I’m not very well-versed on all this but it seems
First Past The Post
Benefits the two parties in a two-party duopoly system like that of the US. Boom or bust, black or white. When the party in power pisses you off you vote their competitor even if holding your nose.
Seems like there must be a better way, maybe just not as good for those who prefer shooting fish in a barrel
I don’t like the idea of having to vote multiple times, but it’s better than ranked choice, as with ranked you can get a person in that the majority of people didn’t vote for. If you have multiple rounds of just one vote cast, at least you’re picking the person you want each time, rather than 'i guess this person is better than person X, but i really don’t want him in.
As I alluded to, this is what happened in Alberta politics - we had 3 candidates for conservative leadership: two were very polar, and one guy was in the middle, and thus the guy in the middle won, but no one really wanted him to win. Conversely, if they had just voted regularly, the guy that won would have been kicked out since voting for him wasn’t an option. Then you could run the thing again, and get a better split between the polar candidates.
I think we have a different understanding of ranked choice.
In your example, you have 3 candidates, and candidate 3 isn’t very popular. He isn’t many people’s first choice. At the end of round 1, candidate 1 has 45% of the first choice votes, candidate 2 has 46% of the first choice votes, and candidate 3 has 9% of the first choice votes. Candidate 3 is then eliminated, and those who voted for him have their votes go to their second choice candidate. That should leave either candidate 1 or 2 winning. The only way he wins is if he had more first choice votes than one of the other candidates.
If someone who is everyone’s second choice but no one’s first choice wins, that sounds like approval voting or something similar, not ranked choice.
Edit: Looking at the referenced election, it looks like he was the most popular among the people who didn’t want the 2 popular candidates. The first round was 8 candidates and a simple ballot. The second round was a runoff election with the 3 most popular candidates and a ranked choice ballot. He won the first round of that. No one had 50%, so instant runoff, but he also won the second round of that.
To avoid that situation, you would have had to change the run-off rules to only allow the 2 top people instead of the 3 top people. But it still was an in person run off that gave you the result you dislike.
Yes, we’re talking about different things, it seems (also thanks for being civil in your reply). My apologies - your definition seems better than what my understanding was.
In any round though you only have 1 vote still, it’s just collecting the votes ahead of time? The only thing you lose is knowing who is in each round in advance?
In your example, wouldn’t the same candidates have been knocked out in each round regardless?
Again, see the chain, but my understanding was wrong. I was thinking ranked was you got multiple votes (1st preference, 2nd preference). That system sucks.
I think the ideal solution would be like selecting skills in an rpg. You get some number of points, say 10, and you can give as many or as few to each candidate as you want. If there’s only one candidate you want you give them all your points, otherwise, you can do essentially the same thing as rank choice and give some to every candidate but different amounts
That way still ends up with candidates that you didn’t vote for though, the ranked choice method means you always have a vote in each round.