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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
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday November 07 2019, @06:30PM (1 child)
Ranked Choice voting tends to produce more popular results (i.e., more people find the winning candidate tolerable), but it is subject to information overload.
There's no perfect answer. Probably, though, when there are a lot of diverse opinions it's worth the cost. Personally, I prefer Condorcet voting, but that's harder to explain to people, so Instant Runoff Voting is probably a better approach. Both are versions of Ranked Choice.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Thursday November 07 2019, @08:09PM
Information overload? Like, worse than what we have now with all numpteen Democratic contenders? Other countries with coalition governments would seem to have a worse time of it.
Why is Condorcet voting hard to explain? I thought it was just, like, drag and drop your candidates from the 'too lame; didn't rank' pile to one of the spots on the rocks <--> sucks continuum, and the Dexter Boffinmatic Egghead-o-tron will pick the best one for you.