Ranked Choice Voting Pros Cons | Ranked-Choice Voting Explained | What is Ranked Choice Voting?
Vložit
- čas přidán 27. 07. 2022
- What is Ranked Choice Voting and what are its pros and cons. In this video, we will cover everything you need to know about it.
Most of the elections in the United States are plurality elections. Whichever candidate receives the most votes wins. This means that sometimes candidates can win without a majority or 50% of the votes. Ranked-choice voting is an electoral system that ensures a candidate receives a majority of the votes because voters rank candidates by preference, picking their 1st, 2nd, and 3rd choices and so on. If a candidate receives more than 50% of the vote in the first round, then the race is over and that candidate wins. If not, then a second round of counting commences. The candidate with the fewest first-place votes is eliminated, and their votes are reallocated to the voter's second choice candidate. These rounds continue until one candidate has a majority.
Watch this video to learn more about the pros and cons of this type of voting system to see if you think every election should use Ranked-Choice Voting.
Sources:
www.rankedvote.co/guides/unde...
my.lwv.org/vermont/article/pr...
www.bettergov.org/news/can-ra...
#rankedchoicevoting #RCV #voting
The last two points against RCV make no sense. 1. an exhausted vote only happens when the voter doesn't fully rank all the choices. If a voter chooses not to have an opinion on all the candidates, then what is the problem, why would they complain about not having a say about those candidates? It's voter's choice to rank them or not. 2. RCV does not violate "one person, one vote" any more than any other run-off election when a majority isn't reached. You only have one vote, but if your candidate got knocked out then you have the opportunity to switch your one vote to another candidate. It's still just one vote though.
well put, they anti RCV crowd are just trying desparately to protect corruption voting.
I 100% agree. Those two parts of this video were ridiculous. He should’ve labeled the video “let me tell you the propaganda that the major parties are spreading about ranked choice voting even though it’s completely ridiculous.”
I'm for whatever system makes PAC money less influential and gives third party candidates a chance. Binary voting is antiquated and any semblance of a major third party will get stamped out. RCV seems flawed but worse than the alternative? Doubt it.
um , if u think that any party other than the democrat party is gonna benefit from this then u may want to give it more thought . the dem political candidates nationwide outnumber any other party and thats why they want to do this type of voting , because it usually benefits the party with the most candidates running but it will not benefit the voters and who the majority of voters vote to hold a particular office .
Yet Maga Republicans and Bernie bros are both third parties.
@@marleonetti7 Younger voters tend to lean more progressive. Plenty of centrists who lean Dem that would gladly vote for moderate conservatives before voting for a progressive. Populism and progressives dominate a lot of the online discourse making more traditional media seem dated which tends to be more liberal. I don’t know how such a system would play out when voting for president, but RCV Would certainly be more diverse party wise down ballot.
@@Reigninsuds we are living in a time when u are either red or blue , purple need not apply . people dont want second or third options , progressives want a dem and conservatves want a republican .
RCV would help with dirty financing and dirty campaigning but no system is instantly going to make a third party viable.
The part where you were saying exhausted voting because you're only allowed three choices out of a five candidate vote. That is not full rank choice voting. Full Rank choice voting means you put in five choices out of five candidates. Or as many choices as there are candidates. That's a simple fix and that should've been mentioned. Those partial ranked choice voting methods are the only thing that kills this as everything else is dismissed easily
The fun part is that same "con" is literally even worse for single vote.
You literally HAVE to vote someone you just "don't dislike as much" and let people like Clinton and Trump win
I don’t think that was the message, it just looks that way because of the graphics.
There are many elections with literally dozens of candidates for a single office. Unless a voter wants to meticulously choose an exact ranking for all 50 of them, they’re likely going to fill out their top few and stop there. This could still result in none of their choices winning, and thus their vote was exhausted because they didn’t have the time or will to research and rank all 50 candidates on the ballot.
(To be clear I’m not opposed to RCV. Just trying to clear this criticism up.)
The problem is Americans are not educated enough about politics, because we spend so much time working just to keep our heads above water.
All we wanna do is relax when we’re off work, not figure out why we don’t want candidate B, C or D, and comparing and contrasting all the candidates and figuring out why exactly we don’t want each candidate.
You bring up a really good point. I do agree that Americans are not very well educated in politics and that’s a big problem.
Australian voters are handed how-to-vote cards by party volunteers as a quick and easy ranking recommendation to make it easy. Though you don't have to follow it, you can rank any order you want. It's not as hard as it sounds. Also we have mandatory voting, which means the politically uneducated have to vote anyway (the fine is like $20 though). That also has the added advantage that Australian politicians might have an incentive to be likeable rather than extreme in order to appeal to voters who don't care much for politics.
It's not the best alternative voting method out there, but ranked choice voting is certainly better than first-past-the-post.
100% agree , not the best but better than what we have
the problem with this system of voting is that it forces u to declare that there is a second choice and if the rest of the choices are in the opposite party that u prefer then u are forced to vote for a person as second choice from a party u dont like . that just simply wont work unless there are an equal number of candidates from each party .
@@marleonetti7 You aren't forced to rank additional choices if you don't want to. You can simply pick one candidate like you usually do.
@@Nanofuture87 well if thats the case then how can this voting system work ? its mainly based on first second and third or fourth choices to make the allocated votes work .
maybe the system or software automatically makes a second and third choice by default . just another corrupt situation with our voting systems right now .
