Having done it twice, I LOVE "RANKED CHOICE VOTING". In practice it is as simple as voting for your first choice to win an election, and your second choice. If you don't get your first choice, you stand a better chance of getting your second choice instead of your last choice. That's all a voter needs to know about how it works, making it work is the job of those whose job it is to make it work and it has not been ridiculously complicated or expensive. In Maine ranked choice voting got rid of the last Republican House member in New England and elected a very promising young man, Jared Golden, though the vile Republican-fascist, Bruce Poliquin, is going to try to get the courts to install him - Republicans have no problem with judges installing them when The People reject them.
I agree with Rachel Maddow that "ranked-choice voting" is a stupidly opaque name for what, when you do it is a simple thing. Geeks should never be put in charge of naming things, they'll always name it something stupid. Poli-sci geeks are a danger to democracy even with the best of will, even when their ideas are good they'll fuck up in explaining it.
On the ballot, instead of one column in which you mark your only choice under the old system, there are a first, second and third column (if they give you a third choice).
- You vote for your first choice in the "First Choice" column after the names of the candidates for an office.
- You vote for your second choice in the "Second Choice" column after the names of the candidates for an office.
That's as much as a voter needs to do, from there on it's the elections official's job to figure it out, just like it is under any vote count.
- If none of the "First Choices" gets to fifty-percent of the votes cast, it's a contest between the top two "First Choice" candidates.
- They count the "Second Choice" vote choices for those top two candidates and add those "Second Choice" totals to the First Choice vote totals which will almost certainly add up to 50% or more for one of the top two candidates.
For those who are counting the votes it's slightly more complicated but not very complicated. Considering the consequences of having an office holder who has the approval of fewer than 50% of voters, who is very likely THE LAST CHOICE OF A MAJORITY OF VOTERS those complications are a brief and easy way to avoid something much worse that goes on much longer.
Again, what a voter needs to know is that if they don't get their first choice they stand a better chance of getting their second choice instead of their last choice.
That's really all any voter needs to know about how it works. If Maine had "ranked-choice voting" for governor eight years ago we would never have had Paul LePage as governor, I am absolutely certain of that, there would be Maine residents alive, today who certainly died when LePage and the goddamned Republicans in the legislature blocked medicaid expansion. It is a life and death issue. The Republicans have been doing everything they can to keep that from happening because they know they stand a far lower chance of winning elections here if people get to vote for their second choice.
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