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I'm very proud of my state. We also voted to legalize marijuana. RCV was especially relevant to Maine because our Republican governor, Paul LePage, won his sea

I'm very proud of my state. We also voted to legalize marijuana. RCV was especially relevant to Maine because our Republican governor, Paul LePage, won his seat -- twice -- with around 35%-45% of the vote, primarily due to votes being split between the Democratic and Independent candidates (a.k.a The Spoiler Effect). To me, LePage and his path to election and re-election closely mirrors Trump and his campaign. He ran on "telling it like it is", "being a businessman, not a politician", and "draining the swamp". He has said some really horrible things about minorities and his fellow politicians, he's vetoed a record number of bills, and he's held very controversial policy stances. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/30/us/controversial-gov-paul-lepage-maine-list.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/30/us/controversial-gov-paul-... http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2016/10/06/samantha_bee_compares_maine_governor_paul_lepage_to_trump_video.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2016/10/06/samantha_bee_... Edit: I never meant to imply blame of any candidate in creating the Spoiler Effect, and as such I modified my comment to reflect this.

tanderson92 10y ago
The Democratic candidate came in 3rd place with only 19%. I believe that makes the Democrats the "spoiler" in that election. To not recognize it as such is to prop up the 2-party system.
- kevlar1818 10y ago
  Fair enough, but I think you're kind of splitting hairs. You're referring to the 2010 election, I think. The 2014 election has the Democratic candidate take ~43% if I'm correct.
  - kevlar1818 10y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maine_gubernatorial_election,_2010 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maine_gubernatorial_election,_... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maine_gubernatorial_election,_2014 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maine_gubernatorial_election,_...
  - tanderson92 10y ago
    How is it splitting hairs to correct the (implicit, through use of the phrase "The Spoiler Effect") blaming of third party candidates when it wasn't a third party candidate who was at fault whatsoever? In fact that's the central point of this ballot proposition: so that we can vote for better candidates than the Democrats are willing to put up without fear of your blame if we don't reach enough to defeat the other side. Even worse, your post is just factually wrong. By placing the fact that a 3rd party candidate split the vote once in a sentence where you mentioned the governor failed to reach a majority twice, you conflated the two in a manner that almost looks willful. And yes, I was referring to the 2010 election because the plurality for LePage was much less convincing then.
    - kevlar1818 10y ago
      Look, I agree with you. I am thrilled that RCV was voted-for by the people of Maine. It's a step away from the two-party system, and that's great. The Spoiler Effect happened one way or another. I was not intentionally trying to bash any of the candidates who were involved in the Spoiler Effect, and I think it's petty and inflammatory to assign blame either way. I'll update my post to be more clear in this regard.
    - ClayShentrup 10y ago
      I'm a co-founder of the Center for Election Science. This was the spoiler effect. It doesn't really matter which candidate was the spoiler. It matters that the wrong candidate won. We did some analysis on this election here. http://scorevoting.net/Maine2014Exit.html http://scorevoting.net/Maine2014Exit.html
      - tanderson92 10y ago
        Of course it was the spoiler effect! I never claimed otherwise! I only said that if you are going to use that language then in 2010 it is clear that the Democrats were the spoilers and the independent deserves none of the blame assigned by kevlar1818 in the original wording of the post.
      - RobAtticus 10y ago
- veidr 10y ago
  Sure, the Democrat was the spoiler there. But your characterization of kevlar1818's comment doesn't make sense. Advocating RCV is the exact opposite of propping up the two party system. And the terminology itself is neutral -- it's only because the American democracy has suffered under (or, as some would now say, outright failed due to) the two party system that you associate "the spoiler effect" with a third party candidate.
  - tanderson92 10y ago
    No, my characterization did make sense because at the time I commented (kevlar1818 has since edited -- read the whole thread), kevlar1818 explicitly blamed an independent candidate for splitting the Democrats' votes, as if they owned them.
    - kevlar1818 10y ago
      Once again, any blame was not intentional. I don't know why you are insisting that I'm an opponent of third parties in elections.
- chapium 10y ago
  Just an observation here, I dont think there was an implication that the independants were a spoiler. Parent implied that democrat and independent candidates were similar in ideology and therefore a spoiler effect was present.
