Response: Rank Choice Voting Throws Out Your Votes

[@imnotselma3305]

A new system doesn't have to be perfect for it to be worth putting into place. It just has to be better than the old system.

[@thinkfact]

Absolutely. Currently the problem is the extent of the mental gymnastics people are going through to validate first past the post. Despite the fact that Democrats, Republicans, and Independents have all benefited from split votes at different points in the state's history, this is currently being framed as Democrats upset that they're losing, when it's actually most recently the independents that got most jibbed by the situation. It's a really complicated issue.

[@conjecturemm]

Agreed. We should always strive to improve, no matter what system is in place

[@louisng114]

With first past the post, there are 18 exhausted votes.

[@imnotselma3305]

Jacob Pomelow If someone ranks less than all but one candidate, then that's an active choice on their behalf. Everyone gets the same opportunity of participation.

[@conjecturemm]

It is though. It's functionally equivalent to having multiple elections: if no one gets a majority (>50%) in the first election, then the candidate with the least amount of votes is dropped out and another election is held. This repeats until someone gets more than 50% of the vote. This scenario is played out in one voting session (as opposed to multiple) with the alternate vote.

[@anubis2814]

So tired of voting AGAINST ONE candidate instead of getting to vote FOR someone.

[@xdillonmiller]

Jacob Pomelow ikr

[@alanivar2752]

Then unfortunately, RCV may not be the Voting Method for you. You WILL however appreciate Approval Voting.

[@mm-ll9808]

Hi Dale, the woman speaking in the video is Maine Representative Heather Sirocki, Republican, of Scarborough, Maine. She represents District #28, and she is a vocal opponent of RCV. I think it is disingenuous of her not to identify herself as an elected official in this video. It is also worthy to note that in Scarborough, her town, voters in November 2016 voted for Ranked Choice Voting 6,706 For 5,754 Against. So, she isn't exactly enamored with supporting majorities when they go against her partisan beliefs.

[@chcamerica22]

You know, if Maine tabulated our ballots in one more "instant runoff round" in the same manner it tabulated them in RCV prior rounds the winner would fly over the finish line with 100% of the votes. That unanimous approval would be no less valid than MAINE's so-called 'final round majority". PROTECT OUR VOTE! Vote NO on 1

[@BigLobster44]

I much prefer rank choice voting over first past the post and I couldn’t agree more about making it more about not picking a side and actually voting for candidates who truly represents their constituents. I think their example was set up because it’s validates first past the post and selectively didn’t have a single ballot example that included 4 rankings just so they could focus on the amount of “votes” thrown out in the last round. Great video my dude, always been a fan of your content. 👍

[@thinkfact]

There's been a lot of fear mongering and it's challenging to communicate this stuff with people. I think it's important to recognize that it's better than what we currently have, even though it's not perfect. But opponents an proponents need to be very careful with their language. Thanks for the comment!

[@conjecturemm]

"Exhausted" is a misleading term. It makes it sound like your vote just doesn't count, when in reality you just voted for someone who lost early in the process. Also, like you said multiple times, their ballot would have made it all the way to the end if they had filled out 4 candidates instead of 3. AND ONE MORE THING if they only ranked two candidates total, that means they truly don't care about the rest. So in a sense, "throwing out" their ballot makes sense because they just don't care anymore. One LEGITIMATE issue with Alternative voting I personally see is that one person could receive 100% of the second-place votes, and none of the first. So then this person that everyone wants as a #2 is immediately discarded, even if everyone would have been okay with that candidate. What if someone wins with 20% of the first place votes, and the next 31% are made up of 3rd and 4th place votes? Is that candidate more desired than someone who has no 1st place votes but 100% of the second place votes? I love voting videos lol

[@thinkfact]

That's definitely an interesting hypothetical. I had an "argument" with a person over first past the post, because technically if you had 100 people running, you could technically have a winner who won with just about 2% of the vote. Now that sounds extreme, but even when you reduce the number of candidates down to 10, you could have somebody win with just over 11% of the vote. I mean, we had a winner with just about 35% of the vote. That is still remarkably low.

