Secretary Dunlap explains the voting and tabulation process for ranked-choice voting in the State of Maine. Updated for the Nov. 3, 2020 General Election.
Another question: other ranked choice voting videos (not Maine-specific) explain that the first candidate to receive 50% of the votes in ranked choice voting is declared the winner, but this video (from Maine.gov) explains that the ranking continues until only two candidates remain and the one with the majority of the votes is declared the winner. So someone in Maine could have more than 50% of the votes in round one or even round two but still lose in round 3 if there were more than two candidates remaining?
No, because if a candidate gets over 50% of the vote, they win. RCV only "kicks in" if a) there are 3 or more candidates and b) if none of the candidates gets over 50% after the first round. And even in this example, the ultimate winner (Blue) has only 14 votes (less than 50% of the original 30 ballots).
I have a question about 2:30m "“Orange is no longer in the race, so those ballots are exhausted and are removed from the count since these voters did not rank any other candidates.” What I don't understand is, what would happen if those "orange" ballots DID have other candidates ranked? Would that be their 3rd choice?
RCV doesn't eliminate splitting, complicates tactics in multi-candidate races, with convoluted and unexpected results. Approval Voting is much simpler, cheaper, excels with numerous candidates, and by all criteria, AV is superior to RCV. @Maine made a costly mistake. Please consider Approval Voting. Or if you like Ranking, try STAR instead. Consider 2020 Dem primaries: Sanders and Warren likely split votes 1 and 2 (and 2 and 1). Neither second choice would be counted until the first choice was dead last in any round before another candidate reached majority. Both might have lost, precisely because they split the most popular votes.
This comment is incorrect. Approval voting is not better than RCV. Do your research. I recommend the excellent organization called FairVote. They have extensive comparison of both methods and explain the drawbacks of "Approval" Voting.
Ranked choice voting and eliminating the Electoral College are two steps we can take soon to strengthen our democracy.. RCV captures all our voting preferences, not just our vote for one of the candidates, so if our chosen candidate doesn't get a majority of the vote, he or she can still do so by considering the additional information. Mathematicians love how RCV produces majority winners even in most cases where no candidate would get a majority otherwise. And eliminating the Electoral College would allow the people to directly elect their candidates, free of partisan influence from any party. This would drain the swamp very effectively!
RCV doesn't eliminate splitting, complicates tactics in multi-candidate races, with convoluted and unexpected results. Approval Voting is much simpler, cheaper, excels with numerous candidates, and by all criteria, AV is superior to RCV. Consider 2020 Dem primaries: Sanders and Warren likely split votes 1 and 2 (and 2 and 1). Neither second choice would be counted until the first choice was dead last in any round before another candidate reached majority. Both might have lost, precisely because they split the most popular votes.
@@vegahimsa3057 RCV has always received support from mathematicians for being fair (no voting method can be perfect). If you are going to claim that another voting method is better, the burden is on you to explain it, or at least to point to a good explanation. I could not follow your obscure discussion of the 2020 primary. You can't prove superiority by claiming superiority. You have to explain why, or point to someone who explains the superiority of another method. Here in Maine we have had many elections of people who did not receive a majority of votes. These people have often been poor leaders of government here. To fix this, Maine was the first state to implement RCV, based on educational campaigns in which I participated. I know why RCV is better than single-choice voting: it captures all the voting choices of the electorate, not just the first choice. I also know that it guarantees that the winner has a majority vote. These are very good characteristics of a voting method, and the burden is on you to provide actual and convincing evidence that another method is better.
RCV doesn't solve what's claimed. RCV entrenches the two parties (Duverger's Law). "Approval Voting" tears down the two party system. Easily, cheaply, obviously. AV eliminates "lesser of evils", "fear of wasted vote", "favorite betrayal" strategies. EC, RCV, IRV are complex distractions that don't solve the two party problem. Vote for all approved candidates, the highest count wins; Same old ballots, same counting machines. Just better. It's how you'd select restaurants, outfits, vacations, any election seeking the widest satisfaction from multiple options is "Approval Voting".
RCV requires that a strategic voter betrays favorites. Correct: no system fulfills all possible criteria, as many are contradicting. Surely, we want a system that breaks the duopoly. RCV ain't it.
@@vegahimsa3057 Do you have any recommended sources of description of AV? I'd like to find out more to see if your claims are valid. Also: NO voting system will remove the pressure that maintains the two party system in the USA. The reason has nothing to do with voting, but electing: the candidates who are supported best by the wealthy class will almost always win. If you really want fair elections (not just fair voting), then somehow the candidate income for their electioneering must be made equitable. Ideally, we should have a democracy based on an educated public and a meritocracy: people who are well trained in public service, have proven that they act ethically and lawfully, and who have performed well in public service should be the candidates. I see no path at all to either of these two goals in the USA, even if there were widespread agreement on them, which there is not.
