Instant Runoff voting (otherwise known as Ranked Choice Voting) is a way to keep voters from "wasting their vote" when they vote for the candidate they truly want, regardless of that candidate's chance of winning. See a description here.
A few nations around the world already use this voting method. Even The City of Cambridge, Massachusetts as been using this system for decades, so it's a proven method (scroll down to the section entitled, "How to Vote in a Proportional Representation Election").
But major parties have resisted implementing it, since using it helps to empower third party candidates and reduces domination by the two major parties, who can no longer depend on scare tactics, such as "If you vote for candidate C, then our wonderful major party candidate B could lose, and then the awful candidate A from the other big bad major party will win!"
Now, a decision in the State of Maine has given the green light to implement RCV state wide, for most elections. I found one story here and there are probably other sources.
To me, this is very good news indeed because it helps provide a greater diversity of ideas and candidates and helps unlock government for all.
A few nations around the world already use this voting method. Even The City of Cambridge, Massachusetts as been using this system for decades, so it's a proven method (scroll down to the section entitled, "How to Vote in a Proportional Representation Election").
But major parties have resisted implementing it, since using it helps to empower third party candidates and reduces domination by the two major parties, who can no longer depend on scare tactics, such as "If you vote for candidate C, then our wonderful major party candidate B could lose, and then the awful candidate A from the other big bad major party will win!"
Now, a decision in the State of Maine has given the green light to implement RCV state wide, for most elections. I found one story here and there are probably other sources.
To me, this is very good news indeed because it helps provide a greater diversity of ideas and candidates and helps unlock government for all.
RSS Feed