[@chcamerica22]

Each voter speaks with one vote, the 'collective electorate' speaks as a whole when they, as a whole, cast their votes on Election Day. Each candidate must earn the support from each and every one of us, the government cannot force us to change our minds about our opinion of any candidate. Maine is only capable of exhausting and re casting our ballots from one candidate to another and declare one as getting support from over half the votes in an instant runoff. The government cannot change the reflection of what the voters told Maine when they spoke as a whole. Each votes said exactly what the voter thought about each candidate, we all sang that song together on Election Day. But that's not good enough, our harmony failed to meet Maine's standards, we were we not in perfect pitch, over half of us are required by law to sing the same song. With RCV, the government is now required fix it up, so its will sound nice, you terrible voters were all over the place! ... When Maine is all done with its adding, subtracting, forced associations of loudest voices and weaker voices, the final result may sound pretty, but its not the chorus of the electorate. Its fixed, Maine's voters declared the true winner on Election Day.

[@thinkfact]

Chcamerica22. Now let's emphasize the fact that the majority of Mainers, over 50%, voted in favor of RCV in 2016 and were able to get over 80,000 signatures to perform a peoples veto over the course of 2017, and then tell me you actually care about "Maine's voters declar[ing] the true winner on Election Day." This is not about the "government fixing" the problem, the problem is the government trying to prevent the people from fixing the problem. And people such as yourself supporting that, despite what the majority of people voted for.

[@chcamerica22]

What problems is RCV seeking to "FIX"?

[@chcamerica22]

"Exhausted ballot" means a ballot that does not rank any continuing candidate, contains an overvote at the highest continuing ranking or contains 2 or more sequential skipped rankings before its highest continuing ranking.

[@DoctorRock172]

I am all for ranked choice voting! It's flabbergasting how she seems so manipulative in this video. Thank you for making this video, I hope you can help clear the air on ranked choice voting.

[@Craznar]

In Australia - you have to rank all candidates, otherwise your vote is invalid. They tried optional preferential - but it didn't work.

[@ACDBunnie]

Why? People can't really get mad that their vote wasn't listened to when they only list 2 of the 5 candidates and chose not to rank others.

[@Craznar]

Actually - it was the counting that become the problem, not the voting. It became overly complex. So our house of Representatives uses FULL preferential voting, the Senate uses a quota system which is mathematically more complex than quantum mechanics, but is fairly easy for the voters. Australia values voting so much that it is illegal for a voting age person to NOT vote.

[@commandohazelnuts]

Yeah I heard all about this on Hello Internet

[@robertjarman3703]

May I also contribute here. This is also still assuming we need a single winner. An actually proportional system would have multiple winners, say 3 to 5, maybe up to 7, for a general election (though Irish cities like to go on the high side with 10), and you'd win based on a quota, which is defined as (votes/(seats to win+1))+1 (if you wonder why, it's because if all the seats are filled via all the candidates each receiving a quota, there aren't enough votes left to be able for anyone else to each a quota). It's called single transferable vote. It's pretty effective. Australia doesn't use this for the House of Representatives, which is what defines who the prime minister is. It's only used for the Senate of Australia and most states and the House in Tasmania.

[@mojomac6592]

hopefully more states adopt the alternative vote, its just objectively better in reflecting constituents choices than first past the post. I learned about the alternative vote a while ago, when CGP Grey first made videos about it, and as a Maine native I'm excited that the state is considering it.

[@chcamerica22]

we have to dump this plan, its bad for the voters ... this RCV is the IRV type, and cannot gauge the sentiment of the electorate, I prefer cleaning the ballots of their party affiliation by erasing that D and R and G and I and L, or whatever their party's letter, completely. But there are much better ranking methods than than this if Maine WERE to change its constitution and remove any obligation to continue with the plurality method. Star, Approval, Range, many others, this plan really stinks. Sec Dunlap told us in his video that this plan can keep some from speaking ... not good for Maine. Maybe Maine will consider something that doesn't shut the voices of the minority at a later date. Vote NO on question 1

[@alanivar2752]

Did you miss the whole half of CGP's video where he spoke about IRV still having major flaws? We need a new voting method. We do NOT want IRV.

[@edjuaro2]

Great video! I congratulate you for respectfully disagreeing with someone. This is a great example of how arguing should be done.