Considering twice in a row with present voting system we got two of the least popular candidates ever to run for president as our choices. I would say change would be a great thing. Also the idea of throwing away your vote is perhaps the most valid point you made. In the last two elections I voted against someone not for someone. The least valid point is that voters are not smart enough to figure out rank choice voting. This sounds like politicians talking of like the present way of voting because if people had more of a choice they probably wouldn't get elected. Rank choice might not be the best choice, I heard star voting is a very good choice. But if it comes down to the way we vote now and rank choice, ill go for rank choice every time.
What you talked about here is actually “preferential voting” which is just one type of ranked-choice voting. There are other types of ranked-choice voting too. My personal favorite type of ranked-choice voting is called the condorcet method. Maybe you could talk about condorcet voting in a future video. In condorcet voting, after everyone ranks their choices & submits their ballots, it’s determined who would get the most votes in every head-to-head matchup. So, say, if there were 4 candidates A, B, C and D, based on the ranks the voters gave to each candidate, it’s determined who’d win in a matchup of only candidate A vs. B, then A vs. C, A vs. D, B vs. C, B vs. D and finally C vs. D. The winner of the election is whichever candidate wins the most of those head-to-head matchups.
the problem with this system of voting is that it forces u to declare that there is a second choice and if the rest of the choices are in the opposite party that u prefer then u are forced to vote for a person as second choice from a party u dont like . that just simply wont work unless there are an equal number of candidates from each party .
@@marleonetti7 A solution to this is to vote yes or no for every candidate. A yes scores 1, blank scores 0, and no scores -1. The same without -1 is 2 for yes 1 for blank and 0 for no. This is less complicated than RCV and still eliminates the spoiler effect. But the major parties don't want these fairer systems.
@@vipero00 holy shit that system is genius. Thanks dud.
@Rake In that video, voters could only rank their top 3 candidates. In an ideal preferential vote, they could rank up to however many candidates there were, not just the top 3. They COULD only rank their top 3 if they wanted to, but they wouldn’t be restricted to only rank their top 3 like as shown in that video. So that video doesn’t fairly showcase preferential voting. Condorcet voting gives voters more of a reason to rank every single candidate and not stop at 3 since their vote goes to a series of head-to-head matchups.
I think you would only rank the ones you wanted. I wanted nader. But I voted for gore because I didn't want the damnable w. So at best I would have had gore. But I ended up with the damnable w. With hus method we would have wound up with nader. The best. If more than 33 percent voted for him.
I'm for RC Voting. To start with, one person/one vote is still in tact but it is now dynamic. Also, it is not confusing. How ignorant does one have to be in order to be confused with this? Finally, this system is more aligned with the way any reasonably intelligent and mature person thinks - If I can't get exactly what I want I will take the second best option or third and so forth (or just stop at second as you can just vote for the only two you like).
It is maybe more representative than what we have now. It would also encourage more address of issues rather than mudslinging. A libertarian could vote libertarian and the the best candidate from one of the other 2 parties.... You would perhaps see some "Green" or "Tech" candidates with democrat or republican leanings on other issues and follow up with those choices.
I love it... Would you be interested in looking over STAR???
RCV is obviously on the correct path, if you ask me. We're constantly trying to perfect the Union. I think RCV is on that path. Even if it isn't perfect, it's more perfect than it is now
You didn’t include the largest problem. RCV, like all ordinal methods, is still subject to vote splitting. This can result in the most popular candidate being eliminated early, before all their support is accounted for. See Alaska, August 2022.
Can you expound on what you mean by this? It sounds like you're saying that a person would have almost no first-choice support, but then have so much in the second or third rounds that they would win.
@@sf49erguy
The most important thing to note about vote splitting is that it means anyone can win, no matter how unpopular they are, if the vote is split in the right ways. Any method with vote splitting can randomly produce horrific results.
To your question, sure. That’s possible.
The goal of a voting method should be to maximize the number of voters who consent to their representation. The goal should not be focused on “first-choice votes”.
One voter’s enthusiasm shouldn’t be valued above another voter’s consent, especially when many voters will not make a strong distinction between their first and second choices.
@@Zach-gv6si vote splitting is almost nonexistant in RCV
@@nealmccorkle3681 RCV was built to address a popular candidate splitting votes with a single less-popular candidate.
However, it frequently results in more-popular candidates being eliminated in early rounds due to them splitting votes with more than one other candidate.
For an illustration, look up “Center Squeeze”.
@@Zach-gv6si the "center squeeze" makes the assumption that the population will always seek the more idealogically extreme candidates. It fails to take into account that these candidates also tend to annoy the most voters. Espescially when coming from a FPTP system that incentivized negative campaigning.
Like many things in life, it sounds good on paper, but in reality, who knows?
It's been working in places like New Zealand for years.
Can confirm that it works a treat in Australia 👍
@@Requius76 You guys still have a two-party system. I'd say Australia is a prime example of how IRV is a failure. You should really try switching to Single Transferrable Vote: a semi-proportional multimember version of IRV. It does a lot better.
@@galiantus1354 I see what you mean, the two major parties undoubtedly reign supreme, though I don't know if I'd call it a failure because of that. It's definitely better for getting the representation of the majority of voters in each seat than fptp. In our last election a chunk of the LNP was replaced by a block of independents as a result of the people not being happy with the last government, which wouldn't seem that plausible under the current US system. So yeah it's not perfect, but I'd say it's pretty good.
I just looked up Single Transferrable Vote, and yeah it looks fantastic. I think our Senate has a similar system called Optional Preferential Voting and uses a quota system. Looks pretty much the same except we're only required to number at least 6 boxes out of like 20. The ballot paper for our senate voting is like a meter long though (look it up, it's kind of funny), so most people don't number every box.
Oooh spooky! Who even knows anything? It's all just such a mystery. Welp, two shit party system for eternity it is then
Supposed flaws:
1. People are too dumb-don’t buy it-everyone has ranked their favorite something.
2. Loose confidence: I wonder why if some politicians keep slandering our elections. Again, people are so dumb that they can’t understand this process.
