Maine Voters Prepare to Rank Their Congressional Candidates to Choose Winners - Hit & Run : Reason.com - Scott Shackford:
October 23, 2018 - "In just a couple of weeks we're all going to see an election experiment that could perhaps change the way votes are counted.... November's election will be Maine's first use of ranked-choice voting to determine the winners of three elections — for one U.S. senator and two U.S. House seats. And with the way polls for at least one race are going, independent-minded voters are going to affect the outcome in a manner that can actually be tracked.
"In ranked-choice voting, people are asked not to just select one candidate for office, but to rank the candidates by order of preference. If there are four candidates, for example, you can choose the candidate you prefer the most and also rank the others second, third, and fourth....
"[F]or a candidate to win, he or she must have a majority of the votes, not just a plurality. If no candidate wins a majority of the vote, the candidate with the least number of votes is eliminated from the race.... The ballots are tallied again, and for those who voted for the eliminated [candidate], their second choice is counted instead. And so it goes, until one candidate has a majority....
"The point of ranked-choice voting is to try to enfranchise voters by making it possible to vote for third-party or independent candidates without actually 'throwing their vote away.' Proponents of ranked-choice voting see it as a tool of making candidates reach out to a larger pool of voters rather than just playing to their voting bases.... Ranked-choice voting doesn't necessarily make it easier for third-party candidates to win, but it makes their voices and their voters harder to ignore.
"Several cities in the United States have ranked-choice voting for local races... Maine, as a result of a couple of state ballot initiatives, will be implementing it for the first time....
"Now attention is focused on Maine's 2nd Congressional District, where incumbent Republican Rep. Bruce Poliquin is fending off a challenge from Democrat Jared Golden, and two independents [with] almost no chance of winning, getting less than 10 percent of the vote between the two of them in most polls. But the polls also show pretty much a dead heat between Poliquin and Golden.... Therefore, what's going to determine the outcome of this race may very well be who voters for the two independents selected as their second choice — or even their third.....
"[I]ndependent voters will determine the outcome of the race in a way that doesn't make them 'spoilers'.... They can vote for their favorite and then select the Democrat or the Republican as their second choice. Or they may not. Voters aren't required to rank their choices. It's an option....
"Partisans often whine that third-party voters end up helping their opponents. On a fundamental level, this is political entitlement nonsense that improperly treats voters like they belong to the political parties instead of the other way around. But it's also often not entirely true. Polling often shows third-party voters split between the main parties. In this election, we'll get to be able to track where independent votes actually go."
Read more: https://reason.com/blog/2018/10/23/maine-voters-prepare-to-rank-their-congr
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October 23, 2018 - "In just a couple of weeks we're all going to see an election experiment that could perhaps change the way votes are counted.... November's election will be Maine's first use of ranked-choice voting to determine the winners of three elections — for one U.S. senator and two U.S. House seats. And with the way polls for at least one race are going, independent-minded voters are going to affect the outcome in a manner that can actually be tracked.
"In ranked-choice voting, people are asked not to just select one candidate for office, but to rank the candidates by order of preference. If there are four candidates, for example, you can choose the candidate you prefer the most and also rank the others second, third, and fourth....
"[F]or a candidate to win, he or she must have a majority of the votes, not just a plurality. If no candidate wins a majority of the vote, the candidate with the least number of votes is eliminated from the race.... The ballots are tallied again, and for those who voted for the eliminated [candidate], their second choice is counted instead. And so it goes, until one candidate has a majority....
"The point of ranked-choice voting is to try to enfranchise voters by making it possible to vote for third-party or independent candidates without actually 'throwing their vote away.' Proponents of ranked-choice voting see it as a tool of making candidates reach out to a larger pool of voters rather than just playing to their voting bases.... Ranked-choice voting doesn't necessarily make it easier for third-party candidates to win, but it makes their voices and their voters harder to ignore.
"Several cities in the United States have ranked-choice voting for local races... Maine, as a result of a couple of state ballot initiatives, will be implementing it for the first time....
"Now attention is focused on Maine's 2nd Congressional District, where incumbent Republican Rep. Bruce Poliquin is fending off a challenge from Democrat Jared Golden, and two independents [with] almost no chance of winning, getting less than 10 percent of the vote between the two of them in most polls. But the polls also show pretty much a dead heat between Poliquin and Golden.... Therefore, what's going to determine the outcome of this race may very well be who voters for the two independents selected as their second choice — or even their third.....
"[I]ndependent voters will determine the outcome of the race in a way that doesn't make them 'spoilers'.... They can vote for their favorite and then select the Democrat or the Republican as their second choice. Or they may not. Voters aren't required to rank their choices. It's an option....
"Partisans often whine that third-party voters end up helping their opponents. On a fundamental level, this is political entitlement nonsense that improperly treats voters like they belong to the political parties instead of the other way around. But it's also often not entirely true. Polling often shows third-party voters split between the main parties. In this election, we'll get to be able to track where independent votes actually go."
Read more: https://reason.com/blog/2018/10/23/maine-voters-prepare-to-rank-their-congr
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