- odonnellryan 10y ago
  Good news for Maine: preferential voting will really help with the two party system.
  - pessimizer 10y ago
    The two-party system doesn't need any help. Preferential voting will give people the opportunity to vote for the candidates they prefer in the order they prefer them, rather than participating in the (media-driven) Keynesian beauty contest that the institutional parties force us into.
- Ph0X 10y ago
  While that may be true, either of the two could've been the actual winner if real ranked voting was used. People usually flock to the candidate who has the best mix of "likely to win" and "shares my values". Preferably, only the latter should count. It's also important to note that First-Past-The-Vote forces candidates to try to differentiate themselves as much as possible from each other, and that also includes popular 3rd parties. They will say more extreme things that they often don't really believe in. So that too would skew the results. All in all, ranked voting will completely change how the whole process happens.
  - _samihasan_ 10y ago
    I'm wondering why doesn't the US implement a system like "Two-round system" as a part of electoral reforms because as I see it the current system in place is not fair for the electorate or even the candidates themselves.
    - koenigdavidmj 10y ago
      Washington kind of has this for federal offices (other than president) and state offices. The top two winners of the primary make it to the final election, regardless of party affiliation. We had one state race between a Democrat and a Libertarian, and my congressional district had a choice between two Democrats (though one was 'normal' and the other was a self-proclaimed socialist).
    - sidlls 10y ago
      For basically all offices but POTUS that's what California effectively has. Except it is implemented badly as a "top-two primary" system. This virtually guarantees that most partisan elections will exclude anyone outside the two biggest parties. It is not very healthy.
      - labster 10y ago
        Or outside the one biggest party. Jerry Brown recently vetoed an STV elections bill, calling it "too confusing for voters". Having met some actual voters, I'm growing more inclined to agree with him, but STV has worked very well in my university's elections for more than a decade.
- r00fus 10y ago
  Fine. Whatever. Spoiler effect is much less of an issue with ranked voting, so good to know that Maine will be going IND (likely) next cycle unless GOP steps up their game and caters to the middle. A win for lefties in either way.
- dcosson 10y ago
  We can debate all day about whether voting 3rd party under simple majority voting is taking a stand or being irresponsible (by causing a split vote and letting the worst candidate win). I think there are legitimate arguments on both sides. The only real way to stop propping up a 2-party system is to switch to something like ranked choice voting, so good on them for doing it.
aRationalMoose 10y ago
Didn't the democrat get less votes than the third party candidate and was losing in polls running up to the election as well?
mtgx 10y ago
People complain about the electoral college, that it gave the win to Trump, even though he had fewer votes. They're right, they should complain about it. However, they should also realize that in most state elections, governors across the country win elections with less than majority support, just like you mentioned. So this is not just a one time catastrophe. Far from it. It's time to get rid of the FPTP voting system. It only serves to elect people with minority support. Heck, if the Republican party didn't use FPTP in its primary, it's likely Trump wouldn't have been the nominee. But they used it precisely because they wanted to make the primary less democratic, and they thought their main guy, Jeb Bush, would be the one winning with 40% of the Republicans' votes, while all the other candidates would split the vote. I bet they will reconsider that strategy now. Even Clinton, which won the popular vote, only had support from 48% of the voters - less than the majority. So even if she won, in my book, it would still not be democratic, because perhaps in a two-round voting system or in an RCV system, Clinton would preserve the 48%, and Trump would get 52% if the Jill Stein, Gary Johnson, and write-in voters would've all gone to Trump. We just don't know, and the only way to know that a candidate is indeed liked by at least 50%+1 of the voters, is to have a system that shows that. The FPTP voting system doesn't.
- SamBam 10y ago
  > I bet they will reconsider that strategy now. That will be hard, given that it won them the White House, and produced the victory for the now-defacto leader of the Republican Party. Party rules to amend it would be a slap in the face of Trump, much like if the Democrats tried to change things so that "an Obama" couldn't win while Obama was in office.
  - serge2k 10y ago
    > Party rules to amend it would be a slap in the face of Trump It's always going to be a slap in the face. Start the campaign now and try to get it in with the next term.