3. Exhausted vote: if there’s not enough choices (n-1), this would be a legit flaw. But if someone only selects 1 choice out of 5, that’s on the voter, not the system.
4. 1 person, 1 vote: I call BS. This is essentially multiple elections all in 1. Round 1 is the first, 2 the second election-or first runoff, etc. To argue this, you’d need to argue that you can’t vote in a runoff if you voted in the primary which we’d all agree is absurd.
1. No one is saying "ranking stuff is hard". The problem is most people who vote in RCV don't understand how the counting process works. Most think the system will definitely use all the information on their ballot, but in practice that is usually false: your second rank is ignored if your second rank is eliminated before your first.
2. The counting process of RCV fundamentally changes the administration of an election.
First, individual polling locations can't count beyond the first round because they don't know the order eliminations will happen. So most places that use RCV have all the polling places ship the ballots to a central location to be counted for the second round and beyond. This destroys a significant security feature of our system: decentralized election counting and reporting is part of what ensures our elections are secure. It is extraordinarily difficult to affect a significant number of votes when they are in little pockets that can be individually audited. However, collecting all the ballots to one location creates a single point of failure, making an undetectable scaled attack possible.
Second, if you try and avoid this by having polling locations hold their ballots and count the rounds, you significantly increase the amount of time it takes to count and calculate the result of the election. Each polling place has to wait for every other polling place to report their results for each round before they can report their results for the next round. What would be pretty much instant at a centralized location takes days longer and requires even more manhours.
In short, there are valid reasons to mistrust RCV elections. There are plenty of other voting methods that do not suffer from these problems, for which criticizing them for poor security (or a long counting time) would be invalid.
3. Exhausted votes can be on the voter as much as they are on the ballot for having significantly fewer available ranks than candidates. Even when it is on the voter, there is a point at which the cost of coming to an informed decision is just too great: it has been demonstrated that more educated and wealthy voters tend to use all available ranks than less educated and poorer voters.
4. In a real runoff, everyone who didn't vote for the eliminated candidate(s) has the option to change their vote based on the current state of the election. Simulated runoffs do not allow this. They lock the voter into supporting their preferred candidate regardless of the strategy they would otherwise use. Meanwhile, those voters whose initial choice was eliminated DO get this option. Definitely seems like it violates 1 person 1 vote.
@@galiantus1354
1. Teach them. This isn't that hard.
2. Some valid points, but this doesn't need to be that hard. Sure, poor procedures could cause the problems you called out. But we have the technology and computing power to run all of the US in 20 choice RVC scenario in a handful of seconds.
3. Not ranking beyond a certain number is on the voter. Not giving enough ranks is on the voter system. A N minus 1 number of choices should be available. In reality that's probably way overkill (there's always a few bizarre candidates that have no chance), but would prevent lack of ranks which would be a real flaw.
4. Strongly Disagree.
4a. The current state is the time of the election.
4b. And for the second point, isn't that how you'd make your rank? Well if my first guy doesn't get it, I'd go for this one instead? Really don't see your point there.
4c. And no one got 2 votes. They just voted again in a second election because no one won the first. You still vote for the number 1 on your rank, unless they got eliminated. It's election number 2... then number 3... and so on. Still very much 1 vote, 1 person.
@@jamesbishara2990
1. It is hard to teach it correctly. And if you do, lots of people won't support the system. This is why FairVote deliberately slacks on voter education, resorting to the elevator pitch instead.
2. I don't understand how computing power matters. Yes, I can simulate thousands of nationwide RCV elections on my laptop in under a minute. But it doesn't address the inherent security problems with having to report all the ballot data to a single machine. Let's also not forget that in practice, despite the wide availability of computing power in 2022, and the cost of gas, for some reason every RCV election that happened in Alaska and Maine required all the physical ballots to be shipped on planes and trucks to a central location for tabulation. If it really was so simple, why spend so much extra time and money on that effort?
3. OK, sure.
4. There is a strategic difference between having the option to change your vote between elimination rounds and committing to a predetermined preference order.
--
What I'd like to know is why RCV is treated like some silver bullet. There are more expressive voting systems that use 100% of the information the voters provide, are precinct summable, and don't require such an effort for voter education. Why is it that the premiere electoral reform throws out information, creates logistical problems, and requires so much effort to educate?
Just on a surface level, there are problems with suggesting RCV as an alternative to Plurality. RCV is just iterated plurality. It uses vote splitting in every round to choose which candidate to eliminate. It is not a rejection of vote splitting, but an embrace of vote splitting.
Then there are the deeper nonmonotonicity criticisms. Through the center-squeeze effect it advantages extremist candidates over centrist ones. In some cases, it gives voters a worse outcome than if they hadn't even shown up to vote at all.
Or perhaps we could get into the lies about how it increases civility amongst contenders and helps women and minorities. What it actually does is encourage candidates to find monetary outlets for their attacks. Instead of candidates confronting each other on stage, PACs and super PACs pour money into unaffiliated negative campaign ads, so candidates don't have to deal with the fallout themselves. And it is a misapplication of statistics to say it helps women and minorities: The municipalities and states where RCV has been adopted are disproportionately progressive urban centers that were already pushing equity. Attributing their wins to RCV is a whole other level of academic dishonesty.
The biggest problem is that RCV was never meant to be a single-winner method. It was meant to be a multi-winner method. The proper term for RCV is IRV, which is short for "Instant Runoff Voting". And IRV is just the single-winner version of STV "Single Transferrable Vote". STV is a sensible multi-winner method for relatively small, non-partisan elections requiring semi-proportional results. Why the hell anyone would assume adopting it for large single-winner elections makes any sense is beyond me.
