Entries Categorized with "Instant Runoff Voting"
- 10 of 174 results
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RCV for the GOP: Mitt Romney, Fractured Conservatives, and the Importance of Rules in Determining Election Outcomes
- Posted: January 20, 2012
- Author(s): Sheahan Virgin
- Categories: Instant Runoff Voting, Home, Presidential Nominations Reform
Some conservatives wonder how Mitt Romney has become the favorite for the nomination in a Republican party moving rightward. Others embrace Romney. One problem for believers of both views is the plurality voting rule that means winners don't have to secure a majority. Plurality voting arguably has been negative for all parties involved in the nomination race—whether Romney or his more conservative challengers. The solution, FairVote argues, lies in the adoption of an alternative framework: ranked choice voting.
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Understanding how the Iowa caucuses work – and don’t work
- Posted: January 3, 2012
- Author(s): Rob Richie
- Categories: Home, Instant Runoff Voting, Presidential Nominations Reform
The national media is in a frenzy about the Republican contest in tonight’s Iowa caucuses. Unfortunately, most journalists seem to be getting the story wrong – and a key reason is not understanding or even thinking about the rules and their implications.
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RCV Election Results: Portland and San Francisco
- Posted: November 18, 2011
- Author(s): Sheahan Virgin, Katie P. Kelly
- Categories: Ranked Choice Voting in Bay Area Elections, Instant Runoff Voting
Updated! This November, ranked choice voting (RCV) elections took place in six cities in the United States. Here is a visual breakdown of each ranked choice voting round in the San Francisco (CA) elections for Mayor, District Attorney and Sheriff and in the Portland (ME) mayoral election. In Portland, Michael Brennan led in the first round and was the strongest candidate in securing votes from backers of defeated candidates, winning with 56% when matched against his strongest opponent. In San Francisco, Interim Mayor Ed Lee led in the first round and also expanded his lead during the count, securing 60% of the final round tally.
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Portland’s Biggest Winner: Democracy with Ranked Choice Voting
- Posted: November 16, 2011
- Author(s): Dorothy Scheeline, Rob Richie
- Categories: Instant Runoff Voting, Home
What shouldn’t be missed in the fray of post-election coverage in Maine is the glorious five minutes of pure democratic spirit that everyone experienced when the round-by-results results of the first ranked choice voting election for Portland's mayor were presented before everyone's eyes. In what other instance would you have every single candidate in the race, their supporters, the media, community members that were just curious, all in one room, waiting to hear the results? For those five minutes, there wasn't any politicking, just democracy in action.
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Portland Mayoral Election: One-Day Survey Results
- Posted: November 7, 2011
- Author(s): Dorothy Scheeline
- Categories: Instant Runoff Voting, Home
FairVote conducted a one-day survey of 122 early voters on Thursday, November 3 participating in Portland's first mayoral election in nearly a century. The survey reveals that Portland voters find their new ranked choice ballot easy to use and have experienced a mayoral campaign that has promoted civic engagement.
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Irish presidential election with instant runoff voting: Voter choice without "spoilers"
- Posted: November 6, 2011
- Author(s): Rob Richie
- Categories: Home, Instant Runoff Voting
Our political leaders are again rolling the dice with the American people. Rather than pursue statutory solutions to potential electoral landmines, they've left intact a set of electoral rules that aren’t designed for elections where voters have more than two choices. Ireland last month showcased a better way in its elections. As with all other well-established democracies with presidential elections, Ireland elects its president based on a national popular vote. It uses instant runoff voting to uphold the goal of majority rule.
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Occupy and Democracy Reforms: A Match Made in Heaven?
- Posted: October 19, 2011
- Author(s): Dorothy Scheeline
- Categories: Instant Runoff Voting, Home, Proportional Voting
Democracy reforms have the unique ability to challenge the status quo in a way that fits in very well with the goals of the Occupy movement. It’s a nonpartisan solution to inequality that challenges corporate influence in politics by changing the system to focus more on the voter and less on the candidate. Changing the structure of our electoral system is the first step to creating a space for more voices and points of view within our political process. Maintaining the system we currently have- a stilted, two-party system with low voter turnout isn’t an option any more.
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The Next Generation of Reformers: Reasons for Young People to Get Involved in the Electoral Reform Movement
- Posted: August 24, 2011
- Author(s): Dorothy Scheeline
- Categories: Instant Runoff Voting, Home, National Popular Vote, Learning Democracy, Right to Vote Amendment, Universal Voter Registration
A lot of the people advocating for structural changes do so because we have problems with the established political culture. The group of people that is 18-29 right now has a lot of reasons to want deep systemic change soon. Because of this, I think that over the next decade we will see groups that are focused on young people intensify their advocacy efforts for election reform issues.
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Why Approval Voting is Unworkable in Contested Elections
- Posted: July 30, 2011
- Author(s): The Non-Majority Rule Desk
- Categories: Instant Runoff Voting, FairVote
Approval voting is a method of voting to elect single winners that has adherents among some voting theorists, but it is unworkable in contested elections in which voters have a stake in the outcome. Once aware of how approval voting works, strategic voters will always earn a significant advantage over less informed voters. This problem with strategic voting far outweighs any other factor when evaluating the potential use of approval voting in governmental elections - and is also true of range voting, score voting, the Borda Count and Bucklin voting.
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Ranked Choice Absentee Ballots: Preventing the Disenfranchisement of Military and Overseas Voters
- Posted: July 21, 2011
- Author(s): Cynthia Okechukwu
- Categories: Instant Runoff Voting, Reforms
American citizens living abroad, including men and women in uniform, often face difficulties in voting in elections at home. Military and overseas voters continue to point to short ballot turnaround times as an obstacle to voting in federal, state, and local elections. Ranked choice absentee ballots provide a legal and practical solution to this problem.