Australian Rules?

[bcholmes]

At the request of Mayor Rob Ford’s executive committee and council’s government management committee, city elections officials are now studying a proposal to switch to a ranked ballot system. Councillor Paul Ainslie, the government management chair and a Ford ally, said he plans to bring the proposal to the council floor in November.

[...]

The ranked ballot system typically works as follows. Instead of choosing a single candidate, as they do now, voters are free to rank candidates in the order they prefer them. (A “1” for their favourite, a “2” for their second favourite, “3” for their third.) If a candidate gets a majority of first-place votes — more than 50 per cent — the election is over.

But if no candidate gets a majority of first-place votes — say, if the most popular candidate has 35 per cent — the least popular candidate is eliminated, and the second-place votes of that candidate’s supporters are added to the totals of the candidates who remain. This process of elimination and addition, known as an instant runoff, continues until someone has a majority.

- “Toronto votes: Ranked ballots for 2018? Toronto city council may vote on changing its election system”, The Toronto Star

Mirrored from Under the Beret.

Comments

[wild_irises]

Oakland (my town) has ranked-choice voting. The first time it was used, our now-mayor Jean Quan used it to good advantage (she's a moderate liberal who lost her way during the Occupy encampment) by working with her more progressive opponent to encourage their voters to choose each other second, while the developer-business candidate thought the whole thing was silly and he had a lock, so he ignored it.

It can be used well, but I don't think it will take the right wing long to figure it out, in which case I'm not sure I approve.

[maize]

I'm excited because I've wanted ranked voting for ages, although I want it nationally more than locally.

However, on CBC yesterday they brought a guy on to explain why it was a good thing, and he gave perhaps the worst attempt at an explanation and/or a jumbled bunch of reasons I've ever heard. I was so frustrated, I had to turn the radio off.