MSA Advanced Senior
Captain Election

Two captains.
Ranked-choice vote.

Rank the candidates in the order you'd want them to serve. If your first choice doesn't need your vote to win, it moves to your next choice instead of going to waste.

How ranking works

This election uses a method called Single Transferable Vote — the same family of counting as Ireland's parliament and a growing list of U.S. cities. Here's what happens to your ballot after you submit it.

1

Count first choices

Every ballot's top choice is counted first.

2

Anyone who clears the quota wins a seat

The quota is the number of votes it actually takes to win. Once a candidate reaches it, they're elected — no need to wait for every ballot to be counted.

3

Extra votes move on, not to waste

If a candidate wins with more votes than they needed, the extra doesn't just sit with them — a share of it moves to those voters' next choice, so a very popular first pick still leaves room for a second seat to be decided fairly.

4

Last place gets cut, not wasted

If nobody's over the quota yet, whoever has the fewest current votes is dropped, and every one of their ballots moves to that voter's next available choice.

5

Repeat until both seats are filled

Counting keeps going — elect, transfer, eliminate — until both seats are decided.

Why rank instead of just picking one? Under simple "vote for two," a candidate who's almost everyone's second choice can still lose. Ranking lets your vote count for them if your first choice doesn't need it.
Learn more

Ranked voting isn't something we made up for this election — it's used for real elections around the world. Worth five minutes if you're curious.

A short explainer on how ranked ballots are counted.

Single Transferable Vote, explained
The closest match to what we're doing — multiple seats, a quota, and surplus votes moving on. Walks through a full example count.
electoral-reform.org.uk
Why rank candidates at all?
The case for ranked ballots and where they're used in the U.S. Note this one describes single-winner races, so the counting differs slightly from our two-seat election.
rankthevote.us
A note on ties. If two or more candidates are tied for last place in a round, this tool breaks the tie alphabetically and flags it clearly in the round-by-round results, so nothing happens quietly.
Cast your ballot

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Results

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