The Primary difference between "Ranked Choice" voting and the standard "One voter One vote" systems,
is that Ranked Choice allows you to vote on more than one candidate at a time in terms of 1st Choice, 2nd Choice, 3rd Choice, etc.
Again, Ranked Choice Voting is not new, dating back to the 1800s. And there are many different versions.
Here is a short list;
- Plurality (First Past the Post)
- Run-Off
- Instant Run-Off
- Condorcet
- Borda Count
- Single Transferable Voting (STV)
- Single Transferable Voting (STV) w/ Borda elimination
- Meek Style STV
- Meek Style STV w/ Borda elimination
- Pair Wise
- Approval Voting
- and many more
And All of these have different equations of how to count the votes & select a winner.
Many of these were built on top of a previous one, so they are similar.
And a few add different features such as, electing the top two
candidates, and more.
While All of them worked, and provided a winning count, it seemed that
the ones that performed the count the easiest and least expensive way in terms of tabulation effort
& time, were also the least accurate, selecting the most well
known candidate as opposed to the most preferred candidate.
"Looks too Confusing & Complicated" ~ Is the most common argument against RCV.
We agree, trying to learn each one of these systems,
and then selecting the best one to use is a daunting task...
So, We set out to test & identify the most accurate version and clearly discribe
how it works, and why it be should be used.
As this task became more
complicated with the ranking and/or weighting of the choice levels,
we built a tool to test the different versions.
And in the effort of fine-tuning this tool, it ultimately turned into a very nice demo.
The demo's shifting Process is an extremely accurate and fast way
to rank and count RCV ballots.
This process is introduced on The Visual Tabulation page here,
Rcv Tools ~ Visual Tabulation Demo
RCV ~ also eliminates the "Spoiler Effect" and
Gerrymandering (as described later).
RCV ~ introduces new faces & new candidates w/o Party Alignment & Commitment.
RCV ~ Gives us more Options & Choices, more information on issues & referance for future support.
Some describe RCV as a Consensus-Based voting system rather than a majoritarian one.