[@ACDBunnie]

I wish this was spread around as much as the original

[@thinkfact]

They have a bit of a headstart, but I hope that I made points that are quite solid and subsequently puts people in a situation where they share this in response to people bringing up remarks like the Timberlakes.

[@chcamerica22]

You know, if Maine tabulated our ballots in one more "instant runoff round" in the same manner it tabulated them in RCV prior rounds the winner would fly over the finish line with 100% of the votes. That unanimous approval would be no less valid than MAINE's so-called 'final round majority". PROTECT OUR VOTE! Vote NO on 1

[@geekjokes8458]

It's like saying the non mandatory vote "throws out your vote". It's the voter who chose, in most cases, not to vote. Yes, it indicates a failure in the system, but it can be easily fixed, as people have already pointed here, and its a problem the current system also has.

[@thinkfact]

That concept within itself has been the biggest hurdle. People think ballot exhaustion is the same as silencing people. People are arguing because exhaustion is a thing, that this is manipulating votes... It's been extremely difficult to explain this is not the case, especially when people had convinced themselves that any opposition is lying more whatever. And popular videos that perpetrate disingenuous points are becoming popular. So I'm just trying to do my part.

[@MichelGarciaH]

Because, basically, if the voter just chooses one and leaves the rest blank the voter is saying "it's either my candidate, or I don't care", so they're not being silenced, they're actually being heard and noted. CGP Grey did a wonderful series on the matter some years ago. Mt question would be, if you have a significant number of voters that vote just 2 out of 5 (or whatever), and you end up with an atomized spectrum and a really high number of exhausted votes, what to do next? Maybe that's why most places with this system made it mandatory to rank ALL candidates.

[@Puggy42069]

“It’s unconstitutional.” Please show me where in the constitution it says this is not allowed. You can’t, cause it is utterly constitutional and fair in its purest form.

[@thinkfact]

I do plan on doing a follow-up to all of this madness. I probably is going to be my next video considering it's relevance around the election.

[@Puggy42069]

@@thinkfact that would be great! I think this is extremely important to spread awareness about, because every single American I know out of 20+ people I have asked are completely ignorant on what RCV is. This is dangerous, cause they are then easily susceptible to anti-democracy propaganda like this.

[@peggybayliss8346]

This is NOT MR and MRS Timberlake. The female voice that is heard is that of Heather Sirocki another member of our Legislature who would lie to make a point fit her point of view. I was at a meeting in Wells where she claims ownership of her lies.

[@zbrown02]

They should do run off voting for the presidential elections. That way a third party may have a chance and we wouldn’t be stuck with a choice of Killary or drump ever again

[@ajhare2]

Trump won in some states with less than 50% of the vote. SO having a run off election with the 2 most popular candidates would insure a more accurate vote.

[@warrenpeas]

that is why they call this "instant run off voting". it saves a lot of money to do it this way.

[@LongbowGaming]

Thank you for publicly defending ranked choice voting.

[@richjordan6461]

This video is in support of Ranked Choice Voting, which I didn't get until halfway through the video. It may just be something I missed. Anyway, rather good video once I realized who was who.

[@Ardy-xc2hu]

Gonna share this

[@thinkfact]

Do it up.

[@Ardy-xc2hu]

Think Fact did it's on discord

[@jacobwas809]

@Think Fact I don’t know if anyone else noticed this, but you seem to have a small typo. Sarah only had 10 votes in the last round, not 11. However, this is a small error that does not affect the overall quality of the video or its message. I hope IVR gets passed!

[@SweetLilWren]

I've heard your Governor speaking on TV I can't wrap my head around this form of voting even with you breaking it down I think in time I could and from what I do understand about it I think it's a smarter way overall and kind of wish every state would pick this up and then maybe it could be employed federally so to speak because this two-party system isn't working anymore and everyone's afraid that voting third-party is a wasted vote because of bases you're right thank you for making this video I just found your Channel today

[@Mutex50]

I don't like instant runoff voting ( the more accurate name for rank choice voting), but you can't argue that it is not better than first-past-the-post and I'm glad Maine adopted it for at least some elections. One of my big problems with the campaign though is that they say it is safe to vote for your favorite. Although it is safer, it is not safe to vote for your favorite unless he is very strong or very weak. If your favorite can't win, but has strong base support, voting for your favorite can help your least favorite win. Also, IRV only gives you a majority winner against a single candidate. The IRV winner may not even beat a particular eliminated candidates head to head. I think Maine would have been better off replacing party primaries with a single non-partisan primary that uses approval voting to get the top two candidates for the general election. If they had done that, they wouldn't have to worry about the constitutionality and they would have had a better system which would make it easier to organize voting blocs around issues.

