Larry Diamond on BillMoyers.com talks about a referendum in Maine that could lead to ranked-choice voting being used in that state in the future. The basic idea is that if no candidate gets a majority of first-place votes on the first ballot, then votes from the lower-ranked candidates get redistributed based on how people ranked all the candidates. Ultimately, this results in a winner who is acceptable to a majority of the voters even though they may not have been the top choice of a plurality of voters. This could encourage a Bernie Sanders or Ralph Nader (or Ross Perot or future Donald Trump) to run as a third-party candidate rather than competing for a major-party nomination.
…the issue at stake in Question 5 (a citizen-initiated referendum) is whether Maine will adopt a system called ranked-choice voting (RCV) in all its elections. If they approve the measure, Maine voters will have a unique opportunity to showcase the transformative potential of US democracy and to send a much-needed signal for reform at a crucial moment.
In RCV, voters select not just one candidate, but a list of candidates in order of preference. If no candidate gets a majority of first-preference votes when tabulating the results, the least popular candidate is eliminated and the second-preference votes of his or her supporters are redistributed to the other candidates. The process continues until someone gets a majority.
The ability to rank all the candidates running for office, rather than voting for only one, is intrinsically more democratic. But, because it forces candidates to try to appeal to a broader cross-section of the public, RCV also makes it much more likely that the winner will be open to moderation, compromise and building governing coalitions…
How often do we have a Presidential winner who did not get a majority of the popular vote? George W. Bush and Bill Clinton are the obvious examples from my lifetime, but it has happened before. This article on History News Network answers the question.
Seven of the Presidents who won without a majority were Democrats—Polk, Buchanan, Cleveland both times, Wilson both times, Truman, Kennedy, and Clinton both times. Six of the Presidents who won without a majority were Republicans—Lincoln, Hayes, Garfield, Benjamin Harrison, Nixon, and George W. Bush. One Whig, Zachary Taylor, and one Democratic-Republican, John Quincy Adams, finish the list.