- hackuser 10y ago
  Trump won with fewer votes than his opponent; governors always win with more votes than their opponents. Whether the governor's vote total is a majority or plurality is a separate question. Also of interest: Democrats have won the popular vote in 6 of the last 7 presidential elections, going back a quarter century.
Frondo 10y ago
Hey, thanks so much for passing this, Maine! I'd love to start a group (or get involved with one if there is one) to bring this to my adopted state of Washington. Though I often groan at the "laboratories of democracy" turn of phrase, it is kinda cool to see this stuff implemented somewhere. It means there's a model we can use to bring it to where we live.
- ncallaway 10y ago
  As another Washingtonian who donated to and followed the Maine initiative closely, let me know if you find an organization to work with (or if you start one). I'd be happy to volunteer, donate, etc.
- pnathan 10y ago
  I'd sign & vote for that initiative.
- wang_li 10y ago
  Washington uses what they call Top Two. Only the top two in the primaries will be on the ballot in the general election for the congressional, state legislative and state executive offices. They can be from the same party, e.g. the two candidates for state treasurer in 2016 were both republicans. (California does this as well and it has had interesting effects. California's 31st district voter registration favors the democratic party, but they ended up with only the choice between two republicans in the general election because there were four democratic candidates dividing up the vote in the primary.[1]) 1. https://ballotpedia.org/California's_31st_Congressional_District_elections,_2012 https://ballotpedia.org/California's_31st_Congressional_Dist...
  - tunesmith 10y ago
    A starker thing happened in WA already. In the primary, there were five candidates for Treasurer. Three Democrats, two Republicans. No one knew much about any of them, and the vote was roughly split between all five. So the two Republicans advanced, even though almost 60% of the votes went to Democrats. (One of the Republicans won - the Democrats were prohibited from participating as write-ins due to a "Sore Loser" rule.) Regardless of your political leanings, this is a case where the vote was distorted, and where the winner was decided more by the voting system than the preferences of the electorate.
k_lander 10y ago
While may not agree on how an alternate voting system should work, I am glad that we can finally acknowledge the system we have in place desperately needs fixing.
- ClayShentrup 10y ago
  http://scorevoting.net/UniqBest.html http://scorevoting.net/UniqBest.html
r_smart 10y ago
Hey, I'm also from Maine! There's at least two of us here! I voted against the initiative, mostly because as I understand it, it still doesn't necessarily create majority candidates and because there's a good chance it's in violation of the state constitution. I don't mind that it passed though.
- citizenkeen 10y ago
  > it still doesn't necessarily create majority candidates How could it not? Genuinely asking.
  - SamBam 10y ago
    Ranked voting could still produce a simple plurality, not a majority, if no candidate is ranked by more than 50% of the population. E.g. in the extreme case, with three candidates, suppose everyone hated the other two options so much that they refused to even write in a #2 choice. Of course, this seems like a completely silly argument, because it's much more likely to generate majorities than the single-choice system.
    - r_smart 10y ago
      People just frequently complain when a candidate didn't get 50% of the popular vote in an election. I think it's silly, but it's common. Many people's argument in favor of this initiative is seeing that 50% number. If it doesn't actually produce that reliably, then it's not solving the problem people want solved. Personally, I don't mind if someone wins with 43% of the popular vote. I don't even mind FPTP much, and yes, I mostly vote third party. But from other people in the state, that 50% number was a concern, and I don't think this addressed that adequately.
      - vishvananda 10y ago
        If you tend to vote third party, You should consider being against FPTP voting, because it almost always leads to a two-party system[1]. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law
mjhoy 10y ago
I'm also very proud of Maine. We had record high turnout this year, when much of the country had low turnout. Perhaps because of the important ballot items such as this one. I also think Maine's splitting up our electoral votes helps, too. I say this as someone from the 2nd district who hates that Trump got our vote!
douche 10y ago
Thankfully, the ridiculous, unenforceable gun control initiative that was funded by out-of-state interests was also rejected. I'm very proud of my home state.
SmellTheGlove 10y ago
Good post. I'm proud of our state.
daodedickinson 10y ago
>very controversial policy stances That applies to all of us.
daodedickinson 10y ago
>very controversial policy stances That applies to all of us.