[@alanivar2752]

Actually, I'd like to argue that it's NOT better than our current method: IRV advocates claim one (and literally only ever one) real advantage over our current system: the Spoiler Effect. When in reality, the Spoiler Effect is a lot more frequent with RCV than with our current method. kzbin.info/www/bejne/gKWucoaZhLeYrLM

[@debbie81554]

I believe the reason they chose three ranked candidates is because we are limited to three as far as I know.

[@guel95ftw]

damn I forgot about your channel you have not pop up in sub box in over a year. nice to see you doing good and got 20 times more subs sense last time I saw you! I need to click on that bell

[@aresmars2003]

The example video shows a legitimate problem of RCV if people refuse to rank or can't rank deeply enough. Conditional thinking is a higher mental skill and people with an emotional attachment to one or more candidates may sometimes need absolute certainty of elimination before asking if they have an opinion on the final two. So there is an advantage to multiple ballots, most simply a primary system. I think the solution here should be a RCV open primary, with a 20% threshold if there are more than 4 candidates running. That prevents the exhausted ballot problem. You only need to rank deeply enough in the primary so ONE candidate rises to 20% to have your vote counted. And even if you fail, you get another chance in the general election. Often enough only 2 candidates will exceed a 20% primary, but when there is wide diversity of leaders, all deserve a voice in debates. IN FACT, you can replace the idiotic partisan primary as well, and let ALL candidates run in the same primary and all voters decide. A party may endorse 1 or more candidates, and that can influence voters, but parties shouldn't control ballot access.

[@alanivar2752]

Precisely. The binary quality of Approval Voting prevents the Strategic Voting that plagues RCV.

[@aresmars2003]

@@alanivar2752 What nonsense. Approval is even worse than ranking. Aproval is a simple scam to help elect people who otherwise can't win majority support.

[@aresmars2003]

@@alanivar2752 Approval is a GOOD method only if the answer allows a variable number of winners. If you ask "Who do you want to see in the debate?" the natural answer is more than one candidate for many people. Calling a single-winner election "approval" is a misnomer, and I call this decision intentionally manipulative.

[@alanivar2752]

@@aresmars2003 I don't think you know what Approval Voting is.

[@alanivar2752]

@@aresmars2003 Because it doesn't seem like we're talking about the same thing: kzbin.info/www/bejne/paPck3eois9nrKM

[@anubis2814]

Doing everything they can to kill RCV before people can feel the effects of it. June 12th is going to be a nail biter. Sadly your video wont spread they this one did, sigh.

[@thinkfact]

It is unfortunate, but if it is any caviar, I noticed that the majority of the most popular comments on their video were in support of rank choice voting. The biggest hurdle is just getting people out to vote during the primaries.

[@chcamerica22]

You know, if Maine tabulated our ballots in one more "instant runoff round" in the same manner it tabulated them in RCV prior rounds the winner would fly over the finish line with 100% of the votes. That unanimous approval would be no less valid than MAINE's so-called 'final round majority". PROTECT OUR VOTE! Vote NO on 1

[@jamesgardner6434]

Can you link the original video? This must become a YTP

[@thinkfact]

It's in the description. ;)

[@benpennington1866]

This is why you are my favorite KZbinr!

[@thinkfact]

Haha, thank you.

[@aaroniouse]

I don't understand how 52% of Oregonians who voted don't want ranked choice voting. How is that kind of ignorance possible?

