CHARLESTON — A new white paper presented a new way for voters to select candidates in elections, though the state’s top elections official doesn’t see West Virginia switching any time soon.
Adam Kissel, a senior fellow at the conservative Cardinal Institute for West Virginia Policy, released a white paper Tuesday, titled “Can Ranked-Choice Voting Work? A Conservative Approach.”
Ranked-choice voting allows voters to rank multiple candidates by preference, starting with the voter’s top choice, secondary choice and so on depending on how many candidates are listed for an office.
If the winning candidate receives more than 50% of the vote, that candidate is the winner of the race. If no one receives more than 50%, the candidate with the least number of votes is dropped, with the secondary choice of those voters being added to the tally of the remaining candidates. This goes on until one candidate gets more than 50% of the vote.
“Ranked-choice voting provides an instant runoff, so voters don’t have to go to the polls twice,” Kissel said in a phone interview Wednesday. “It also produces more widely approved winners. If your first choice can’t win, you get a fallback choice that can get counted. So it is likely to improve civility because candidates want to vie for that second-choice vote.”
“It’s likely to reduce costs because there’s only one election and it’s likely to reveal voter preferences because you can vote honestly, rather than try to game the vote,” Kissel further explained. “And you don’t mind working on behalf of a spoiler candidate because you know that even if that person can’t win, your second vote can get counted for someone who is more likely to win.”
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, only Maine and Alaska have ranked-choice voting for congressional and state races. Put in place by voter referendums, Maine used ranked-choice voting during the 2018 and 2020 elections, while Alaska will use ranked-choice voting for the first time for the 2022 election. Ranked-choice voting is primarily used by city governments.
Kissel, however, recommended a new method for ranked-choice voting called “single-elimination.” Instead of ranking all candidates by preference, single-elimination would allow voters to pick their top two candidates. The candidate with more than 50% of the votes still wins. But if no one gets 50% or more, it triggers an instant runoff between the top two candidates, with the second choice of the voters whose candidates were eliminated being factored into the tally.
“If your preferred candidate doesn’t make the top two, then your second choice – if it’s one of the top two – can add to one of those totals and it produces more of a consensus candidate,” Kissel said. “If you choose so-called fringe candidates as both your first and second choice, neither of them are going to win anyway, but at least you have a chance to help contribute to the final result.”
According to a June assessment of West Virginia’s election system by the Ranked Choice Voting Resource Center, 84% of the state’s 55 counties already have voting systems that can be programmed for ranked-choice voting, though 16% would have to upgrade their current elections equipment.
Secretary of State Mac Warner said Wednesday he is open to considering new ways of voting, particularly for primaries when there are multiple candidates for various offices. One such method Warner supports is the 50-plus-one method. Instead of the winning candidate receiving a plurality of votes to win, the candidate would need to receive more than 50% of the vote to win.
However, Warner said he wasn’t a fan of ranked-choice voting. Warner said he has been in contact with the secretaries of state for Maine and Alaska, with Maine not pleased with the ranked-choice voting process.
“Neither one of them were in favor, but Maine has tried it. It didn’t work the way they liked,” Warner said. “There are other cities that have tried it and then backed away from it…While it’s an interesting theoretical process, the application to date hasn’t worked well. So, I’m not in favor of going down that path.”
According to a March article written by Jesse Clark for the MIT Election and Data Science Lab, he found that voters who participated in Maine ranked-choice voting walked away with negative perceptions.
“The findings of the experiment were stark,” Clark wrote. “I found that RCV produced significantly lower levels of voter confidence, voter satisfaction, and ease of use. It also increased the perception that the voting process was slanted against the respondent’s party. Similarly, I found that it increased the amount of time it took to vote by nearly 12 seconds per candidate than voting using a plurality ballot.”
“If everybody voted the way it’s intended to vote, then it is an interesting concept,” Warner said “However, people don’t necessarily either want to abide by the rules, have bad intentions, or they manipulate the system.”
"choice" - Google News
December 30, 2021 at 12:12PM
https://ift.tt/3sJTdiV
1Ranked-choice voting not likely in West Virginia - The Inter-Mountain
"choice" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2WiOHpU
https://ift.tt/3c9nRHD
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "1Ranked-choice voting not likely in West Virginia - The Inter-Mountain"
Post a Comment