In the upcoming elections, Maine will again make history by using Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) for the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives races. RCV is simply a runoff voting system for races with more than two candidates done through one efficient ballot. It is completely non-partisan, and it is one person, one ranked-choice vote. RCV further empowers voters and gives us winners who better reflect the will of the people.
With RCV, if you so choose, you simply rank the candidates in order of preference. If someone gets a majority after the first count, it’s over. If not, the instant runoff kicks in. The candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated, and the ballots of those who selected that candidate as their first choice then go to their second choice. Everyone else’s ballots stay with their first choice. The ballots are then re-tabulated. This continues until there is a majority winner.
RCV was used successfully in last June’s primary elections. By all accounts, primary election voters overwhelmingly found RCV to be easy. It was cost-effective, and there was no “chaos.” It did not take “weeks” for the results. And RCV was again strongly supported by a solid majority of Maine voters.
Runoff election systems are pretty common. For example, the Maine Republican Party uses a runoff process similar to RCV to elect its party officers. RCV is used in Portland to elect its mayor, and Lewiston uses a traditional runoff process to elect its mayor. I would encourage voters to participate in ranking the federal-level candidates in the upcoming elections.
Ron Bilancia, Brewer
Voters should follow the constitution, not democrats!
Dems are still going to lose, no matter the voting method. The only people who believe the leftist nonsense is themselves, normal liberals don’t even buy into it.
You 2 guys rock!
The mob won’t win
Sometimes you need a runoff election so you can vote for the lesser of the evils that end up getting the top votes.
With RCV you don’t have that option.
One vote = One winner
How can anyone think this constitutes a true majority? Your eliminating the losers until you come up with the loser that lost by the least and calling him/her a winner. Hello people one person, one vote, one winner. In a three way race, the result will be the same, just fuzzy math more time and more money to get there. Our constitution says plurality for a reason. It works every time and every one can understand it.
To all of the above commenters. Did you all hear how dems use gerrymandering, fact-less fear tactics like saying out of state people vote here, use deceased voters names, and purged over 400k voters from registration just days before an election? Oh, wait that were all things done by GOP candidates. Talk about an unlawful and unconstitutional practice, I can’t think of one better than to abuse the power you are given to restrict voters rights. Q: Why is RCV thought to be a Democratic or Liberal boggy man move? It could go either way or out the door to a third party. At this point anything is better than what we’ve have now.
What we have now is fine. THAT is how a representative democracy works. Allowing people to vote more than 1 time in 1 election is unconstitutional. Was found to be so.
More Progressive lunacy. I believe its real purpose is just to undermine our electoral process, to sow these bad feelings.