If you are interested in good ranked single-winner methods, look into the various Condorcet methods. Condorcet methods don't ignore ballot information, and they can actually be expected to deliver on some of the promises FairVote claims RCV would help with. Another ranked method worth considering is the Borda count. I would also suggest scored methods like Approval and STAR. 3-2-1 voting is also pretty good. Most of these would certainly be better than RCV (though I'll admit I'm not certain about the Borda count. That's an area I need to study more).
💯 agree
Definitely support ranked choice voting.
I think it’s better than what we currently have
Sounds like a good idea, in theory.
What if you only rank two instead of the four choices on the ticket? What happens to the percentages of each of the four choices when people choose only two of the four?
If all the choices you ranked are eliminated, then it becomes as if there was a runoff election where you didn't vote. The percentages are calculated by the votes that are still remaining.
Then it’s not one person one vote. Then the party that have more candidates is likely to win.
@@jubileelin1 Exactly. It is flawed, and seemingly by design. I find it hard to believe those who came up with this scheme were not intelligent enough to see the major inherent flaw; no, they are much to smart for that.
If you only rank two candidates and those two end up being eliminated in the first two rounds, your vote would be exhausted and not counted in the final round when there’s only the other two candidates (that you didn’t rank) left.
Still, the winner would be the one who is more preferred than the other by the decision of the remaining votes that have indicated preferences between the two remaining candidates.
@@jubileelin1 In the current binary voting system, one could decide not to vote at all. That would be on them (choosing not to choose is a choice, after all), but it's democracy nonetheless, no?
Better than the mess we have now.
It seems we should focus on counting the first vote since the total outcomes already seem to be so controversial.
This only makes sense to me.
I’m not exactly what I prefer at this time. Thank you for your information!
You are so welcome!
Once I heard the heritage foundation was against rank choice voting, I became a supporter of it.
"The enemy of my enemy is my friend" is terrible logic. There are a multitude of voting systems other thank Ranked Choice Voting (properly called Instant Runoff Voting), many of which also have you rank candidates.
Instant Runoff Voting displays some undesirable properties which warrant criticism. Before blindly supporting it, you ought to consider the very real nonpartisan, mathematical and practical criticisms of it. For example:
- IRV ignores most of the information voters give it.
- It doesn't actually solve vote-splitting. States and countries that use it are still in the throes of the two-party system.
- It behaves erratically: ranking someone higher can cause them to lose, and ranking them lower can cause them to win.
I suggest looking into STAR voting, Approval voting, and Condorcet methods (which are also ranked, by the way), to get an idea what voting methods exist. Also look into Single Transferrable Vote, the multimember version of IRV, which actually performs better than regular IRV.
@@galiantus1354 - Wait a minute. Your comment is written like someone who knows what they’re talking about, but I don’t believe what you’re saying. When you said that ranking someone higher could cause them to lose and Ranking them lower could cause them to win, that’s patently wrong. I’m happy to eat my words if you can convince me. But I’m so convinced of that that I’m ready to scream. It almost sound like you’re just full of propaganda but you’re writing it in a way that makes it seem like you’re educated.
Instant runoff election voting, as you properly refer to it as, it’s just that. It’s an instant runoff.
@@iMatti00 If 3000 Palin voters had ranked Peltola first in the Alaska special/primary election, Peltola would have lost to Begich. Go look at the ballot data. RCV is literally insane.
Smart
I think combined-approval voting (CAV) would be the best. Voters can upvote candidates they like and downvote the ones they dislike. Candidates are then scored based on approvals minus disapprovals, and whoever has the highest of that score wins the election.
If two candidates encourage their supporters to downvote eachother, it might give other, less-hated candidates a chance to defeat both of them.
Ah…interesting!!
Or just do a lottery, that's fun too.
But by that case, the media would manipulate the election results every time like they did in 2020 by censoring the Hunter Biden story and excessively publishing anti-Trump media articles to manipulate people's perceptions of certain candidates.
In case anyone is wondering what the third reply is that isn't showing up for some reason, it went like this: (I received a notification for it the other day)
"But by that case, the media would manipulate the election results every time like they did in 2020 by censoring the Hunter Biden story and excessively publishing anti-Trump media articles to manipulate people's perceptions of certain candidates."
If CZcams is automatically hiding these sorts of comments, then not only would they be silencing those people, they would also be denying them a chance to hear counter-arguments, as anyone who could refute their arguments aren't even able to see those arguments in the first place, so they wouldn't be able to refute said arguments.
My counter-argument would be that, as far back as 2015, many people have already had reasons to disapprove of Trump to begin with. Combined-approval voting would favor broadly-liked candidates over divisive ones.
any form of "approval" voting is stupid because it means you give candidates that you merely find acceptable over candidates that you actually like.
All 4 it. I’m glad I’m seeing more and more people talk about this subject. I’ve been a fan for changing to this style of voting for years.
Sometimes it's easier to make a decision when there are more options available. I might want Candidate A (1st choice) to win, though I'd be just as happy if Candidate D (2nd choice) were to win, and would certainly protest if Candidate B (4th choice, or left blank if I feel strongly enough) gets into office, and yeh, I'd probably tolerate Candidate C (3rd choice) if necessary. With RCV, I could make that thought process more clearly known, in theory if not in detail.
RCV enables ending gerrymandering when combined with at large congressional districts. Endless gerrymandering and lawsuits against it is a huge waste of money. A very large percentage of voters are disenfranchised.
