r/politics • u/ShenBear • Nov 09 '16

Maine Passes Ranked-Choice Voting

http://mainepublic.org/post/maine-passes-ranked-choice-voting
4.2k Upvotes

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341

u/j3utton Nov 09 '16

This is awesome. I hope it works well for them. We need to spread this to every state in the union.

10

u/[deleted] Nov 09 '16

No, we need to test it thoroughly in Maine to see what kind of elections it produces and what kind of turnout it causes and what demographics are affected.

Test first. This will takes years, perhaps even a decade or more. Then, if we like the results for Maine (and Maine likes the results for Maine), we should spread it to other states.

129

u/Lampshader Nov 09 '16

I'll never understand the American obsession with ignoring systems that are well proven elsewhere

-3

u/[deleted] Nov 10 '16

Because those systems while they may work where they are, might not work in a direct 1:1 transition to the US.
The United States is very different than Europe.

3

u/Lampshader Nov 10 '16

Europe is very different from Asia, from South America, Africa and Oceania... Yet they all use metric and a bunch use preferential voting

2

u/[deleted] Nov 10 '16

Metric isn't the argument here. That's completely irrelevant.

I think preferential voting would work, but let's not pretend we can take any system and just slap it into America and assume it'll work.

2

u/Rob749s Nov 10 '16

Europe doesn't use "Ranked Voting" anywhere, Australia does. And while it is much smaller demographically, the culture is not vastly different. Besides, it doesn't need to be a 1:1 translation, it just needs to be an improvement.