Ranked Choice Voting. Instant Run-Off Elections.

[MineralMan]

In St. Paul and Minneapolis, Minnesota voters will be voting for their Mayors with ranked-choice voting. Instead of just voting for your top choice, you can vote for a second, third and even more choices on different columns.

Then, when votes are counted, if nobody wins a majority of the votes, people's second, third and up to sixth choice votes in St. Paul become important.

No run-off elections. People don't quite understand this system yet, despite news talkers trying their best and despite cute explainer videos that try to help. But, the system does work and does eliminate the need for run-off elections.

Of course, we may not know tonight who won the mayoral races, but we will know by the end of the week.

This system has been used in a couple of other local elections. It looks like it will become the standard for such races in the future.

Still, waiting for results is not optimal.

[question everything]

1. Thus, you may have results were the one who got the most votes, say 45%

yet the next mayor would be the one who got only 13% but who was everyone third choice?

Four more years of incompetency and constant bickering, more shooting and just unpleasant downtown and, of course, sky rocketing property taxes that cannot even be used for itemized deductions.

And just in time for the Stupid Bowl.

L.A in Blade Runner comes to mind.

Good luck!

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. If someone can't increase their vote from 45% in the first round to over 50% in a subsequent one

they are clearly hated by the majority of voters. Keeping a candidate like that - eg Trump - out of power is probably a good move.

It would, however, be an incredibly weird looking election in which someone on 13% in the 1st round overtook someone on 45%. I suspect that large a change may never have happened in an IRV election anywhere, ever.

[MineralMan]

3. Your scenario is highly unlikely.

More likely would be a second place candidate with 40% compared to 45%. In that case, it would certainly be possible for the second place candidate to win with second place votes for even less popular candidates. However, the scenario your drew would be statistically very, very unlikely to occur. I'm not concerned about that at all.

[unblock]

6. and if it did happen, it might be a perfectly reasonable result --

let's say there are 3 candidates:

- a perfectly reasonable candidate that everyone is fine with
- wackadoodle #1, who appeals to one fringe element
- wackadoodle #2, who appeals to a different fringe element.

wackadoodle #1 gets 45% of the vote
wackadoodle #2 gets 40% of the vote
the perfectly reasonable candidate only gets 15% of the vote but he's everyone's second choice.

there are various methods of counting rank ordered votes, but if these chosen method made the perfectly reasonable candidate the winner, that would not be unreasonable at all, as everyone is content with that result.

[unblock]

4. think of the republican primary with many voting for "anyone but trump"

our current system effectively split the "anyone but trump" vote among a large number of other contenders, making it easy for donnie to win.

a rank order system might have found very few ballots where donnie was a second or third choice, effectively allowing the "anyone but trump" people to select their best candidate as the candidates get dropped out while their supporters' votes just go to one of the remaining "anyone but trump" candidates.


in reality, donnie might well have won anyway, because the republican party is just that messed up, but it would have at least allowed the "anyone but trump" people to accurately express their wishes.


all such systems have flaws, but pretty much any of them is an improvement over what we have now. one single vote makes for a crude mode of expression, and makes it challenging to figure out what a vote even means. was that a protest vote? was that a vote for the most viable candidate you can tolerate? or was that really your dream candidate? rank ordering makes it much easier.

[PatsFan87]

5. Let us know how it goes! We voted for RCV here in Maine

last year but it's in limbo. I'd like to see it implemented sooner rather than later since we have tons of independent voters up here which makes a split vote between an Independent and Democrat a very real possibility (and letting a nutbag like Paul LePage get into office).

[MineralMan]

7. Well, so far, in the elections where it has been used, it has all worked

out just fine. I expect the same to happen this year. In St. Paul, we have 10 candidates for Mayor, but only three of them are actually known to most voters. One of those three will end up as the new mayor, and whoever wins will be a Democrat. I prefer one of them, but would be OK with the other two, if that's how it turns out. I voted for the one I prefer as my first choice and the other two as second and third choices.

I don't follow Minneapolis city politics at all, and that race is fairly hotly contended, but, again, the winner will be a Democrat. That's the nature of the city. We shall see.

In St. Paul, we also had school board elections. But in those voters vote for three candidates out of the five on the ballot. The top three vote-getters are elected, since there are three seats up for election. It's not a majority race.

[Jamaal510]

8. As someone

who is from and lives in a city that does RCV in mayoral elections, I dislike it. We ended up with someone who most people did not choose as their first choice, and that appears to have been the pattern since we started doing RCV. It sounds great in theory, but not so great in practice. As far as our current mayor, I'm not a big fan of hers in regards to homelessness, housing, and not fighting hard enough to keep our 3 professional sports teams.

[MineralMan]

9. Well, see, I'd like one that worked to get the pro sports teams to leave.

Nobody is always pleased, I guess.

[Jamaal510]

10. The reason

why I've been so distraught over the possibility of losing our teams boils down to a matter of civic pride. With fewer teams, there would be less of an identity here, and fewer attractions. The mayor said she wanted to increase tourism here, but it doesn't help for us to lose our sports teams. Also during nationally-televised home games, I see them as free advertising for the city.