It doesn't matter. We are headed to the edge of the cliff and there's no one who can stop it, and there's a good many who seem to be aiming for the bottom
I’m for rank choice voting because it’s the only sure way of getting rid of the two party system and having choices for the American people to decide how they want their country run who’s going to be running the country for us.
Interesting!
I wonder about 2 things:
1st) if lets say there are 8 parties-candidates, and I only support 2 of them, can I vote for them only, and not any of the rest (ie my 2nd choice to be considered also my 3rd, 4th etc...)
2nd) if noone win the 1st round, and only 2nd choices are counted isn't it very possible to again get no party over 50% ?
For example lets say that there are 2 major runners up, but each of them have a party sharing most of their ideas (so their electorate would be rather split between them).
If none of the 2 major candidates wins the 1st round, and most people have marked their similar party as 2nd choice, would that generally result in the 3rd & 4th party (assuming the similar parties were popular enough of course) end up being 1st & 2nd in the 2nd round, but again no party with over 50% ?
... if I understand correctly, I think the 2nd round should include the 1st & 2nd choice people made as a party-coalition, but again that doesn't guarantee any party or coalition would get over 50%.
For real examples look at the Bulgarian elections in the last 2 years. Only 1 out of 4 elections produced working government cabinet, and 1 of the coalition parties broke the coalition that government lasted about half a year only. The rest of the elections couldn't produce a party or coalition of parties that are willing to work together over 50% (because after elections such government has to win 50% of the elected officials, and in 99% of the cases they vote for their party or coalition only).
PS. One major issue with the voting system is exposed, because most of the parties are so corrupt that they only care about their wellbeing (ie getting access to move government & EU funds they can abuse), and practically there are no ideas to be shared with other parties.
Unfortunately the reforming parties can't gather over 50% even together in coalition, so we even don't get a chance to test if their reforms are for good, or because they didn't have opportunity to steal yet.
you would only vote for the candidates you find acceptable....if all of the candidates you find acceptable are eliminated at some point in the counting, your vote is exhausted.
1
Yes.
Just remember after you stop voting on the 1st 2nd or 3rd etc rank
You essentially return your vote to the current system and your vote is left on the last guy
Who has already lost
Again like the current system
2
It’s about as likely as the getting a perfect tie remember you don’t use everyone’s second choice you remove the lowest scoring first choice and use ONLY those 2nd choices
The idea is that guy lost let’s treat it like he was not in the race and see who the people would have voted for if he was not here
It again creates a viable reason to have less polarization
I absolutely support Ranked Choice Voting.
I caused a runoff in the 2022 US Senate Race in Georgia and am now advocating for why this is a better system.
the problem with this system of voting is that it forces u to declare that there is a second choice and if the rest of the choices are in the opposite party that u prefer then u are forced to vote for a person as second choice from a party u dont like . that just simply wont work unless there are an equal number of candidates from each party .
Yes, but if people are properly educated about RCV they would see that getting to vote for the “lesser evil” even though their primary pick lost is a great benefit.
Getting your 3rd best pick instead of your 5th best can make all the difference in the world.
Having the chance to influence the election in your favor even after your candidate lost means your voice counts no matter what. Which isn’t what we have now.
That’s a flaw of the candidates available, not RCV.
@@adamj2683 the design flaw is that this , lets say the dem party has a liberal dem and a conservative dem that pretends to be a republican run just to cause confusion and take votes from the front runner . then what happens is even though the majority of people in a state are republicans they will end up with a dem in office because decoys were set up to take away votes from the repub party because more dems usually run for govt offices nationwide then repubs but the actual repub voters outnumber dem voters nationwide so the majority of voters of the usa will not be properly and accurately represented.
Plurality and FPTP voting has the same flaw. An area with a particular partisan lean may have more candidates in one party over the other. But that area would have been likely to vote for that party as a plurality/majority anyway. This at least gives the smaller party a chance if the other candidates of lesser quality. Otherwise that party would always win anyway.
You don't have to choose a second or third or fourth if you don't want to.
Against. There are a lot of systems that accomplish the stated goals of RCV without ignoring information provided by the voters: Approval, STAR, Condorcet methods, Proportional methods, etc. Many voters who participate in RCV elections mistakenly believe all the information on their ballot will be used to maximize the election in their favor. This is false.
Even if you rank every candidate, only your first rank is guaranteed to matter. This can create a scenario where, by ranking candidates honestly, your ballot actually gets you a WORSE outcome than if you had treated it like a plurality election and bullet-voted for your preferred frontrunner. This is why in the long-term, RCV elections have done nothing to solve the two-party duopoly enforced by Plurality.
I don't see how you came to this conclusion. To simplify for the purpose of breaking away from two dominating parties, let's use the letters R, B, and G. R and B are the dominating parties, and anyone who prefers G knows that a vote for G would be a complete waste, so they vote for R or B. With rank choice, more people could vote for G, while still being able to choose between R and B. Even if G doesn't win at this point, their sizeable chunk of votes is going to let them gain a foothold for future elections, and put pressure on R and B to shape up.
@@Noah-rm5bu Not exactly. What can happen is, if my preferences are G > B > R, and I vote that way, I can often cause R to win, when if I insincerely ranked B first, B would beat R. And the chances of this happening actually increase the more competitive the race is. The problem is the order of elimination changes which two candidates make it to the final round. Your first rank can potentially eliminate the more viable candidate who would win against your least preferred candidate - this is what happened in the Alaska election. So in fact, RCV can not only actively discourage voting for third party candidates in a similar way as Plurality, but it can actively subvert the will of the electorate, even when it has collected all the necessary information to correctly determine the correct winner.
@@galiantus1354 I see. To me this seems like a problem with how they are eliminated. Perhaps a slightly more complex algorithm could keep this from happening.
