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• Anonymous

  So glad that the process worked and the city saved the cost of a run-off. 

  Now that we’ve had our experiment with Ranked Choice (or Instant Runoff) Voting, it’s time to put it into play statewide so we can avoid repeating the fiasco that was the last gubernatorial election.

• Anonymous

  It absolutely would have made the difference. Assuming all of Moody and Scott’s votes were redistributed to LePage and not to Cutler, that would have given LePage only 44% of the total vote. And virtually all of Mitchell’s votes would have gone to Cutler before LePage.

  Let’s make this happen, people.

• Anonymous

  Definately needs to be implemented at the state level!

• Anonymous

  So–Americans, was it really so bad waiting 24 hours??

  Even for President.  

  We spend two years, listening to all those jokers (and in my book, they are all jokers including the incumbent), and nowadays, billions of dollars during an election, we cannot wait a few more days?  

  Do you want the results quick? 

  Or right (accurate)?   

  I know what my answer is.

• Susan Westfall

  How exactly are the “votes for lower ranked candidates…systematically reallocated to higher ranked candidate[s]“? Who decides this? How is it monitored? What is the systematic method? This just sounds like a method to ensure that “it’s who counts the votes that matters” and not who voted or even who they voted for…  I’m not questioning peoples’ honesty in counting votes right now (I don’t know them how could I) but a system that is clearly complicated and involves redistribution of votes (a bizarre concept in itself) is an open invitation for abuse by those who don’t find cheating morally reprehensible. If Maine’s voting is based on “one man, one vote” this is way out of line with that basic concept in more ways than one.

• Anonymous

  When you vote, you rank your choices for candidate.

  If no single candidate has a majority, the last place candidate drops off.

  They then recount the votes— anyone who voted for the last place candidate get’s their 2nd choice counted instead.

  This keeps going until a candidate has over 50% of the votes!

  If we had this system in place for the Governor race, we would have ended up with Elliot Cutler.

• Anonymous

  I love the idea of instant run-off. It helps citizens vote for the candidate they want, instead of voting for the candidate they think stands the best chance against a candidate they don’t want.

• Anonymous

  …and the one before that! I’m not a LePage fan, but Baldacci was also elected by a minority of Maine voters.

• Anonymous

  After all that.  We come up with a career politician.  An insider.  A partisan.  I was hoping Portland could have been a little more creative.  What a waste of time and resources

• PaulNotBunyan

  I love headlines with double meanings: “Brennan to become Portland’s first popularly elected mayor in 88 years”. He’ll be quite old by then.

• Anonymous

  I always vote for the candidate I “want”.

• Anonymous

  Serious question…did you see the Portland ballot? It reminded me of filling in the ovals on the SATs!

  Thirteen candidates ran for Mayor of Portland. Are we seriously asking people to keep track of their 1st through 13th choice?

• ReasonWillTriumph

  123

• Anonymous

  I think that in most races, you won’t see so many choices.  I would definitely like to see this implemented statewide.

• Anonymous

  I did not see the ballot, I can imagine it was a headache to rank all of the choices… “well, in hindsight my 8th choice should really have been my 7th…”

  There were 15 candidates, and it took 13 recounts to reach a majority, so you are correct that there were people whose 13th choice mattered! Hopefully most races will have far fewer candidates.

• Anonymous

  Me too, and they rarely win. Being a libertarian means you have to get used to that, though :)

• Anonymous

  Susan, I can understand how someone who does not understand how IRV works would be skeptical of terms like “systematically reallocated.” Sounds crazy. But, it’s not. There have been a lot of indepth articles in the Portland Press Herald explaining how the votes are counted. And, I think you can find some youtube videos that show how it’s done, too. Read up on the process, and after you understand it, your fears should go away. Mine did.

• http://pulse.yahoo.com/_LW4FB6KENKESPHTKPN56PHDVQA Greg

   Susan you were correct in questioning the voting system, which I can prove to be a fraud.  Voters were told they could vote for as few or as many candidates as they wanted.  But as it turned out,  over 3500 voters had their votes “thrown out” of the total count because they did not rank all 15 choices first to last.  That was done, evidently, to make it appear the winner had received more than 50% of the votes, when in fact that was not the case.   The discussion about this on the press herald site yesterday…. has all been censored and deleted by the newspaper in Portland!