May 4, 2011

ME: Greens Enter Ranked Choice Mayoral Race

From the Portland Herald, via Green Party Watch:
Shrugging off the label of electoral "spoilers," members of the Maine Green Independent Party embraced Portland's new rank choice voting system as a third-party-friendly approach to electing the city's mayor.

"I think it will encourage people to run positive campaigns, and rather than having the so-called spoiler, Ralph Nader effect, which is not true at all ... it will totally separate that, because there are no spoilers in rank choice voting," said Tom MacMillan, a Maine Green Party steering committee member who lives in the West End of Portland.

Portland this year embarks on an elected-mayor campaign that replaces a council-appointed mayor with one elected to an at-large seat. Through a city charter change, voters also will choose their next mayor through rank choice voting, where if any candidate falls short of a majority, then the "second choice" votes come into play in the tabulation.
No spoilers in ranked choice voting?

4 comments:

Dale Sheldon-Hess said...

"No spoilers in ranked choice voting?"

Indeed. Burlington, VT, is only an hour or two away, they should ask them about that.

d.eris said...

Hey Dale, do you have a good link to a post at Least of All Evils or elsewhere addressing the spoiler effect in ranked choice, one that could serve as a good reference for future posts in which this topic comes up?

TiradeFaction said...

I wonder how well the Green Independents will do under IRV in Portland. I guess we'll see soon enough.

TiradeFaction said...

(Or I suppose, how poorly)

A Green Independent activist I know in Maine is very excited about IRV (and his lobbying the state legislature for it's statewide use), I wonder what he'd think of Approval voting.