tanderson92 10y ago

The Democratic candidate came in 3rd place with only 19%. I believe that makes the Democrats the "spoiler" in that election. To not recognize it as such is to prop up the 2-party system.

kevlar1818 10y ago
Fair enough, but I think you're kind of splitting hairs. You're referring to the 2010 election, I think. The 2014 election has the Democratic candidate take ~43% if I'm correct.
- kevlar1818 10y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maine_gubernatorial_election,_2010 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maine_gubernatorial_election,_... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maine_gubernatorial_election,_2014 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maine_gubernatorial_election,_...
- tanderson92 10y ago
  How is it splitting hairs to correct the (implicit, through use of the phrase "The Spoiler Effect") blaming of third party candidates when it wasn't a third party candidate who was at fault whatsoever? In fact that's the central point of this ballot proposition: so that we can vote for better candidates than the Democrats are willing to put up without fear of your blame if we don't reach enough to defeat the other side. Even worse, your post is just factually wrong. By placing the fact that a 3rd party candidate split the vote once in a sentence where you mentioned the governor failed to reach a majority twice, you conflated the two in a manner that almost looks willful. And yes, I was referring to the 2010 election because the plurality for LePage was much less convincing then.
  - kevlar1818 10y ago
    Look, I agree with you. I am thrilled that RCV was voted-for by the people of Maine. It's a step away from the two-party system, and that's great. The Spoiler Effect happened one way or another. I was not intentionally trying to bash any of the candidates who were involved in the Spoiler Effect, and I think it's petty and inflammatory to assign blame either way. I'll update my post to be more clear in this regard.
  - ClayShentrup 10y ago
    I'm a co-founder of the Center for Election Science. This was the spoiler effect. It doesn't really matter which candidate was the spoiler. It matters that the wrong candidate won. We did some analysis on this election here. http://scorevoting.net/Maine2014Exit.html http://scorevoting.net/Maine2014Exit.html
    - tanderson92 10y ago
      Of course it was the spoiler effect! I never claimed otherwise! I only said that if you are going to use that language then in 2010 it is clear that the Democrats were the spoilers and the independent deserves none of the blame assigned by kevlar1818 in the original wording of the post.
    - RobAtticus 10y ago
veidr 10y ago
Sure, the Democrat was the spoiler there. But your characterization of kevlar1818's comment doesn't make sense. Advocating RCV is the exact opposite of propping up the two party system. And the terminology itself is neutral -- it's only because the American democracy has suffered under (or, as some would now say, outright failed due to) the two party system that you associate "the spoiler effect" with a third party candidate.
- tanderson92 10y ago
  No, my characterization did make sense because at the time I commented (kevlar1818 has since edited -- read the whole thread), kevlar1818 explicitly blamed an independent candidate for splitting the Democrats' votes, as if they owned them.
  - kevlar1818 10y ago
    Once again, any blame was not intentional. I don't know why you are insisting that I'm an opponent of third parties in elections.
chapium 10y ago
Just an observation here, I dont think there was an implication that the independants were a spoiler. Parent implied that democrat and independent candidates were similar in ideology and therefore a spoiler effect was present.
odonnellryan 10y ago
Good news for Maine: preferential voting will really help with the two party system.
- pessimizer 10y ago
  The two-party system doesn't need any help. Preferential voting will give people the opportunity to vote for the candidates they prefer in the order they prefer them, rather than participating in the (media-driven) Keynesian beauty contest that the institutional parties force us into.
Ph0X 10y ago
While that may be true, either of the two could've been the actual winner if real ranked voting was used. People usually flock to the candidate who has the best mix of "likely to win" and "shares my values". Preferably, only the latter should count. It's also important to note that First-Past-The-Vote forces candidates to try to differentiate themselves as much as possible from each other, and that also includes popular 3rd parties. They will say more extreme things that they often don't really believe in. So that too would skew the results. All in all, ranked voting will completely change how the whole process happens.
- _samihasan_ 10y ago
  I'm wondering why doesn't the US implement a system like "Two-round system" as a part of electoral reforms because as I see it the current system in place is not fair for the electorate or even the candidates themselves.
  - koenigdavidmj 10y ago
    Washington kind of has this for federal offices (other than president) and state offices. The top two winners of the primary make it to the final election, regardless of party affiliation. We had one state race between a Democrat and a Libertarian, and my congressional district had a choice between two Democrats (though one was 'normal' and the other was a self-proclaimed socialist).
  - sidlls 10y ago
    For basically all offices but POTUS that's what California effectively has. Except it is implemented badly as a "top-two primary" system. This virtually guarantees that most partisan elections will exclude anyone outside the two biggest parties. It is not very healthy.
    - labster 10y ago
      Or outside the one biggest party. Jerry Brown recently vetoed an STV elections bill, calling it "too confusing for voters". Having met some actual voters, I'm growing more inclined to agree with him, but STV has worked very well in my university's elections for more than a decade.
r00fus 10y ago
Fine. Whatever. Spoiler effect is much less of an issue with ranked voting, so good to know that Maine will be going IND (likely) next cycle unless GOP steps up their game and caters to the middle. A win for lefties in either way.
dcosson 10y ago
We can debate all day about whether voting 3rd party under simple majority voting is taking a stand or being irresponsible (by causing a split vote and letting the worst candidate win). I think there are legitimate arguments on both sides. The only real way to stop propping up a 2-party system is to switch to something like ranked choice voting, so good on them for doing it.