@@Noah-rm5bu That is precisely what I'm advocating for. Look up Ranked Robin or Condorcet Voting if you want to see a more accurate algorithm.
@@galiantus1354 Stil confused as to what you mean; could you explain it further? What do you mean by "if I insincerely ranked B first, B would beat R". Why would this increase the more competitive an election is?
If the elite don't want you to have it then we need it
Not worth voting in Maine. Sick of living here.
It didn't seem to work in Alaska.
It worked in Alaska just fine.
Round 1: Begich got 28.53%, Palin got 31.27%, and Peltola got 40.19%
Begich, with the lowest amount, gets eliminated. Of his 53,810 votes, 27,053 now get distributed to Palin and 15,467 now get distributed to Peltola.
Round 2: Palin got 48.52% and Peltola got 51.48%
Peltola now has a majority and wins the election.
@@Nanofuture87 Except it didn't. Going by election data, it eliminated the consensus candidate and chose one of the two extremists (and not even by a majority, thanks to exhausted ballots).
This comment section was very informative using the Alaska 2022 election as an example.
You really should’ve left off the last part of the video where you said it might violate the “one person, one vote” principal. That makes literally no sense. That’s like saying you can’t do a runoff election because it violates one vote per election. It’s an instant runoff election. That could really confuse people. So I’m disappointed in that.
A lot of people argue that, whether or not you or I agree or disagree with it, or whether makes sense or not.
@@IllustratetoEducate - I just worry that by you saying that it makes people who see your video think there’s some legitimacy in it. Can I give you do a video about the Earth being round and how gravity works, and then he pointed out that some people believe the Earth is flat. You know.
It’s an improvement.
I think this actually encourages anti voting. If you hate a political candidate you can vote to actively subvert them even if you know your preferred candidate can't win.
Basically you are voting to elect the least bad person. Which isn't what I want in an election. I want an actual choice. If I lose at least the other citizens have a candidate to push their agenda. Then next election everyone can decide if it was good or bad.
In a first past the post system you also just elect the least bad person...
@@maaren3150 no. you have the choice to vote for or against someone.
The ranking system means you can vote for someone AND against someone else both.
Example would be someone losing the election with 49% of the vote even though no other candidate got higher that 2% of the vote themselves. 1 person get 2% and all other candidates 1%, but all ranked choice put the 49% person last. See what I mean?
@@tylr3669 It is a strategy of the elites to EXPLOIT this system no doubt.
I wouldn't want to play a game where it looks like Hells casino's Poker table, where I am having to play a bluff to get the Devil to fold ⬇
It's all in the cards🗨😈🃏🃏😨💬But I thought you counted them already
Yep. I've seen that happen over and over again. Why are we doing that to ourselves?
Dear Lord, why do people not understand this? This does not encourage anti-voting. You cannot subvert an election by voting for the person who is least likely to win as some way to mess up and hurt candidates. If you were ranking your choices based on having someone pick the consensus candidate, that would be true. Otherwise it’s not true. You are 100% incorrect. And it’s so frustrating that people do not understand something so simple or maybe it’s propaganda from the major parties because they want right choice voting to be viewed with such skepticism that people turn away from it.
You pick your freaking number one candidate, if they don’t win then you act like that never happened, then you go to your second place winner, and so on. LORD!!!!
I am against Rank Choice Voting - Voting transparency and election integrity is at an all time low. How are we to trust that they will split the votes equally? It's confusing for many people, I've seen that first hand among the older neighbors in our city. Paper Ballots, voting for your candidate of choice, hand counted with poll watchers/witnesses from both or all political parties - is the time tested way to insure that the election process is fully transparent and reliable.
It sounds to me like the most polarizing candidates (anti Establishment) are unlikely to win and the plurality is going to tend towards moderate (Establishment) picks. This system sounds like a poisoned chalice. The establishment will own the middle and will lead you like lambs to the slaughter as the savior candidates will always be portrayed as revolutionary/fringe and won't be favored in this system.
I don't like ranked choice, it's too easy to manipulate (sorta). Picture this, there are 3 candidates 2 Republicans and 1 Democrat. The Republicans split each other apart and by default Democrats win. So if this system is used we'll just naturally go right back to square one with two main people because that's the best way to avoid such a poor situation.
That's not true, if anything rcv helps the Republicans in this case. In first past the post whoever gets the most votes wins so if the Republican vote is split then the Democrat could win with say 40% of the vote. In rcv if one of the Republicans comes in 3rd and their base ranked the other Republican as 2nd then a Republican will win because most voters prefer them to a Democrat. If the Democrat still wins, that's the Republicans fault for not appealing to most voters.
@@irishspud5526 It happened in Alaska though where a Democratic candidate won despite only accounting for 38% of the vote while the Republicans accounted for 60%.
This is just a voting system designed for a one party state.
@@InattentiveADHB Because when the first Republican was eliminated, it turned out that only half of their voters ranked the other Republican as their second choice, with 29% of their voters actually picking the Democrat instead. The issue isn't the system, the issue is the candidates and the kind of campaign they ran.
@@InattentiveADHB I never said this wouldn’t happen. But you are missing the point, the democrat would have won either way in first past the post she would have won with 40% of the vote. That would be completely discarding the vote of 60% of a divided electorate. Sarah Palin came in second and since she doesn’t appeal to moderates many of Begich’s supporters ranked a more moderate democrat in second. The whole state got to voice there opinion on all candidates and if they didn’t Peltola would have won either way just by a plurality not a majority. This isn’t of an issue of not being fair. Republicans need to stop nominating more radical candidates and then they would have more broad support .
