• skibidi@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    Ranked choice in the US is pretty much only instant-runoff (IRV).

    All the votes are tallied for a voter’s first preference, if no majority winner then the ballots for the lowest-voted candidate are re-tallied for their next preference - repeat until some candidate gets a majority.

    It is a terrible voting system, mathematically only barely better than first-past-the-post. The reason (in my opinion) that it has gotten some traction in the US is that it is the change that is least-threatening to the party duopoly, with the math telling us that is supports the same big-tent duopoly that FPTP does as an end-state.

    A better form of it is the condorcet method, where candidates are compared pairwise based on preferences. E.g. on how many ballots is candidate A ranked above candidate B? The winner of such an election is the one who wins the greatest number of head-to-head elections.

    STAR is interesting, but I personally find it too complex and it fails at preventing many different electoral pathologies.

    Approval voting is the method I prefer (mark all candidates you approve for holding this office). Immune to spoilers, simple to explain, adaptable to single and multi-winner elections, and ensures that the candidate that has the broadest electoral support wins.