Prop 1 will ensure your vote counts

I would like to explain how ranked choice voting works. If it worked how a recent letter claimed (Daily Bee, Aug 20), I imagine most of the people who support Proposition 1 would also not want to implement it.

Ranked choice voting does not elect the candidate with the most votes in their "tier." RCV operates in rounds in order of the ranked choices. If a certain candidate is overwhelmingly preferred as a first choice, such as in Jen's example of 99/100 people voting first choice for Jane Doe, that candidate would win immediately in the first round.

If there is no candidate who is the first-choice majority, the least popular candidate is removed from the ballot. This means, if 100 people vote in an election between A, B, and C, but the ballots have 49 people with their first choice A, 49 with their first choice as B, and only two with C as their first choice: C would be removed from the running, and those two voters would then have their second choice candidate considered. If those two votes listed their second choice as A, then A would now have a 51-49 majority, and A would win the election. And relevantly, if one of those votes chose not to rank anyone else, their vote is not "thrown out." Their vote counted toward C; C just did not have the majority support in the election: which is how the current system works already.

Prop 1 is far from an attempt to trash your vote. It works like voting works now, but with the ability to have your second choice considered. If you have opinions about who wins if your first choice does not win, ranked choice voting is the only way to make your full opinion count in an election. If we ever want to leave behind the trap of this two-party system and vote for people that everyone wants in office instead of the people projected "most likely" to win, ranked choice voting is the only feasible way to make that happen. If you want your vote to truly count, Prop 1 is trying to make that happen.

ELISE MCINTYRE

Naples