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You're listening to the one a podcast. I'm'm Jen White and I'm Todd's Willick.

Every week leading up to the election we're teaming up to bring you our politics series if you can keep it.

This is our weekly election series where we leave the horse race to the side. Instead, we focus on the stakes of this election.

For people, for the country, and for our democracy.

Both major political parties have now wrapped up their conventions in one way

their advertisements for why Americans should vote for each party's

candidates from president all the way down the ticket. But this year voters in

five states are going to have another question on that. the is known broadly as ranked choice voting. There are some different flavors of it.

In some cases it's called instant runoff voting or final five voting. I like that name.

It's got a Battle Star Galactica vibe. Final Five voting. I like it, but in any

case all of these different names describe a way of electing candidates that's

different from how most Americans elect their representatives right now. So here's how it works in general.

As a voter, you get to rank your preferred candidates so you don't just choose one name.

You might have a first, second, and third preference for who represents you.

When voting is all over, a process of elimination takes over.

The lowest vote getter in the first round is eliminated, and then their votes are redistributed to hire vote gators up the

line according to how voters ranked the other candidates. The process

continues until you end up with a winner and ranked choice voting systems are already

...