Maines new ranked voting a step in the right direction?
The article discusses Maine’s recent referendum to change the voting system to a “ranked-choice voting for state and federal elections.” In recent elections, third party candidates have played a crucial rule in the outcome of elections. Causing the decided winner to not win anywhere near majority, but instead end up with around 40% or so. This is specifically due to primary party candidates having their votes “stolen” by 3rd party candidates. With a ranked vote, considering just the 1st rank first, if no candidate receives majority, ignore the lowest percentage candidate and push up the second rank up. This continues until a party reaches majority votes. As the article states, this version of voting could have alleviated the low margins of some of the recent outcomes in some states in the recent presidential election. Specifically, both PA and Florida had very low margins. In PA, the third party received a significantly larger number of votes than the margin. This implies with ranked systems, those 3rd party candidate votes would be eliminated, and the second choice reassigned to the first choice. Those significant vote counts could most likely increase the margin of winning within the two-party system, and allow more of a chance to those with large number of second choice votes.
As we’ve discussed in class, voting systems are all individually flawed. In this case, much of what is flawed in our current system are still present in the alternative vote, but with an alternative vote, spoil votes (that take away from primary or more popular candidates) won’t occur. This is the primary idea behind implementing it in Maine. If implemented nation wide, this would most likely lead to an increase in campaigning by parties as candidates no longer have to just work for a vote, but a higher rank in the voters minds in comparison to other candidates.
http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2016/11/maine_just_passed_ranked_choice_voting_bravo.html