Vote Early And Often For Governor By Candidate Preference

Who says Only In Bridgeport do we vote early and often? Our friends at the New Haven Independent have created a unique ballot featuring 22 potential candidates for governor. The survey allows you to select candidates by order of preference. Why be limited to just one vote, right? With this poll you can rank the candidates. See poll here. The Independent story also provides profiles on candidates so you can make an informed decision on the order. Full Independent story here.

Months before the major parties decide who should become Connecticut’s next governor, you can cast an early vote–and in the process challenge our winner-takes-all electoral system.

Dozens of candidates have emerged to seek to succeed Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, who retires at the end of this year after two terms in office.

In May Democrats and Republicans will hold conventions to endorse a candidate each, then some others will qualify for an August primary.

Some cities across the country have experimented with a different system: “ranked-choice” and “instant run-off” (IRV) elections. Voters select all the candidates they support in order of preference; then those results are tabulated to remove the lowest-scoring candidate in a series of rounds, with that candidates’ voters’ next picks redistributed to remaining candidates.

The idea is to give people a reason to vote. IRV and ranked choice are designed to offer more choices in each election, so people feel they can vote for one or more candidates rather than always vote against the lesser of two “evils” left standing when final choices appear on a general election ballot. (Here’s a fuller description).

So let’s try it out.

We’ve embedded below a ballot on which we’ve listed the 22 candidates who have filed papers (for either “exploratory” or official campaigns) and made some public show of breathing and gathering money or support. You can list all the candidates you support in order of support. Then you can view round-by-round results as they evolve in coming weeks as other readers vote, too.

Below the ballot, we’ve also provided links to information about those candidates (and in some cases embedded radio interviews they’ve done on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven” program) to help you make your choices.

Thanks to the organization OpaVote for designing and adapting this polling tool in collaboration with Independent webmaster Kyle Summer so we can embed it here. Thanks to Brandon Patton for finding the right tool and creating the poll.

See poll here.