[@robertjarman3703]

You also forget that this is just about single winner races. RCV is much more capable than that. This form, single winner, would be used for gubernatorial races, federal senator, presidential, etc, winners, but for legislatures, commissions, boards, city councils, etc, you can use a multi member version called single transferable vote. Say you want to elect 7 winners to a commission with 14 members who each serve 4 year terms, such that half are chosen every 2 years. You need to reach something called a quota. This is defined by taking the number of valid votes you have, divide this number by the sum of the number of positions you want to elect plus one, and add a one to the quotient. This is because if all the positions are filled, it's impossible for anyone else to reach the quota as well. If you are at a stage of counting such that you have X number of positions remaining to be assigned, and there are still X+1 number of candidates still in the race after their votes have been counted from the previous round, eliminate the one with the fewest votes and declare the rest elected. This is true for the same reason your winner in this video wins, exhausted ballots. So you rank your candidates just as you do in RCV. The first thing to do is to see if anyone has more than the quota they need. If they do, then declare the candidate elected and transfer their votes at a reduced fraction to account for how they've already received one of their choices. This reduced fraction is calculated by dividing the number of votes they got above the quota by the number of votes they got. For a quota of 400 where a candidate gets 500 votes, the reduced fraction is 100/500=0.2. Say that 200 of those votes wanted B as their second choice, they'd get 200*0.2=40 votes transferred to B. Eliminated candidates have their votes transferred at the value they already were at. This continues until all seats are filled. It tends to be much more proportional than a standard RCV vote is, let alone the plurality vote would be. Say that you had those 7 seats to fill, you'd need 12.5%+1 to win, or (100%/(7+1))+1. If all 7 seats are filled, you could potentially represent almost 87.5% of the voters precisely, and even more would have still likely been comfortable with those 7 if you counted down their ballots enough. And many of those candidates have someone they wanted as their first choice, much more so than RCV or plurality. And even if they didn't, it's more likely that someone very high up on the ranking and almost as good as their first choice will be elected rather than someone who is maybe your 5th choice.

[@mizfrenchtwist]

maine is cool , always liked maine...........great clip...............

[@wietse430]

Came here from h3h3, nice content :)

[@thinkfact]

I appreciate your taking the time to check out my content. I must say though, this is by far not my highest quality entry video. Haha

[@benlyman115]

Brilliant video

[@benlyman115]

Jacob Pomelow Everything is going well over here but thanks for your concern.

[@peggybayliss8346]

Great video!

[@davidromero3803]

The Maltese phallus.

[@_KlootMalloot_]

sooo lucky i don't live in Murica. doesn't mean Holland is any better though...

[@thinkfact]

Well right now the entire country, or at least people who are really interested in voting systems, are keeping their eyes on us. We will see how this works out.

[@MichelGarciaH]

They both still beat out the one we have. I live in Venezuela, where both the government and the "opposition" decide beforehand the results. Our votes don't count.

[@connorp3030]

Pros and cons of rank choice voting where you have to rank all candidates, but can't rank any candidates the same number vs you can rank candidates the same number?

[@thinkfact]

Nope. You don't rank any of the candidates the same number. Each one is ggivenving their own number, and the one you gave a "1" to is who you're vote counts for, for the first round. If that candidate is removed in any of the subsequent rounds, the person you ranked "2" then gets your vote. This continues until somebody gets over 50% of the vote, or there is just one person left.

[@connorp3030]

Think Fact yeah I know the process, I was asking you what the pros and cons would be if you could rate people the same number as compared to the above mentioned system. It seems like it would entirely eliminate safety voting.

[@thinkfact]

That would potentially mean more than one vote per person per round, or at least in terms of how I'm reading this. And that would be a huge conflict at least in United States. One of the current arguments opponents have is that rank choice voting is giving people more than one vote, which is not true in the context of how runoff election's work. But if you could rank two or more people at the same number, I don't know how you would efficiently be able to do a runoff election. Maybe I'm not reading this right?

[@connorp3030]

Think Fact well, if you really think it through its not such a big problem (as far as I can see). It is giving people multiple votes, everyone can vote for every candidate. The process is still exactly the same, the only difference as far as I can see is that it stops the situation where let's say that Elise is everyone's second favourite, and so no votes are for her so she's eliminated immediately despite being very liked.

