And there may be instances where candidates who seem to have a comfortable lead in first-place votes on election night lose because relatively few voters rank them as their second or third choice. That could lead to people questioning the results. Sections U. Science Technology Business U. How does ranked-choice voting work? This visual explainer walks through the steps of the ranked-choice voting process. Connect with the definitive source for global and local news.
The Associated Press. All rights reserved. Among the countries that have implemented ranked-choice systems nationwide are Australia, New Zealand, Malta and Ireland. Australia first introduced ranked-choice voting more than a century ago, and the system has helped the country avoid vote-splitting by allowing voters to still vote for less-popular and similar candidates that they like. Though ranked-choice voting is currently gaining traction in the United States, several U.
Ranked-choice voting can lead to less negative campaigning, says Richard DeLeon, who researches ranked-choice voting at San Francisco State University. Less divisive political environments can also have the effect of helping female, minority, centrist candidates, and third-party candidates. But since candidates are forced to rely on second and third-place votes in ranked-choice elections, negative campaigning can open the way for a third candidate to gain support.
A study showed that this created a slight percentage increase in female candidates running. The study also showed that women overall and minority women are more likely to win in ranked-choice voting systems.
According to experts, ranked-choice systems also tend to favor centrist candidates, since the system allows voters to express preference for one-sided, partisan candidates of their choice, as well as moderate candidates, who have broader appeal.
Partisan candidates have a narrower appeal, so they are less likely to be the second and third-choice for voters than a centrist candidate would be. This can also motivate partisan candidates to avoid taking extremes as well as give third-party, centrist candidates more incentive to run.
The Maine Heritage Policy Center, a leading conservative public policy nonprofit in Maine, released a recent study finding significant flaws with ranked-choice voting.
Ranked-choice ballots can require voters to read up on more candidates and require more time in the voting booth, which can lead to voters making mistakes during voting. There is also fear that ranked-choice voting can be used by interested parties to game the system.
Since candidates often win with the aid of lower-preference rankings, ranked-choice elections can incentivize parties to look for third-party candidates to insert into a race for their own benefit. Less negative campaigning can also be a bad thing, some argue. The added element of gaming out who the final two candidates are likely to be, to ensure you use one of your limited ranking slots on at least one of them, can also be challenging in a complex race.
Perhaps they may be more likely to have their ballots thrown out due to improper rankings. Or perhaps they may be less likely to use all their ranking slots, making their ballots disproportionately likely to be discarded in a later round.
Partly this is because voters have limited ranking slots, and all their ranked picks could get eliminated. This happens frequently. Of the US ranked-choice elections that have proceeded to at least a second round of counting, only 64 ended up producing a winner with a majority of the voters who turned out, per FairVote. In the San Francisco mayoral election of , for instance, there were , votes counted in the first round; in the final and decisive ninth round of counting, only , votes remained.
This was a drop-off of 21, votes, or 8. Supporters argue that the problem was that, in many of these elections, voters only had three ranking slots, so ballots were exhausted more easily as all three were eliminated. But adding more ranking slots means foisting more complexity on voters. Some real voting systems nerds have a different critique.
Ranked choice, in contrast, might incentivize a sort of inoffensive lowest common denominator campaign, rather than a bold one. Though you do have to stand out to some extent to avoid getting eliminated. Party endorsements and campaigns can also help simplify choices for voters who trust the party.
And runoffs have their virtues — they concentrate the mind, bringing clarity to a crowded field, by offering a binary choice, rather than tasking voters with researching and forming opinions on multiple little-known candidates, as they will in a ranked-choice election.
Voters adapted — and so did the parties. The task of negative campaigning may have been effectively outsourced to independent groups rather than the candidates themselves. But Richie told me that moving to a proportional system was too heavy a lift for the time being. It is, we believe, an important step toward a conversation about proportional voting.
This would allow for proportional ranked-choice voting — where seats are split up according to how the vote breaks down. Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment: to empower through understanding. Financial contributions from our readers are a critical part of supporting our resource-intensive work and help us keep our journalism free for all. Please consider making a contribution to Vox today to help us keep our work free for all.
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Are they right? For additional information about the status of these measures, click the links below. Ballotpedia has tracked the following ballot measure s pertaining to electoral systems for Ballotpedia features , encyclopedic articles written and curated by our professional staff of editors, writers, and researchers.
Click here to contact our editorial staff, and click here to report an error. Click here to contact us for media inquiries, and please donate here to support our continued expansion. Share this page Follow Ballotpedia. What's on your ballot? Jump to: navigation , search. As of , one state Maine had implemented RCV at the state level, eight states contained jurisdictions that had implemented RCV at some level, and another five states contained jurisdictions that had adopted but not yet implemented RCV in local elections.
In November , Alaska approved a ballot initiative to establish ranked-choice voting and top-four primaries with Voters in Massachusetts defeated a ballot initiative to establish ranked-choice voting for state-level elections with In November , Maine voters were the first to vote for president using ranked-choice voting.
The Maine Republican Party filed a veto referendum to suspend LD and let voters decide whether to approve it. On September 22, , the Maine Supreme Judicial Court ruled that not enough signatures were submitted for the veto referendum to qualify it for the ballot, which meant LD was not suspended. In November , New York City voters approved a measure to enact ranked-choice voting for primary and special elections beginning in This made NYC the most populous jurisdiction in the U.
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