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Maine adopts Ranked Choice Voting

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Maine became the first state in the country Tuesday to pass ranked choice voting

 

By Nik DeCosta-Klipa, Boston.com, November 10, 2016
Amid a national vote that rocked the political world Tuesday, voters in Maine narrowly approved a measure that supporters say will be respectively disruptive to the state’s political status quo.
With 98 percent of the vote reporting in the state, 52 percent of voters approved a ballot question making Maine the first state to implement ranked choice voting, a fundamental reform of how voters literally fill out their ballot.
In a ranked choice vote system, rather than simply voting for one candidate, voters rank their candidates by preference—first, second, third, and so on.
Then, if no candidate receives at least 50 percent of the vote after the first choices are counted, the candidate with the least first-choice rankings is eliminated, and the voters who preferred the last place finisher have their vote reallocated according to their next choice. The votes are then recounted and the process is repeated until one candidate breaks the 50 percent threshold.
It's hard to know how much of an impact this'll have with only one state adopting it, but this is a huge step forward for third parties as it eliminates the spoiler argument. Apparently third parties are pretty big in Maine, according to that article they've only elected one governor with a majority in the last 40 years. I hope this gets some attention because I would love to see more states adopt it.
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Wow that is awesome.

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Interesting. I'm surprised we never heard about this until now. Would be very nice to introduce for all elections.

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It would be great for democracy if this catches on. I'm actually going to write my state representative about proposing this in PA. I'll post it on here after I'm done.

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