It always blows my mind how little effort the people in charge put into the final details of picking systems.

STAR needs to write a similar article to this.

https://newsdirect.com/news/open-letter-to-ranked-choice-voting-supporters-946993204

Not sure about the specific implementation, but at least mathematically it's also equivalent to combined approval voting (i.e. -1, 0, 1).

@toby-pereira Right.... but of course "the popular vote" isn't so meaningful with ranked ballots either.. I assume he means "the most people who picked a candidate as their first choice," and admittedly this has become associated with "popular vote" and even "democracy" simply because that's been how it's been done for so long.

Really, though, the term "popular vote" makes sense when contrasted with "electoral college." But not so much as it is being used here.

Steve Forbes did similar things with the thing he is most known for, the flat tax. Similarly, it sounds so nice and simple and logical as long as you don't actually think too hard about it.