Ranked Choice Voting: Better than plurality rules?

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Through the presidential primaries in the USA, voters could vote for one and only one candidate and whoever had the most votes won "all the marbles" in some states usually without winning a majority of the votes. If, only in utopia, the slate of candidates were all acceptable and voters were selecting a "first among equals", that would work fine. If the top candidate is polarizing and a majority of voters would not want that candidate, their wishes are ignored. This year a majority of Republicans did not want Trump, in other years a well funded moderate took center stage while the majority split their votes among a number of more conservative candidates with no opportunity to rally behind someone they would rather support.

Instead of voting for just one candidate, voters give a ranked list of their favorites. For each round of the election runoff cycle, only each voters' (then) top place is counted. When a candidate is in last place and no one has a majority, each vote for that candidate is transferred to the voters' next highest choice still in the race. For example on a ballot listing in order A, B, C, and D. When votes are counted the first time, A has the fewest and that vote is transferred to B. In the 2nd counting, C is eliminated so that vote still goes to B. 3rd time, B is eliminated so that vote would go to D since C is gone.
is one example, is another.

At a glance, I like this idea.

It's probably not perfect but its worth considering. Everyone knows the 2-party system is bogus. This alternative makes some sense to me. It would apply well to this election where many Democrats would vote for Bernie first and then Hillary.

The same might be said about Republicans. But Republicans tend to band together more. I tend to think there is more risk or Republicans banding together for Trump than there is of Democrats banding together for Hillary.

This is why no one wants to vote for Sanders. Because they know the Republicans will out-mob them. But an alternative vote system could help with this.

Sucks.

Elections are still only popularity contests.

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C minus 100 and counting.

Republicans are sure not banding in favour of the nominee, not a single ex-president, nor the speaker, nor the former candidates...

That's what a polarizing candidate can do. If Instant Runoffs had been in place, he would have needed a number of 2nd, 3rd, or 4th place votes to advance. If those who had voted for other candidates didn't vote for him until they were way down on their list (or didn't vote for him at all) he might not be the nominee now.

BTW, a runoff between the top two would be better than nothing and would be fair if the top two vote getters had more than 50%. If your top two were a white racist and a black racist with a combined total of 40% or less, IRV would give the majority a chance to support someone else, but not a two way runoff.

There are some people in the state of Maine who have been working to establish a form of ranked choice voting in the state. Perhaps we may soon get to see an example of this voting system in action.

I had forgotten about this thread. At any rate Maine did it a few days ago.

Actually Range Voting is the best method.

Explain.

Ranked Choice is definitely an improvement on FPTP, but it's still a heavily flawed system.

Better to use a proportional system. When a position can't be filled proportionately, try to abolish it.

I meant how does it work and why do you think it is better than RCV?

"Explain."

I can't. It's been a few years since I really studied the issues and my memory is real bad with technical stuff (I've read a whole book or two on voting systems and can't remember a thing because I only read through once).

Just check out RangeVoting.org. All the information is there and for the most part it's easy to read.

To be clear, I wasn't talking about Range Voting. I believe the system being referred to is where you are asked to rank candidates out of ten, rather than just ordering them. This allows greater expression of your preferences.

Here's an example: let's say it's the 2016 Presidential Election. There are six candidates: Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, John Kasich, Hillary Clinton, and Bernie Sanders.

You're a moderate Republican like Lindsey Graham. You dream of John Kasich being president. You rank him 10/10.

You think Marco Rubio would be a fine president, so you rank him 9/10.

You'd rather not have President Clinton, but you know she'd basically be competent and there would still be a country in four years. You give her 5/10.

Then you're left with three options you find strongly objectionable, so you give Cruz a score of 2/10 and Bernie and Trump both get 1/10.

The winner is whoever gets the most points from all voters.

This is a more accurate representation of your preferences than 1) Kasich 2) Rubio 3) Clinton 4) Cruz 5) Trump 6) Sanders, it gives you a greater say, and mathematically it increases the level of average satisfaction in the victor.

I think it falls down because it makes voting too hard and it doesn't reflect how most people actually think about politics. It's good for nerds like us, but not ordinary people who just want to say which team they're on, which is valid.

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On the other hand, PR ensures that the resulting elected body is representative of the views of the population at large. It's rather silly that less than half of all Americans get represented by the super-powerful president.

They have Ranked Choice voting local elections in San Francisco. They just elected a Mayor there.

Recently, the San Fransisco Chronicle about a proposal in S.F. to expand the number of people that can be voted for in their Ranked Choice up to ten! I don't think I read the whole story, though .