Preferential voting wins out in Maine court case

Nice to see preferential voting (‘ranked choice voting’ in US parlance) win out in an American court case:

This afternoon, Judge Lance Walker issued his order in a court case that affects this November’s Senate election. This comes surprisingly fast, just one day after the evidentiary hearing. He finds that plaintiffs, four supporters of Senator Susan Collins, have suffered no constitutional injury from ranked-choice voting. His order gets pretty tart with the plaintiffs, and is worth a full read, here …

Consequently, supporters of minor-party candidates will still have the option (as they did before this lawsuit) to reassign their vote to either of the two major-party candidates, Sara Gideon (D) or Susan Collins (R). In principle, every voter in Maine will have a say between which of these two is the Senator next year – without risking the possibility of throwing away their vote. [Princeton Election Consortium]