Wednesday, January 28, 2015

Why I like Ranked Choice Voting


I just read an article in The Bangor Daily News of Maine, by Dick Woodbury, who served 10 years in the Maine Legislature, advocating for a less partisan approach to politics and policy-making.  He is leading a citizen initiative to establish Ranked-Choice Voting (RCV) in Maine.

He writes:

The best and most cost-effective of these reforms is ranked choice voting, which uses a vote counting process that is identical to holding run-off elections, while avoiding the delay, expense and drop in participation of requiring voters to go back to the polls.

The key point is this: With ranked choice voting, your ballot already indicates who you would choose in a run-off election, if a run-off count is needed to establish a majority winner.


These are his 6 reasons for supporting RCV:

1. The finally elected candidate is chosen by a majority of voters.

2. There is no such thing as a spoiler candidate.  If a candidate turns out not to be electable, then he or she is eliminated in the counting process.  The candidate doesn’t “spoil” the result by taking away votes from somebody else.

3. Voters can cast their vote for a preferred candidate without the strategic dilemma of potentially helping a candidate they oppose.

4. By avoiding spoiler candidates and strategic voting, the entire messaging of campaigns, media coverage and public evaluation of candidates will focus on issues, vision, experience and capabilities; not on polling and electability.

5. Elected candidates can serve with a credibility and mandate that can only be delivered by a majority of votes cast.

6. Most importantly, campaigns will be more civil and respectful, as candidates avoid alienating their opponents’ supporters.  Rather than only appealing to loyal supporters, a winning candidate needs to appeal to a genuine majority of all voters, including those whose first choice may be somebody else.

This initiative will be on the Maine ballot in November 2016.

I strongly support this method of voting.  But I would go farther and remove primary elections and just have a General Election with Ranked-Choice Voting.

This would be like voting in Louisiana with RCV.

What do you think about this type of voting?











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