfer votes to win and (b) a winner that junior reform partners prefer to the incumbent. I test this logic against the November 2016 adoption of RCV in Maine. First, I show that the most recent, runner-up party overwhelmingly supplied votes to the ‘yes’ side. I also show elite endorsements tending to come from this party, albeit not exclusively. Then I show a drift in the mass of public opinion, such that reform partners could coordinate. RCV is likely to find favour where voter preferences are polarised and lopsided, and where multiple candidates split the larger ideological bloc.