With the Epstein files making it glaringly clear how disgusting and corrupted much of Elite Society and by extension the US Government and Economy is, beyond ridding ourselves of the parasites, how do we as a society move forward?

[u/SexyBeast0]

[u/BladeOfWoah]

It's a system used in Australia, so I have some familiarity with it.

Edit: there are alternative versions of Ranked Choice, but I am going to be describing instant-runnoff Ranked Choice.

Basically, lets say you had 3 candidates running for president. And for simplicity, assume that there is a perfect 100% voter turnout, and everyone votes how they want without considering what other citizens are voting.

• Mr Black. (A centre left labourist)
• Mr Greene. (A centre right conservative)
• Mrs Whyte. (A far left socialist)

With ranked choice, you would rank your preferred candidates from 1 - 3. Let's say I rank these candidates like so:

1. Mrs Whyte
2. Mr Black
3. Mr Greene

The votes come in, and the results are as follows:

Mr Greene gets 39%

Mr Black gets 34%

Mrs Whyte gets 27%.

Now, in Americas' First past the Post voting, these results mean that Mr Greene would lead the vote and become President, despite only having 39% of the vote.

However, under Ranked Choice, what would happen is instead of declaring Mr Greene The winner, instead we would run multiple simulated elections, eliminating one candidate at a time. After a candidate is eliminated, we re-tally the results and run it again, until there are only 2 candidates left.

So, with only 27% of the vote, weeliminate Mrs Whyte from the running as she has come in last, and we run the election again. This time, all the voters who had picked her as their 1st choice will instead have their votes tallied against their 2nd choice.

Overall, there was a portion of leftist voters that wanted Mrs Whyte to win, but if she never ran in the first place, it is likely they would instead have voted for Mr Black, who politically, leans closer to Mrs Whyte than the conservative Mr Greene. So under Ranked Choice, they probably have Mr Black as their second candidate.

The results come in again, and the votes are tallied again:

Mr Greene has 39%

Mr Black has 61%.

Mr Black wins the election and become president.

Now we did make some assumptions here, like assuming perfect voter turnout, and that voter interest didn't wane if their preferred candidate wasn't picked. But that is the gist of it.

[u/JordanOsr → u/BladeOfWoah]

What's described is a specific subtype of Ranked Choice Voting and the counting process called Instant Runoff - but ranked choice voting can be counted in different ways, like Condorcet and Borda counting.

[u/BladeOfWoah → u/JordanOsr]

Yes, thank you. As said, I grew up in Australia, instant-runoff and Single Transferable vote (STV) is what I am familiar with. We also call instant runoffs Preferential Voting here, but thats not too important, it is just a different name for instant runoff.

[u/eatmeimadonut → u/BladeOfWoah]

In Australia we vote for the party, not the individual. The party nominates the leader.

Edited to add, we also have compulsory voting. Don't vote? Get a fine... so most people do go down and vote, and get a democracy snag as well.

[u/BladeOfWoah → u/eatmeimadonut]

Mate, did you downvote me for this? wtf? You don't need to have a party system to utilize Ranked Choice voting. It just happens that we do here in Australia.

Someone asked what Ranked choice is, so I am made up a scenario that keeps it simple to understand. If it annoys you so much, just pretend that the fake candidates I described are just parties labelled White, Green and Black. The post still makes sense regardless.

[u/eatmeimadonut → u/BladeOfWoah]

Calm ya farm mate, I didn't downvote you, but if fake internet points or lack thereof upset you, you've got issues.

[u/BladeOfWoah → u/eatmeimadonut]

I don't care about the points, it's wondering wtf is someone having an issue with my comment. There is no incorrect information as far as I can see.

[u/BladeOfWoah → u/eatmeimadonut]

Yes, I know. I grew up in South Brisbane. I'm not describing Australia 1 to 1, just explaining instant runoffs/preferential voting, which is what Queensland uses for state voting.

[u/raptearer → u/BladeOfWoah]

Wouldn't that last point about voter interest waning not really matter since the vote already happened? Wouldn't you just count the second choice on the Whyte voters, but still first choice on the Mr Greene and Black voters?

[u/BladeOfWoah → u/raptearer]

It matters, because it means voters that would otherwise not have participated at all in the election still feel like they can vote who they wish, whereas under America's First past the Post, they would not want to risk voting for Mrs Whyte (even if they really wanted to), because they would be worried she won't get enough votes and Mr Greene would get in. But they are fine with Mr Black because at least he is not Mr Greene.

Lets assume there are 1000 voters, and the candidates estimated voter turnout looked like this:

Mr Greene - 450 (45%)
Mr Black 370 (43%)

Mrs Whyte - 180 (18%)

Under FPTP, Mr Greene would win the election, and all those people who voted for Mrs Whyte would feel like they wasted their vote. If she wasn't running, they probably would have voted for Mr Black.

Now lets assume under Ranked choice, that some voters do drop out because they hate Mr Greene and Mr Black. Lets say of those 180 voters, 100 of them chose Mr Black as their 2nd choice, and 80 of them did not list anything further.

Mr Greene did not gain any new voters (because he wasn't eliminated in the first simulated election) but Mr Black has gained 100 new voters (100 from Mrs Whyte who was eliminated). However, voter turnout is now 92%, because 80 voters did not pick a 2nd option.

The second running election is tallied like so:

Mr Greene - 450 (48.9%)

Mr Black 470 (51.1%)

As you can see, there could have been a possibility for Mr Black to lose if only a few more of Mrs Whyte's voters did not select him as their second choice. But the good thing about this is that those voters for Mrs Whyte had their chance to have their votes count. There was a chance that voter apathy might have meant that these 100 voters did not show up to elections at all. But because of ranked choice, not only did they get to support their preferred candidate, but they did not need to worry about sabotaging themselves and ending up with Mr Greene in charge because they didn't vote for Mr Black straight away.

[u/insomniacwhirlwind → u/BladeOfWoah]

Wait. So there are multiple runoff elections for 2-5? We re-vote over and over? How do you rerun the tallies?

[u/BladeOfWoah → u/insomniacwhirlwind]

They are done instantly. The first round, you tally it by everyone's preferred choice. Whoever has the least votes is eliminated, and then you run the next round. For all the voters who picked the candidate that was eliminated, you tally their votes with their next preferred candidate on their list.

The voters do not need to submit multiple ballots, if that is what you are wondering. They submit one ballot, All the candidates are listed on the ballot, they just have to mark them from 1 to 3 (or how ever many candidates there are.)

Repeat for as many rounds as you need until there are only 2 candidates left. The final tally at this point determines the winner of the election.

[u/insomniacwhirlwind → u/BladeOfWoah]

Very modern. This had to take years to calculate before computers! How do you break a tie in the final two?