Ranked-choice voting is simple: you rank the candidates in order of preference, 1 through 5. You do not have to rank them all: if you like only two candidates, you can just make a first and a second choice. If a candidate gets more than 50 percent as voters’ first choice, that candidate wins. That makes sense; anyone who gets more than 50 percent would win under any system. If no one breaks 50 percent, then the least popular candidate—the one who got the fewest 1s—is discarded, and that candidate’s voters get reassigned to their second choice. You continue this process until a candidate gets
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