Ranked Choice Voting

Speaking specifically about US politics, but this is used internationally as well, like Australia nationwide so it should be general interest. 
People normally think of just 'pick one' in terms of voting.

but an alternative is 'ranked choice' Think of the last US election, no wait. don't. Think of a general election between 4 candidates - Incumbent, Challenger, Spoiler, and Snowball. Incumbent and Challenger are neck and neck in polls. Spoiler shares votes with Incumbent. Snowball doesn't have a chance.

So in the status quo vote-for-1 system, people voting for Spoiler might cause Challenger to win by taking votes away from Incumbent. So we have negative campaigning and day to day 'don't waste your vote arguments'. Want to get rid of all that?

Ranked Choice Voting, also called Instant Runoff, means every voter votes for as many candidates as they want. So let's look at the example of someone who voted for Spoiler then Incumbent then Challenger. With status quote voting, Snowball is the vote, snowball doesnt win and that vote is thrown in the trash.

With Ranked Choice, Every vote is counted and we have like Incumbent with 7 votes, Challenger with 9 votes, Spoiler with 4 votes, and Snowball with 1 vote. Challenger would be declared winner with 9 happy people and 12 unhappy people. That doesn't seem fair. But with Ranked Choice, we continue to get a good democratic voice.

Snowball was last. Let's say whoever voted for Snowball had nobody second. That's fair and ok but that's the end of their vote. Then we recount the others, still taking their first choice so no change - 9-4-1 still.

Then Spoiler is last. So Spoiler can't win and we look at the second choice for all those votes. Let's say one had Spoiler-Snowball and that's it. So that ballot is exhausted with no candidates left. But the other 3 had Spoiler-Incumbent. So we count Incumbent for those three votes. Then the final count with everyone's voice counted as much as they wanted is Incumbent 10, Challenger 9. Incumbent wins. Still 9 unhappy people, but Incumbent wins with a majority.

That sounds a lot more fair to me and It's just as easy for the voter. And we never ever have to hear 'don't waste your vote' again.

I didn't think political debate was allowed on chess.com but I might be wrong.