aRationalMoose 10y ago

Didn't the democrat get less votes than the third party candidate and was losing in polls running up to the election as well?

mtgx 10y ago

People complain about the electoral college, that it gave the win to Trump, even though he had fewer votes. They're right, they should complain about it. However, they should also realize that in most state elections, governors across the country win elections with less than majority support, just like you mentioned. So this is not just a one time catastrophe. Far from it. It's time to get rid of the FPTP voting system. It only serves to elect people with minority support. Heck, if the Republican party didn't use FPTP in its primary, it's likely Trump wouldn't have been the nominee. But they used it precisely because they wanted to make the primary less democratic, and they thought their main guy, Jeb Bush, would be the one winning with 40% of the Republicans' votes, while all the other candidates would split the vote. I bet they will reconsider that strategy now. Even Clinton, which won the popular vote, only had support from 48% of the voters - less than the majority. So even if she won, in my book, it would still not be democratic, because perhaps in a two-round voting system or in an RCV system, Clinton would preserve the 48%, and Trump would get 52% if the Jill Stein, Gary Johnson, and write-in voters would've all gone to Trump. We just don't know, and the only way to know that a candidate is indeed liked by at least 50%+1 of the voters, is to have a system that shows that. The FPTP voting system doesn't.

SamBam 10y ago
> I bet they will reconsider that strategy now. That will be hard, given that it won them the White House, and produced the victory for the now-defacto leader of the Republican Party. Party rules to amend it would be a slap in the face of Trump, much like if the Democrats tried to change things so that "an Obama" couldn't win while Obama was in office.
- serge2k 10y ago
  > Party rules to amend it would be a slap in the face of Trump It's always going to be a slap in the face. Start the campaign now and try to get it in with the next term.
hackuser 10y ago
Trump won with fewer votes than his opponent; governors always win with more votes than their opponents. Whether the governor's vote total is a majority or plurality is a separate question. Also of interest: Democrats have won the popular vote in 6 of the last 7 presidential elections, going back a quarter century.

