ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Electoral reform

Electoral reform is all about making sure that voting is fair and accurate. Think about when you play a game and you want to make sure that everyone has the same chance to win. That's what electoral reform is all about, making sure that everyone's vote counts the same and that the rules are fair for everyone.

Sometimes, the way we count votes can be tricky, especially when there are a lot of people running for something. For example, let's say we are voting for class president in our school. If five different people are running, the person who gets the most votes might not actually have the support of the majority.

So, to make sure that the winner of the election is truly the person that most people want, there are different methods we can use for counting votes. One popular method is called Ranked Choice Voting.

With Ranked Choice Voting, each person gets to pick more than one person that they want to vote for. Then, we count up all the votes and if someone has more than half of the votes, they win!

But if no one has more than half of the votes, we do something called an instant runoff. This means that we look at the person who got the least amount of votes and cross them off the list. Then, we look at everyone's second choice and add those votes to each candidate. If someone gets half of the votes now, they win!

We keep doing this until someone gets more than half of the votes. This way, even if your first choice didn't win, your vote still counts towards the person you second chose.

Overall, electoral reform is about making sure that everyone's vote counts and that the way we count votes is fair for everyone. It's like making sure that everyone has a fair chance to win the game!