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posted by martyb on Thursday April 19 2018, @10:34AM   Printer-friendly
from the democracy dept.

Common Dreams reports

Election reform advocates on [April 18] praised a decision by Maine's Supreme Court, upholding the use of ranked-choice voting for the state's upcoming primary elections, saying the ruling demonstrated that the court heeded the demands of Maine voters.

[...]Unlike in traditional voting, in which the candidate with the largest share of votes wins--even if he or she is far from capturing a majority of the support--in ranked choice voting, voters rank each candidate in order of preference. If no candidate has a majority after the first count, the least-popular contender is eliminated, voters' ballots are added to the totals of their second-ranked candidates, and the ballots are recounted. The eliminations and recounts continue until one candidate has a majority.

Supporters of the system say it increases voter turnout and proportional representation.

Maine's June 12 multi-party primary elections, in which voters will choose candidates for governor and congressional districts, will now make history as the first state election to use ranked-choice voting.

Fifty-two percent of Maine voters supported the system in a November 2016 ballot initiative, but lawmakers passed a bill last year delaying its implementation until December 2021 and argued that the state could not use a new voting system without direction from the legislature. The state Senate also threatened to repeal ranked-choice voting altogether if it could not pass a constitutional amendment by then.

More than 77,000 Maine residents signed a petition saying any repeal of the system by the legislature should be voided.

"The Maine legislature has changed or repealed all four of the initiatives passed by Maine voters in 2016", said Kyle Bailey of the Committee for Ranked Choice Voting in a statement on Tuesday. "Today's decision by the Maine Supreme Court confirms that the Maine people are sovereign and have the final say."

The Portland Press Herald, Maine's largest circulation daily newspaper, has extensive background details in their April 17th story: Ranked-choice voting will be used for June primaries, Maine supreme court rules.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 19 2018, @09:42PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 19 2018, @09:42PM (#669332)

    And when they rerun the exact same slate, or if that's not permitted, faithful puppets who everyone knows will hold exactly the same positions and do the exact same things? Do you keep voting "None of the above" and keep the incumbents in office for years on end?
    I'm not saying it's worse than what we have now, but I'm afraid the improvement is largely illusory -- without the realistic possibility of a specific third-party or non-party candidate winning, your options still boil down to (R), (D), or (incumbent). Now if "None of the above" winning triggered a lottery selecting a random citizen to hold office for the next term, I could get behind that.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 20 2018, @07:24AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 20 2018, @07:24AM (#669544)

    "None of the above" probably wouldn't work for a president election, but it could work for a parliament election. The "none of the above" choice should just result in the same number of empty seats as those votes would if they were for a party. As long as passing a law still requires a majority of the available seats, that would force the remaining politicians to cooperate if they want to pass anything. That way, it wouldn't take long until at least one party realizes that they could have all those empty seats if they started listening to the voters.