In most contexts, we’re mostly talking about Single-Winner elections.
In the context of electoral systems, “Congress” and “Senate” are multi-seat legislatures. Hence the talk about proportional representation, IE how many Americans vote Democrat vs how many Democrats get elected. Without that discussion you’ll never get a 3rd party elected.
Really bugs me how americans talk about “ranked choice voting” because you guys seem to mean STV, which is a form of proportional representation with multi-member districts.
But in Canada, “ranked ballots” meant IRV, which was basically FPTP with a ranked ballot, and ironically exacerbated the worst parts of FPTP like the trend to a two party system.
Stick with the real names of electoral systems!
Because there’s fewer foreign bots trying to make you hate everyone in your country, and fewer social media engagement bots trying to make sure you stay online arguing with someone.
We studied it in Canada, including how it was used in Australia, and it was the only electoral systems out of all the ones listed that actually widened the gap between voter intention and seat distribution from FPTP.
https://www.ourcommons.ca/documentviewer/en/42-1/ERRE/report-3/page-174#49
Specifically here, where it is called “Alternative Vote”:
https://www.ourcommons.ca/content/Committee/421/ERRE/Reports/RP8655791/errerp03/06-RPT-Chap4-e_files/image002.gif
I’m mostly just frustrated about how it keeps getting renamed.
But it is entirely possible to invent an electoral system that is worse than what we have now, and it seems politicians might have done that with IRV.