The Maine Secretary of State's Office says neither incumbent Jared Golden nor challenger Austin Theriault received more than half the vote in the U.S. House race.
If I’m honest, it sounds like a mess. More and more, I’m thinking that STAR is a better system.
More understandable. It’s almost as simple as, whoever gets the most stars wins. There’s still an algorithm involved but the explanation doesn’t start with the algorithm.
Voters can more accurately represent their preference. 5 star / 4 star / 1 star is different from 5 star / 1 star / 1 star and those are both common things to want in a three-way election.
Simpler tabulation, no shipping ballots around and recomputing everything in a central location.
No weird Condorcet situations where the wrong person wins.
Proportional representation is something different. I think that would be excellent in the United States, but unfortunately we’re going back to having a king at this point, so big reforms to the voting system might have to wait until that gets sorted out which might take a few years or decades and maybe a civil war. Hope everyone brought their helmets.
Why do you think that STAR is a better system than Ranked Choice Voting?
If you just need a more general term to describe your desired electoral reform(s), “proportional representation” is probably suitable:
I like STAR because:
Proportional representation is something different. I think that would be excellent in the United States, but unfortunately we’re going back to having a king at this point, so big reforms to the voting system might have to wait until that gets sorted out which might take a few years or decades and maybe a civil war. Hope everyone brought their helmets.