Ranked Choice Voting!?! Here's How it Works

San Francisco's new mayor will be chosen next month by a system few voters can fully explain, much less understand, and a process that even the guy who runs the city's elections struggles to describe.

Ranked choice voting (RCV), sometimes called "instant runoff," was approved by city voters in 2002. For offices decided by RCV, each voter ranks their first, second and third choices. Through a complicated system of algorithms, if no candidate gets 50 percent plus one after counting all the first place votes, the last place candidates are eliminated one by one and their voters' second choice votes are redistributed.

Animation by Mark Fiore

[crypticcorgi]

*Ranked Voting:*
_-Would make gerrymandering exceedingly difficult. Because nothing is absolute._
_-Give Third parties a chance.(giving more voting options.)_
_-Eliminates winning presidency by default because split voting._
_-There would be no such thing of "throwing away a vote."_
_-No more run off elections that cost money and everyone's time._

[gordonadams]

Ranked voting would allow for 3rd party candidate's. Great idea, IMO.

[gregsimpson]

How difficult is it to understand? This allows you to vote for someone you like, as opposed to strategically voting against someone you don’t like.

[VaDude]

I like the idea, especially since it helps alleviate the "wasted vote" problem with supporting a decent third-party candidate.

[eddiewawa]

Literally on here after listening to a ton of Andrew Yang vids, thanks for the explanation #YangGang #yang2020

[Bluemooque]

Oh so this is what was happening on Hunter x Hunter lol

[robocowone]

The system we have had in place for decades is best way to conduct elections. The primary election is the election to whittle the field down to the top candidates, then you get to cast ONE vote for the candidate of your choice. People may change their minds between the Primary and General elections. I think that is the best way.

[jimba]

Our elected leaders are always saying competition makes a better product. We should follow their wise advice.

[allanjeong]

One main advantage that doesn’t get mentioned or given any emphasis is that RCV increases the power of democracy and collaboration by enabling candidates to adopt ideas proposed by opposing candidates to: 1) win ranked votes from people that support their opponents; and most all 2) add, revise & improve their proposals/solutions in their campaign platforms.

[joedav]

Sports voting for MVP candidates do this

[helioveo]

I'm excited to see alternatives to FPTP being used in the U.S.! More people are seeing how terrible FPTP is.

[andibrema]

This video is about how instant-runoff voting works, not ranked-choice voting in general. It's better than plurality voting, but there are better ways to determine the winner of the election.

[michaelhurlburt]

I still don't know how it works after watching the video. They just want me to support it without telling me exactly what it is.

[AislingMcDowellcasual]

Great idea but I have a question: What happens of your second choice has already been eliminated? Or your third choice as well? Do the votes go back to those eliminated parties or do they drop out of the voting pool?

[alexleanh]

So, when are we going to switch to this method of voting? And then we also need to either eliminating the electoral college or at least change it to a percentage based electors instead of the "winner takes all" electors as of today.

[KennuhWayne]

Or how about we simply allow the candidate receiving the most votes be declared the winner? Is that concept far out of reach? I swear we will find a way to complicate just about anything in this country. It's hard enough to identify one likable candidate on the ballot and now you want me to select 3?! So unnecessary.

[FINEYOUBABYGIRL]

There wouldn’t be any intellectually dishonest claims of spoiler candidates either.

[susanboozier]

is it a possible w RCV that some would try to skew the outcome by people deliberately voting for an unpopular candidate of the opposite party so that candidate would be on the general election ballot against their parties candidate? Also, IF a large percent of people DONT fill in for all the choices, that skews the vote counting too. AND it’s time consuming - Also costly to redesign the voting machines and ballots ! Alaska is trying to eliminate RCV since they voted it in place before - it’s a mess to work out. i’m voting NO

[brianpreston]

I see lots of people not understanding this

[Primo_extracts]

I believe 24 states currently have this in affect someone correct me if I'm wrong