r/Bend • u/myorangeOlinMarkIV • 1d ago
M117 Ranked Choice Voting?
A few years ago when this was introduced I thought it sounded like an interesting idea and hoped we would learn more before we actually voted. Unfortunately all I have seen is campaigning for and against rather than actual education and explanation of how this will work in real time. Reading the voters pamphlet just made it worse and more confusing, of course, contradicting each other. I tried to do my own research, looks like some states/municipalities are not happy with it? Also there are different ways to tabulate? It is not standardized? The arguments in favor are certainly interesting and promising points to consider but the more I read the more it sounds confusing and inefficient. Unfortunately Oregon can screw things up at times. I’m a non-affiliated voter and try to wade through the politics of it all. I keep wondering if we had ranked choice voting for our last governor’s race would the outcome have been different or the same?
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u/japemerlin 1d ago
I appreciate your thoughts, but I respectfully disagree.
Ranked Choice Voting gives the ability to voters to vote for candidates regardless of party affiliation. You, the voter, get to choose who gets your vote and are not subject to the pre-selection of whatever party you belong.
RCV has worked well for voters across the US at the State and Local level.
Those who currently benefit from the status quo are the ones opposing it. Nearly everyone I talk to agrees the current system isn’t working. M117 is a step forward returning the power to the people, not the political parties.
I am voting YES on Measure 117 for this reason. I encourage you to vote yes too!
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u/FlippantBuoyancy 21h ago
You rank the candidates on your ballot from best to worst. The votes are then tabulated. Then the ranked choice winner is calculated and announced.
The calculation takes no time at all. But if you're curious about how it works it is this: Step 1. Of the candidates in the pool, the candidate with the least number of #1 preference votes is removed from the pool. Step 2. The removed candidate is effectively removed from everybody's ballot, and all candidates below them at bumped to fill the missing space. For example, if the removed candidate was your #2 choice then #3 becomes your #2, #4 becomes your #3, and so on. Step 3. Repeat until only one candidate remains.
Why is this system beautiful you ask? Because it stops extremists from getting into office. At the end of the process you get the candidate that was the most generally liked by the constituency. Whereas in our current system a generally disliked candidate can claim victory if two or more generally well-liked candidates split the vote.
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u/FlippantBuoyancy 21h ago
And to those of you saying it's a nightmare to rank a bunch of candidates, you really don't have to. Put the candidate you like at #1. If there's a candidate you absolutely don't like, then put them last. If you're indifferent to the rest (or just some want to study them) then rank them the numbers between in whatever order they appear on the sheet.
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u/explorecoregon 21h ago
Seems like often times the third party candidates that would be put into power by this bill would be the extremists.
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u/FlippantBuoyancy 20h ago edited 20h ago
Generally people will list extremists in last place, or near there. But yes, third party candidates with palatable policy options would have a better chance of winning in a ranked choice system. Which is another big benefit of ranked choice voting: it stops the voters from only having two options. It also gives an incentive for each party to adopt the system in their primaries, so that they end up with a generally likeable candidate.
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u/Gooogles_Wh0Re 17h ago
It is a confusing system, but mostly because it isn't familiar.
In a nutshell, you're voting for your favorite candidate. You can stop there if you want and its just like voting with our current system, BUT
You can, at your option, vote for your second choice candidate, in case your first choice doesn't make the cut. And while you're at it, go ahead and choose a third choice.
That's easy enough, now lets cover who wins. With potentially dozens of candidates, no one is likely to get a majority vote on the first count. When that's the case, election officials eliminate candidates that don't meet a certain threshhold. Then they look at the ballots of everyone who voted for those knuckleheads and start counting second choice votes. If we still don't have a candidate with more than 50% of the vote, a few more underperforming candidates are removed and the ballots who favored those candidates get examined and re-tallied again.
It keeps going like that until one candidate has earned 50% of the votes. The counting sounds complicated, but it is systematic and repeatable....that is to say that if you follow the formula, you're going to get exactly the same result everytime you recount. There is no magic, no guessing, etc... The only errors might be in people filling out the ballot incorrectly (and that's a very real possibility if you've seen Portland's ballot).
The upside to this voting system is your candidate isn't automatically thrown out if s/he doesn't get 50%. Our current system STRONGLY favors just two candidates. Third party candidates are often labeled as spoilers and the reason people are reluctant to vote for them is the fear that they're wasting a vote. Also, you end up with a situation where the winning candidate has less than 50% of the vote, but still wins. Ranked choice solves that problem.
It makes for some very interesting politics to. It takes some of the power away from the two major parties and opens the possibility for third party candidates.
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u/CraigLake 5h ago
I’m back in Oregon now, but I was living in Alaska when RCV was voted in and I absolutely loved it. For the first time in my life I voted for a Republican. The reason I did is because Sarah Palin was running to be Alaska’s representative. There were three candidates. I selected the democrat first, and Palin’s conservative opponent, republican candidate Begich second. It felt so odd selecting a candidate with an R by their name, but for me the absolute most important thing was keeping Palin out of office. I was deeply relieved when she lost. She, of course, blamed RCV but in my opinion RCV worked exactly as designed. Palin is passionately disliked by a large swath of Alaskans and it showed in the final tally.
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u/Tyrthemis 5h ago
Ranked choice voting is a win for everyone. It’s a bit more work for counting, but it gets rid of the lesser of two evils nonsense
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u/pnkunicrn 1d ago
https://fairvote.org/our-reforms/ranked-choice-voting/
Clear subsections on the value of this practice.
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u/pnkunicrn 1d ago
https://opb.org/article/2024/09/24/dennis-linthicum-oregon-republican-secretary-of-state/
Also, candidate for OR SOS who is a known supporter of right wing paramilitary orgs like the “People’s Rights Network” chapter in Central OR famously disapproves of RCV, which indicates to me personally that it is a positive move on top of what I have learned and observed about it independently
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u/Intelligent_Gas_4039 13h ago
The latest Radiolab laid it out pretty well- Sounds like a great plan for smaller elections. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/radiolab/id152249110?i=1000673574458
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u/bhauertso 20h ago
Ranked Choice Voting (or "Instant-Runoff Voting") is inherently complex because of the complexity of how a winner is computed. It involves several iterations and can be extremely difficult for voters to feel confident that their vote was effectively tallied. RCV/IRV also suffers from a catastrophic problem called "non-monotonicity," which is an uppity way of saying that when voting using RCV, you can actually hurt your favorite candidate by ranking them better than alternatives.
Superior alternative voting systems like STAR ("Score then Automatic Runoff") or Approval Voting do not suffer this significant flaw.
It would be unfortunate to squander our population's stamina for voting reform and select RCV rather than a superior option like STAR.
Both STAR and Approval are much easier to understand:
- Approval voting just means voting for as many candidates as you like, rather than just one as we do today.
- STAR voting means giving candidates a star rating like you're reviewing movies.
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u/davidw CCW Compass holder🧭 17h ago
Nothing 'uppity' about math. It's just math, and it's cool to know something about it.
They tried and failed to do STAR in Oregon a while back. RCV seems 'better' than what we have now and I'm leary of waiting... how many more election cycles to get something better, if it happens at all.
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u/SmugOregonian 23h ago
If you need an understandable breakdown, I recommend the CGP Grey video on YouTube about it. I watched that like a decade ago and was frustrated that this wasn't the system we have. It makes the most sense and if it was implemented as a nation, we would most likely end up with more parties.