@@irishspud5526 Ah, and while you're making total sense and I would agree with you, only 50% or over technically constitutes a majority vote. So there may be some legal basis for contesting that outcome.
The concept that you may not get a vote is a PRO not a CON. If you consistently chose the worst candidate then hey -- you're wrong. That's the point of voting : To determine who is liked by the most people. If you always chose the least liked person then "thanks for your input. but goodbye". A person who chose the least liked candidate three rounds in a row is a real statistical outlier.
For Ranked-Choice voting. Pros weigg more than cons, in my opinion.
Here is the four candidates. Spin the Bottle, Kegger, pin the tail on the donkey, dizzy stick. Who do you think will win? The Kegger always wins no matter what it's the best party. Ranked choice is just a polarized party that delivers a raging party. It's $$$$$$$$$$$ centric.
Another drawback not mentioned is RCV advantages the incumbent.
I don't feel like that's unique to RCV. Any type of voting is advantageous to the incumbent mainly because they can campaign on their previous record, they have access to more funds, and usually have access to committees, so they sound better in debates.
RCV does not advantage the incumbent anymore than any other system currently being discussed. On the contrary, with FPTP incumbents are almost always reelected, with RCV there are more challengers and thus a more willingness to put untrusted incumbents last in the voting.
Absolutely false. Ranked choice voting actually takes away power from incumbents from the two major parties. It makes it more likely they will lose. That’s why they were fighting it and also spreading propaganda about it.
AGAINST. I'm from Maine so I atill think it's shady.
why do you think empowering the voters and disincentivizing negative campaigning is shady?
Agreed. There are tons of systems out there that are far more transparent and accomplish the same goals.
If we are talking on a state/ city level, maybe. Nationally we would have to change the Constitution and become a democracy. I’m not in favor of that.
The constitution explicitly says that each state is free to choose its electors any way it wants. There is no need whatsoever to touch the constitution, every state can choose RCV on its own, as Alaska and Maine already have.
That’s not even close to being true. Either you misunderstand the constitution or you misunderstand ranked choice voting. I think it might be the second period because ranked choice voting is the exact same as regular voting, it just prevent somebody from wasting their vote. It’s no more of a democracy than the typical voting system is right now.
This has always seemed like the best way to vote period.
You are not multiple voting as you still only get one vote that counts. And for every category that you were voting on you should have that many to rank that way you don’t exhaust your vote.
This would probably take about three presidential cycles to really catch on and for people to fully realize it’s potential. You vote for whom you want, it weakens and doesnt allow one party to be OP like the Democrats and Republicans have. I really only see positives with this. Every time I see a negative posted it’s not really or it’s easy to go around
Good way to sneak a communist in
RCV is just Plurality in a mask.
I'm in favor of RCV. People shouldn't be voting out of fear, which a lot of people are doing now.
There exist other systems that do that well. Have you looked into STAR voting?
This assumes that every voter ranks every candidate as equidistant to each other. This is obviously not true in reality.
A point-based system (0-10) may work much better than this. This would account for each voter's preference for one candidate relative to another. This also allows for abstain votes by rating a candidate with 0 points. It also accounts for 'either/or' cases by rating two or more candidates with the same points.
As far as I can tell, ranked choice voting is poorly conceived.
ranked choice voting is the best system yet come up....the system you are speaking in favor of benefits extremism.
@@nealmccorkle3681 Hmm... I think I see how that can be. Perhaps my idea is poorly conceived as well.
@@rainbrain8460 I gotta say that I appreciate your humility. Reforming our voting system demands more debate and I admit that I can be extremely brash at times. I support the system they passed in Nevada this go around though they have to approve it again in 2024 for it to take any effect.
@@nealmccorkle3681 Thanks I guess. Aren't we all just extremely brash sometimes? I'm really no different from the next guy. Had you caught me at a different time I might have responded differently. US politics can be quite messy and can get people all up in arms so easily. Even those of us not from the US (myself included) can get somewhat invested sometimes. I have to say Ranked Choice Voting certainly is an interesting topic to ponder on. I do agree with you, it does seem better than the conventional method of voting.
Literally every point against rcv this video mentioned is bullshit
#Dan4President
Hahaha thanks, but that’s never gonna happen. 😂
I don't think you properly explained why rank choice voting violates the principle of one-man, one-vote. In rank choice voting, the LEAST POPULAR candidate gets his votes reallocated first. That means that those voters who voted for the least popular candidate are the FIRST VOTERS to get a say in who wins. At stage two of this system, they are the ONLY ONES whose second place votes are counted. All the other voters have no say at this point.
If one candidate is now over 50%, then they (and only they) tipped it in his or her favor. If not, then those who voted for the SECOND LEAST POPULAR CANDIDATE are the next ones in line to try and tip the scale. All other voters have to sit on the side-line.
So, while in round one everyone gets an equal say, in round two we give some people a say and others do not get a say. Not fair.
It is very fair, because all the other voters actually got their FIRST choice, it's only the least popular voters who now have to settle for their second choice, while everyone else still is getting their first choice vote. Yes of course the voters who did not get to vote their first choice can act as "spoilers" just like in any election there can be a fringe minority that tips the balance. But that doesn't mean RCV is unfair, it just means people who aren't getting their first choice can be unpredictable in who their second choice might be.
@@thoughtfulexaminer6455 I have updated my view on RCV since writing that comment. I no longer think it is unfair.
The key for me was understanding that RCV is essentially an instant run-off system. That is to say, we simply smush all potential run-off's into one single election. In a run-off election, people have to decide who they are going to vote for. In general, the only one who really has to make a new decision are those whose candidates do NOT make it into the run-off.
