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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Awesome!

Anyone want to ELI5 for how the voting works? [/quote]

Ranked choice voting works like this:

Instead of voting for one single candidate, you literally rank your choices. Instead of voting for a single candidate you put them in order of preference. First they count up the "Choice #1" votes, and if one candidate has a majority they win. If no candidate has a majority, the candidate with the least amount of "choice #1" votes is eliminated, and the people who voted #1 for them now are voting for their #2. This process repeats until somebody has a majority.

So say the ballot has Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, and Hitler on it.  You really want Bernie to win, but you know he probably doesn't have the votes to make it and you don't want to "throw your vote away" and potentially help Trump win. With regular voting, you vote for Biden, obviously. With ranked choice voting, you rank Bernie #1, Biden #2, Trump #3 and Hitler #4.

The first round of votes is counted. There are 100 voters and the #1 choices look like this:

Biden: 26
Bernie: 25
Trump: 40
Hitler: 9

Nobody got a majority, so Hitler is eliminated. All of Hitler's voters put Trump as their #2, so the votes are counted again. The new totals are:

Biden: 26
Bernie: 25
Trump: 40 #1s + 9 #2s from Hitler voters = 49

Still nobody has a majority, so Bernie is eliminated. All of Bernie's voters put Biden as their #2, so the votes are recounted and the new totals are:

Biden: 26 #1s + 25 #2s from Bernie voters = 51
Trump: 40 #1s + 9 #2s from Hitler voters = 49

Now Biden has a majority so he wins.

The advantage of this system is that you're practically never "throwing away your vote" by voting for who you want to win regardless of their chances of winning. Even if your guy loses you still get to transfer your vote to your second favorite.  [/quote]

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