Rank order voting in NY (and in xkcd)

Vox has the story:
New York City adopts ranked-choice voting, a major milestone for the reform
The biggest city in the US is joining a voting reform movement.

"New York City has become the latest — and most populous — city to adopt ranked-choice voting, a major milestone for voting reform efforts.

Voters in the city overwhelmingly approved Ballot Question 1 on Tuesday, enabling voters to begin using ranked-choice voting in local primary and special elections beginning in 2021.

New York City joins 20 other cities around the country, as well as multiple states, that have already started using this method in various elections. Maine, notably, implemented ranked-choice voting for the first time in a federal election in 2018.

Ranked-choice voting works much like its name suggests. Instead of picking just one candidate on the ballot, voters rank their top five in order of preference.

Once those votes are cast, they are counted in the following way, Lee Drutman explains:

Ranked-choice voting lets voters mark their first-choice candidate first, their second-choice candidate second, their third-choice candidate third, and so on. Each voter has only one vote but can indicate their backup choices: If one candidate has an outright majority of first-place rankings, that candidate wins, just like a traditional election.

But if no candidate has a majority in the first round, the candidate in last place is eliminated. Voters who had ranked that candidate first have their votes transferred to the candidate they ranked second. This process continues until a single candidate gathers a majority."

xkcd has the cartoon:

Previous posts:

Monday, September 30, 2019

Ranked-choice voting in Maine, and elsewhere

Friday, October 4, 2019

Eric Maskin on Rank Choice Voting (RCV) in Massachusetts and beyond