That is what is happening in RCV - except that we save the time and expense of holding an actual, second (or third) run-off election. Seems perfectly reasonable to me with many merits. I just didn't properly understand it at first.
Against ranked choice voting
This is a violation of the one vote rule.
You still only get one vote. You just have the opportunity to change your vote if your candidate got eliminated, just like now if your favorite candidate didn't make the cutoff then you can switch to another in the run-off election. RCV is just doing the run-off right away instead of making you go to the poll twice.
no it is not
Then I guess when you have a runoff election that also violates the one person one vote rule. Or maybe when you vote for congressman and senator and president at the same time, that should also violate the one person one vote rule. You obviously don’t understand what that rule even means if you believe it actually violates it.
Against. 100%.
HOw do you exploit ranked choice voting? There are several ways to do this. One way is just letting people know that their first choice usually gets eliminated so put that choice 3 or 4th.
That makes no sense.....
That makes no fucking sense whatsoever...
Either you have a learning disability or you were trying to exploit others that have a learning disability. So yes, if someone is foolish and they believe the poop coming out of your mouth then they could fall for something so blatantly false.
Yes, Ranked choice voting is a better system. It will stop parties from supporting Only extreme points of view on both ends of the spectrum. It will also promote a more civil discourse since disrespecting another candidate would be likely alienate voters who are supporting that candidate And thus negate the possibility of gaining a vote on a second round.
Should rename it to Rigged choice voting!
Obviously you fell for the propaganda from the two major political parties who don’t like rank choice voting or you are purposely trying to confuse others.
Ranked choice vote is best.
Think of a dessert lovers club. They vote for their favorite dessert.
A. Milk Chocolate cookies
B. Dark Chocolate cookies
C. Double Chocolate cookies
D. Raisin oatmeal fiber sugar free cookies
Let’s say 74% of people love any chocolate dessert!
But their votes are split equally across the three chocolate entries.
In a normal election the “raisin oatmeal fiber sugar free cookies” would win.
That’s why they need to have primaries and caucuses to avoid this split vote. It also makes 3rd party candidates almost impossible to win, which is what the puppet masters want.
I think it’s a bad idea, A candidate who receives the most first choice votes, which by all voting logic would be declared the winner, can be eliminated by the second or third choice candidate. Second and third choice candidates did not win most of the votes, therefore should not be allowed to win an election.
Consider the following scenario: five candidates run for office. Candidate A receives 21% of the vote, B receives 20%, C receives 20%, D receives 20%, and E receives 19%. By your voting logic, A should win the election even though 79% of voters wanted someone else.
@@Nanofuture87 you make a fair pioint, however in your scenario, (with ranked choice)No matter who wins, only about 20% of the people wanted them anyway?
Candidates B C D or E would win, they each had only 19 or 20 Percent,
Hows that any better?
@@pmoney3688 With ranked choice, we can at least see which candidate a majority has some preference for even if they aren't their first choice. To continue the unrealistically extreme scenario, suppose it goes like this in subsequent rounds as candidates get eliminated (just to make it easier, let's say there are 100 voters and they all made sure to rank fully):
Round 2: A receives 21%, B receives 35%, C receives 22%, and D receives 22%.
Round 3: B receives 56%, C receives 22%, and D receives 22%. B wins.
It turns out that A was an extremist candidate who was no one's second choice while B was a moderate candidate who, while not a lot of people's first choice, was overwhelmingly people's second choice. Shouldn't B win rather than A if we're trying to see who best represents the voters?
In reality obviously this kind of situation doesn't usually happen. Ninety percent of the time, the candidate with the most votes in the first round ends up winning.
@@Nanofuture87 nice….. that makes sense now I get it, you would rather have the majorities second choice than the minorities first choice. thank you for taking the time to lay out that scenario👍🏿
@@Nanofuture87 that happened in alaska under RVC. 72% of voters voted for republican candidates while only 28% voters voted for the democrat candidate and the democrat candidate won. So using your argument, should the democrat have won even though 72% of voters voted for a republican candidate?
Vote no if you see this on your voting ballot
Agreed. There are much simpler, transparent systems that accomplish the stated goals of RCV with far less effort. For example, Approval voting, which uses a traditional ballot and simple addition to find a winner. The only difference is you're allowed to vote for as many candidates as you want.
Ranked choice voting is ridiculous
I think it's pretty good. Works in a bunch of countries, including mine.
@@Requius76 good for you we don't want it here it doesn't work it's a different form of cheating either like somebody or you don't
@@LuckyDogDog You need to get back in school
@@nealmccorkle3681 you need to go see a psychiatrist
There's no better system than one vote for the person you like
note that all the claims of cons are bullshit in the form of ranked choice voting currently in Maine, Alaska and recently had a firs level passed in Nevada.
Just because Republicans can't make accurate criticisms of RCV does not mean there aren't valid criticisms of it. Anyone active in the voting reform space, including RCV advocates, acknowledges as much.
@@galiantus1354 There are going to be holes in anything you can push but RCV of the version that has passed its first vote in Nevada is the cleanest answer.
@@nealmccorkle3681 What do you mean "cleanest"? If you want a clean reform that ends vote splitting with the smallest amount of overhead, go with Approval.
@@galiantus1354 I would much rather not give candidates I merely decide as "acceptable" just as much of a vote as for the one that I firmly believe is the best person for the job.
@@nealmccorkle3681 You are free to do that if you wish.
I think it's simplest to eliminate the electrical college and leave us with the majority wins or the popular vote wins. That way everyone's vote counts. Easy to understand for all.
That's mob rule, and it concentrates power in cities and states with the most population.
It's tyranny of the majority, and we have good examples of the failures of pure democracies.