Update, November 9: Lost in the fallout of Donald Trump's victory last night was the fact that Maine narrowly approved the use of ranked choice voting—a way of counting the votes that, Slate argues, perhaps could have negated the third party spoiler effect and found Hillary Clinton to be the winner. This article from November 1 explains ranked choice and other alternative ways to count votes.

One person, one vote, one candidate. That is the United States' method for electing government officials, known as plurality voting, and it sounds perfectly simple and logical. But if you follow the Nate Silvers of the world, you know that casting and counting votes is an endlessly complicated matter of statistic and strategy. Voting is a math problem, as voters try to express their political opinions within the confines of an imperfect system. Plenty of people think our system just plain stinks. Among them is Aaron Hamlin, the executive director of the Center for Election Science, who considers plurality systems are as bad as they get.

From the point of view that the political will of the people should be represented as accurately as possible, one of the biggest problems with plurality voting is the so-called spoiler effect. This is the issue we're seeing the current presidential election, where supporters of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton fear third-party nominees like Gary Johnson or Jill Stein will siphon off enough votes to let their opponent steal a state or even the entire Electoral College. "Plurality voting's vote-for-one restriction makes it hypersensitive to the spoiler effect," says Hamlin. "It handles the spoiler effect so terribly that voters regularly vote against their favorite candidates. These defects create bad winners and persuade otherwise good candidates not to run because they fear getting hit with the spoiler label."

"It handles the spoiler effect so terribly that voters regularly vote against their favorite candidates."

But, hey, don't give up on voting yet. Here's a look at a few other, perhaps better ideas for how to count votes.

Range Voting

Imagine an election night where all the candidates are seated on a stage facing an audience made up of every voter. Each person has 10 cards, numbered 1 through 10. As each candidate's name is read, the each voter has the option to raise a scorecard. Voters are free to do as they wish: they can hold up any number they choose, or none at all. At the end, each candidate's total average score is calculated. The candidate with the highest score wins. In real life, of course, range voting would take place by mail or in the voting booth, but the idea is the same. You can vote for several candidates and assign different weights to different candidates.

Range voting offers some key benefits compared to the current way. You can show support for secondary candidates you like without wasting your vote, while giving more points to your most favored candidate. There's no longer the much-lamented imperative to vote for your second-favorite candidate simply to avoid vote splitting. If there's a candidate you're not familiar with, you don't have to give any number to that person. You will not affect their average.

Approval Voting

Approval voting is a style of range voting that is easier to implement. Once again, imagine you're in the giant auditorium on election night with all candidates seated on stage. Instead of having 10 cards with numbers 1 through 10 on them, you have a green card and a red card. As each name is called you either hold up a green card, meaning this person is "okay by me," or a red card which means "no way." It's range voting with only two choices: 0 or 1.

"This vote-for-however-many-you-want feature means voters can support their honest favorite no matter what," Hamlin says. "And that creates opportunity for more representative winners as well as better candidates."

"This vote-for-however-many-you-want feature means voters can support their honest favorite no matter what."

Ranked Choice Voting

Ranked choice voting is also called " instant runoff voting ," and like range voting, it gives citizens a chance to be more completely heard. Voters assign a rank to each of their choices on Election Day. So, if your preference for president were Candidate B, then C, A, and D, then you would rank those first, second, third, and fourth. Basically, instant runoff voting is a way to express your second (or third choice) rather than having to select only one.

Logistically, it works like this: The votes are counted, and if any candidate secures more than half of the first-choice votes, he or she wins. If no one has 51 percent of the vote, however then the last-place candidate is eliminated. Say you voted Jill Stein first and Hillary Clinton second. If Stein came in last, she's be eliminated and your vote would move over to Clinton. If you made Gary Johnson your first choice and Donald Trump your backup, same deal. The votes are recounted, and this repeats until one candidate is the top remaining choice of a majority of the voters.

"We've seen how ranked choice voting gives more voice to voters in city elections and I believe its positive impact would only increase in state and congressional elections," says Rob Ritchie of FairVote.org.

What Should We Do?

The aforementioned examples aren't the only alternatives for voting. There more than a dozen others: contingent voting , Borda counting , and the Schulze method to name just a few. But even among psephologists (scientists who study voting systems), there is no unanimous agreement about which voting system is best, although most believe the current plurality system does not work at all well when more than two candidates run for one office.

Currently, the cities of San Francisco, Oakland, Minneapolis, and Saint Paul use ranked choice voting in municipal elections. The state of Maine is voting this November whether to use it statewide. Two professional associations that seem like they would know a whole lot about this stuff, the American Mathematical Society and American Statistical Association, use approval voting to elect officers. Olympic judges in diving, gymnastics, and figure skating events have long used range voting, of course, as did Time Magazine in 2008 to elect its Person of the Year.

Perhaps in the not-too-distant future, some forward-looking cities, states or even countries will figure out a way to let the voters better express their preference, free of the problems of vote splitting and election gaming. Until then, get out there and vote.

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