So why do only the 2 votes that were given to purple get transferred on? Since purple is being eliminated, the 7 original votes for purple should be distributed in the round.
All of the votes originally for purple are redistributed. Give it another listen and you'll see how they are moved. If you still have questions about RCV, give our office a call. 626-8400
Don't confuse rounds with rankings. You are advising voters to vote for their candidate in each RANKING. If you only want to vote for one candidate in a ranked-choice race, the ballot instructs that you mark only the first-choice oval for your candidate. You can also choose to mark the ovals all the way across in every ranking (1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc. choice) for your candidate. Both of these markings are valid and will result in your vote being counted for your candidate throughout all the rounds of the ranked-choice voting process, unless/until that candidate is eliminated from the race.
This video was originally created in 2018 when we first implemented RCV in Maine. The colors do not refer to any political party or candidate for any election then or now. They are simply the options we had available in the animation program.
@@mesecofstate what a load of BS. You can't say blue won and it doesn't represent a political party because it does. There colors why not use those instead of blue or red. There wasn't a red but their is blue. To obvious
How convenient blue has the majority and there isn't even a red in the video. I hate that the Portland area makes decisions for the rest of the state. And that is where and why we keep having these talks every 2 to 4 years about splitting the state up into 2 states.
RCV doesn't solve what's claimed. RCV entrenches the two parties (Duverger's Law). "Approval Voting" tears down the two party system. Easily, cheaply, obviously. AV eliminates "lesser of evils", "fear of wasted vote", "favorite betrayal" strategies. EC, RCV, IRV are complex distractions that don't solve the two party problem. Vote for all approved candidates, the highest count wins; Same old ballots, same counting machines. Just better. It's how you'd select restaurants, outfits, vacations, any election seeking the widest satisfaction from multiple options is "Approval Voting".
It is a blatant violation of the Equal Protection clause. Specifically, the Maine law states that "write-in votes for any undeclared persons will not be counted. " There are over 300,000,000 eligible candidates for POTUS position, and there were a total of 11 candidates registered this year alone. The Big Party candidates are guaranteed to be ranked somewhere, however if you write in one candidate, all your other choices have to be some Big Ticket candidate. Two Independant write-in's don't have any chance for a head-to-head run. Voters got robbed! What they gave us is a corrupt version of runoff voting! This MUST get to the SCOTUS before it spreads like a cancer!
@@periculum69 Independent voters were denied the right to rank order their candidates Mark Charles and Kasey Wells. Any voter who wanted Kasey Wells was not allowed to rank Mark Charles, Kanye West, or anyone but printed candidates. And any voter who chose any write-in candidate for any slot was forced to choose printed candidates for all the other ranks. There is absolutely nothing equal about our choices on that ballot. This law actually says that write-in candidates that are not registered will not be counted, so it was not even possible for Kanye West to even get a single vote let alone win the Maine electors. West was a qualified and eligible candidate which voters had the same right to choose as Joe Biden or Trump or Johanson, Maine denied them that right. Saying "it does not violate the Equal Protection Clause" doesn't make that true.
How can we trust Maine Department of Secretary of State to be fair and impartial, given this video? (This video is on the maine . gov website. ) Secretary's choice of colors included BLUE as the winning candidate. The color of democrats? Orange as the losing candidate? (Was this a jab?) Red, the color affiliated with republicans not used, hence not given equal time to their blue? With all the non-affiliated colors or objects available for this representation, this video began to seem political! And no denying this after the Maine Secretary of State allowed his office to use candidate cartoon names with the first listed was Donald- Duck, that he is fully aware is the first name of the President and the republican candidate. This was followed by 3 other cartoon names that did not coincide with any candidate. Maine's Secretary of State is supposed to oversee elections, remain impartial, not promote any candidate while holding office and refrain even from bad puns while disceminating voting information to the public. The color and name scheme would be very obvious to anyone in that office. This was not oversight. This office is by law not to particpate in such activity and is walking an extremely dangerous line. In any event, the instructions for ranked-choice ballot scheme are ludicrous. Voters do not be fooled. Vote ONLY for your one choice in ALL rounds, across the board, to give your vote no means to be manipulated. Too bad the Maine Secretary of State's office appears to have a political agenda.
There is no bias in the video or our example materials. We were limited on colors available for the "candidate head/shoulders" graphic and did our best to pick colors that are easily distinguishable from each other. When we did the example marked ballots, we purposefully chose cartoon character names to keep it non-partisan. Keep in mind that all of these materials were originally created in 2018 when we first had to implement RCV. The text/audio has been updated to reflect additional court decisions since then.