Frondo 10y ago

Hey, thanks so much for passing this, Maine! I'd love to start a group (or get involved with one if there is one) to bring this to my adopted state of Washington. Though I often groan at the "laboratories of democracy" turn of phrase, it is kinda cool to see this stuff implemented somewhere. It means there's a model we can use to bring it to where we live.

ncallaway 10y ago
As another Washingtonian who donated to and followed the Maine initiative closely, let me know if you find an organization to work with (or if you start one). I'd be happy to volunteer, donate, etc.
pnathan 10y ago
I'd sign & vote for that initiative.
wang_li 10y ago
Washington uses what they call Top Two. Only the top two in the primaries will be on the ballot in the general election for the congressional, state legislative and state executive offices. They can be from the same party, e.g. the two candidates for state treasurer in 2016 were both republicans. (California does this as well and it has had interesting effects. California's 31st district voter registration favors the democratic party, but they ended up with only the choice between two republicans in the general election because there were four democratic candidates dividing up the vote in the primary.[1]) 1. https://ballotpedia.org/California's_31st_Congressional_District_elections,_2012 https://ballotpedia.org/California's_31st_Congressional_Dist...
- tunesmith 10y ago
  A starker thing happened in WA already. In the primary, there were five candidates for Treasurer. Three Democrats, two Republicans. No one knew much about any of them, and the vote was roughly split between all five. So the two Republicans advanced, even though almost 60% of the votes went to Democrats. (One of the Republicans won - the Democrats were prohibited from participating as write-ins due to a "Sore Loser" rule.) Regardless of your political leanings, this is a case where the vote was distorted, and where the winner was decided more by the voting system than the preferences of the electorate.

k_lander 10y ago

While may not agree on how an alternate voting system should work, I am glad that we can finally acknowledge the system we have in place desperately needs fixing.

ClayShentrup 10y ago
http://scorevoting.net/UniqBest.html http://scorevoting.net/UniqBest.html

r_smart 10y ago

Hey, I'm also from Maine! There's at least two of us here! I voted against the initiative, mostly because as I understand it, it still doesn't necessarily create majority candidates and because there's a good chance it's in violation of the state constitution. I don't mind that it passed though.

citizenkeen 10y ago
> it still doesn't necessarily create majority candidates How could it not? Genuinely asking.
- SamBam 10y ago
  Ranked voting could still produce a simple plurality, not a majority, if no candidate is ranked by more than 50% of the population. E.g. in the extreme case, with three candidates, suppose everyone hated the other two options so much that they refused to even write in a #2 choice. Of course, this seems like a completely silly argument, because it's much more likely to generate majorities than the single-choice system.
  - r_smart 10y ago
    People just frequently complain when a candidate didn't get 50% of the popular vote in an election. I think it's silly, but it's common. Many people's argument in favor of this initiative is seeing that 50% number. If it doesn't actually produce that reliably, then it's not solving the problem people want solved. Personally, I don't mind if someone wins with 43% of the popular vote. I don't even mind FPTP much, and yes, I mostly vote third party. But from other people in the state, that 50% number was a concern, and I don't think this addressed that adequately.
    - vishvananda 10y ago
      If you tend to vote third party, You should consider being against FPTP voting, because it almost always leads to a two-party system[1]. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law

mjhoy 10y ago

I'm also very proud of Maine. We had record high turnout this year, when much of the country had low turnout. Perhaps because of the important ballot items such as this one. I also think Maine's splitting up our electoral votes helps, too. I say this as someone from the 2nd district who hates that Trump got our vote!

douche 10y ago

Thankfully, the ridiculous, unenforceable gun control initiative that was funded by out-of-state interests was also rejected. I'm very proud of my home state.

SmellTheGlove 10y ago

Good post. I'm proud of our state.

daodedickinson 10y ago

>very controversial policy stances That applies to all of us.

daodedickinson 10y ago

>very controversial policy stances That applies to all of us.