Ranked voting

In light of recent events, trust in the current political structure of so-called democratic states is at a low. Most of the dissatisfaction is in the United States. However, here in Canada, we aren't the happiest either. Now, most solutions advocated by the radical ends of the two political wings' aren't the most popular with most people. One thing that most can agree on is that change needs to happen. Despite what some previous articles (which tbh need some editing) might allude to, we here in WSN media do not follow a singular ideology or political current. However, one policy we hear at WSN does endorse is ranked voting.

As the name implies, ranked voting is a voting system where the voter can rank each of the candidates from their favorite to least favorite. Like most political policies, there are multiple means to implement it, with their general goal is to have every vote count.

A variant of ranked voting practiced in Australia is instant run-off voting. The way it works is that if no candidate has the majority of the first-place votes, then the candidate's votes with the least first-place votes are redistributed to all the other candidates based on who that candidate's voters selected as their second-place choices, and the votes are recounted. If there still isn't a candidate with a majority, then the candidate's votes with the least first-place votes after the recounting are redistributed to their voters' second or third place choices. The process repeats until a candidate has the majority of the votes.

Another variant is contingent voting. Where in an election with multiple candidates and none have a majority, the two candidates with the highest votes have the votes of all the other candidates distributed to them based on the voters' preference. Different versions of this type of voting have been used in places as distant from each other as Sir Lanka and Alabama.

Now all the previous variants that have been discussed only applied to elections with singular candidates and not multi-member bodies such as city councils. That's where single transferable voting comes into play. What sets this variant of ranked voting apart from others is that there can actually be multiple victors. Essentially the way it works is that a candidate must gain a certain amount of votes to win; however, unlike the previously mentioned variants, multiple candidates can meet this quota and thus get elected to their multi-member bodies. Like the previous versions, the votes of the candidate with the lowest first votes are redistributed to all the other candidates based on who that candidate's voters selected as their second-place choices, and the votes are recounted, with the process repeating until a candidate or candidates meet the required amount of votes for them to win. However, unlike the previously mentioned variants, votes can also be redistributed from the candidate with the most votes. Essentially, if a candidate gets more votes than they need to win, those extra votes are redistributed to the other candidates; this way, they can be more than one winner, and the body they are being elected to has candidates with a wide variety of perspectives.

Now that we've discussed various different forms of ranked voting let's look at some of the advantages and disadvantages. For starters, it allows for the winner to always be the candidate with the majority of votes. Secondly, it is less cost-effective than regular elections since there wouldn't be a need for holding primaries. Lastly, to quote from the website of democratic party member Andrew Yang: "Since each voter can potentially vote for a candidate as well as their opponent, candidates shy from negative campaigning that would alienate the supporters of other candidates, instead of trying to appeal to those voters as their second or third choice." This can result in all-around less political polarization, which is something that many can agree is something we need right now. Additionally, it allows for different parties to work together and put more of a focus on policies rather than denunciation.

Now no debate is fair without addressing the other side. One major criticism that the second-place would always win, and though this is true, they will at least win by a majority. Another problem is a scenario where there are five candidates, but voters only had to rank three of them, and the three that they ranked all got eliminated, then that means their vote ultimately didn't matter. However, that can be solved by making the voters able to rank all of the candidates instead of just three of them.

As a closing statement, the last thing we here at WSNmedia want is to tell our viewers what to think and believe. What we do want is to introduce new ideas and concepts to our viewers and have them decide for themselves what to think. In fact, we are very open to corrections, for like all humans, we make mistakes and get things wrong. So please if there were any mistakes made in this article don’t shy away from telling us and if there’s a variant of ranked-choice voting that I neglected to mention please tell me so.