Ranked choice is the best for single seat elections: let everyone choose their first choices, and do an instant runoff where people not in the top X at that stage are disqualified and their votes transfered to the voters’ next choice, until there actually is a candidate with majority support among remaining candidates that made it that far.
Parliamentary systems, though, have room for other representative formulas where each voter isn’t necessarily just voting for a single seat to be filled. If you have a system with strong parties, you can vote for a party, each party wins a certain number of seats, and then the party fills those seats with their members according to their internal procedures. This system, however, requires strong parties where members can be controlled by the party.
Single seat elections aren’t necessary in every situation, and it’s worth thinking through which types of representative structures may be better than single-seat districts and when to use proportional representation through multi-seat elections, and how to formally recognize the role of political parties in those systems.
Ranked-Choice voting can be used for multi-seat elections as well, essentially voter ranks the top x candidates from the full pool. After the first seat is selected the tally continues by removing the first seat name from the pool to appoint the second seat.
I am from the US in a city where we have rank choice local elections, so “strong party” style elections where you vote for a party not a candidate seem frankly wildly unaccountable. I see no advantage to this system for the voters over individual candidates.
Ranked choice is the best for single seat elections: let everyone choose their first choices, and do an instant runoff where people not in the top X at that stage are disqualified and their votes transfered to the voters’ next choice, until there actually is a candidate with majority support among remaining candidates that made it that far.
Parliamentary systems, though, have room for other representative formulas where each voter isn’t necessarily just voting for a single seat to be filled. If you have a system with strong parties, you can vote for a party, each party wins a certain number of seats, and then the party fills those seats with their members according to their internal procedures. This system, however, requires strong parties where members can be controlled by the party.
Single seat elections aren’t necessary in every situation, and it’s worth thinking through which types of representative structures may be better than single-seat districts and when to use proportional representation through multi-seat elections, and how to formally recognize the role of political parties in those systems.
Ranked-Choice voting can be used for multi-seat elections as well, essentially voter ranks the top x candidates from the full pool. After the first seat is selected the tally continues by removing the first seat name from the pool to appoint the second seat.
I am from the US in a city where we have rank choice local elections, so “strong party” style elections where you vote for a party not a candidate seem frankly wildly unaccountable. I see no advantage to this system for the voters over individual candidates.