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Ranked-Choice Voting Adopted in New York City, Along With Other Ballot Measures

posted by takyon on Thursday November 07 2019, @04:41AM   Printer-friendly
from the people's-choice dept.

DeathMonkey writes:

Ranked-choice voting adopted in New York City, along with other ballot measures

New York City will move to a system of ranked-choice voting, shaking up the way its elections are run after voters approved a ballot question to make the change.

The city will be by far the biggest place in the U.S. to put the new way of voting to the test, tripling the number of people around the country who use it.

A ballot question proposing the shift for New York primaries and special elections was approved Tuesday by a margin of nearly 3-1. It's now set to be in effect for New York's elections for mayor, City Council and other offices in 2021.

Under the system, voters will rank up to five candidates in order of preference, instead of casting a ballot for just one. If no candidate gets a majority of the vote, the last place candidate is eliminated and their votes are parceled out to the voter's second choice, a computerized process that continues until one candidate has a majority and is declared the winner.

Ranked-choice voting is now in use or approved in 18 other cities around the country, including San Francisco, Minneapolis and Cambridge. The state of Maine also uses it. Backers say the system discourages negative campaigning, and forces candidates to reach out to more voters rather than relying on a narrow base. It's also designed to allow voters to pick their true favorite, without worrying about throwing away a vote on someone who can't win.

Previously: Maine Supreme Court Approves Ranked-Choice Voting for 2018 Elections
Maine Debuts Ranked-Choice Voting

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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by ilPapa on Thursday November 07 2019, @01:47PM

    by ilPapa (2366) on Thursday November 07 2019, @01:47PM (#917305) Journal

    This is a weird misconception that somehow stays alive. The electoral college was a compromise designed to satisfy all the various interests that were significant at the time. Some of them, like how much representation should be given to slaves, are obviously no longer relevant. Others, like protecting the interests of sparsely populated states from being trampled by densely populated states, are still very significant.

    At its heart, the electoral college was designed to protect landowners and slaveholders. Giving voters in sparsely populated states a vote that carries more weight than a city-dweller is a throwback to a time when aristocrats were farm and plantation-owners. In an age of an imperial presidency, why should the vote of someone living in a trailer park in Oklahoma count for more than a doctor in Chicago when it comes to choosing the president?

    It is an anachronism and an abomination. A republic will always be inferior to a democracy, since it requires less from its citizens.

    --
    You are still welcome on my lawn.
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