[@chcamerica22]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/pHW0nImNrbd9bK8 In walks TOM, looking forward to good news, but then: Counters: Sorry Tom, you lost. Tom: Oh shucks, I reached out to so many Mainers, what a disappointment, who won? Counters: No one won yet, since no one reached 50% of the votes, we are still counting. Tom: What percentage of the ballots are remaining? Counters: All 100% Tom, ALL 100%? How do you know I lost if 100% of the ballots still remain to be counted? Counters: We only finished counting 1st choice pick, and found that you only got 3 votes, now we are on our second round of counting. Tom: Whew! Then I still have a chance maybe I can win with over 50% of everyone else's second choice pick! Lets hurry and check, I was about to begin drafting my concession speech, I really want to thank all the hard working volunteers who gave so much of their time toward this effort, they are so wonderful, all of them. Counters: Go ahead and write the speech, Tom, we already determined that you lost Tom: But I did not concede, no one won, when you finish counting the ballots on round #2, maybe I will get over 50% of them! Counters: Not possible, Tom, we completely removed your name from any further consideration, you have no chance on this second round, you are done. Tom stands there with a puzzled look on his face. Counters politely ask Tom to leave, they know he is not happy, but he leaves without objection, then they continue counting according to the system and ultimately declare a winner. Curiosity then gets the best of the counters and they decide to look again at all the ballots' #2 pics. One counter says: "Wow, if we treated all ballots in the same manner Tom would have won, he has seventeen #2 picks, more votes than the one we declared as winner. I knew he had strong support from all across Maine, that's over 65%, the winner did not even garnish 50%. Do you think we should we tell anyone about this?" The other responds, "Why? We did our job, we tallied the ballots using this new RCV method since some voters thought the other way was broken and produced an unfair result, its all fixed now, so lets just call it a night."

[@skavies2351]

9:22 Despite being stoned off my ass, I'm pretty sure your math is off.

[@samuelhmullins2170]

If 100% voters anyone 2nd place , that elects the Vice President. What is straining your brains?

[@davidromero3803]

Third place wins in a run off?

[@Camelotsmoon]

Ya, that video is pretty disengenous.

[@litch294]

You're giving the original video too much credit, they would have to be incredibly stupid to make that video unless they were trying to mislead people.

[@thinkfact]

The video was definitely bizarre, but I feel the people who made it simply don't know what they don't know. The argument that they made has been spouted around for a very long time, and I think when somebody gets to a point where they are convinced they've got something figured out, they don't even think about potential problems in their argument. And that's what I think this is.

[@napoleonbonaparte8835]

HE'S BACK

[@thinkfact]

Trying to be consistent. Haha. Thanks for sticking around!

[@AngusMurray]

I just realised your uploading....

[@thinkfact]

Make sure to have the bell icon selected. KZbin can be brutal to KZbin channels that don't upload frequently.

[@theobuniel9643]

Whoa, 11 views.

[@thinkfact]

It's crazy how fast people can get here.

[@xWood4000]

Hello, human.

[@thinkfact]

Hello there

[@bigzclipz5104]

In nyc which is going to be new your only allow 3pick . Rvc is horrible idea I rather have approval voting

[@blocksbrains4911]

This video has an agenda obviously. The arguments seem disingenuous givin the real world senario they would be applied to. There is no way a single vote non ranked choice system gives the voters what they want better.

[@rmdunton]

I did learn something. With the use of RCV, you are forced into choosing more than one candidate or else you're vote is likely to be exhausted. How is this fair? A separate runoff election is more fair.

[@thinkfact]

People misunderstand the fact that an "exhausted ballot" is not much more different than simply not going back to the polls and voting for the following round because you don't like who's left. RCV it's cheaper, more convenient, and faster then most other runoff election systems. Nobody's forcing you to do anything, but just like voting third party has its risks now, choosing not to rank candidates over one another, particularly ones you like less than others even if you don't necessarily like the others, is a valid voting strategy.

[@xdillonmiller]

Wtf even is this

[@xdillonmiller]

I’m confused on this one

[@rmdunton]

Voting NO!!!! Ranked choice voting must go.

[@KaiWritesCode]

Great video!

[@thinkfact]

Kai Mast thank you very much.