Maine Adopts Ranked Choice Voting

My apologies if this has already been reported here - if it has, I've missed it.

From Washington Free Beacon:

Maine Voters Approve Major Change to Election Process

The measure requires Maine to adopt a system in which voters elect state and federal officials by ranking candidates in order of preference. Following a complicated multi-round process, a winner would be selected, rather than the single-round system currently used in most of the country.

While several U.S. cities such as San Francisco and Minneapolis have implemented ranked-choice voting, Maine will become the first U.S. state to do so.

Kyle Bailey, campaign manager of the Committee for Ranked Choice Voting, told the Washington Free Beacon that the measure would restore majority rule by ensuring that the candidate who captures the most votes takes office.

For example, if three candidates are in the running for governor and no one wins a majority of votes after the initial count, the least popular candidate is knocked out, and those votes are reallocated to the other two candidates in the next round. The cycle continues until a candidate wins the majority number of votes.

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Electronic voting and tabulation is still means elections waiting to be stolen.

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Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work for the benefit of all."
- John Maynard Keynes

MsGrin's picture

ballot images and whether they must be preserved. That documentary a couple of us posted, Fraction Magic, said that hacking can do a lot, but it can't change the preserved images so that if saved they are actually auditable. I found that a tiny bit reassuring. Now just hoping the case affirms that the images must be saved so they can be used to confirm vote totals in audits.

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'What we are left with is an agency mandated to ensure transparency and disclosure that is actually working to keep the public in the dark' - Ann M. Ravel, former FEC member

paper is still better. If they want faster tabulation, they can use optical scanners like we have in NY. If there is a question, there is a paper trail.

Unless the scanners are really just very quiet paper shredders (snark). Smile

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Yaldabaoth, Saklas I'm calling you. Samael. You're not alone. I said, you're not alone, in your darkness. You're not alone, baby. You're not alone. "Original Sinsuality" Tori Amos

We're working on RCV here in Oregon. If you're an Oregonian, please join us:

http://www.rcvoregon.org/
https://www.facebook.com/rcvoregon
https://www.facebook.com/groups/rcvoregon/

There will be other social media entry points if you aren't on Facebook, but they haven't been set up yet.

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PriceRip's picture

          so as an Oregonian I will need to find another way.

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Hawkfish's picture

Approval voting gives a better fit to what people expect and is harder to game. I haven't dug into the math, but the simulations in the video are compelling.

Approval voting just gives out "stars" like Yelp or movie rating systems. The simplest is just a choice between zero and one star. This could be implemented with most of the existing infrastructure in this country: you just make it legal to mark more than one oval.

Any of them will lead to more civility, though, which is a net win.

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We can’t save the world by playing by the rules, because the rules have to be changed.
- Greta Thunberg

seefleur's picture

I live in Maine - and up until a few years ago, we used paper ballots. 2012 was the first time my town used electronic voting machines. And the ballots are kept in case they are needed for a recount. My only concern is that ranked choice is so time intensive, it might not be practical in states with a population greater than Maine's - which is just about every other state in the nation. But given that LePage managed to weasel in (twice) in spite of not having a true majority, I hope this works. For all those who are concerned that it might slow down getting the actual count, it wasn't that long ago that we (collectively as a nation) didn't know the day after the election who had actually won... nothing wrong with a little patience in getting an accurate count.
For those who still say "as Maine goes, so goes the nation", I certainly hope not - we have LePage... Sad

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Think off-center.
George Carlin

Thaumlord-Exelbirth's picture

doesn't count Stephen King novels. Although... we did have a lot of clowns around the nation... crap. If I start hearing stories of revived pets with bad attitudes, I'm outta here.

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seefleur's picture

Pennywise was wanting votes... I just figured that Trump was looking for more support and using a frontman. Stephen King is pretty amazing - has done a lot for the state and for Bangor in particular. Plus, he's as progressive as they come!

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Think off-center.
George Carlin