Ranked Choice Voting - SCOPES Digital Fabrication

Lesson Details

Subjects
Age Ranges
Standards
1.G.A1, 1.G.A2, 2.G.A1, 3.G.A1, 4.G.A2, 5.G.B3, 5.G.B4, 7.G.A2, 8.G.A4, 8.G.A3, 9-10.RH.6, 9-10.RH.8, 6-8.RH.6, 6-8.RH.8, 6-8.RH.2, 6-8.RH.4, 6-8.RH.5, 11-12.RH.1, 11-12.RH.2, 11-12.RH.4, 11-12.RH.5, 11-12.RH.6, 11-12.RH.7, 11-12.RH.8, 11-12.RH.9
Author

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Author

CITC Fab Lab
CITC Fab Lab
Informal educator
We are Cook Inlet Tribal Council’s Fabrication Lab. We are based out of Anchorage Alaska serving Alaska Native and American Indian students based in the Anchorage school district. We teach design, building, and fabrication with a cultural emphasis. Our different… Read More

Summary

This lesson will help students understand the ranked choice voting system. This system is used in Australia, the state of Maine, and many cities throughout the united states. Alaska currently has a ballot proposition to use ranked choice voting.

What You'll Need

Laser Cutter (this is written for a Glowforge but can easily be adapted)

Wood for cutting

Paint or markers

The Instructions

Background

Provides background information on why this lesson is important.

Alaskan voters will be voting on a ballot proposition that would change the way state and federal elections are calculated. The official ballot summary can be found here.

 

Instead of having a Republican Party primary and a Democratic Party primary and a separate system for undeclared or nonpartisan candidates, this ballot measure would have all candidates participate in the same primary system. Votes for this primary would operate the traditional way with each voter selecting only their top choice. The top 4 candidates would move forward to the general election.

The general election is where the system changes the most. Instead of voters only selecting their top choice, they get to rank all the candidates in preference order. Unlike traditional voting, a candidate cannot win until they have reached over 50% of the votes. If no candidate has over 50% of the votes, the lowest candidate is eliminated and anyone who voted for them now has their second place vote counted instead. This process continues until there is a winner.

 

You could have students read the proposition text, the summary text, and information from groups for and against the proposition.

 

Make Voting Chips

Voting chips allow students to easily track their vote and see what happens to it throughout the ranked choice voting process.

For this lesson we are going to make and use customized voting chips so that students can easily track what is happening to their vote. I will show the process for using a Glowforge to have students make custom voting chips but this could be done in many other ways. I have included a file with many pre-made shapes which could be used on any laser. I painted the sheets of wood before cutting out the shapes to make it easy to compare votes but for more engagement students could be given a limited set of colors and could decorate their own voting chips.

 

Give students a sticky note and a Sharpie marker. It doesn’t have to be a Sharpie but the Glowforge does a really good job with them and might not do as well with other markers. Have students draw the outline of a shape on their sticky note. You can add restrictions or requirements to the shapes as fit your class and content. The shape should be a closed shape to give it some volume. 

 

I recommend having students write their name or initials in small letters on the back of their sticky note using pencil. This can help connect the shapes to the students if any of them forget which shape was theirs.

 

 

Have students put their sticky notes on a group page so that the sticky notes overlap but the shapes don’t. Put this in the Glowforge.

 

 

Make a selection rectangle around the shapes. 

 

 

You will then need to click the inside of each shape so that the laser will cut it out. 

 

Select the appropriate settings for your material, align the shapes, and have it cut out the pieces. Use the same designs and print 3 more sets of identical shapes. Distribute the pieces to students and if you didn’t already color the material, have them decorate their pieces with a set color theme so that each student four identical colors on four of the same shapes. For my example I’m using red, blue, white, and gold.

 

I like having students explain their shape to me. If they selected a simple shape this can be easy but some of them may need to discuss several shapes that they combined into one shape. They can also reference objects that have a similar shape.

 

Hold an Election

Walk students through the process of voting using the ranked choice voting system. Students will use their voting chips to add a visual to the process.

Now that students have voting chips you can hold an election. You can decide if you want to have a primary or if you would like to go directly to the general. Select something that your class would have knowledge of and have them come up with things to vote on. This could be restaurants in the area, super heroes, cartoon characters, books, school topics, etc. One thing to keep in mind is that a classroom is a very small sample size so if you have too many candidates in the primary you will probably end up with a lot of ties and it will make it difficult to tell which candidates should move to the general election. I recommend stopping after the first 6-8 candidates are on the list.

 

If you are running a general election, hold the vote with a secret ballot and the top 4 candidates will move to the general.

 

Assign each of the 4 candidates a color that matches one of the student voting tokens. I recommend having them written on the board. Have each student rank the candidates by stacking their tokens with their top choice on top and their last choice on the bottom. Do not make students include all four choices as voters will not be required to rank all candidates. Have students bring their voting stack to a common place in the room that has enough room around it for your students to view. You could also use a document camera if you have one.

 

 

Tally up the count for each candidate. There are 32 votes so a candidate needs 17 votes to win (half the votes plus 1). In the example there are 9 votes for blue, 10 for white, 6 for red, and 7 for gold. No candidate had at least 17 votes so we eliminate the votes for the last place candidate, in this case red. According to current Alaska law, if there is a tie, the winner should be decided by a coin flip.

 

 

After removing the candidate in last place, recount the votes. In the example there are 11 votes for blue, 13 for white, and 8 for gold. Again, no candidate has at least 17 votes. Gold is in last so we remove all of the gold votes.