7th November 2017, 9:34 PM
So, the Dems won huge in the election yesterday! It's really nice to win stuff for once... :) And in this one things have gone so well pretty much everywhere taht it's hard to find races that didn't go the Democrats' way. Sure, it's a small sample size being an off-year election, but still it feels good, and hurts Donald Trump. :love:
Sorry, no, I misunderstood what you meant. There'd be a list of all the candidates, and you can rank them from first to last. You can choose as many or as few people to rank as you want. Then when counting the votes, the election clerks look at the overall totals, and if one person running for the office does not have over 50% they then drop the person with the fewest votes, and re-allocate those peoples' votes to their next choice. Then the process repeats until someone has over 50% and is thus the winner.
It would be "winner take all" once someone is over 50% though, since that is how the American political system works; we do not have a system that distributes votes based on how many people voted for each party or such. But by allowing people to rank multiple candidates, it lets voters vote for minor candidates in a way that is impossible with the regular "first past the post" system and in a place like Maine where we're constantly having three-way races that would be a very good thing.
As for the electoral college for President, currently Maine is one of the two states that isn't "winner take all". The state gives 2 electors to the person who won the statewide vote for President, and one elector for the winner in each of the two Congressional districts. Trump won district 2's popular vote but not district 1 or the statewide total, so Maine had 3 electors for Hillary and 1 for Trump last year. (The other state that divides its electors is Nebraska. The Republicans almost always win all of them there, but Obama did win one district, and thus one electoral vote, there in '08; their system is similar to ours.)
I actually don't like the way we do things here, though -- because of the way that the House is gerrymandered in so many states, if all states used the Maine/Nebraska system Republicans would win for President in everything except for the largest wave elections! If the House was all drawn with nonpartisan lines maybe it'd work fine, but with things as they are it'd actually be a significantly less representative system than the 'winner takes all' system that the other 48 states use does.
Dark Jaguar Wrote:So its the voter system where you are given, say, 5 "votes" and if you felt like it you could just use all 5 on one candidate, or 3 on one and 2 on your second favorite? I must admit that one does sound compelling. There is the matter of the electoral college though. Does or will your state operate such that instead of "winner take all" electorally, it divides up all state's votes so that an equivalent number of electors get voted in for each candidate? That's another big problem our country needs to solve, but if all the states can adopt such a rule, it would at least defeat the electoral college's ability to spoil modern elections.
Sorry, no, I misunderstood what you meant. There'd be a list of all the candidates, and you can rank them from first to last. You can choose as many or as few people to rank as you want. Then when counting the votes, the election clerks look at the overall totals, and if one person running for the office does not have over 50% they then drop the person with the fewest votes, and re-allocate those peoples' votes to their next choice. Then the process repeats until someone has over 50% and is thus the winner.
It would be "winner take all" once someone is over 50% though, since that is how the American political system works; we do not have a system that distributes votes based on how many people voted for each party or such. But by allowing people to rank multiple candidates, it lets voters vote for minor candidates in a way that is impossible with the regular "first past the post" system and in a place like Maine where we're constantly having three-way races that would be a very good thing.
As for the electoral college for President, currently Maine is one of the two states that isn't "winner take all". The state gives 2 electors to the person who won the statewide vote for President, and one elector for the winner in each of the two Congressional districts. Trump won district 2's popular vote but not district 1 or the statewide total, so Maine had 3 electors for Hillary and 1 for Trump last year. (The other state that divides its electors is Nebraska. The Republicans almost always win all of them there, but Obama did win one district, and thus one electoral vote, there in '08; their system is similar to ours.)
I actually don't like the way we do things here, though -- because of the way that the House is gerrymandered in so many states, if all states used the Maine/Nebraska system Republicans would win for President in everything except for the largest wave elections! If the House was all drawn with nonpartisan lines maybe it'd work fine, but with things as they are it'd actually be a significantly less representative system than the 'winner takes all' system that the other 48 states use does.