I will go ahead and warn you, this is where opponents will argue that ranked choice voting is too complicated. Don't listen to them. If you made it through third grade math, you can understand what I am about to show you.
Let's look at a hypothetical election with six candidates:
Alice
Bob
Charlie
Darla
Ed
Frank
In this hypothetical election, each voter is allowed to rank their top five choices. 199 voters cast ballots. The votes are counted based on each ballot's first choice.
Alice 34 first place votes
Bob 25 first place votes
Charlie 20 first place votes
Darla 45 first place votes
Ed 18 first place votes
Frank 57 first place votes
Although Frank received the most first place votes, his percentage is just under 29% - hardly a majority. Because no one has accrued over 50% of the vote, the election continues.
This is where ranked choice voting gets the alternate name of instant runoff. In a perfect world, where voters had the time to go to the polls multiple times, we would eliminate the last place candidate and hold another election with the remaining five, and then repeat this process until we had a winner. But we can't expect people to vote that many times.
With ranked choice voting, we only have to vote one time because every ballot already has their second, third, fourth, and fifth choices built right in. It becomes an instant runoff.
In our hypothetical, Ed would be eliminated as the last place candidate. But all of Ed's voters still have a say in the election. Under ranked choice, all of the ballots which listed Ed as the first choice would then be assigned to the candidate listed second under Ed.
For example, let's say you voted for Ed as your first choice and your ballot looked like this:
1. Ed
2. Charlie
3. Darla
4. Alice
5. Bob
Although your first choice of Ed would be eliminated, your ballot continues to have a say in the election because your vote will now be counted for Charlie.
As it turns out, you are not alone in your Ed-Charlie preference as every Ed-first voter ranked Charlie second. In round two of our hypothetical election, all of the Ed-first ballots are assigned to Charlie as all of these ballots have Charlie listed second. Maybe Ed and Charlie were similar candidates with the same ideas about taxes, or some other popular position.
Alice 34 first place votes
Bob 25 first place votes
Charlie 20 first place votes + Ed's 18 ballots
Darla 45 first place votes
Frank 57 first place votes
Now the vote count looks like this:
Alice 34 votes
Bob 25 votes
Charlie 38 votes
Darla 45 votes
Frank 57 votes
Because no candidate has achieved over 50% of the vote, we perform another round of elimination. This time, Bob is eliminated as the last place candidate. Bob's supporters are equally split in this election as to their second choice between Alice and Darla. Transferring Bob's 25 ballots will give us this result:
Alice 34 votes
Charlie 38 votes
Darla 45 votes
Frank 57 votes
After two rounds of elimination, the race looks like this:
Alice 46
Charlie 38
Darla 58
Frank 57
Because no candidate has hit the magic percentage, the runoffs continue. Next to be eliminated is Charlie. A few Charlie voters had Frank next, a few more had Alice, but more than half had Darla as their next choice.
Wait, what about your ballot from earlier:
1. Ed
2. Charlie
3. Darla
4. Alice
5. Frank
Originally your ballot was with Ed, but he was eliminated. Now your second choice of Charlie is about to be eliminated, but your ballot lives on and is transferred to Darla.
Alice 46
Darla 58
Frank 57
And now the election stands like this:
Alice 58
Darla 78
Frank 63
Still no majority winner, so another elimination. Next is Alice. Almost all of Alice supporters liked Darla as their next choice, with a handful selecting Frank.
Darla 78
Frank 63
And now the election stands like this:
Darla 123
Frank 76
And we have a winner: Darla with over 61% of the vote. Hey, your third choice won. Just for a second, go back to your hypothetical 2016 ranked presidential ballot and imagine if your third place choice had won.
If you like pictures, here's a video about how ranked choice voting works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5SLQXNpzsk
If you like pictures, here's a video about how ranked choice voting works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5SLQXNpzsk
Notice our first round leader, Frank, couldn't must muster enough second and third place votes to win the election. Apparently, most of the voters in this election, like you, weren't very happy with Frank and did not include him in their ballots or ranked him very low. Darla, on the other hand, appealed to a larger group of people, and benefited from being voters' second and third choice. The candidate with the broader appeal won - how crazy is that?
"But wait", a skeptic says from the back, "why is this so much better than what we do now?"
Ok, I'll tell you. https://rcv-sc.blogspot.com/2017/11/why-current-system-is-failure.html
